Game Six (20 page)

With the count full, Armbrister took off as the next pitch left Tiant’s hand, a fastball low but in the zone, and Rose was ready: He lined it sharply into straightaway center field. Armbrister rounded second, hesitated, and then accelerated toward third as he saw the ball reach Fred Lynn on the first hop, but as Lynn tried to transfer the ball to his throwing hand it caught momentarily in the webbing of his glove. Armbrister safely reached third, and instead of rushing a throw to third, Lynn wisely threw behind him to Doyle covering second, holding Rose to a single, his second in a row and second of the game against Tiant. Pete Rose now led the World Series in hits, and the Reds had runners on first and third with only one out, their most serious threat of the game.

Ken Griffey came up for the Reds’ biggest at bat of the game. Sparky and the Reds’ entire bench crept forward toward the rail on the edge of the field.

Tiant started Griffey with a fastball, again up in the zone, but a little late on the swing, Griffey fouled it high into the stands down the third base line.

The crowd grew restive, sensing trouble. Griffey had produced under similar pressure in Game Two, driving in what turned out to be the game-winning run in the ninth inning. Then, in the bottom of the ninth in Game Four in Cincinnati, against Luis Tiant—with one out, men on first and second, and the Reds trailing by a run—Griffey had hit a screaming line drive toward left center; Fred Lynn turned around, tracked the ball down at full speed, and snagged it over his shoulder at the base of Riverfront’s deep center field wall, the kind of defensive gem Lynn had been making all season. This one saved Game Four and the win for Tiant.

Tiant missed outside with a fastball, 1–1.

Pete Rose took an exaggerated lead off first base, trying to draw a throw and induce Tiant into an error that would score Armbrister from third. Tiant looked Rose back toward the bag but didn’t take the bait. He came in again to Griffey, using the same windup and toward the same outside location, but pulled the string on a slow curve. Griffey resisted and the pitch missed low, 2–1.

Behind in the count, Luis needed a good pitch now, and he reared back and threw his best fastball of the game, which clipped the outside corner for a strike, evening the count at 2–2.

“Boy, that was a good pitch, Tony,” said Garagiola.

“He needs another one,” said Kubek. “Right now.”

Fisk called for a curve, and set up low and away. The pitch arced toward the plate but floated and hung up, waist-high over the outside edge. Griffey had time to measure and adjust to the speed and then belted it, a majestic, deep drive toward left center field. The runners, Armbrister and Rose, held up halfway down the line, turning to watch the flight of the ball. Just as he had on the ball Griffey hit at Riverfront in Game Four, Fred Lynn immediately turned and with the briefest of glances sprinted back toward where his superb tracking skills told him the ball would come back to ground. His path took him straight toward the 379 sign in the corner formed by the left field wall angling sharply into the joint of the center field section. Ten feet from the wall, on the edge of the generous warning track, his back completely turned to home plate, Lynn glanced again over his shoulder, drew a bead on the ball, took one quick look at the wall, and then leapt up desperately to make the grab, knowing he was dangerously near the concrete and about to collide with it, turning his body counterclockwise back toward the infield.

His glove missed the ball by less than a foot; it smacked the left field edge of the wall almost on the numbers and caromed wildly back toward right center. Completing his awkward turn, Lynn’s back slammed straight into the concrete just on the center field side of the angle, his limbs splayed out, his hat came flying off, and he immediately slumped to the ground.

Seeing the ball bounce free, Ed Armbrister trotted home for the Reds’ first run. By the time Dwight Evans could reach the ball and throw it back in to Rick Burleson, Pete Rose had motored all the way around from first and scored the Reds’ second run. Griffey was already gliding into third with a stand-up triple, and Burleson ran the ball in to hold him there. Carl Yastrzemski had joined Evans in right center, having chased the ricocheting ball all the way over from left, and then they both turned; NBC cut to a zoom shot of center field, the umpire at second called an urgent time-out, and Fenway went instantly silent as everyone realized that Fred Lynn was still lying motionless at the base of the wall. His bent legs turned to the right, his upper back still wedged against the concrete, his glove lying on the ground beside him, utterly motionless—he looked dead, a battlefield casualty frozen in time.

Yaz got to him first, leaning down, relieved to hear Lynn respond to his first question; his young teammate had never lost consciousness but was afraid to move. He’d hit the concrete at full speed, taking the impact into his lower back, and as he lay there crumpled on the track he’d lost all feeling in his legs, totally numb from the waist down. Dwight Evans reached them moments later and knelt down beside him.

