In the previous 26 chapters of this series we recalled the history of the Los Angeles Kings baseball franchise from its creation by William Randolph Hearst in 1920 to the firing of Billy Martin as Kings manager midway through the 1978 MLB regular season. In this segment we'll look back at the Kings' 1978 American League playoff run.

When the Red Sox took the field at Hearst Palladium for Game 1 of their 1978 divisional playoff series against the Kings, one would have had a hard time knowing three minutes had passed since the two teams' last postseason encounter-- let alone three years. The chorus of boos which descended on Boston from the Palladium faithful was loud enough to almost peel the paint off the outfield foul poles; Kings fans with short tempers and long memories had been waiting since the end of the 1975 ALCS for the opportunity to vent their hate on the team which had kept dashing L.A.'s playoff hopes. One particularly irate Purple & Gold supporter even threw a popcorn box at then-Sox manager Don Zimmer, an act which would get him escorted out of the stadium by the LAPD for his troubles. The already substantial police presence normally deployed to handle security for Kings postseason games was augmented by a squad of CHP state troopers and two teams of L.A. County sheriff's deputies; there had even been some talk about requesting assistance from the FBI's Los Angeles field office, but this was nixed as overkill.

For the first five innings neither Boston nor Los Angeles could even get a man on base, much less put runs on the scoreboard. Boston's starting pitcher, Mike Torrez, and veteran Kings starter Doyle Alexander dueled each other like mountain bighorn rams fighting for turf. It was only with two outs in the bottom of the sixth inning that the logjam was finally broken with a Toby Harrah single to center field...but once that single came, all bets were off. By the top of the eighth inning L.A. and Boston were locked in a 6-6 tie and everybody up in the stands at Hearst Palladium were bracing themselves for the possibility of extra innings. That tie held up through the top half of the ninth inning and the first two outs of the bottom half.

Then Cesar Tovar came to bat with both Boston's and L.A.'s relief pitchers warming up in the bullpen in anticipation of going to the mound in a possible tenth inning. With a man on second and the Red Sox infield moving in for a game-ending force play, Tovar smashed a 3-2 screamer of a double into center field to drive in the winning run for Los Angeles in a 7-6 Kings victory. To put it mildly, Boston fans were shocked, and more than a bit alarmed, by the outcome of the divisional playoff opener-- it had been taken for granted in most parts of New England that the Red Sox would dismantle the Purple & Gold much as they'd done in 1946 and 1967. The possibility of losing any game in the latest playoff series between the two clubs-- let alone the series opener --hadn't even occurred to all but a few particularly dour pessimists. And even they hadn't anticipated the possibility of Boston fighting L.A. tooth and nail into extra innings only to come up short at the last second(in their own park no less).

For Kings fans still aching over the Purple & Gold's defeats in the '46, '67, and '75 playoffs, though, this game's outcome was the answer to a lifelong prayer. After having so often been on the receiving end of all kinds of heartache in the postseason whenever the Kings faced Boston, the Hearst Palladium faithful felt a certain schadenfreude at witnessing L.A. dish some out for a change. The handful of valiant(or crazy, depending on your perspective) souls who'd ventured out from the West Coast to support the Kings at Fenway rained down an avalanche of jeers at the Sox as then- Boston manager Don Zimmer trudged into the Sox clubhouse. And many of the same people in that handful would return to Fenway Park for Game 2 in the hope of being able to rub more salt into the wound.

Things didn't quite work out that way. The Red Sox recovered from their Game 1 embarrassment to hand Los Angeles a pounding in Game 2. They jumped on the Kings early and never looked back; in the eighth and ninth innings Boston reliever Mike Torrez struck out the side to close the deal on a seven-run Sox shutout of the Purple & Gold. As the two clubs headed west to Hearst Palladium for the next two games of the divisional playoff series, baseball fans all across the country were waiting eagerly to see whether postseason history would repeat itself or if the Kings could flip the script for once and send Boston packing. As these old American League archfoes braced themselves for what sportswriters were sure would go down in baseball history as one of the most epic playoff games of all time, it seemed like time itself was standing still....

