Game Six (22 page)

Darrell Johnson often defended his minimalist style of managing—another direct contrast to Sparky—as one that reflected his philosophy about the game itself: When you had players as talented as he did, the best thing a manager could do was set the lineup and get out of their way. Both men’s methods had demonstrably worked; here their two teams were, after all, in the World Series. But to the degree that Johnson’s reticence also reflected a deeper insecurity in his character, for the first time in Game Six, with his stubborn insistence on sticking with Luis Tiant, this tendency threatened to impact events on the field. Johnson had been Luis’s manager when he began his extraordinary comeback in Louisville, benefited enormously from his greatness in Boston during the last two seasons, and had every reason to think the world of his talent, passion, and tenacity. When Johnson had defied the conventional odds and kept Tiant on the mound throughout his struggles in Game Four, Tiant had delivered magnificently for the win that had kept the Red Sox in this Series. But the thought now nagged at the minds of some of Boston’s players, most of the press, and many of the fans at Fenway as Luis stepped up to bat in the bottom of the sixth: Had Darrell Johnson allowed his faith in Tiant to lead the Red Sox into danger?

Rose and Perez crept in again from the corners, and before Borbon went into his windup, Tiant squared to bunt, making it clear he was only there for a second straight at bat to sacrifice Burleson to second, where Cecil Cooper might drive him in. But Luis let the first pitch go by, and Davidson called it a strike on the outside corner. Tiant squared again, but watched the next one sail high for a ball, 1–1, and then another came in low, 2–1. Tiant bunted the next pitch foul down the first base line, taking the count to 2–2, then looked down to third base coach Don Zimmer for the sign: A foul ball off a bunt now meant a strikeout, but Zimmer flashed the bunt sign again, Rose and Perez charged in, and Tiant offered on a hard sinker
from Borbon that flanked off his bat, bounced down onto the plate, and kicked directly back over Bench’s head.

Foul ball, out on strikes. Two outs now, their runner still at first—Darrell Johnson’s gamble, as far as his pitcher’s at bat was concerned, had failed.

First baseman Cecil Cooper followed Tiant to the plate. Working briskly, Borbon started him with a sinking fastball, low for ball one. He followed with a fastball that tailed wide outside, then another outside fastball that Cooper fouled off, taking the count to 2–1. Bench moved inside, called for a slider, and Borbon hurled a beauty that cut toward Cooper and nearly sawed off the bat in his hand. He swung defensively and chopped it down into the dirt, resulting in a harmless soft grounder to Morgan at second, who flipped to Perez for the easy out at first to end Boston’s sixth inning.

After leading all American League designated hitters for average in 1975, Cecil Cooper had now gone 1–17, still mired in his horrendous World Series slump. Momentum, often invisible to the eye but apparent to any alert baseball sensibility, had firmly shifted to the Cincinnati Reds.

A
FTER THEIR VICTORY IN THE FIRST WORLD SERIES IN
1903, and their second straight American League pennant the following year when the National League’s New York Giants refused to play them for a championship, the Boston Americans fell into a brief but steep period of decline. In 1904, after nearly being sold to a popular Irish politician, newspaper mogul and future maternal grandfather of John F. Kennedy, the colorful John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, the Americans were bought by the patrician WASP publisher of the
Boston Globe
, a Civil War veteran named General Charles Taylor. Hopes for improvement were soon dashed when it was revealed the general had purchased the team as an expensive plaything for his ne’er-do-well son John. General Taylor then put the dreamy wastrel in charge of the Americans’ day-to-day operations in the hope these new responsibilities would give the boy some purpose in life. (As demonstrated by the Yawkey clan’s early ownership of the Detroit Tigers, plutocratic nepotism has always played a major role in the history of professional sports.) No sooner had young John taken over than the 1906 season was marred by a gruesome tragedy: The troubled man Taylor had just named as his manager, Chick Stahl—a newlywed who, one theory suggests, was being aggressively blackmailed by a chippie he’d impregnated the year before—committed suicide during spring training. Undeterred, John
Taylor persisted in establishing his credentials as a clueless, meddlesome young dilettante with a disastrous eye for talent.

