Five Seasons: A Baseball Companion (36 page)

Although the four divisions produced between them only one semblance of a close pennant race—the Red Sox and Orioles in the American League East—the baseball summer never languished. I traveled about this year more than is my custom, and wherever I went strangers and friends (many of them minimal fans) talked avidly about baseball and the pleasures that the game was bringing this year. Various reasons for this suggest themselves—a post-Watergate unseriousness, the economy (a baseball ticket, by comparison with tickets to most other entertainments, is easily available and relatively cheap), the overexposure via television of so many inferior rival sports—but it seems to me that the most noticeable new assets of baseball are the wide distribution of its true stars among so many different teams, and the sudden and heartening emergence of so many remarkable young ballplayers. Rod Carew and Bill Madlock, the 1975 batting champions, play, respectively, for the noncontending Twins and Cubs; the best pitcher in the National League, Randy Jones, performed for the Padres, and the best in the American League, Jim Palmer, for the Orioles. The Phillies had the NL’s home-run champion (Mike Schmidt) and RBI leader (Greg Luzinski); their counterparts in the AL were Reggie Jackson, of the Oakland A’s, and the delightful George Scott, of the Milwaukee Brewers. Al Hrabosky, an utterly commanding relief pitcher, ran off a won-lost mark of 13–3 and an earned-run average of 1.67 for the Cardinals; Mickey Rivers stole seventy bases for the California Angels; Dave Kingman bopped thirty-six homers for the Mets. And so on. Carew’s batting title, by the way, was his fourth in succession, and he led his nearest pursuer in the averages, Fred Lynn, by .359 to .331. Last year, he hit .364, as against .316 for the next man, and the year before that the margin was .350 to .306. No previous hitter except Rogers Hornsby has ever dominated his league in this fashion. The refreshing and sometimes startling youngsters—rookies, most of them—included pitchers John Montefusco and Ed Halicki (Giants), Rawly Eastwick (Reds), John Candelaria (Pirates), Dennis Eckersley (Indians), and Frank Tanana (Angels), and hitters Mike Vail (Mets), George Brett (Royals), Mike Hargrove (Rangers), Claudell Washington (A’s), and Fred Lynn and Jim Rice (Red Sox).

Baseball among the have-nots was often riveting. The most entertaining games I saw prior to the World Series were part of a set that I happened to catch in Anaheim in June between the Angels and the Rangers, neither of which was going anywhere in the American League West. In the opener, the Angels fell behind by 6–0, rallied to lead by 8–7, were tied at 8–8, gave up three runs to the visitors in the top of the eleventh, and won it with four runs in the
bottom
of the eleventh. There were thirty-seven hits, including innumerable singles chopped by speedy young Angels—Jerry Remy, Mickey Rivers, Dave Collins—off their cementlike infield. The pitching left something to be desired, but the next afternoon, in the opener of a twi-night doubleheader, Frank Tanana struck out seventeen Texas batters, thereby establishing a new American League one-game mark for left-handers. (Tanana, a curveballer, went on to win the AL’s strikeout crown with 269 whiffs, thus succeeding his teammate, Nolan Ryan, who fell victim to injuries this year and went through a bone-chip operation on his right arm. Before going into drydock, Ryan pitched a no-hit game against the Orioles—his fourth no-hitter in four seasons, which ties the record held by Sandy Koufax and approached by no other pitcher in the history of the game.) In the nightcap, the Angels led, then trailed, then tied, and then lost, 6–5, on a homer in the ninth. The next two days, after my ill-advised departure, the Angels won, 1–0, on a two-hitter by Ed Figueroa, and lost, 1–0, in thirteen innings, after the two starters, Steve Hargan for the Rangers and Bill Singer for the Angels, threw shutout ball for eleven innings. The Angels hit 55 homers this year—I mean 55 as a team, or six fewer than Roger Maris in 1961—but they stole 220 bases, and while watching them in action I developed a new preference for the latter means of advancement. There is something
stately
about the home run.

Locally, the home clubs competed hotly against each other in out-disappointing their supporters. The Mets, offered almost innumerable late-summer chances to move up to the lead in their division, lost most of their crucial games, lost their good relief pitching, and lost at last their proud and famous defense. Amid the shambles, Rusty Staub batted in 105 runs, Eddie Kranepool batted .323, and Tom Seaver, finishing at 22–9 and 2.38, struck out more than two hundred batters for the eighth season running. He won eleven games more than in 1974, when he was suffering from a hip injury, and the Mets, by no coincidence, improved over their 1974 won-lost record by eleven games. The Yankees suffered from some damaging injuries (to Elliott Maddox, Ron Blomberg, and Bobby Bonds), and entirely proved the sagacity of everyone who had suspected the soundness of their infield. Thurman Munson hit .318 and batted in 102 runs. Catfish Hunter won 23 games and lost 14, with an ERA of 2.58, second best in the league, all without the semblance of a Rollie Fingers to help him in the late going.
With
such a semblance, he might have wound up around 27–8. He was, we may conclude, worth all that money.

