Five Seasons: A Baseball Companion (24 page)

This dispute, however, barely quivered the needle on the Oakland seismic scale, and in spite of the North-Jackson imbroglio, there had been some late-summer whispers that the A’s were growing more peaceable and cuddlesome. This horrid possibility was done away with, however, when it was revealed that ex-Oakland infielder Mike Andrews had just sued Finley for two and a half million dollars over his forced retirement during last year’s Series, that Catfish Hunter had commenced legal steps to force his contract release by Finley for nonpayment of fifty thousand dollars in deferred salary, and that Oakland pitchers Rollie Fingers and Blue Moon Odom had engaged in a clubhouse battle on the very eve of the Series: five stitches in Rollie’s scalp and a sprained ankle for Odom. The Oakland AC was ready to play ball.

The opener, which the defending champions won by 3–2, was a busy and absorbing affair, crowded with events and mistakes and discussable baseball. There was Reggie Jackson taking up exactly where he left off in the seventh game of last year’s Series—with a terrific near-line-drive home run muscled over the left-field fence in the second inning. There was Oakland pitcher Ken Holtzman, batting in his very first game of the year, rapping a double to left—his third two-bagger in his last four Series games; he proceeded to third on a wild pitch by Andy Messersmith, and was scored on a dandy suicide-squeeze bunt by Campaneris. Dodger dash brought in their first counter: Davey Lopes, on base after a Campaneris error, flew away to second as Bill Buckner bounced a single over first, and when Jackson bobbled the ball ever so briefly in right, Lopes steamed all the way around and easily beat the throw to the plate. The winning Oakland run, in the eighth, was pieced together out of a single, a sacrifice, and a terrible throwing error by Ron Cey. The young Dodgers, as flashy as they were fallible, scored again in the ninth, on a homer by Jimmy Wynn, and had the tying run aboard when Catfish Hunter, of all people, came in to relieve Fingers and fanned Ferguson for the final out. The Los Angeles fans went home stimulated and perhaps insufficiently troubled. In addition to the costly Dodger error and the costly wild pitch, there had been a mystifying failure of strategy after the Dodgers placed their first two batters on base in the second inning and again in the third; in neither case was there any attempt to bunt them along, and none of the four base runners scored.

Perhaps it didn’t matter. It didn’t seem to the next afternoon, when Don Sutton and Vida Blue faced each other before the same enormous, sun-drenched multitudes, and the home side reversed things, winning by 3–2, for a split on the weekend. It was a quiet, minimal sort of game for most of the distance, with Sutton, now in quest of his twelfth successive win, having a bit the better of things. Vida, down by a bare run, gave up a single to Garvey in the sixth and then tried to throw an inside fastball past Ferguson, who redirected it over the fence in dead center field, exactly between the two “395” markers. Blue threw up his hands in despair. Oakland loaded the bases in the eighth after a fielding error by Dodger shortstop Russell, but Russell now took North’s hopper behind second, sprinted over and stepped on the bag, and got off a straining, anxious heave toward first, which Garvey backhanded on a short hop, for an inning-ending, Little League DP. A livelier finale was still to come. In the ninth, Oakland scored twice, on a hit batsman, an accidental, checked-swing double to left by Jackson, and a solid single by Joe Rudi. Reliever Mike Marshall fanned Tenace, whereupon Mr. Finley, suddenly aware of a vivid opportunity to trot his new hobbyhorse, ordered Herb Washington to run for Rudi. Washington now represented the tying run, and Marshall, who is known as perhaps the fastest pick-off gun in the West, sourly eyed him over his shoulder, exactly like Bat Masterson registering the arrival in town of still another uppity gunsel from the prairies. He stepped off the mound three times as Washington, swinging his arms between his knees in a nervous, amateurish fashion, took up a minimal lead. Marshall then spun and fired, Garvey made the tag, umpire Doug Harvey threw up his arm, and Washington, figuratively shot between the eyes, lay twitching in the dust, as 55,989 Los Angelenos cried “Ah-HAH!” in one single splendid shout.

Up in Oakland, two nights later, a pattern began to show itself—not just the third successive 3–2 score (this one in favor of the A’s) but something woven more subtly into the texture of these games. Some miserable Dodger luck was part of it: two whistling Los Angeles line drives were hit directly at Oakland infielders and converted into instant double plays. Contrariwise, with two Oakland men on base and two out in the third inning, Reggie Jackson barely topped a pitch by Dodger starter Al Downing, nubbing it feebly but luckily up the first-base line; Jackson flung his bat away in disgust and raced for first, closely accompanied by Joe Ferguson (on this day the Dodger catcher), who lunged for the ball and saw it dribble off the end of his glove for an error. A run was in, and then Rudi hit a single up the middle that barely skipped under Lopes’ glove, good for another run, and only the third Oakland run—a trifling walk-sacrifice-and-single affair—was earned. Catfish Hunter gave up two solid solo homers—to Buckner and Crawford (“I had some friends here from North Carolina,” Hunter said afterward, “and they’d never seen a home run, so I gave ’em a couple”)—but somehow it was Oakland that was now ahead in the Series. It was almost unfair. Bad baseball luck, however, can usually be contained or nullified by perfect defense, but these careless young Dodgers were letting the genie out of the bottle.