Red Sox trainer Charlie Moss and manager Darrell Johnson sprinted out from the dugout, Moss reaching Lynn first. The entire crowd remained on their feet, straining to get a view. Fenway had gone as quiet as a tomb. The fans had seen Lynn make dozens of spectacular, headlong plays throughout his first season, and he’d never been hurt or injured on any of them; now it looked as if their Golden Boy’s miraculous rookie year—and the Red Sox’s prospects for both present and future as well—had met a tragic end. Charlie Moss gently helped Lynn extend his legs, easing him out of the awkward posture and trying to relieve any strain. Pitching coach Stan Williams then joined them from the bullpen as Lynn planted both hands on the ground behind him and crabbed forward slightly, going all pins and needles as the first feeling returned to his legs.

The anxious crowd clapped their hands and blew horns as Lynn began to stir, and when the other men helped him rise gingerly to his feet, they cheered. Lynn bent over from the waist, carefully assessing the damage. He’d taken worse hits on crossing patterns in the middle of the field as a receiver in football, but his legs and lower back felt stiff and bruised. He picked up his glove, took a few deep breaths, and walked back onto the outfield grass, Charlie Moss and Darrell Johnson at his side. Lynn stretched from side to side, moving a little easier, and told Johnson he wanted to keep playing. As Moss and Johnson started back toward the dugout, and the crowd realized Lynn was not only all right but staying in the game, the cheer became a sustained ovation.

With one out, the Red Sox lead reduced to one, and the potential tying run in Ken Griffey at third, Joe Morgan walked to the plate. Darrell Johnson drew his infielders in to the edge of the grass, unwilling to give up that run on a groundout. Tiant, looking slightly unsettled, missed high once again with a first-pitch fastball, then low and away with a hard curve, quickly behind in the count to Morgan, 2–0. Knowing he only needed a medium-deep fly out to bring home the swift Griffey, Morgan looked and waited for a pitch he could lift into the air. Going back to the same misdirection that had just failed with Griffey, Tiant threw the changeup again; Morgan adjusted, but slightly overanxious, he swung hard and missed the center of the bat by a fraction of an inch. The ball skied straight up in the air, a high pop fly to third base, where Rico Petrocelli barely moved and settled under it for the second out.

Two outs, and with the sacrifice fly no longer in play, Johnny Bench stepped into the box. Bench had been given the same tip in the Cincinnati dugout, that Tiant was tending to start batters with first-pitch fastballs for strikes. He hadn’t needed to be told; from his extraordinary expertise behind the plate he knew more about most pitchers’ patterns than they did themselves. He’d already hit 240 home runs in his career, more than any other catcher in baseball history besides Hall of Famer Yogi Berra, and done it on a steady diet of fastballs, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But for all the
hoopla that had been made in the press about how the Reds’ relentless right-handed bats were going to dine out on Fenway’s short left field, they hadn’t yet hit a single ball off the Green Monster in two and a half games of the World Series.

That streak ended moments later when Tiant threw his next first-pitch fastball to Bench. It came in low, but Johnny reached out for it and hit a rope that rocketed toward left field and smacked into the wall about twenty-five feet up. The old master of the Monster, Yastrzemski, retreated back exactly to where he knew the ball would rebound, caught it on the bounce as it came down, then whirled and fired to second, holding Bench to a 310-foot single.

But not before Ken Griffey trotted across home plate with the Reds’ third run of the inning, to tie the game. Bench had come through again. The Red Sox’s early lead had become a memory.

Now Tony Perez stepped in for his third trip to the plate in the game, the seventh Red to bat in the fifth, with the go-ahead run in Bench on first. The Cubans faced off; Perez lunged at Tiant’s first offering, a slow curve, and whacked it foul down the first base line. Tiant came back at Perez with a fastball, but again missed up and away, certain evidence his legs were beginning to tire.

For the first time in the game, pitchers stood up and began throwing in the Red Sox bullpen—right-hander Jim Willoughby, their long reliever, and rookie left-hander Jim Burton.

Tiant challenged the dangerous Perez with another fastball that buzzed in on his hands, and Perez fouled it straight back, 1–2. He then tried to induce him to chase a low slider, but Perez held up and the count evened at 2–2. Tiant missed with yet another high fastball and the count went to full. Luis was obviously laboring; anxiety in Fenway deepened.

