The Roger Angell Baseball Collection

Chapter 13

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"You know, we have a good team right here, but we"ve had injuries. Gary Matthews and Von Joshua got hurt on the same day. Matthews is going to miss about a month, they say, with the broken knuckle on his left hand. But I think we"re going to pick up and pull ourselves together. This is a young team, and I do like that. We have a lot of young arms."

He looked up at the scoreboard. "Those Cubbies are beating the Phils again, I see," he said. "They must have some kind of wind there-look at all those home runs. Yes, so many things can happen to a team in a year, you know. We had a lot of strange events in "33, when we ended up winning the Series. Johnny Vergez had an appendectomy, and Charlie Dressen came up and filled in-he"d been managing in the Southern a.s.sociation. He told Adolfo Luque how to pitch to the final Washington batter in the Series-it was somebody he"d seen down there. Lefty O"Doul came back with us that year, too, and he got a big pinch hit in the Series, off of Alvin Crowder. I remember that Luque was limping around at the party after we"d won the last game, and when we asked him about it, it turned out he"d split his big toenail throwing those curves during the game. He bore down that hard, he broke his toe.

"When Sal Maglie was first with us, he was just an average pitcher. [Stoneham had moved along about fifteen years.] But when he jumped down to the Mexican League, in 1946, the team he played for there was managed by Dolf Luque, and when we got him back he"d mastered all those great curveb.a.l.l.s, and n.o.body could touch him."

We were joined now by Garry Schumacher, the retired press director for the Giants, who was for many years a redoubtable Polo Grounds press-box sage.

"Garry, we"ve been talking about Luque and Sal and some of the other old-timers," Stoneham said.

"Hey, do you remember how Maglie used to have fun with Roy Campanella?" Schumacher said. "Every now and then, in a game when it didn"t mean anything, he"d plunk Roy right in the belly with one of those curveb.a.l.l.s. You know how Roy used to look when he stood up there and crowded the plate."

Stoneham laughed. "Sure, I remember now," he said. "Oh, Campy was a good man. He was a friend of ours."

"Did you get to the time Marichal and Spahn hooked up against each other for sixteen innings?" Schumacher asked.

Stoneham nodded several times, thinking about it, and it suddenly came to me that he and Garry Schumacher and his other friends had probably talked together hundreds of times about each of these famous games and vanished companions. Old afternoons were fresh and past players stayed young, and it was the talking that kept them that way.

Now, however, the Padres had two base runners aboard, and Stoneham leaned forward in his seat. "They"ve been getting some strange-looking hits here," he said. "It looks like they"re slapping at the ball." He called to his pitcher. "Bear down, John!"

Montefusco struck out the next batter, and Stoneham said, "Boy, that fastball is the answer."

"Did you tell about that doubleheader against the Cards in "33?" Schumacher said. "The one where Hubbell won the first, 10, in eighteen, and Parmelee beat Dean, 10, in the nightcap, and we held on to first place?"

"That was a day," Stoneham said. "Hubbell sure won a lot of big ones in his time. You know, he first belonged to the Tiger organization, but he never played in the majors with them, because they thought that screwball of his would only ruin his arm. Then it happened that our scout, d.i.c.k Kinsella, was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention of 1928, down in Texas, and one day when he was there he went to a game and saw Hubbell, who was pitching for the Beaumont club. He signed him up. He saw what that pitch would do for him."

Schumacher, who was not wearing a coat, had been blowing on his hands, and now he said goodbye and went inside to warm up.

"In any list of our teams, you"d have to mention the "54 club," Stoneham went on. (The Giants met the Cleveland Indians in the World Series of 1954, and beat them in four straight games, although the Indians had been prohibitive favorites. It was the only Stoneham team to win a World Series.) "Willie and Don Mueller and Dusty Rhodes. It"s funny, but the thing I remember about that club is all the double plays they got that year that ended up with a base runner caught out of position-being put out by a throw behind him, or something like that. A great heads-up team. Dusty Rhodes got all the publicity for those pinch-hit homers, but I think Henry Thompson was the key man for us in that Series. Dusty"s first home run was nothing-real Chinese-but the one he hit the next day went nine miles. You know, Dusty Rhodes works on a tugboat in New York Harbor now. He belongs to the seafarers" union, or whatever they call it. I still hear from him. And Davey Williams is a deputy sheriff down in Dallas. I try to keep in touch. I got a letter from Burgess Whitehead just this week, from-let me see. From Windsor, North Carolina."