Other events: The Tigers lost nineteen straight games.… On the night of June 10, before a Yanks-Angels game I attended at Shea Stadium, a U. S. Army unit, celebrating a gathering of the Sons of Italy and the two hundredth birthday of the Army, fired off a cannon during the playing of the national anthem and blew an enormous hole in a section of the center-field fence. Liveliest anthem you ever heard.… The Atlanta Braves staged a promotion in which twenty-five thousand dollars in one-dollar, five-dollar, and ten-dollar bills was scattered on the ball field. Six female fans were then selected, who were permitted to keep as much money as they could stuff into their blouses in ninety seconds. The Braves—one may hope not at all coincidentally—suffered a record loss of 446,413 at the gate this year.

A lot of managers, including both New York skippers, were unseated during the season or at its conclusion—a phenomenon that has caused some grumbling among friends of mine, who complain that they can no longer remember who is in charge of which club, or why. The second question is a cinch. Managers are changed whenever it becomes apparent to a slumping club’s owners that
something must be done,
even though it is almost always plain that nothing can be done. The ideal qualification for a new manager is that he should have failed at the same post with another club (or sometimes with the same club). Come to think of it, “fired” and “hired” are probably the wrong words to use in the managers’ game; it is more useful to envisage the whole process as a version of Going-to-Jerusalem, with about forty heavily tanned, wrinkle-necked skippers slowly circling twenty-four kindergarten chairs, into which they attempt to throw themselves from time to time. This year’s roundabout was typical. It began, in a way, in 1973, when Whitey Herzog was fired as the manager of the Texas Rangers and replaced by Billy Martin (formerly manager of the Twins and Tigers). This summer, Martin was fired by the Rangers and then quickly replaced Bill Virdon (formerly of the Pirates, where he had replaced Danny Murtaugh, who also succeeded him), who had previously been fired as manager of the Yankees. Virdon was then engaged to replace Preston Gomez (former manager of the Padres) as manager of the Astros. (Going back to Murtaugh for a minute, we should all certainly remember that prior to preceding and succeeding Virdon as the Pirates’ manager, he had also preceded and succeeded Larry Shepard at the same post.) Also fired this year were Yogi Berra (former manager of the Yankees), by the Mets; Gene Mauch (former manager of the Phillies), by the Expos; Clyde King (former manager of the Giants), by the Braves; Edward II (former king of England and the son of Edward I and Eleanor of Castile … Aha! Now pay
attention,
class); Frank Quilici (no previous record), by the Twins; Del Crandall (no previous record), by the Brewers; Alvin Dark (former manager of the Giants, A’s, and Indians), by the A’s; and Jack McKeon (no previous record), by the Royals. McKeon was replaced by Whitey Herzog.

The irreplaceable departing manager was Casey Stengel, who died this summer at the age of eighty-five. His quirks and triumphs are so familiar to us all that they need no recapitulation here, but I think that a demurrer should be entered on the subject of Stengelese, which too many of his biographers seemed to consider as nothing but a comical difficulty with the English language. It always seemed to me that Casey’s nonstop disquisitions—stuffed with subclauses, interruptions, rhetorical questions, addenda, historic examples, shifted tenses, and free-floating whiches—constituted a perfect representation of the mind of a first-class manager. Almost every managerial decision during a ball game—the lineup, who is to pitch, when to pinch-hit and with whom, when to yank a pitcher, who should pitch to the new pinch-hitter—is, or should be, the result of a dozen or two dozen pressing and often conflicting reflections, considerations, and ancient prior lessons. (Sparky Anderson, asked by the press why he had pinch-hit with a certain batter during the fourth game of this year’s Series, responded with an explanation that went on for a good five minutes.) Stengelese had other uses. In April, 1962, when Casey held a press conference before the Mets’ home opener in order to introduce the members of the newborn team, he went through his roster and his opening-day lineup extolling this has-been and that never-was and his ungainly rookies (he called them “the youth of America”), and when he came at last to his right fielder, Gus Bell, he explained that this was a man which has come to us from Cincinnati, where he hit a lot of home runs, and he would hit some more here because he was the prop and support of a family that included two children, and he mentioned Bell’s other attributes and sterling qualities at greater and greater length, during which time it became apparent to everyone present that he had forgotten Bell’s name. (He always had a terrible time with names.) He finally dropped the search and went on to other players and other promises, and concluded, reluctantly and at long, long last, with “… and so you can say this tremendous and amazin’ new club is gonna be ready in every way tomorrow when the bell rings and that’s the name of my right fielder, Bell.”