Manager Darrell Johnson moved to the top step of the Red Sox dugout, watching Tiant closely. He was always reluctant to remove his best pitcher from any game, but if Luis lost Perez here, he might have to make a move. These were the moments when Tiant reached down into a reserve few other players possessed; he blew a waist-
high fastball by the swinging Perez to strike him out and end the Reds threat.

Sparky clapped his hands, walking the length of the dugout, exhorting his men as they grabbed their gloves and headed out onto the field for the bottom of the fifth. It was a new game again, and the Big Red Machine was alive and kicking in Boston.

U
P IN THE NBC BROADCAST BOOTH, APPEARING ON CAMERA
for the first time at the midpoint of the game, Dick Stockton turned over the play-by-play duties for the second half to Joe Garagiola. Eager to be back in charge of the evening’s narrative, Garagiola turned away from Stockton and went to work.

Sparky Anderson sent out his fourth Reds pitcher of the game to start the bottom of the fifth inning as thirty-four-year-old Clay Palmer Carroll took the mound. After a few years of knocking around the National League and languishing in middle relief for the underachieving Atlanta Braves, Carroll had caught the eye of Reds super-scout Ray Shore. Shore thought the unheralded Carroll had outstanding command and control, and the ideal psychological makeup for a position that was just then being defined in the major leagues: the dedicated closer in the bullpen. Shore’s report put Carroll on the radar of GM Bob Howsam, and the Reds acquired him mid-season in 1968, as part of a trade for starting pitcher Tony Cloninger. Cloninger never panned out, but “Hawk” Carroll—nicknamed for his prominent beak—immediately won the job as the Reds’ closer. When Sparky Anderson joined the team and brought along his emphasis on a strong bullpen, Clay Carroll became one of the dominant closers in the National League, twice making the All-Star team, averaging sixty-one appearances a season, and saving eighty-nine games for the Reds during their resurgent half decade. In the last year, as two younger closers emerged from the Cincinnati farm
system—right-hander Rawly Eastwick and lefty Will McEnaney—the aging Carroll had been eased back into setup and middle relief work. Hawk never complained—off the field he was the pitching staff’s court jester, a good ol’ country boy from Alabama who kept everybody loose—but whenever Sparky put the ball in his hand, he still snarled like a Rottweiler.

His first assignment: left fielder Carl Yastrzemski. Fenway Park and the Red Sox dugout remained quiet for the first time in the game, as if the Reds’ three-run outburst and the threat of serious injury to Fred Lynn had knocked the wind out of them. Yaz stepped in, looking to breathe some life back into his team and the home crowd. The Red Sox leader was carrying another burden this night that he seldom talked about: His beloved mother, Hattie, who had been a fixture in the stands at Fenway throughout his two decades in Boston, was undergoing chemotherapy, gravely ill since late summer.

Hawk Carroll was as big and sturdy as a plow horse. His easy throwing motion looked quite a bit like Jack Billingham’s, and he was equally durable, but he had a larger repertoire, four quality pitches he could throw for strikes: a good running fastball, a sweeping slider, a nasty curve, and an outstanding changeup. He started Yaz with a curve that caught the outside corner for a strike.

Hearing the footsteps of the youngsters coming up behind him, Carroll had won seven games for the Reds in 1975, and saved seven more, his ERA still an outstanding 2.62. This was the fourth time Sparky had called on him in the World Series, but to this point Hawk hadn’t been particularly effective, giving up three hits, a walk, and a couple of runs in less than three innings pitched.

Hawk tried the same pitch again on Yaz, but missed the outside corner to even the count. He then missed high and outside with a fastball; Yaz had the advantage now, 2–1, and looked for a pitch to hit. Carroll fooled him with a changeup that caught the inside corner and evened the count again at 2–2.

Yastrzemski tightened his grip as Carroll came inside with a hard curve, and then made a superb inside-out swing, lining the
ball to left field for his second single of the game. The Boston crowd came back to life as Carlton Fisk strode to the plate.

Clay Carroll had never finished high school, jumping to the minor leagues as soon as he was drafted at eighteen, and the evidence suggested he hadn’t been paying much attention during the years he did attend. The funniest clubhouse moment of the Series for Cincinnati had come during the Reds’ weekend workout at the Tufts University field house, when Sparky told the team upon their arrival that at long last they’d figured out a way to get Hawk to go to college.

Johnny Bench set up outside and Carroll nailed his target with a fastball for a called first strike. The Reds’ infielders put a shift on for the pull-hitting Fisk, as Joe Morgan moved almost directly behind second base; with Perez holding Yaz on first, an enormous hole opened up between them, daring Fisk to punch the ball to the right side.