I asked Stoneham when he had first seen Willie Mays.

"Willie Mays first reported to us in New York carrying a toilet kit and three bats," Stoneham said. His face was lit up. "But the first time I saw him play was way before that. He was with Trenton, in a Cla.s.s B league, and we"d just played a game in Philadelphia, and some of us rented a car and drove out to watch him play. They had a little press box, just about the size of this box. Bill McKechnie, Jr., was the general manager there, and Chick Genovese was manager, and Bill warned us that Mays might be a little tight because of our being there. Well, Willie got about two hits in the first few innings, and in the seventh he came up and hit a ball into a gas station that was across the street beyond the left-field fence. That"s how tight he was.

"Henry Thompson had seen him play in exhibitions, and he told me how Willie sometimes ran after a ball in the outfield and caught it in his bare hand. I said, "Oh, sure." You know-I didn"t believe it. And then, of course, he did it lots of times for us. I missed his greatest play, when he made an unbelievable catch like that in Brooklyn, just as he crashed into the outfield wall. And I remember after Willie had been with us a couple of years I was out watching our farm club at St. Cloud, Minnesota, and I saw all the young players-Willie Kirkland and Orlando Cepeda and Andre Rodgers-making those basket catches in the outfield, and I said "Hey, who loused up all these kids?" It was Willie, of course-they"d seen him on the television and they were all trying to imitate him. n.o.body else had those reflexes, though, and n.o.body else could get away with what he did."

Stoneham left his seat for a few minutes to talk to some visitors who had been brought up to the box to be introduced, and then he made a couple of telephone calls. When he sat down again, we were in the eighth inning and the Giants were ahead by 61.

"We were talking about Juan Marichal," he said. "Well, one of the remarkable things about him was that even when he first came up he knew everything there was to know about the game of baseball. He came from the Dominican Republic, and young General Trujillo-the big man"s son, I mean-he"d put Juan into the Air Force there in order to have him play on his team. There must have been some great coach or manager in that Air Force who taught Juan, because he did everything right from the beginning.

"I think we were the first club that signed players from that whole area. They"d have their winter leagues in the fall, and after the World Series we"d take a couple of scouts and go down and see our friends. I think the first time I ever saw Jose Pagan play-he came in a game to pinch-hit-he was fourteen years old. Our scout down there was Alex Pompez, who was a Cuban. He saw Fidel Castro play ball when Castro was a young fellow, and sent us a report on him. Castro was a right-handed pitcher. When he came up-you know, came into power-we checked back in our files, and it was the same Castro. A good ballplayer. I think if he"d stayed in the game he"d have made it to the majors. You know what a fan he is."

Bobby Murcer, the Giants" right fielder, doubled in a run, and a minute or two later Chris Speier drove in another. It was a Giants afternoon.

"I just hope fellows like Chris and Bobby get a break in the All-Star Game balloting," Stoneham said. "Bobby"s done everything we expected when we got him from the Yankees-everything and more. He"s a fine man. But the fans tend to overlook this year"s play on their ballots, you know. They vote on reputation. Well, I"m not going to the All-Star Game this year anyway. They"re having business meetings all day, before the game. Who wants that? That used to be a holiday. You"d go to the game and then you"d see your friends in the evening. It"s the same way at our board meetings. When I first came on our board, all the conversation was about baseball. We"d sit and talk about the game. Now the lawyers outnumber the baseball people. In the old days, it was nothing but baseball people on the ball clubs-it was a personal thing. Even with somebody like Mr. Wrigley, it was him that owned the team, not the company."

The Padres came up in the ninth, trailing by 81, and Stoneham clapped his hands.

"Who would you pick on an All-Time Giants team?" he said. Then he answered his own question. "I"d have Travis Jackson at short," he said. "Travis never got in the Hall of Fame, but he came up with us and took Dave Bancroft"s job away from him. Terry"s the best first baseman. Can I play Frisch at second and at third? Mays and Ott and Ross Youngs in the outfield. But Monte Irvin"s got to be out there somewhere, too. If Monte had come up from the Negro leagues a few years sooner, he"d be known now as one of the great ballplayers of all time. And we can"t leave off Irish Meusel, either. Frank Snyder is catching. But Gus Mancuso was a great defensive catcher, and so was Wes Westrum."

