Authors: Mark Frost
The owners decided to call this blood-feud exhibition the “World Series.”
WHILE THE FANS
in Fenway continued to chatter with excitement over Fred Lynn’s home run, Luis Tiant returned to the mound and Cincinnati’s first batter of their second inning, first baseman Atana-sio “Tony” Rigal Perez, came to the plate.
Perez and Tiant were fellow countrymen and near contemporaries—at thirty-three, Perez was less than two years younger—and both had traveled a similar path out of the
beisbol
-rich environs of Cuba. Also like Tiant, Perez had been a precocious talent, earning his way onto a traveling Cuban All-Star team at the age of fourteen. He was a skinny kid then with a big friendly grin, tall for his age—almost six-two—grown powerfully strong from the summers he’d spent working beside his father and grandfather in a sugar mill. But their paths never crossed in their homeland; Tiant grew up in suburban Havana on the northwest coast, while Perez lived in the region of Camaguey in central Cuba’s rural countryside. Luis Tiant Sr.’s professional baseball career had inspired not only his son but a whole generation of young Cuban pitchers. For hitters like Tony Perez—he played shortstop in his early days—who came of age in Cuba during the 1950s, their inspiration was a man named Saturnino Orestes Armas Minoso Arrieta. Baseball fans around the Americas would come to know him, in a pleasing, almost cartoon-like contraction, as Minnie Minoso.
Tiant started Perez with a sidearm slider that missed low and inside for ball one.
Since banishing black players from its leagues in 1884, orga
nized baseball had long made a fine distinction that allowed a few light-skinned (or “Caucasian”) Latins to play in the majors, occasionally even letting a few darker-skinned Latins into the minors as long as they could be verified as “Cuban” and not African-American. After playing for almost ten years in Mexico and the Negro Leagues, Minoso wasn’t allowed to play an inning in the American major leagues until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947; Minoso was nearly twenty-eight by the time he appeared in a few games for the Cleveland Indians in 1949. Never appreciating what they had, in 1951 the Indians traded him to the Chicago White Sox—where he became the first black player to wear a White Sox uniform, and instantly established himself as one of game’s most flamboyant and colorful figures. Displaying speed, power, defense, and an exuberant personality, Minoso made seven All-Star Games during the fifties, and gave hope to every kid in Cuba with a bat that their dreams might be within reach.
Tiant’s second pitch to Perez was a slow, arcing overhand curve that dropped in for a strike to even the count, a touch of showmanship that stirred up the crowd. Perez had struck out waving at that same weightless changeup from Luis in Game One.
El Tiante
was rolling out his full repertoire for the Reds’ dangerous RBI machine.
“Tani” Perez, as everyone called him then, knew that the only future Cuba could give him was the same backbreaking factory life his father and grandfather had endured, and that following in the footsteps of the great Minoso offered the only avenue of escape. Similarly inspired by Minoso’s success, American big-league teams had for the past few years dispatched a brigade of scouts to scour the Cuban countryside looking for hidden gems. One of those scouts, Tony Pacheco, director of scouting for the Havana Sugar Kings—at that time the Cincinnati Reds’ Triple-A farm team in the International League—spotted Perez when he was sixteen, saw a glimmer of potential in his raw skills, and got him the instructional help he thought he needed to develop. When Perez turned seventeen, Pacheco was sufficiently encouraged by Tani’s progress to sign him as a Reds farmhand; the deal he proposed would only cost the Reds a one-
way plane ticket to Tampa, and a grand total of $2.50, the price of Perez’s visa. There wasn’t much to recommend the offer, but other pressures had come into play that weighed heavily on Perez’s decision.