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..but that feeling of stasis would give way to frenetic action as soon as the third game of the series got underway in earnest. Both teams' starting pitchers got pulled early on as their respective hitters turned Hearst Palladium into a giant pinball machine; by the time the Kings took the field for the top half of the sixth inning Boston and Los Angeles had combined to score sixteen runs, and the Red Sox would push two more runs across the plate to give themselves a 10-8 lead in the seventh inning. It seemed as if the wheels were about to start coming off the truck for L.A. once again. Up in the press boxes, sportswriters were starting to compose leads to stories about another heartbreaking Kings playoff game defeat.

In the eighth inning, however, those same sportswriters would find themselves scrambling to do a hasty rewrite as Los Angeles rallied to tie the game with a two-run homer by Toby Harrah. The tie held up through the first two outs of the ninth inning, and as a pinch hitter came to bat for the Kings it looked like the game might go into extra innings. As the old saying goes, the tension in the air at Hearst Palladium was thick enough was thick enough to be cut with a knife. The normally raucous stadium was as a quiet as a mausoleum while fans waited for the pinch hitter to take his first swing. His name was Orlando Ramirez, and though he hadn't seen much playing time before that day and wouldn't see much after it, he was to have a massive effect on the fortunes of both his own club and the Red Sox during the remainder of the '78 divisional playoffs. After falling behind on the count on the first two pitches he faced, Ramirez managed to work the count up to 3-2, then fouled off the next four pitches that came his way, and finally blasted a rocket of a triple to center field which put him in perfect position to score the game-winning run if the next man at the plate could just get a single.

That next man would get more than a single-- considerably more. To the dismay of Boston fans the batter who followed Ramirez, reserve DH Danny Goodwin, smashed a towering home run to center that went so far up in the air some fans thought it might never come down again. The final score of Game 3: Kings 12, Red Sox 10. Just like that, the whole tone of the divisional playoffs had been radically changed...and it was a change to Boston's detriment. Up until that Goodwin pinch hit home run, it had looked to most people like the Red Sox were about to roll to another ALDS demolition of Los Angeles; after that homer, however, a new wave of self- confidence began to wash over Bob Lemon's players and they came into Game 4 loaded for bear.

Game 4 was one of the most embarrasing defeats any Red Sox team has ever sustained in any playoff contest-- which is saying a mouthful considering their checkered postseason history. The Kings batting order torched Boston's starting rotation for nine runs in the first inning and chased the Sox starting pitcher off the mound before the bottom half of the second; by the time the fourth inning started Boston was trailing 14- 1 and in danger of falling even further behind. In the sixth inning, Los Angeles effectively drove a stake through a stake through Boston's heart with a Toby Harrah grand slam to deep center that pierced the collective heart of Sox fandom-- as one Boston Herald sportswriter put it --"like a sniper's bullet."

As the first two outs of the ninth inning were recorded a slight tremor seemed to reverberate through Hearst Palladium, like an earthquake was about to hit the stadium. But it wasn't a quake; it was thousands of Kings fans anticipating the end to over three decades of playoff agony at the hands of one of their team's most bitter adversaries. When the final out of the game, a lazy pop fly, drifted into the outstretched glove of a Los Angeles infielder, the crowd collectively erupted like Mount Vesuvius in celebration. The monkey was finally off L.A.'s back. Next up on their to-do list: avenge their '77 playoff defeat by the Yankees and regain the American League pennant.

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While nobody in their right mind was going to suggest that the Kings would blow a 3-0 series lead for a second straight year, there were quite a few sportswriters who were convinced history would repeat itself in the sense Los Angeles would come out on the losing end of the ALCS. As anyone familiar with the Purple & Gold's history might imagine, Bob Lemon's crew instantly took exception to this and resolved to tear New York to ribbons when the Yanks and Kings squared off in the ALCS opener; by the time the Kings got off the plane at JFK Airport they were ready to personally take on the entire population of New York City for the sake of getting back to the World Series. A member of L.A.'s coaching staff actually did get in a fistfight with a particularly rowdy Yankees fan on the eve of Game 1-- an act which would land both men in a jail cell at Rikers Island.