Montefusco, who looked tired, walked his second Padre batter of the inning, and then threw a pitch past his catcher. "He"s trying to aim the ball," Stoneham said. He stood up. "Come on, John!" he pleaded. Then he turned and said, "Oh, I almost forgot Willie McCovey. Where do we play him? Or Joe Moore, our best leadoff man. You"d try to bat him third and he"d hit .250. Put him back up top there and he"d hit .330."

His all-time roster was growing by the minute, but now there was a swift double play on the field, and the game ended. "All right," Stoneham said. The Giants had won.

We went back to Stoneham"s office. I took off the polo coat, and Stoneham hung it up in the closet again. I suddenly wondered how many Giants games it had seen. Stoneham signed a couple of letters that were waiting on his desk, and buzzed his secretary on the intercom. "I"m getting a haircut in the morning," he told her, "so I"ll be a little late getting in. Good night, Florence."

We went outside and walked down a ramp in the sunshine. The wind had dropped, and the low hills around the Bay were all alight. It was one of those afternoons when you felt that summer might never end. I started to say something to Stoneham about his parting with the Giants and how I felt about it, but he smiled and cut me off.

"You can"t get discouraged over a few bad breaks," he said. "In this game, you"re always losing sometimes. You can"t let yourself complain or feel sorry for yourself."

He walked me to my car in the parking lot, and we shook hands and said goodbye.

* It was, in fact, a great deal lower, since the j.a.panese sportsmen never let anyone see the color of their yen, and the deal fell through. For the true further adventures of Mr. Lurie and the elusive San Francisco franchise, see page 336 et seq.

** The trend continued in 1975, when the A"s drew 1,075,518 for the season, against the Giants" 522,919.

Agincourt and After

- October 1975 TARRY, DELIGHT, SO SELDOM met.... The games have ended, the heroes are dispersed, and another summer has died late in Boston, but still one yearns for them and wishes them back, so great was their pleasure. The adventures and discoveries and reversals of last month"s World Series, which was ultimately won by the Cincinnati Reds in the final inning of the seventh and final game, were of such brilliance and unlikelihood that, even as they happened, those of us who were there in the stands and those who were there on the field were driven again and again not just to cries of excitement but to exclamations of wonder about what we were watching and sharing. Pete Rose, coming up to bat for the Reds in the tenth inning of the tied and retied sixth game, turned to Carlton Fisk, the Red Sox catcher, and said, "Say, this is some kind of game, isn"t it?" And when that evening ended at last, after further abrupt and remarkable events, everyone-winners and losers and watchers-left the Fens in exaltation and disarray. "I went home," the Reds" manager, Sparky Anderson, said later, "and I was stunned."

The next day, during the last batting practice of the year, there was extended debate among the writers and players on the Fenway sidelines as to whether game six had been the greatest in Series history and whether we were not, in fact, in on the best Series of them all. Grizzled coaches and senior scribes recalled other famous Octobers-1929, when the Athletics, trailing the Cubs by eight runs in the fourth game, scored ten runs in the seventh inning and won; 1947, when Cookie Lavagetto"s double with two out in the ninth ended Yankee pitcher Bill Bevens" bid for a no-hitter and won the fourth game for the Dodgers; 1960, when Bill Mazeroski"s ninth-inning homer for the Pirates threw down the lordly Yankees. There is no answer to these barroom syllogisms, of course, but any recapitulation and reexamination of the 1975 Series suggests that at the very least we may conclude that there has never been a better one. Much is expected of the World Series, and in recent years much has been received. In the past decade, we have had the memorable and abrading seven-game struggles between the Red Sox and the Cardinals in 1967, the Cardinals and the Tigers in 1968, and the Orioles and the Pirates in 1971, and the astounding five-game upset of the Orioles by the Mets in 1969. Until this year, my own solid favorite-because of the Pirates" comeback and the effulgent play of Roberto Clemente-was the 1971 cla.s.sic, but now I am no longer certain. Comebacks and late rallies are actually extremely scarce in baseball, and an excellent guaranteed cash-producing long-term investment is to wager that the winning team in any game will score more runs in a single inning than the losing team scores in nine. In this Series, however, the line scores alone reveal the rarity of what we saw: In six of the seven games, the winning team came from behind.

