Authors: Mark Frost
Sparky had decided to hand the ball to Fred Norman to start Game Four against
El Tiante
back in Cincinnati, but it turned out to be the little left-hander’s least effective outing in two months; the Red Sox hit him hard, and touched him for four of their five runs in an explosive fourth inning, which turned out to be all Tiant would need to eventually secure the win. Norman went only three and a third innings, giving up seven hits; that subpar performance remained fresh in Sparky’s mind, and Doyle had hardly reached second before the call was made from the dugout to the Reds’ bullpen; Jack Billingham immediately got up and began to throw again to catcher Bill Plummer.
Carl Yastrzemski came to the plate with one out and a runner in scoring position, worked through his deliberate routine, then waved his bat high in the air in small, tight circles as he waited, staring out at Norman. Even at thirty-six, Yaz exerted a palpable gravity at the plate, but then for him playing baseball had always been a matter of asserting his implacable will on what many feel is the most difficult physical act in all of sports: hitting a round ball moving at over ninety miles an hour, seldom in a straight line, with a spherical hunk of wood. The demands placed on visual perception, hand-eye coordination, and fast-twitch muscle response are extraordinary. The more daunting part of the challenge most often forgotten by everyday fans, who’ve never stood in the box and felt a major-league fastball sizzle by them like a bullet, is that every batter in the game
has to deal with the persistent, nagging fear that the next pitch could maim or even kill them, as an inside fastball had done to Cleveland Indian shortstop Ray Chapman in 1920.
Norman’s first pitch to Yaz, a curve, missed high and outside.
Carl Yastrzemski had grown up in Bridgehampton, Long Island, on his father’s seventy-acre potato farm. A big, clannish family of second-generation Polish Catholic immigrants, the Yastrzemskis worked hard at the farming skills they’d brought over from the old country, and played hard at the game they’d learned in their new country, a game that soon became their consuming passion. For many years Carl’s father, Carl Senior, had starred for and managed a local semi-pro hardball team—the Bridgehampton White Eagles—that played doubleheaders every Sunday after Mass, its roster filled almost exclusively with his brothers, in-laws, and cousins. Carl Senior was skilled enough to have given pro ball a chance if the Depression hadn’t prevented his leaving the security of the farm; the demand for the family’s humble product only increased when times were hard. Carl Junior had chores to do on the farm from the time he was old enough to walk—an early instillation of the tireless work ethic that later became his hallmark as a player—and he also seemed predestined to inherit his father’s love of baseball.
Bench set up inside, Norman came in with a curve, and Yaz took a home run cut and fouled it back for strike one.
Carl Junior became the Eagles’ batboy at the age of seven, and was good enough to join his dad on the field by the time he was fourteen. At forty-one, Carl Senior could still play shortstop and hit .400, but he kept suiting up primarily so that his son could learn by example how the game was supposed to be played. They were teammates on a couple of semi-pro teams during the next three years. Along with the genetic gifts and disciplined values Carl Senior had given to his boy, nothing would be more important to Yaz’s future greatness than watching his father’s resolute denial of the aging process, which never dimmed his intense dedication to excellence.
Norman came back with his best pitch of the inning, a wicked
slider that caught the outside corner for a called strike; he was ahead of Yaz now, 1–2.