Charles O. Finley, it must be added, did not fail to intrude himself into the proceedings. During that third game, we could all watch him leading the hometown hordes in banner-waving, or, up on his feet, joining in the fervent singing of “God Bless America” during the seventh-inning stretch. Then, too, the public-address system announced that Mr. Finley himself could be observed in his box, next to the Oakland dugout,
in the very act
of placing a call to President Ford, in which he invited him to come and throw out the first ball at one of the remaining Series games. The President said sorry, he was busy, but thanks anyway, and moments later we watched Charlie calling up ex-President Nixon in San Clemente—with the same result. The crowd loved it. (Charles O. Finley, I have begun to think, may be the last of the true populists.) Then, the next day, Finley abruptly benched and enraged Gene Tenace just before game time, replacing him in the lineup with another protégé and discovery of his, also named Washington—in this case, Claudell Washington, a twenty-year-old rookie outfielder, who, by the looks of him, may become one of the best left-handed hitters in baseball. (Charles O. Finley, I have concluded, is never boring.)

Game No. 4, both managers had stated in advance, would be the core of the Series, and its core inning, it turned out, was the bottom of the sixth. The Dodgers were leading by then, 2–1, thanks to a triple by Bill Russell; Ken Holtzman had accounted for the Oakland score with another personal editorial on the subject of the designated hitter—this time, a home run. In Dodger retrospect, the Oakland sixth may have turned on a trifling mistake by Andy Messersmith, who made a bad pick-off throw that allowed North to move along to second base, with none out. Or perhaps it was Bando’s lucky, blooped, wrong-field single to right (his first hit of the entire Series), or possibly the unfortunate walk to Jackson that came next. Nothing much could be done about the surprising but excellent sacrifice bunt that Joe Rudi now laid down (Rudi
bunting?
), which in turn, of course, required an intentional walk to the next man, and set up the only solid blow of the rally—a pinch single by Jim Holt. There was hardly anything to the whole business, then, except that four runs were in (Was that right—
four?
) and the game, now somehow at 5–2, was nearly gone. It vanished forever in the top of the ninth, on a fantastic sliding, lunging stop by Oakland second baseman Dick Green, who flipped to Campaneris from the dirt to begin a double play. These A’s knew how to play this hard old game.

The pattern continued right to the end—a pattern of nearly forgivable little Dodger errors or youthful lapses in judgment, and deadly, coldly retributive play by the old and now doubly renewed champions. This was not in the end a distinguished World Series, because of the losers’ multiple mistakes, but rarely has any of these October seminars offered so many plain lessons in winning baseball, or such an instructive moral drama about the uses of baseball luck and the precision with which experienced, opportunistic veterans can pry open a tough, gnarled, closed-up game and extract from it the stuff of victory. In that fifth and final game, Dodger catcher Steve Yeager committed a throwing error in the very first inning, allowing Bill North to move along to third, and to score, a moment later, on a sacrifice fly. Ray Fosse’s homer off Don Sutton made it 2–0, but the Dodgers responded, bravely and necessarily, in the sixth—a pinch double by Tom Paciorek, a walk, a fine sacrifice bunt, a fly ball, and a single by Garvey (his eighth hit of the Series). The game was tied, 2–2.