In the early hours of New Year’s Day in 1959, revolutionary forces led by a thirty-two-year-old lawyer named Fidel Castro had overthrown the corrupt regime of Cuba’s longtime military dictator Fulgencio Batista, promising new elections and a swift return to democracy. Those elections never materialized, and Cuba’s long relationship with Batista’s patron United States swiftly deteriorated once Castro established his government. Amid a wave of murderous reprisals against former Batista supporters, Castro balked at attempts by the American government to paternalistically influence the direction of his country the way it had grown accustomed to doing so routinely throughout the twentieth century. When President Eisenhower imposed a punitive quota on Cuban sugar imports, Castro retaliated by seizing and nationalizing American-owned industries throughout his country. He also made a series of alarming moves toward the threatening embrace of the Soviet Union, all the while publicly denying any interest in establishing a socialist government. Rumors spread that every available young man would be conscripted into compulsory military service and that all emigration off the island would soon be curtailed. Luis Tiant, now pitching in his second professional season in Mexico, had never shown an interest in politics, but he was alarmed by the changes afoot in Havana that his father told him about whenever they spoke by phone. Life, as the Tiant and Perez families had known it in Cuba, had reached a treacherous crossroads. Although Castro himself spoke often of his love for the great sport of
beisbol
—he had pitched for his college team and made a show of appearing on the mound in games after he took office, bragging that he had once been offered a contract by a scout from the New York Giants—if he broke off relations with America, the bridge for Cuban players to the major leagues that had been built by the success of Minnie Minoso might instantly collapse.
Tiant went back to the sidearm slider, laying more heat on it this
time, and it broke inside off the corner of the plate toward Perez’s hands. Perez took his first swing at a hittable ball and whacked it hard and foul down the first base line. One and two, advantage Tiant.
So Tani Perez accepted the Reds’ paltry offer. He spoke only two words of English when he arrived at their spring camp in Florida—“yes” and “no”—and didn’t know a living soul on the continent. The Reds dispatched him to their rookie club in Geneva, New York, where the frigid weather of the early northeastern spring shocked his system. He was still rail thin, and the Reds tried him initially at second base, then moved him to third, where he would remain until his body filled out. But everywhere they sent him, Tony—during the acclimation process his nickname had quickly been Americanized—Perez ripped the cover off the ball. In his third year, with the Reds’ farm team in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, he hit .292, with 18 home runs and 74 RBIs. He also experienced his first taste of Southern segregation when he was grouped with the team’s African-American players and denied access to white restaurants and hotels. Luis Tiant went through the same shocking introduction to American apartheid in 1963, playing for Burlington in the Carolina League. Perez’s performance earned him a promotion late that season to the Reds’ Triple-A franchise in the Pacific Coast League, the San Diego Padres. He tore up PCL pitching in 1964, hitting .309 with 34 home runs and 109 RBIs. Tiant made it to Cleveland’s Portland franchise in the PCL that same spring, their number two starter behind the Indians’ best prospect, fireballer “Sudden” Sam McDowell.
Tony Perez shared another crucial quality with Luis Tiant: As a person off the field, and at the plate in even the most pressurized situations, he possessed an almost unearthly calm, and with extraordinary consistency he delivered hits when runners were in scoring position; by now it was clear that it was only a matter of time until Perez would get the call to the major leagues. To go with his great natural talent, he owned the perfect temperament for baseball’s long, trying seasons, a relaxed, generous, easygoing, good-humored confi
dence that never called attention to itself and, like Tiant’s, defused the tension in every locker room he entered. Johnny Bench said that with his engaging attitude, booming baritone, and wide, contagious smile, Perez “cast a net” over the entire team and wouldn’t let them wander. His teammates had already tagged him with the nickname he’d carry throughout his career: “Doggie,” the “Big Dog,” or “Big Doggie,” the man you could always count on to come through when the game was on the line.
After Perez stepped out of the box to gather himself, Tiant nodded at the sign from Fisk and reared back into the same overhand motion he’d used for that tantalizing slow curve, but instead fired a high, hard fastball an inch beyond the outside corner, exactly where he’d wanted to put it; that was an “out” pitch and a less disciplined hitter would’ve ripped at it and missed. Perez kept the bat on his shoulder. The count went even, two balls, two strikes.
The parallel paths of Tony Perez and Luis Tiant would come close to crossing again in July of that 1964 season. After Sam McDowell was called up by the Indians, Tiant had stepped in to become the unquestioned ace of the Pacific Coast League Portland Beavers, compiling a commanding 15–1 record only halfway through the season. The Beavers traveled to San Diego for a weekend mid-July showdown with the Padres, with Tiant scheduled to start the first game on Friday night, and the local paper splashed this impending showdown, between their local Cuban slugger and the visiting Cuban hurler, all over the front page of their sports section.