Perhaps it is best to say goodbye with a garland of Stengel-flowers:

To himself, in 1921, on entering the Polo Grounds after being purchased by the Giants from the Phillies: “Wake up, muscles—we’re in New York now.”

After winning still another pennant as manager of the Yankees: “I couldna done it without my players.”

On being seventy-five: “Most people my age are dead, and you could look it up.”

Concluding his acceptance speech at Cooperstown, when he was taken into the Baseball Hall of Fame: “And I want to thank the treemendous fans. We appreciate every boys’ group, girls’ group, poem, and song. And keep goin’ to see the Mets play.”

By September 16, the Pirates and the A’s were enjoying comfortable leads in their divisions, the Reds had long since won their demi-pennant (they clinched on September 7—a new record), and the only serious baseball was to be found at Fenway Park, where the Orioles, down by four and a half games and running out of time, had at the Red Sox. The game was a pippin—a head-to-head encounter between Jim Palmer and Luis Tiant. Each of the great pitchers struck out eight batters, and the game was won by the Red Sox, 2–0, on two small mistakes by Palmer—fastballs to Rico Petrocelli and Carlton Fisk in successive innings, which were each lofted into the left-field screen. Tiant, who had suffered through almost a month of ineffectiveness brought on by a bad back, was in top form, wheeling and rotating on the mound like a figure in a Bavarian clock tower, and in the fourth he fanned Lee May with a super-curve that seemed to glance off some invisible obstruction in midflight. The hoarse, grateful late-inning cries of “Lu-is! Lu-is! Lu-is!” from 34,724 Beantowners suggested that the oppressive, Calvinist cloud of self-doubt that afflicts Red Sox fans in all weathers and seasons was beginning to lift at last. The fabulous Sox rookies, Jim Rice and Fred Lynn, did nothing much (in fact, they fanned five times between them), but Boston friends of mine encouraged my belief with some of the shiny new legends—the home run that Rice hammered past the Fenway Park center-field flagpole in July; the time Rice checked a full swing and snapped his bat in half just above his hands; Lynn’s arm, Lynn’s range, Lynn’s game against the Tigers in June, when he hit three homers and batted in ten runs and the Sox began their pennant drive. The night before my visit, in fact, against the Brewers, Lynn and Rice had each accounted for his one hundredth run batted in
with the same ball
—a run-forcing walk to Lynn and then a sacrifice fly by Rice. I believed.

Baltimore came right back, winning the next game by 5–2, on some cool and useful hitting by Tommy Davis and Brooks Robinson, and the Sox’ cushion was back to four and a half. The Orioles’ move, we know now, came a little too late this year, but I think one should not forget what a loose and deadly and marvelously confident September team they have been over the last decade. Before this, their last game at Fenway Park this year, they were enjoying themselves in their dugout while the Sox took batting practice and while Clif Keane, the Boston
Globe’s
veteran baseball writer (who is also the league’s senior and most admired insult artist), took them apart. Brooks Robinson hefted a bat, and Keane, sitting next to manager Earl Weaver, said, “Forget it, Brooksie. They pay you a hundred and twenty-four thousand for your glove, and a thousand for the bat. Put that back in your valise.” He spotted Doug DeCinces, the rookie who will someday take over for Robinson in the Oriole infield, and said, “Hey, kid, I was just talkin’ to Brooks, here. He says he’ll be back again. You’ll be a
hundred
before you get in there. Looks like 1981 for you.” Tommy Davis picked out some bats and went slowly up the dugout steps; his Baltimore teammates sometimes call him “Uncle Tired.” Keane leaned forward suddenly. “Look at that,” he said. “Tom’s wearin’
new shoes
—he’s planning on being around another twenty years. Listen, with Brooks and Davis, Northrup, May, and Muser, you guys can play an Old Timers’ Game every day.” Davis wandered off, smiling, and Keane changed his tone for a moment. “Did you ever see him when he could play?” he said, nodding at Davis. “He got about two hundred and fifty hits that year with LA, and they were all line drives. He could
hit.”
His eye fell on the first group of Oriole batters around the batting cage. “See them all lookin’ over here?” he said to Weaver. “They’re talking about you again. If you could only hear them—they’re really fricasseein’ you today, Earl. Now you know how Marie Antoinette felt.…” The laughter in the dugout was nice and easy. The men sat back, with their legs crossed and their arms stretched along the back of the bench, and watched the players on the ball field. The summer was running out.