After the Chick Stahl public relations debacle, Taylor decided he should manage the team himself, an idea that league president Ban Johnson immediately nixed; then Taylor ripped through two more bad choices in less than three weeks—the athletic director at the University of Illinois, who sensibly quit once he realized what he’d gotten himself into, and then the team’s twenty-five-year-old first baseman, who’d never managed a game in his life—before Ban Johnson “suggested” he hire a more qualified veteran from New York named Jim “Deacon” McGuire. At the conclusion of the next two dispiriting seasons, during which he traded away most of the good players he’d inherited for dead wood, John Taylor decided that what his team needed most was a new look and name to rehabilitate its deteriorating image. Both of Boston’s baseball teams bought their uniforms from Wright & Ditson Sporting Goods, the city’s preeminent sports retailer. The store had become a resounding success for founder George Wright, younger brother and former teammate to Harry Wright, the player-manager who had founded both the original Cincinnati Red Stockings and, shortly thereafter, the Boston Red Stockings; George Wright had been the star shortstop on both those teams, and would later become an early inductee into baseball’s Hall of Fame. Wright & Ditson was also the store where a short time later a gifted young amateur golfer named Francis Ouimet would begin his professional life, as a stock clerk.

During a visit with George Wright before the 1908 season John Taylor learned that the city’s older baseball franchise, the National League’s Boston Nationals—the team that had begun life as the Red Stockings in 1871 but was now under new ownership and another name—had decided to give up their traditional red stockings for navy blue. In what is now remembered as the only good decision he ever made during his tenure, Taylor decided on the spot to co-opt the iconic crimson socks for his Americans and change their name to the Boston Red Sox for the 1908 season. Young John then promptly
made the worst in his impressive string of bad executive decisions and traded pitcher Cy Young—coming off yet another twenty-win season at the age of forty—to Cleveland for a couple of nobodies and $12,500. In 1911, after his son had gutted the team’s once peerless roster, John Taylor’s father stepped back into the picture, took the reins from his knucklehead offspring, and the deeper nature of his initial interest in baseball finally came into focus: General Taylor had in the interim become a major shareholder in the Fenway Realty Company, which had bought up most of the usable land reclaimed by the city’s massive expansion and engineering project in the Back Bay’s boggy “fens” district. Taylor then sold half his interest in the Red Sox, through a shell company built to disguise his participation, to American League owner Ban Johnson. General Taylor then used the cash from that deal to “buy” a prime building site for a new ballpark from Fenway Realty Company, in essence, as one of that company’s principal investors, funneling the funds back to himself after a thorough laundering. Taylor then leaned on his friends downtown to issue citywide bonds that paid for construction, and he became the principal owner of the place he decided to call Fenway Park, where the Boston Red Sox began playing ball in the spring of 1912. The new trolley lines to Fenway that the city then compliantly installed brought hundreds of thousands of fans to the attractive new ballpark that season—an exposure that ensured the rapid sale and development of the surrounding reclaimed neighborhoods—which, not coincidentally, also largely belonged to General Taylor and the Fenway Realty Company.

And that, for those interested in the ways of the world, is how the game was, still is, and has forever been played at the grown-ups’ table.

THE BOSTON CROWD
remained tense and subdued as Luis Tiant trudged out to the mound to begin the seventh inning, and Reds right fielder Ken Griffey dug in to face him. Doubts about whether Darrell Johnson had left his star in too long were raised anew on
Tiant’s first pitch, another fastball on the outside corner, that Griffey turned on and whacked past the outstretched glove of Cecil Cooper into right field. Sparky’s decision to move Griffey back up in his lineup had paid dividends all night, as he reached base for the third time in four at bats.

As Joe Morgan stepped to the plate, a quick pickoff move from Tiant nearly caught Griffey leaning toward second, but he slid back in safely just ahead of Cooper’s tag. Turning his back completely to home on the windup, Tiant fell off to the right side of the mound again with his follow-through, and his first-pitch fastball to Morgan sailed high and away for ball one; his velocity had visibly diminished now as well.