Game 1 itself was little more civilized; NYPD cops working security at Yankee Stadium that afternoon had to break up at least five fisfights in the stands and two unruly spectators were ejected for trying to vault over the guard rails in front of the bleacher seats and get to the Kings dugout. Kings manager Bob Lemon came within a whisker of getting ejected from the contest after getting in the third base umpire's face over what he(and many L.A. fans) deemed a questionable error call. Yankees skipper Billy Martin actually was ejected after kicking dirt onto the home plate umpire's slacks during an argument over a close force play at second base late in the fifth inning. But Martin would have the last laugh that day; the Bronx Bombers went on to win the game 5-4 in extra innings to take a 1-0 series lead over the heavily favored Kings.

The Yankees extended their series lead with a four-run shutout of Los Angeles in Game 2, and as the ALCS headed west to Hearst Palladium for Games 3 and 4, there were whispers among some of the more nervous members of Kings fandom that New York might win the playoff series in five games....or worse, pull off another sweep of the Purple & Gold on the Kings' own home turf. But as it turned out, anxietes regarding the possibility of an L.A. sweep at the Bronx Bombers' hands would turn out to be groundless.

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Game 3 of the 1978 ALCS was beyond a doubt one of the strangest days in Kings franchise history. The strangeness started hours before even one fan had taken his seat at Hearst Palladium; the actor who was supposed to play King Homer the First in the pre-game festivities that afternoon was hospitalized with food poisoning, while his understudy got arrested on an assault charge after decking a bar patron. Things only got more absurd in the pre-game introductions after the Hearst Palladium organist mistakenly started playing the first bars of the East German national anthem "Arisen From The Ruins" instead of the more customary "Star-Spangled Banner". And when the game finally did get underway, the first Yankee batter to get up to the plate had to call time due to(of all things) a split seam halfway up the right leg of his uniform pants.

For the first four innings of play, the scoreboard stayed empty-- a state of affairs that had less to do with the defensive abilities of the fielders than with the inability of the batters to make any contact with the ball. In the fifth inning, however, the runs begam tu pile up as Los Angeles and New York traded RBI doubles; by the top of the seventh inning the score was tied at 6-all and the distinct possibility of extra innings loomed. But in the bottom of the eighth the logjam abruptly broke with the aid of a Cesar Tovar bunt; in the ninth, the bullpen shut down New York's bats to clinch an 8-6 L.A. win and give the Kings a much-needed jump start to their collective morale. For those who had expected that the Yankees would reassert control of the series in Game 3, the outcome was something of a shock to the system. But for those who'd been hoping L.A. would take the high ground in the series, the Kings win was a note of sweet vindication.

In Game 4 the Purple & Gold began to extend their series lead over the Bronx Bombers, racking up seven runs in the first two innings on the way to a 12-5 pasting of the Yanks. Now the question on baseball fans' minds became this: could L.A. close the deal in Game 5 and punch their ticket to their first World Series since 1972, or would New York force a sixth game? Even the most die-hard Kings fans couldn't be totally sure on that point; more than once they'd seen L.A. get within striking distance of the brass ring only to watch it slip out of the Purple & Gold's hands at the last second. Nevertheless, Los Angeles fans went into Game 5 full of optimism that the Kings would ultimately prevail and secure a place in the 1978 World Series.

That optimism would be richly rewarded. Despite falling behind the Yankees in the early innings of Game 5 the Kings hung close, and in the bottom of the sixth inning they tied the game on a Toby Harrah two-run double. In the seventh inning, with two outs and a runner on first base, Los Angeles outfielder Rick Hunter smashed an RBI triple to deep center to give the Kings an 8-7 lead; in the eighth, the L.A. bullpen silenced the Yankees' bats. When the final out of the game landed in the waiting glove of reserve shortstop Rance Mulliniks, the Hearst Palladium crowd erupted in a standing ovation that lasted nearly twenty minutes. For the first time since 1972, the Kings were going to the World Series....