Carroll missed outside with a curve to even the count. In the on-deck circle, Fred Lynn swung the bat easily as he loosened up, demonstrating no lingering effects as yet from his collision with the wall.

Carroll came inside with a running fastball, and Fisk hit it on the screws, a screaming two-hopper pulled toward third. Playing in, Pete Rose snagged it as he stutter-stepped to his left, a tailor-made double-play ball, but then as he turned, he caught his spikes in the dirt and stumbled, and as he continued to stagger, he whipped the ball to Morgan at second for the force-out on Yastrzemski, while Fisk made it safely to first on the fielder’s choice. Rose ended up on his hands and knees, all his strengths and weaknesses as an infielder on display during his first defensive chance of the game; the result was neither pretty nor perfect, but the Reds still had their first out of the inning.

“Rose did everything but bite that one,” said Garagiola.

Fred Lynn came to the plate and impatiently swung at Carroll’s first pitch, a low fastball running away from him. He caught it off the end of the bat, lofting it to short left field, where George Foster
pulled it in for the second out. Lynn’s swing had appeared fluid but considerably less powerful, as if he might have been protecting his back, and Tony Kubek speculated that the extent of the damage Lynn had suffered in his collision might not yet be known.

Rico Petrocelli came up next, with two outs and Fisk on first. Carroll crossed him up with the first pitch he threw, a fastball motion resulting in a beautifully camouflaged slow curve, and Rico hit it almost accidentally with a checked swing, straight out to Davey Concepcion at short, who made the short toss to Morgan for the force on Fisk at second, and just like that the Red Sox’s fifth inning was over.

As he walked to the dugout, feeling pretty pleased about his best outing in the Series to date, Carroll looked toward the bullpen and saw that Captain Hook already had his next pitcher warming up. After just getting into the flow of the game, Hawk Carroll was done for the night.

RED SOX MANAGER
Darrell Johnson now faced his toughest dilemma of the game. His eyes had told him that Luis Tiant was beginning to tire, and the Reds lineup no longer seemed fooled or bewildered by his diminishing stuff. Johnson’s emotions urged him to stick with Tiant as long as he could; they were still tied with the Reds, and with his battler’s heart, Luis might find a way to keep them in the game. Johnson had gone through the same argument with himself during Game Four in Cincinnati; when he’d gone out to start that night, Tiant had discovered that the mound in Cincinnati was higher than any he’d pitched from all year, and it adversely affected his balance and delivery in the early frames. Pitching with only a one-run lead in a hostile park after four innings, refusing to yield, Tiant had adjusted his windup to the higher mound and willed his way out of trouble in nearly every subsequent inning. When Darrell Johnson finally walked out to the mound after the Reds’ Cesar Geronimo reached first with a lead-off single in the bottom of the ninth—fully intending to take Luis out and hand the ball
over to his closer Dick Drago—Tiant had read him the riot act.

“What the fuck you doing out here, man?” said an indignant Tiant. “This is my ball game, I’m gonna finish this fucker. Get the fuck out of here.”

Johnson, almost laughing at his man’s sheer audacity and perhaps more than a little intimidated, walked back to the dugout and let Tiant go back to work. Reds pinch hitter Ed Armbrister bunted Geronimo to second for the first out, then Tiant walked Pete Rose, putting the winning run at first. After Ken Griffey lined one to deep left center, where Fred Lynn made his game-saving over-the-shoulder catch for the second out, Tiant got Joe Morgan to pop out to first, and the Red Sox had won Game Four to even the Series at two games apiece.

Obsessively charted pitch counts dominate the regulated lines of starting pitchers in the twenty-first century, each with their own rigidly established limits, almost no one allowed to throw more than 100–120 in a game. On this night in Cincinnati, when he had far from his best stuff, Luis Tiant had thrown
163 pitches
for his second complete-game win of the 1975 Series, one of the gutsiest performances in World Series history, but at what cost? Although the rain delay had given him an extra day of rest from his usual turn in the rotation, how much could
El Tiante
have left this late in the season, at his age, after 292 innings of work?

With the pitcher’s spot due up third in the home half of the sixth, Johnson decided he had to give the man who’d brought them this far the benefit of every doubt, and so Luis Tiant went out to start the sixth inning.