In one of the games, the winning team came from behind twice.

In five games, the winning margin was one run.

There were two extra-inning games, and two games were settled in the ninth inning.

Overall, the games were retied or saw the lead reversed thirteen times.

No other Series-not even the celebrated GiantsRed Sox thriller of 1912-can match these figures.

It is best, however, not to press this search for the greatest Series any farther. There is something sterile and diminishing about our need for these superlatives, and the game of baseball, of course, is so rich and various that it cannot begin to be encompa.s.sed in any set of seven games. This Series, for example, produced not one low-hit, low-score pitching duel-the cla.s.sic and agonizing parade of double zeros that strains teams and managers and true fans to their limits as the inevitable crack in the porcelain is searched out and the game at last broken open. This year, too, the Reds batted poorly through most of the early play and offered indifferent front-line pitching, while the Red Sox made too many mistakes on the base paths, were unable to defend against Cincinnati"s team speed, and committed some significant (and in the end fatal) errors in the infield. One of the games was seriously marred by a highly debatable umpire"s decision, which may have altered its outcome. It was not a perfect Series. Let us conclude then-before we take a swift look at the season and the playoffs; before we return to Morgan leading away and stealing, to Yaz catching and whirling and throwing, to Eastwick blazing a fastball and Tiant turning his back and offering up a fluttering outside curve, to Evans" catch and Lynn"s leap and fall, to Perez"s bombs and Pete Rose"s defiant, exuberant glare-and say only that this year the splendid autumn affair rose to our utmost expectations and then surpa.s.sed them, attaining at last such a level of excellence and emotional reward that it seems likely that the partic.i.p.ants-the members of the deservedly winning, champion Reds and of the sorely disappointed, almost-champion Red Sox-will in time remember this Series not for its outcome but for the honor of having played in it, for having made it happen.

Although the four divisions produced between them only one semblance of a close pennant race-the Red Sox and Orioles in the American League East-the baseball summer never languished. I traveled about this year more than is my custom, and wherever I went strangers and friends (many of them minimal fans) talked avidly about baseball and the pleasures that the game was bringing this year. Various reasons for this suggest themselves-a post-Watergate unseriousness, the economy (a baseball ticket, by comparison with tickets to most other entertainments, is easily available and relatively cheap), the overexposure via television of so many inferior rival sports-but it seems to me that the most noticeable new a.s.sets of baseball are the wide distribution of its true stars among so many different teams, and the sudden and heartening emergence of so many remarkable young ballplayers. Rod Carew and Bill Madlock, the 1975 batting champions, play, respectively, for the noncontending Twins and Cubs; the best pitcher in the National League, Randy Jones, performed for the Padres, and the best in the American League, Jim Palmer, for the Orioles. The Phillies had the NL"s home-run champion (Mike Schmidt) and RBI leader (Greg Luzinski); their counterparts in the AL were Reggie Jackson, of the Oakland A"s, and the delightful George Scott, of the Milwaukee Brewers. Al Hrabosky, an utterly commanding relief pitcher, ran off a won-lost mark of 133 and an earned-run average of 1.67 for the Cardinals; Mickey Rivers stole seventy bases for the California Angels; Dave Kingman bopped thirty-six homers for the Mets. And so on. Carew"s batting t.i.tle, by the way, was his fourth in succession, and he led his nearest pursuer in the averages, Fred Lynn, by .359 to .331. Last year, he hit .364, as against .316 for the next man, and the year before that the margin was .350 to .306. No previous. .h.i.tter except Rogers Hornsby has ever dominated his league in this fashion. The refreshing and sometimes startling youngsters-rookies, most of them-included pitchers John Montefusco and Ed Halicki (Giants), Rawly Eastwick (Reds), John Candelaria (Pirates), Dennis Eckersley (Indians), and Frank Tanana (Angels), and hitters Mike Vail (Mets), George Brett (Royals), Mike Hargrove (Rangers), Claudell Washington (A"s), and Fred Lynn and Jim Rice (Red Sox).

