Five Seasons: A Baseball Companion (37 page)

The Sox just about wrapped it up the next week, when they beat the Yankees, 6–4, at Shea, in a game that was played in a steadily deepening downpour—the beginning of the tropical storm that washed away most of the last week of the season. By the ninth inning, the mound and the batters’ boxes looked like trenches on the Somme, and the stadium was filled with a wild gray light made by millions of illuminated falling raindrops. The Yankees got the tying runs aboard in the ninth, with two out, and then Dick Drago struck out Bobby Bonds, swinging, on three successive pitches, and the Boston outfielders came leaping and splashing in through the rain like kids home from a picnic. The winning Boston margin, a few days later, was still four and a half games.

The playoffs, it will be remembered, were brief. Over in the National League, the Reds embarrassed the Pittsburgh Pirates, winners of the Eastern Division title, by stealing ten bases in their first two games, which they won by 8–3 and 6–1. Young John Candelaria pitched stoutly for the Pirates when the teams moved on to Three Rivers Stadium, fanning fourteen Cincinnati batters, but Pete Rose broke his heart with a two-run homer in the eighth, and the Reds won the game, 5–3, and the pennant, 3–0, in the tenth inning. I had deliberated for perhaps seven seconds before choosing to follow the American League championship games—partly because the Red Sox were the only new faces available (the Reds, the Pirates, and the A’s have among them qualified for the playoffs fourteen times in the past six years), but mostly because I know that the best place in the world to watch baseball is at Fenway Park. The unique dimensions and properties of the Palazzo Yawkey (the left-field wall is 37 feet high and begins a bare 315 feet down the foul line from home plate—or perhaps, according to a startling new computation made by the Boston
Globe
this fall,
304
feet) vivify ball games and excite the imagination. On the afternoon of the first A’s-Sox set-to, the deep green of the grass and light green of the wall, the variously angled blocks and planes and triangles and wedges of the entirely occupied stands, and the multiple seams and nooks and corners of the outfield fences, which encompass eleven different angles off which a ball or a ballplayer can ricochet, suddenly showed me that I was inside the ultimate origami.

There were two significant absentees—Jim Rice, who had suffered a fractured hand late in the campaign and would not play again this year, and Catfish Hunter, the erstwhile Oakland meal ticket, whose brisk work had been so useful to the A’s in recent Octobers. Boston manager Darrell Johnson solved his problem brilliantly, moving Carl Yastrzemski from first base to Rice’s spot under the left-field wall—a land grant that Yaz had occupied and prospected for many years. Oakland manager Alvin Dark found no comparable answer to his dilemma, but the startling comparative levels of baseball that were now demonstrated by the defending three-time champion A’s and the untested Red Sox soon indicated that perhaps not even the Cat would have made much difference. In the bottom of the very first inning, Yastrzemski singled off Ken Holtzman, and then Carlton Fisk hit a hopper down the third-base line that was butchered by Sal Bando and further mutilated by Claudell Washington, in left. Lynn then hit an undemanding ground ball to second baseman Phil Garner, who muffed it. Two runs were in, and in the seventh the Sox added five more, with help from Oakland center fielder Bill North, who dropped a fly, and Washington, who somehow played Lynn’s fly to the base of the wall into a double. Tiant, meanwhile, was enjoying himself. The Oakland scouting report on him warned he had six pitches—fastball, slider, curve, change-up curve, palm ball, and knuckler—all of which he could serve up from the sidearm, three-quarter, or overhand sectors, and points in between, but on this particular afternoon his fastball was so lively that he eschewed the upper ranges of virtuosity. He did not give up his first hit until the fifth inning or, incredibly, his first ground ball until the eighth. The Sox won, 7–1. “Tiant,” Reggie Jackson declared in the clubhouse, “is the Fred Astaire of baseball.”

The second game, which Alvin Dark had singled out as the crucial one in any three-of-five series, was much better. Oakland jumped away to a 3–0 lead, after a first-inning homer by Jackson, and Sal Bando whacked four successive hits—
bong! whang! bing! thwong!
—off the left-field wall during the afternoon. The second of these, a single, was converted into a killing out by Yastrzemski, who seized the carom off the wall and whirled and threw to Petrocelli to erase the eagerly advancing Campaneris at third—a play that Yaz and Rico first perfected during the Garfield Administration. The same two elders subsequently hit home runs—Yaz off Vida Blue, Rico off Rollie Fingers—and Lynn contributed a run-scoring single and a terrific diving cutoff of a Joe Rudi double to center field that saved at least one run. The Sox won by 6–3. The A’s complained after the game that two of Bando’s shots would have been home runs in any other park, and that both Yastrzemski’s and Petrocelli’s homers probably would have been outs in any other park. Absolutely true: the Wall giveth and the Wall taketh away.