When it became clear early on in his high school career that Carl had the talent to play the game for a living, Carl Senior took his son’s future firmly in hand, guiding him through every important decision. Carl yearned to play in the major leagues, but just in case baseball didn’t work out—stranger things had happened—his father made him promise that he’d also finish his college degree. He played the infield then, like his dad, but also showed exceptional promise as a pitcher, and pro scouts were willing to sign him as one, but Carl Senior felt he’d grow up into an even better hitter. He was right; by his senior year, when he hit nearly .500, Carl had become one of the hottest prospects on the East Coast. They lived in Yankee territory, and Carl put on a batting clinic for team management during a spectacular tryout at Yankee Stadium; that upped the ante as far as Carl Senior was concerned, and he threw the Yankees’ player development rep out of his kitchen for refusing to raise the team’s signing bonus offer above $45,000. The unschooled but shrewd Carl Senior, who had never made more than $10,000 a year in his life, made it clear to every scout who came calling that his son wouldn’t sign for a penny less than $100,000, plus the cost of his college education, an unheard of sum at the time. The Braves offered $60,000; no dice. The Phillies raised the bar to $80,000, and threw in the tuition; Carl Senior wouldn’t budge. The Reds were the first to reach $100,000, but choked on the college fees. Carl Senior wavered momentarily, but their parish priest and family confidant, Father Joe Ratkowski, encouraged the Yastrzemskis to stick to their guns. So instead of accepting less than his price—which he now raised to $125,000—Carl Senior secured a full athletic scholarship to Notre Dame that fall, for Carl to play both baseball and basketball, his second best sport, at the nation’s number one Catholic university. He then drove him out to South Bend for the start of his collegiate career. His classmates elected Carl their president during freshman year, and by the time he went home for Thanksgiving, the Red Sox, who had shown the most persistent interest in him for years, finally agreed to Carl
Senior’s price—at which point he promptly retired from playing himself—and the following spring Carl Michael Yastrzemski’s storied career as a professional ballplayer for the franchise in Boston began. He made the Red Sox roster as a full-time player two years later, in 1961, and five years after that, already an established star in the major leagues, Carl finally fulfilled the promise he’d made to his father and completed his college education.
Norman made another effective pitch, a slider low and away from Yaz’s strength but in the zone, that he had to defend against; the ball floated harmlessly high up into the air near second, where Joe Morgan snagged it for the second out.
Up in the booth, Tony Kubek talked through the circumstances on the field, putting himself into Sparky’s decision-making process for the broadcast audience: two outs, runner on second, first base open, left-handed pitcher on the mound, right-handed hitter Carlton Fisk coming up, left-handed Fred Lynn on deck.
“I might put Carlton Fisk on in this situation,” said Kubek.
Joe Garagiola began to offer a slightly different opinion, until he saw Johnny Bench standing up behind the plate, holding his right hand out to the side, signaling for the intentional walk. Kubek had read Sparky’s mind perfectly.
“You like to see that in managers,” Joe added hastily. “They put him on, and that’s the way it should be.”
“It’s a percentage play all the way,” said Dick Stockton.
Home crowds traditionally greet intentional walks with half-mocking boos, expressing disdain for the opposing manager’s cowardice at avoiding confrontation, and they did again here, forgetting that Sparky’s strategic decision to put Fisk on first recreated the very circumstance that had given them the lead: two runners on, two outs, and Fred Lynn at the plate. Pitchers have been known to miss the catcher entirely and allow runners on base to advance—there have even been a few instances in baseball history where managers elected to walk a slugger with the bases loaded in order to avoid even more damage—but intentional walks still continually provoke the same question: If it is the team in the field’s clear inten
tion to give the batter an uncontested pass to first, why are pitchers and catchers then compelled to go through the charade of throwing four unhittable balls to home plate? Engaged in the receiving end of this apparently empty exercise behind home plate, Johnny Bench could answer that question better than anyone in Fenway. During the eighth inning of Game Three in the 1972 World Series in Oakland, the Reds held a 1–0 lead with runners on first and third and one out, when Bench came to the plate against the A’s ace reliever Rollie Fingers. Fingers pitched Bench carefully to a full count, at which point manager Dick Williams came out for a conference on the mound with Fingers and the entire A’s infield. The outcome clearly appeared to be that they now intended to intentionally walk Bench to load the bases; Williams returned to the dugout and catcher Gene Tenace stood up behind the plate with his arm held out to the right, signaling for the outside balloon ball to float in and complete the walk.
Instead, Fingers fired a hard slider over the outside corner, Tenace dropped back down into his crouch in time to catch it, and a red-faced Johnny Bench was called out on strikes. With a little help from their bullpen, the Reds’ Jack Billingham held on to complete their shutout in that game for the win, but Johnny Bench never forgot the humiliating burn of that moment; his needling teammates wouldn’t let him.
The Reds attempted no similar trickery here, but Norman did spin and threaten a pickoff throw before the final toss to keep Denny Doyle close to second. After the fourth ball, Fisk moved into his curiously refined trot down the line to first, dropping his bat along the way.