Morgan looked sharp and hypervigilant as he read the signs from third base coach Alex Grammas; in a key at bat in the game, he lived for moments like this. Griffey would not be running now, nor would any other play be put on; Sparky’s supreme confidence in Morgan’s talent and judgment canceled all other strategies. Since arriving in Cincinnati, Morgan had been given an unprecedented degree of freedom by his skipper, and each year he’d rewarded Sparky’s faith with improvement in every facet of his game. Morgan usually called his own plays at the plate, and whenever he was on base he had the green light from Sparky to run at his discretion. In Sparky’s mind he’d earned that right.

Tiant threw another fastball, low and over the plate, challenging Morgan. He fouled it back for a strike. The Red Sox closer Dick Drago began to loosen up in the Boston bullpen.

During his career in Houston Morgan had been called selfish, cocky, and a lot worse, but under Sparky Anderson on the Reds he had turned into the most complete second baseman not just of his era but in the history of American baseball. He had just concluded what was arguably the most complete individual
season
ever by a man at his position—Rogers Hornsby in 1922 provided the only compelling competition—and he was about to be rewarded with his first Most Valuable Player award. Since baseball writers began handing out MVPs in 1931, only five had ever been won by a second base
man, the fewest by any position, and the proud Morgan didn’t need to be told that no man in the National League had done it since Jackie Robinson in 1949.

Working more deliberately than he had all game, Tiant came at Morgan again with a fastball, one that just missed high for ball two, 2–1.

Anxiety permeated the air in Fenway, eerily silent; over the decades since Tom Yawkey had owned the team, disappointment had become such a central part of rooting for the Red Sox that after the Reds had fought their way back into the game, you could feel the crowd expecting a crushing blow to land.

Tiant took his time again, chasing Griffey back to first with a throw before coming back to the plate—fastball again, all he’d shown Morgan in this at bat—for a called strike on the low outside corner, 2–2.

Now Morgan backed away from the box, agitated—disappointed either with himself for letting that hittable pitch go by or with Davidson’s call—glancing down at Alex Grammas for the sign. Morgan missed it the first time, then gestured with irritation at Grammas:
Run through them again.
Morgan read them this time, then stepped back in: With two strikes, would Griffey be going with the pitch?

For Morgan the question was: Would Tiant come back with a fastball again? Morgan seemed to think so. Fisk set up low and outside, and when Tiant’s fifth straight fastball came at him, cutting away to the right, Morgan went with the pitch and lined it hard into left field. Yastrzemski made a long run to cut the ball off, but with nobody out, Griffey, who had
not
been running with the pitch, made no move toward third as he rounded second base. Yaz made a hustling play to field the ball quickly and throw it back in to Petrocelli. The Reds had runners at first and second with nobody out.

And Johnny Bench coming to the plate. Ask yourself, how often in the heat of a pivotal World Series game had a pitcher ever had to confront this dilemma? After failing to retire the best second baseman in baseball history, Tiant now had to face the greatest
catcher
who’d ever played the game.

Darrell Johnson headed out of the Red Sox dugout toward the mound, and Fisk moved out to join him. The silence grew more pronounced as the crowd waited to see if Johnson was finally coming with the hook, but it was almost immediately clear that no, Johnson was just out there to talk—review the situation, remind Tiant how to pitch to Bench, maybe buy more time for Drago to get loose. Tiant didn’t say a word, just nodded repeatedly, then Johnson patted Luis on the butt and headed back to the dugout. The crowd responded with a smattering of applause that indicated little conviction; they wanted to believe leaving Tiant in was the right move but seemed to have a hard time persuading themselves.

What the hell is he thinking?
Sparky said to himself, professionally irritated at Johnson’s disregard for the obvious move.
The man’s done, get him out of there.

Tiant went into his windup and threw his first off-speed pitch of the inning, the same sidearm curve he’d used to strike Bench out in the fourth. Bench offered at it then pulled back, just breaking his wrists for a called first strike. Bench immediately turned to ask Satch Davidson if the pitch had actually been in the zone:
Yes,
said Davidson.