Baseball among the have-nots was often riveting. The most entertaining games I saw prior to the World Series were part of a set that I happened to catch in Anaheim in June between the Angels and the Rangers, neither of which was going anywhere in the American League West. In the opener, the Angels fell behind by 60, rallied to lead by 87, were tied at 88, gave up three runs to the visitors in the top of the eleventh, and won it with four runs in the bottom of the eleventh. There were thirty-seven hits, including innumerable singles chopped by speedy young Angels-Jerry Remy, Mickey Rivers, Dave Collins-off their cementlike infield. The pitching left something to be desired, but the next afternoon, in the opener of a twi-night doubleheader, Frank Tanana struck out seventeen Texas batters, thereby establishing a new American League one-game mark for left-handers. (Tanana, a curveballer, went on to win the AL"s strikeout crown with 269 whiffs, thus succeeding his teammate, Nolan Ryan, who fell victim to injuries this year and went through a bone-chip operation on his right arm. Before going into drydock, Ryan pitched a no-hit game against the Orioles-his fourth no-hitter in four seasons, which ties the record held by Sandy Koufax and approached by no other pitcher in the history of the game.) In the nightcap, the Angels led, then trailed, then tied, and then lost, 65, on a homer in the ninth. The next two days, after my ill-advised departure, the Angels won, 10, on a two-hitter by Ed Figueroa, and lost, 10, in thirteen innings, after the two starters, Steve Hargan for the Rangers and Bill Singer for the Angels, threw shutout ball for eleven innings. The Angels. .h.i.t 55 homers this year-I mean 55 as a team, or six fewer than Roger Maris in 1961-but they stole 220 bases, and while watching them in action I developed a new preference for the latter means of advancement. There is something stately about the home run.

Locally, the home clubs competed hotly against each other in out-disappointing their supporters. The Mets, offered almost innumerable late-summer chances to move up to the lead in their division, lost most of their crucial games, lost their good relief pitching, and lost at last their proud and famous defense. Amid the shambles, Rusty Staub batted in 105 runs, Eddie Kranepool batted .323, and Tom Seaver, finishing at 229 and 2.38, struck out more than two hundred batters for the eighth season running. He won eleven games more than in 1974, when he was suffering from a hip injury, and the Mets, by no coincidence, improved over their 1974 won-lost record by eleven games. The Yankees suffered from some damaging injuries (to Elliott Maddox, Ron Blomberg, and Bobby Bonds), and entirely proved the sagacity of everyone who had suspected the soundness of their infield. Thurman Munson hit .318 and batted in 102 runs. Catfish Hunter won 23 games and lost 14, with an ERA of 2.58, second best in the league, all without the semblance of a Rollie Fingers to help him in the late going. With such a semblance, he might have wound up around 278. He was, we may conclude, worth all that money.

Other events: The Tigers lost nineteen straight games.... On the night of June 10, before a Yanks-Angels game I attended at Shea Stadium, a U. S. Army unit, celebrating a gathering of the Sons of Italy and the two hundredth birthday of the Army, fired off a cannon during the playing of the national anthem and blew an enormous hole in a section of the center-field fence. Liveliest anthem you ever heard.... The Atlanta Braves staged a promotion in which twenty-five thousand dollars in one-dollar, five-dollar, and ten-dollar bills was scattered on the ball field. Six female fans were then selected, who were permitted to keep as much money as they could stuff into their blouses in ninety seconds. The Braves-one may hope not at all coincidentally-suffered a record loss of 446,413 at the gate this year.

A lot of managers, including both New York skippers, were unseated during the season or at its conclusion-a phenomenon that has caused some grumbling among friends of mine, who complain that they can no longer remember who is in charge of which club, or why. The second question is a cinch. Managers are changed whenever it becomes apparent to a slumping club"s owners that something must be done, even though it is almost always plain that nothing can be done. The ideal qualification for a new manager is that he should have failed at the same post with another club (or sometimes with the same club). Come to think of it, "fired" and "hired" are probably the wrong words to use in the managers" game; it is more useful to envisage the whole process as a version of Going-to-Jerusalem, with about forty heavily tanned, wrinkle-necked skippers slowly circling twenty-four kindergarten chairs, into which they attempt to throw themselves from time to time. This year"s roundabout was typical. It began, in a way, in 1973, when Whitey Herzog was fired as the manager of the Texas Rangers and replaced by Billy Martin (formerly manager of the Twins and Tigers). This summer, Martin was fired by the Rangers and then quickly replaced Bill Virdon (formerly of the Pirates, where he had replaced Danny Murtaugh, who also succeeded him), who had previously been fired as manager of the Yankees. Virdon was then engaged to replace Preston Gomez (former manager of the Padres) as manager of the Astros. (Going back to Murtaugh for a minute, we should all certainly remember that prior to preceding and succeeding Virdon as the Pirates" manager, he had also preceded and succeeded Larry Shepard at the same post.) Also fired this year were Yogi Berra (former manager of the Yankees), by the Mets; Gene Mauch (former manager of the Phillies), by the Expos; Clyde King (former manager of the Giants), by the Braves; Edward II (former king of England and the son of Edward I and Eleanor of Castile ... Aha! Now pay attention, cla.s.s); Frank Quilici (no previous record), by the Twins; Del Crandall (no previous record), by the Brewers; Alvin Dark (former manager of the Giants, A"s, and Indians), by the A"s; and Jack McKeon (no previous record), by the Royals. McKeon was replaced by Whitey Herzog.