The crowd stood to greet Fred Lynn with an ovation as he came to the plate, and he discreetly tipped his cap to acknowledge their appreciation. Two on, two out; Fred Norman knew that in all likelihood unless he got him out, the left-handed Lynn would be the last hitter he’d now face in Game Six.
Bench set up outside, but Norman missed the target badly, a fastball high and inside, and Lynn took a wicked home run cut. He had
guessed fastball, correctly, but the ball sailed half a foot out of the strike zone and he missed it entirely.
Not about to let this kid put the game out of reach with a second three-run jack, Bench set up even farther outside, and Norman threw a curveball that almost hit the dirt, for ball one. Then he creased the outside corner with a fastball on a pitch that Lynn resisted; Bench held his glove in place waiting for the strike call, but Satch Davidson didn’t give it to him. Bench dropped his head and mitt with visible disappointment, pegged it back to Norman, and turned to Davidson to try a little gentle lobbying. Diplomacy was only one of the many skills Bench had mastered behind the plate; combined with his supreme knowledge of the strike zone, it bought him universal goodwill from umpires—who, despite traditional epithets to the contrary, are only human—and who knows how many benefit-of-the-doubt calls when games hung in the balance. Umps never changed their minds in the moment, but they might think twice about it the next time.
It didn’t take long to reap the benefits on this occasion, when Norman’s next pitch, a sweeping curve that Lynn leaned in and looked hard at before laying off, landed in Bench’s mitt at least six inches to the right of the previous pitch: Davidson signaled strike two to even the count. Now Lynn rolled his eyes. Bench wanted that same pitch again, trying to get Lynn to chase for the strikeout, but Norman came in even wider with it, and the count went full.
Two on, two out, full count. The crowd stood up in anticipation. Bench dropped into his authoritative crouch. Doyle and Fisk took off with Norman’s pitch, another broad sweeper that missed low and outside for ball four to load the bases.
A wall of noise filled Fenway now as the tension tightened. Norman went back to pick up the rosin bag but soon knew his night was over; here came Sparky up the steps, walking out to meet Bench at the mound. He might trot out occasionally to have a word with his battery, but whenever he walked, that was it. Carefully avoiding the first base chalk—another of his superstitions—Sparky stepped over
the line and gave a little right-handed toss signal toward the bullpen: with the right-handed Rico Petrocelli coming up, he wanted Billingham.
They exchanged a few words, then Norman handed Sparky the ball and headed for the dugout. Slipping on his warm-up, Jack Billingham left the bullpen and stepped into the waiting golf cart, which was dressed up like a baseball wearing a big Red Sox cap—another cutesy 1970s innovation that had invaded many parks—to cover the two-hundred-foot drive to the infield.
Billingham offered a stark contrast to Norman as he took the mound; the laconic, six-four, 215-pound right-hander looked like he’d just ridden into town on horseback. Some of his teammates called him “John Wayne” during his years in Houston they’d nicknamed him “Cactus Jack.” Billingham was a Florida native who’d initially been signed out of high school by the Dodgers, and he went 3–0 when he finally made their roster in 1968, but because of their stacked pitching staff he was left unprotected in the expansion draft, where he was picked up by the Montreal Expos. They dealt him six months later to the Houston Astros, a perennially mediocre team, where he earned a spot in the starting rotation, before coming over to the Reds as the second most important piece of the big Joe Morgan trade in 1971. Billingham had more than justified the Reds’ faith in him ever since, winning sixty-five games over the next four seasons and becoming the steady anchor of their starting rotation.
Sparky handed Jack the ball, offering his usual words of encouragement, but during the last few days there had been genuine hard feelings between them that remained unresolved. On Sunday, the morning after the first rain delay, when it became clear the rain wouldn’t let up that day either, the Reds scheduled a workout at the indoor field house at Tufts University in suburban Medford, outside Boston. That resulted in a comical bus ride from the hotel, when their driver got lost, and Sparky, in full uniform, had to jump out at a gas station and ask directions from an astonished attendant. Once they got to Tufts, Sparky called Billingham into a small cubicle off
the field house with Gary Nolan and pitching coach Larry Shepard, to explain why he was pulling him from his scheduled start in Game Six and giving it to Nolan instead.