By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL/Designated Writers

The Designated Writers co-founder brought back a great memory in the last Daily Happen as he recounted that fateful night in Boston in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series when Carlton Fisk hit his famous home run. (Early side note — though my father offered me a school night free pass, I headed for bed. As my head hit the pillow, I heard in the next room “there’s a long fly ball …”)

Two years later, there was another Game 6 and, once again, I was a no-show for reasons entirely different. Let’s just say that your world changes a lot from your junior year in high school to your freshman year in college.

I grew up a New York Yankees fan, for reasons that now escape me. The bad news is that fandom coincided with the worst years in Yankees history. I picked up the scent as Mickey Mantle was tossing his literal and figurative helmet away and then I lived/suffered through some miserable seasons. The Horace Clarke Era. The years in which two pitchers (Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich) switched lives. Bobby Murcer was my boy, but he was about all they had as they often finished 20 games out of first place.

But by the mid-1970s, the Yankees were turning it around. And in 1976, they made it to the World Series … only to be boat-raced in four games by Cincinnati.

In 1977, despite all sorts of problems brought on by the signing of Reggie Jackson, the Yankees won 100 games. They scored three runs in the ninth inning of the deciding Game 5 in the ALCS in Kansas City to win 5-3 and reach the World Series.

Now a freshman in college and freed from the shackles of living at home, I strapped in to watch my team win a World Series as I did what I wanted to do whenever I wanted to do it.

Except, that is, on October 18, 1977.

The Yankees were up on the Los Angeles Dodgers 3-2 as the Series headed back to the Bronx for Game 6. It was the night I was finally going to watch my baseball dream come true, surrounded by a few of my fraternity pledge brothers. About the same time as the first pitch, there was a knock on the door. In walked active members of the fraternity, who didn’t seemed particularly concerned if Mike Torrez had his fastball working.

They rounded us up in the back of a truck — it was called being “taken out” — and we ended up somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Lincoln Parish with copious amounts of shaving cream on our bodies and, sadly, no map. (These days, arrest warrants would probably be issued.)

Eventually we made our way back to civilization, just missing the final out being recorded in the Yankees clincher. I never saw Jackson hit one home run, much less three in consecutive at bats on three pitches from three Dodgers’ different pitchers.

I waited a decade for that baseball moment, only to miss it. Some people always remember where they were when a special event happened. I only remember where I wasn’t.

If tonight’s Game 6 between Washington and Houston is half as good as Game 6 between Cincinnati and Boston in 1975, it’ll be a great game.

Reds led the Series 3 games to 2. It had rained for three days, so Boston had its pitching aces back, Bill Lee and Luis Tiant.

Boston rookie sensation Fred Lynn hit a 3-run homer in the first. Tiant lasted until the top of the eight and left trailing 6-3.

But Boston’s Bernie Carbo hit a three-run pinch hit homer to tie it in the 9th.

Then things kept happening.

I was writing an English paper at the kitchen table, a high school junior, the TV on behind me so I could listen. By extra innings, everyone at my house had gone to bed and it was just me and the TV and baseball history.

Reds left fielder George Foster threw out Denny Doyle at the plate in the ninth.

Red Sox right fielder Darrell Evans robbed Reds Joe Morgan of extra bases and an RBI in the 11th with a running catch at the right field fence.

And in the bottom of the 12th there in cozy Fenway Park, Carlton Fisk hit the dramatic homer down the left field line and gave us one of the great caught-on-tape World Series moments as Fisk begged it to stay fair, pushing the air toward fair territory with his arms as he skipped sideways down the first base line.

The Reds won Game 7 and the Series, another great game. And there have been some wonderful Series since, including the one being played now.

But if you’re of my generation and you say “Game 6,” the game you think of is that one in ’75.

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