That had been Darrell Johnson’s message to his pitcher: No fastballs for Mr. Bench. Tiant threw another slow curve, overhand this time, breaking down and away. Bench reached out for it, just as he had in the fifth when he slammed Tiant’s first pitch off the Monster, but his right hand came off the bat and he caught a smaller piece of it this time, and the ball floated lazily out toward left, where Yastrzemski backed up and gathered it in on the edge of the warning track for the inning’s first out. Griffey, halfway to third, hustled back to second, just ahead of Yaz’s quick throw to Burleson covering the bag.

Relief flowed through the crowd; one out now, with the possibility of the inning-saving double play on any ground ball, as Tony Perez came to the plate.

Perez looked to Grammas for the sign, but he and everyone else in the park knew that with the Reds’ two fastest men on base, he
was there for one purpose: Drive Griffey and Morgan home with power. The Big Dog could put Red Sox fans out of their lingering misery with one swing.

So Perez looked for that first-pitch fastball from Tiant and got one, out over the plate, but he missed the center of the barrel by a fraction of an inch, slicing a catchable ball toward right field. Griffey retreated to second, preparing to tag up as Dwight Evans positioned himself under the dying fly ball, setting up for a throw to third. Once he had it in his glove, the man with the most powerful arm in the business reached back and uncoiled a rifle shot on the fly to the left side of the infield, where Burleson cut it off; Griffey reached third standing up, but Morgan remained at first.

First and third, two outs, still threatening, but Tiant had defused the imminent danger of Bench and Perez with only three pitches. The Fenway crowd stirred back to life; maybe Darrell Johnson’s faith in him was justified and Luis’s magic could deliver one more out.

George Foster came to the plate, the last of the Reds’ big guns. Burleson walked in to consult with Tiant about how to play him, then Fisk trotted out to join them: Morgan was an obvious threat to run at first in this situation, and if he took off for second and Fisk tried to nail him Griffey might break for home on a double steal. Burleson’s positioning depended on how they pitched Foster; if he played Foster to pull as they normally did, Burleson couldn’t cover second on a throw from Fisk if Morgan made a move. That meant the weaker-armed Denny Doyle would have to cover second and then try to throw home if Griffey ran as well. Their other option was to give Morgan second unopposed and take their chances with Foster and two men in scoring position. In the meantime, Alex Grammas trotted to the dugout to counsel with Sparky: Sparky gave Grammas his orders, and he came back out to whisper them to Griffey and then flash the sign to Morgan.

The Red Sox set up in their normal defensive shift for Foster, shaded to pull. Tiant came in with a fastball in the zone, believing Foster probably had the take sign to facilitate the steal and he could sneak in a strike, and Morgan broke for second with the pitch. The
Red Sox made no move to stop him, but Foster had the green light, swung hard at a hittable pitch, and fouled it straight back to the screen for strike one.

Morgan retreated to first, clear now that the Red Sox would concede second, and as Tiant straddled the rubber, he took an ever bigger lead. Taut with tension, Foster stepped out again, prolonging the moment. When he resumed his stance, Tiant came back with a slow overhand curve that dropped toward the outside corner; but not far enough, maybe his worst pitch of the night. Foster appeared to be ready for something off-speed, because without having to adjust, he reached out and clobbered the ball, a high, towering shot toward deep straightaway center field. Fred Lynn turned and ran, immediately realized it was over his head, then pulled up short and watched it glance high off the center field wall, just below NBC’s camera position, about ten feet short of a home run. Lynn fielded the ball cleanly on the first hop off the wall, turned, and fired back to Rick Burleson on the edge of the outfield just as Foster pulled into second base with a stand-up double. Ken Griffey, stationed behind home after he’d scored from third with the Reds’ go-ahead run, signaled Joe Morgan to stay on his feet, and the speeding Morgan, who had broken for second again with the pitch, scored easily all the way from first before Burleson had the ball in his glove. Morgan ran right through home plate, didn’t slow or turn until he’d reached the foul area behind home, and, pumping his right fist repeatedly, took a little victory lap back to the Cincinnati dugout, where his teammates swarmed around him.