GEORGE FOSTER
led off the sixth for the Reds, and for once he stepped immediately into the box, ready to go to work. Tiant went right after him with a fastball that tailed up and in; fooled by the pitch, Foster made an almost protective check swing and accidentally put a slow grounder in play to the left of the pitcher’s mound. Quick as a cat, before the hard-charging Rico Petrocelli could even
reach it, Tiant darted to his left and snared the ball, ran a couple more steps before he could stop, then turned and fired a fastball to Cecil Cooper at first base to beat Foster by two steps. A superb defensive play, executed with flair, the best by a Red Sox player in the game so far.

The next man, Davey Concepcion, watched a Tiant changeup float by him for a ball, then took a home run rip at a fastball and missed for a strike. Tiant missed outside with another fastball, then came inside with a sidearm slider that Concepcion hit off the hands toward right field. Dwight Evans drifted back a few steps to his right and easily made the catch for the second out of the inning. Fred Lynn backed up the play, but as he walked back to center moved with a visible hitch in his stride; Tony Kubek kept a close eye on Lynn, sensing a developing story.

Darrell Johnson now felt a little better about his decision to leave Tiant in the game, but still kept his two relievers, Burton and Willoughby, throwing in the Boston pen.

Reds’ center fielder Cesar Geronimo leaned back from a first-pitch fastball that missed inside, then watched a second one crack into Fisk’s mitt for a called strike on the outside corner. When Tiant came back inside with his third straight fastball, low and inside, Geronimo made a terrific inside-out swing and whacked a low screaming liner past a diving Rico Petrocelli at third. As it flew over the base, umpire Larry Barnett immediately signaled fair ball, then had to jump out of the way as it shot past him and hit the face of the grandstand, where it cut sharply back to hug the foul line and bounce at a nearly ninety-degree angle into shallow left field. World Series umpire crews always carry two extra men to patrol the foul lines, and left field line umpire Dick Stello ran out onto the grass to follow the ball. Before Carl Yastrzemski could run in and reach it, shortstop Rick Burleson sprinted out to grab the dying ball and fired to Denny Doyle covering second. Reds first base coach George Scherger screamed at Geronimo, almost halfway to second, to put on the brakes; he did, just in time, and retreated to first with a single. At any other park in baseball, Geronimo’s ball would have run all
the way down the line to the outfield wall for a double; once again, the architectural quirkiness of Fenway Park, and a typical hustling effort by the Rooster, had saved its home team a base.

But Cincinnati now had six hits off Tiant, tying the Red Sox in that department as well, and putting the go-ahead run at first.

For the third time in the game, Sparky had sent his best pinch hitter, Terry Crowley, to the on-deck circle to bat for a pitcher. This time, with Geronimo reaching first, the left-handed Crowley finally made it into the batter’s box. In his second season with the Reds, Crowley had come over from the Orioles in another of Bob Howsam’s smaller, clever acquisitions for the Big Red Machine.

Tiant came in with a fastball, low for ball one; Fisk held his glove in place and Tiant stared in at Satch Davidson, both of them unhappy with the call.

Crowley had made only one other appearance in the Series so far, striking out against Tiant in Game Four when batting, as he was here, for reliever Clay Carroll. But Sparky had saved him for another reason: During his five years with Baltimore in the American League Crowley had seen Tiant pitch frequently, and had faced him more than any other Reds hitter; he was more than familiar with Luis’s bag of tricks.

Tiant made a casual throw to first, sending Geronimo back to the bag, then tossed his soft marshmallow curve to Crowley, catching the outside corner for a strike to even the count.

Crowley, a Staten Island native, could play any position on the field except catcher, which made him an unusually valuable bench player, but he had spent most of the postseason riding the pine. Given the time he had on his hands, during this World Series he was also moonlighting for his hometown newspaper, dictating a “you are there” column for the
Staten Island Advance
after every game.

Another throw to first by Tiant, his “A” move this time—the one that Sparky still thought was a balk, but there would be no more of those calls from any ump at a time like this—sent Geronimo diving back to first. His next pitch to Crowley hit Fisk’s target to the milli
meter, a fastball that nicked the outside corner to put Tiant ahead in the count 1–2. Crowley fought off the next one as well, another good fastball in the same location, to stay alive.

Terry Crowley had become one of the Orioles’ first designated hitters when the American League implemented the rule in 1972, but since coming to the Reds and the National League, he had made his living almost exclusively as a pinch hitter. Despite his defensive versatility, he had appeared on the field in only eight games in 1975. Good pinch hitters are a rare breed in baseball; the best can make a living for a very long time, and Crowley was one of them. He would stick around in the big leagues for fifteen years, and he was about to demonstrate why.