The next bit of Dodger bad luck (or bad play) was not instantly recognizable, for it began with a brief flurry of violence—a small shower of debris and bottleware from the left-field stands directed at outfielder Bill Buckner, which delayed the game for perhaps six minutes. The Dodger pitcher was now Marshall again, and curiously he failed to continue warming with his catcher during the delay, which was his privilege—and, it turned out, his bounden duty. The tiny omission was observed by the leadoff Oakland hitter, Joe Rudi, who cogitated the matter and concluded that Marshall’s first pitch to him would not be anything fine and delicate like a curve but probably a fastball. He guessed right, pulled the trigger, and deposited Marshall’s delivery in the left-field seats, for the last run of the year, and the last and best baseball lesson, too: Thinking wins ball games. The last big
play
of the year came a moment later, in the eighth, when Dodger leadoff man Buckner whanged out a solid single and watched it slip away from center fielder Bill North. Not content with this free trip to second, he turned the bag and raced madly on toward third, as Reggie Jackson, backing up, swiftly scooped up the ball and fired to the relay man, Dick Green, who whirled—the runner was by now no more than five feet away from third base—and cleanly cut down Buckner with a low, perfect throw to Bando, while Jackson and North exchanged delighted double-slaps back out there at the beginning of it all. It was a play to remember (the throw from the outfield to third base is always one that sticks in memory), a play to carry us through the winter. Bill Buckner, I am sure, will remember it much longer than that, and so, too, will Walter Alston, and so will Sal and Reggie and Joe, and Rollie (who had been chosen as the most valuable player in the Series) and Dick and Campy and Catfish, and the other green-and-yellow champions, who now so clearly deserve our praise and gratitude and whatever other rewards they can extract from their inventor and tormentor and unique leader, Charlie Finley. Nor will Alvin Dark forget. In the lathery, liquid Oakland dressing room, Bando grabbed Alvin by the arm and pulled him up on the interviewers’ rostrum. “Come on
up
here, Skip,” he said, grinning. “You couldn’t manage a meat market!”

April 1975

I
T WAS RAINING IN
New York—a miserable afternoon in mid-March. Perfect. Grabbed my coat and got my hat, left my worries on the doorstep. Flew to Miami, drove to Fort Lauderdale, saw the banks of lights gleaming in the gloaming, found the ballpark, parked, climbed to the press box, said hello, picked up stats and a scorecard, took the last empty seat, filled out my card (Mets vs. Yankees), rose for the anthem, regarded the emerald field below (the spotless base paths, the encircling palms, the waiting multitudes, the heroes capless and at attention), and took a peek at my watch: four hours and forty minutes to springtime, door to door.

The journey and the arrival and then a few innings of mild, meaningless baseball would have been more than enough for my first day of spring training, but this particular evening promised a treat. It was the middle meeting of a three-game set between the Yankees and the visiting Mets, and the starting pitchers were Catfish Hunter and Tom Seaver. The ball park was sold out, and there were rows of standees three or four deep along the fences in left and right field. Yankee manager Bill Virdon and Met manager Yogi Berra contributed to this sudden party by starting their first-stringers—two lineups that looked to be very close to the teams that would take the field four weeks later, on opening day. Both New York front offices had been avid participants in an off-season of exceptionally complex trading activity, and as I studied the old names and the new names I had written on my scorecard, I sensed myself already awash in the kind of deep-water baseball speculation that usually becomes possible only in August or September. Among the new Mets were Del Unser (a useful if unbrilliant center fielder who had come over from the Phillies as part of a trade that had taken away Tug McGraw) and Joe Torre, who was with the Cardinals last year—a lifetime .300 hitter and a former Most Valuable Player, now thirty-four years old and well past his peak but perhaps still better than any previous Met third baseman. Starting in left field was Dave Kingman, a tall free-swinger and erstwhile (very recently erstwhile) Giant, who had just been picked up for $125,000 in a straight cash deal. Last of all, most of all, there was Tom Seaver, the Mets’ champion, who would be trying out the sciatic hip that afflicted him all last summer—a disability now tentatively but anxiously regarded as cured by rest and osteopathy.

The Yankee alterations were even more noticeable. Gone was the familiar and overburdened Bobby Murcer, who had been dealt to the Giants for another outfielder—another
kind
of outfielder—Bobby Bonds, a swift, powerful, mercurial and not altogether reliable courser, who had never quite attained the superstar status expected of him. Thurman Munson, the Yankee catcher, would be making his first appearance of the year and would be testing the damaged forearm that limited his effectiveness last year. And best of all, there was Catfish Hunter, the ex-Oakland ace, a twenty-game winner over four consecutive seasons, last year’s American League Cy Young Award winner (he was twenty-five and twelve, with an earned-run average of 2.49), undefeated in Seven World Series games, et cetera, et cetera, who was cut free from the A’s last December by an arbitrator’s decision, as a result of Oakland owner Charles O. Finley’s failure to make payments on a deferred portion of his salary. Thus suddenly empowered to sell his fealty and right arm to the highest or most attractive bidder, Hunter settled upon the Yankees, after receiving unimaginable cajoleries (“You want Helen of Troy, Cat? Listen, we’ll fix Helen up with a beautiful annuity and throw in a li’l old Dodge Charger for her, and …”) from almost every other club, for a sum in the neighborhood of three and a half million dollars in salaries and deferrals and shelters and other considerations, to be paid over the next five years, and more. Inevitably, some sportswriters have begun to refer to him as Goldfish Hunter.