Not quite believing what was happening, I followed the two teams to Oakland, where I watched the Bosox wrap up their easy pennant with a 5–3 victory. Yastrzemski, who is thirty-six years old and who had suffered through a long summer of injuries and ineffectuality, continued to play like the Yaz of 1967, when he almost single-handedly carried the Red Sox to their last pennant and down to the seventh game of that World Series. This time, he came up with two hits, and twice astonished Jackson in the field—first with a whirling throw from the deep left-field corner that cleanly excised Reggie at second base, and then, in the eighth, with a sprinting, diving, skidding, flat-on-the-belly stop of Jackson’s low line shot to left that was headed for the wall and a sure triple. The play came in the midst of the old champions’ courageous two-run rally in the eighth, and it destroyed them. Even though it fell short, I was glad about that rally, for I did not want to see the splendid old green-and-yallers go down meekly or sadly in the end. The Oakland fans, who have not always been known for the depths of their constancy or appreciation, also distinguished themselves, sustaining an earsplitting cacophony of hope and encouragement to the utter end. I sensed they were saying goodbye to their proud and vivid and infinitely entertaining old lineup—to Sal Bando and Campy Campaneris, to Joe Rudi and Reggie Jackson and Gene Tenace and Rollie Fingers and the rest, who will almost surely be broken up now and traded away, as great teams must be when they come to the end of their time in the sun.

The finalists, coming together for the Series opener at Fenway Park, were heavily motivated. The Reds had not won a World Series since 1940, the Sox since 1918. Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine had stalled badly in its recent October outings, having failed in the World Series of 1970 and ’72 and in the playoffs of 1973. The Red Sox had a record of shocking late-season collapses, the latest coming in 1974, when they fizzled away a seven-game lead in the last six weeks of the season. Both teams, however, were much stronger than in recent years—the Reds because of their much improved pitching (most of it relief pitching) and the maturing of a second generation of outstanding players (Ken Griffey, Dave Concepcion, George Foster) to join with the celebrated Rose, Morgan, Perez, and Bench. The Red Sox infield had at last found itself, with Rick Burleson at short and Denny Doyle (a midseason acquisition from the Angels) at second, and there was a new depth in hitting and defense—Beniquez, Cooper, Carbo, and the remarkable Dwight Evans. This was a far better Boston team than the 1967 miracle workers. The advantage, however, seemed to belong to Cincinnati, because of the Reds’ combination of speed and power (168 stolen bases, 124 homers) and their implacable habit of winning ball games. Their total of 108 games won had been fashioned, in part, out of an early-season streak of 41 wins in 50 games, and a nearly unbelievable record of 64–17 in their home park. The Red Sox, on the other hand, had Lynn and Tiant.…

Conjecture thickened through most of the opening game, which was absolutely close for most of the distance, and then suddenly not close at all. Don Gullett, a powerful left-hander, kept the Red Sox in check for six innings, but was slightly outpitched and vastly outacted over the same distance by Tiant. The venerable stopper (Tiant is listed as being thirty-four and rumored as being a little or a great deal older) did not have much of a fastball on this particular afternoon, so we were treated to the splendid full range of Tiantic mime. His repertoire begins with an exaggerated mid-windup pivot, during which he turns his back on the batter and seems to examine the infield directly behind the mound for signs of crabgrass. With men on bases, his stretch consists of a succession of minute downward waggles and pauses of the glove, and a menacing sidewise, slit-eyed, Valentino-like gaze over his shoulder at the base runner. The full flower of his art, however, comes during the actual delivery, which is executed with a perfect variety show of accompanying gestures and impersonations. I had begun to take notes during my recent observations of the Cuban Garrick, and now, as he set down the Reds with only minimal interruptions (including one balk call, in the fourth), I arrived at some tentative codifications. The basic Tiant repertoire seems to include:

(1) Call the Osteopath: In midpitch, the man suffers an agonizing seizure in the central cervical region, which he attempts to fight off with a sharp backward twist of the head.

(2) Out of the Woodshed: Just before releasing the ball, he steps over a raised sill and simultaneously ducks his head to avoid conking it on the low doorframe.

(3) The Runaway Taxi: Before the pivot, he sees a vehicle bearing down on him at top speed, and pulls back his entire upper body just in time to avoid a nasty accident.

(4) Falling Off the Fence: An attack of vertigo nearly causes him to topple over backward on the mound. Strongly suggests a careless dude on the top rung of the corral.

(5) The Slipper-Kick: In the midpitch, he surprisingly decides to get rid of his left shoe.

(6) The Low-Flying Plane (a subtle development and amalgam of 1, 3, and 4, above): While he is pivoting, an F-105 buzzes the ball park, passing over the infield from the third-base to the first-base side at a height of eighty feet. He follows it all the way with his eyes.