Home plate umpire Satch Davidson put a new ball in play, and Tiant slipped off his glove for a moment to give it a brief rub before he looked in to Fisk for the sign.
But that first showdown in 1964 between the two rising Latin stars never materialized; when Tiant arrived with the team at their San Diego hotel that afternoon, he was immediately summoned to the room of his manager, Johnny Lipon, who broke the news he had just received from Cleveland Indians general manager Gabe Paul; they wanted Tiant to join the Indians on the road in New York City immediately. The moment Tiant had been waiting for since coming
to America had arrived, but his initial instinct was to refuse the call-up; the way the Indians had left him off their roster at the beginning of the year after an exceptional spring camp had wounded his considerable pride. He felt that no matter what he did he would never get the same respect as their fair-haired favorite, Sam McDowell. Lipon had to gently convince his best pitcher that that was exactly why he had to seize this moment and prove to the Indians how wrong they’d been about him. Luis never unpacked his bags; when the Portland Beavers took the field against the Padres that night in San Diego, Tiant was already on the red-eye to New York, where the next morning he signed his first big-league contract, for $5,000—$1,000 below the league minimum. The following day, twenty-three-year-old Luis Tiant won his first big-league start in memorable fashion, besting the first-place Yankees and their ace Whitey Ford with a four-hit shutout. Tiant never looked back; he ended his season for the Tribe at 10–4 with a 2.83 ERA. Tony Perez received his own call-up to the Reds just one week later, and spent the next two years working his way into Cincinnati’s regular lineup, finally winning the third base job outright at the start of the 1967 season. Over the following years, in their respective leagues, the two men had gone on to stardom; in Tiant’s case twice, with an interruption, while Perez established himself as the steadiest, most unshakeable component of the Big Red Machine. But they had still never faced each other in regular or postseason competition until Game One of the 1975 World Series.
Before the Series Darrell Johnson had identified Perez as the man they needed to stop to shut down the Big Red Machine. Perez had simply slaughtered Pittsburgh’s pitching during their three-game sweep of the Pirates in the National League Championship, hitting over .400 and driving in four runs. But Tiant had hung the collar on Tony during his Game One shutout, striking him out twice and baffling the canny veteran with his whirling dervish delivery and offbeat timing. “Doggie” had been slow to regain his footing; Perez remained hitless in the Series through Game Four, when Tiant shut him down again, 0–4 with a strikeout. The next
night, before Game Five, Sparky dropped his star first baseman a spot in the order behind Bench and calmly reminded him of what might be within his reach: “Tony, if we let this go seven games and you don’t get a hit, your children can tell their children that their grandfather had an all-time World Series record: most at bats without a hit.” Taking their cue from Sparky, the rest of the Reds’ superstars gave him the business about it as well, which turned out to be the only prescription he needed; Perez broke out of his funk that night in spectacular fashion as he won Game Five single-handedly with two towering shots that rocketed out of Riverfront Park, driving in four of the team’s six runs and giving the Reds their first Series lead. “You can’t keep the Big Doggie down,” said Sparky afterward. As the Series moved back to Boston, Tony Perez coming to life did not augur well for the Red Sox’s prospects.
Tiant went into his windup. This time, at the top, weight perched precariously on his right leg, his back turned completely to home plate, Luis tossed in a little extra head feint, a peek up toward the left field lights, and after that extra embellishment he dropped down and let go of a nasty three-quarter sidearm curve that broke low and a foot away from the outside corner. The crowd oohed in appreciation at his flourish before the ball had even left Luis’s hand, and then jumped to their feet and cheered when Perez futilely leaned forward from the waist and lunged across the plate at it, almost a gesture of surrender. Tony Kubek remarked on the air that he wasn’t even sure Perez had seen the ball leave Tiant’s hand. For the ninth time in a row during this World Series—and for the fourth time on strikes—Luis Tiant had won the battle with Tony Perez.
Left fielder George Foster came up for the first time with one out. If Tiant’s byzantine deliveries had baffled Perez and most of the other Reds to date, Foster had proved the most immune to them; he had registered four of his five hits in the Series—all singles—during Tiant’s first two outings. Wary of Foster’s power, Tiant started him with a fastball that missed outside.