All this, of course, was vastly appreciated by the Back Bay multitudes, including a nonpaying claque perched like seagulls atop three adjacent rooftop billboards (WHDH Radio, Windsor Canadian Whiskey, Buck Printing), who banged on the tin hoardings in accompaniment to the park’s deepening chorus of “Lu-is! Lu-is! Lu-is!” The Reds, of course, were unmoved, and only three superior defensive plays by the Sox (including another diving, rolling catch by Yastrzemski) kept them from scoring in the top of the seventh. Defensive sparks often light an offensive flareup in close games, and Tiant now started the Sox off with a single. Evans bunted, and Gullett pounced on the ball and steamed a peg to second a hair too late to nail Tiant—the day’s first mistake. Doyle singled, to load the bases, and Yaz singled for the first run. Fisk walked for another run, and then Petrocelli and Burleson singled, too. (Gullett had vanished.) Suddenly six runs were in, and the game—a five-hit shutout for Tiant—was safely put away very soon after.

The next afternoon, a gray and drizzly Sunday, began happily and ended agonizingly for the Sox, who put six men aboard in the first two innings and scored only one of them, thanks to some slovenly base running. In the fourth inning, the Reds finally registered their first run of the Series, but the Sox moved out ahead again, 2–1, and there the game stuck, a little too tight for anyone’s comfort. There was a long delay for rain in the seventh. Matters inched along at last, with each club clinging to its best pitching: Boston with its starter, Bill Lee, and Cincinnati with its bullpen—Borbon and McEnaney and Eastwick, each one better, it seemed, than the last. Lee, a southpaw, had thrown a ragbag of pitches—slow curves, sliders, screwballs, and semi-fastballs—all to the very outside corners, and by the top of the ninth he had surrendered but four hits. Now, facing the heaviest part of the Reds’ order, he started Bench off with a pretty good but perhaps predictable outside fastball, which Bench whacked on a low line to the right-field corner for a double. Right-hander Dick Drago came on and grimly retired Perez and then Foster. One more out was required, and the crowd cried for it on every pitch. Concepcion ran the count to one and one and then hit a high-bouncing, unplayable chop over second that tied things up. Now the steal was on, of course, and Concepcion flashed away to second and barely slipped under Fisk’s waist-high peg; Griffey doubled to the wall, and the Reds, for the twenty-fifth time this year, had snatched back a victory in their last licks. Bench’s leadoff double had been a parable of winning baseball. He has great power in every direction, but most of all, of course, to left, where the Fenway wall murmurs so alluringly to a right-handed slugger whose team is down a run. Hitting Lee’s outside pitch to right—going with it—was the act of a disciplined man.

Bill Lee is a talkative and engaging fellow who will discourse in lively fashion on almost any subject, including zero population growth, Zen Buddhism, compulsory busing, urban planning, acupuncture, and baseball. During the formal postgame press interview, a reporter put up his hand and said, “Bill, how would you, uh, characterize the World Series so far?”

Two hundred pencils poised.

“Tied,” Lee said.

The action now repaired to the cheerless, circular, Monsantoed close of Riverfront Stadium. The press box there is glassed-in and air-conditioned, utterly cut off from the sounds of baseball action and baseball cheering. After an inning or two of this, I began to feel as if I were suffering from the effects of a mild stroke, and so gave up my privileged niche and moved outdoors to a less favored spot in an auxiliary press section in the stands, where I was surrounded by the short-haired but vociferous multitudes of the Cincinnati. The game was a noisy one, for the Reds, back in their own yard, were sprinting around the AstroTurf and whanging out long hits. They stole three bases and hit three home runs (Bench, Concepcion, and Geronimo—the latter two back-to-back) in the course of moving to a 5–1 lead. Boston responded with a will. The second Red Sox homer of the evening (Fisk had hit the first) was a pinch-hit blow by Bernie Carbo, and the third, by Dwight Evans, came with one out and one on in the ninth and tied the score, astonishingly, at 5–5. The pattern of the game to this point, we can see in retrospect, bears a close resemblance to the classic sixth, and an extravagant dénouement now seemed certain. Instead, we were given the deadening business of the disputed, umpired play—the collision at home plate in the bottom of the tenth between Carlton Fisk and Cincinnati pinch-hitter Ed Armbrister, who, with a man on first, bounced a sacrifice bunt high in the air just in front of the plate and then somehow entangled himself with Fisk’s left side as the catcher stepped forward to make his play. Fisk caught the ball, pushed free of Armbrister (without trying to tag him), and then, hurrying things, threw to second in an attempt to force the base runner, Geronimo, and, in all likelihood, begin a crucial double play. The throw, however, was a horrible sailer that glanced off Burleson’s glove and went on into center field; Geronimo steamed down to third, from where he was scored, a few minutes later, by Joe Morgan for the winning run. Red Sox manager Darrell Johnson protested, but the complaint was swiftly dismissed by home-plate umpire Larry Barnett and, on an appeal, by first-base umpire Dick Stello.