The irreplaceable departing manager was Casey Stengel, who died this summer at the age of eighty-five. His quirks and triumphs are so familiar to us all that they need no recapitulation here, but I think that a demurrer should be entered on the subject of Stengelese, which too many of his biographers seemed to consider as nothing but a comical difficulty with the English language. It always seemed to me that Casey"s nonstop disquisitions-stuffed with subclauses, interruptions, rhetorical questions, addenda, historic examples, shifted tenses, and free-floating whiches-const.i.tuted a perfect representation of the mind of a first-cla.s.s manager. Almost every managerial decision during a ball game-the lineup, who is to pitch, when to pinch-hit and with whom, when to yank a pitcher, who should pitch to the new pinch-hitter-is, or should be, the result of a dozen or two dozen pressing and often conflicting reflections, considerations, and ancient prior lessons. (Sparky Anderson, asked by the press why he had pinch-hit with a certain batter during the fourth game of this year"s Series, responded with an explanation that went on for a good five minutes.) Stengelese had other uses. In April, 1962, when Casey held a press conference before the Mets" home opener in order to introduce the members of the newborn team, he went through his roster and his opening-day lineup extolling this has-been and that never-was and his ungainly rookies (he called them "the youth of America"), and when he came at last to his right fielder, Gus Bell, he explained that this was a man which has come to us from Cincinnati, where he hit a lot of home runs, and he would hit some more here because he was the prop and support of a family that included two children, and he mentioned Bell"s other attributes and sterling qualities at greater and greater length, during which time it became apparent to everyone present that he had forgotten Bell"s name. (He always had a terrible time with names.) He finally dropped the search and went on to other players and other promises, and concluded, reluctantly and at long, long last, with "... and so you can say this tremendous and amazin" new club is gonna be ready in every way tomorrow when the bell rings and that"s the name of my right fielder, Bell."

Perhaps it is best to say goodbye with a garland of Stengel-flowers: To himself, in 1921, on entering the Polo Grounds after being purchased by the Giants from the Phillies: "Wake up, muscles-we"re in New York now."

After winning still another pennant as manager of the Yankees: "I couldna done it without my players."

On being seventy-five: "Most people my age are dead, and you could look it up."

Concluding his acceptance speech at Cooperstown, when he was taken into the Baseball Hall of Fame: "And I want to thank the treemendous fans. We appreciate every boys" group, girls" group, poem, and song. And keep goin" to see the Mets play."

By September 16, the Pirates and the A"s were enjoying comfortable leads in their divisions, the Reds had long since won their demi-pennant (they clinched on September 7-a new record), and the only serious baseball was to be found at Fenway Park, where the Orioles, down by four and a half games and running out of time, had at the Red Sox. The game was a pippin-a head-to-head encounter between Jim Palmer and Luis Tiant. Each of the great pitchers struck out eight batters, and the game was won by the Red Sox, 20, on two small mistakes by Palmer-fastb.a.l.l.s to Rico Petrocelli and Carlton Fisk in successive innings, which were each lofted into the left-field screen. Tiant, who had suffered through almost a month of ineffectiveness brought on by a bad back, was in top form, wheeling and rotating on the mound like a figure in a Bavarian clock tower, and in the fourth he fanned Lee May with a super-curve that seemed to glance off some invisible obstruction in midflight. The hoa.r.s.e, grateful late-inning cries of "Lu-is! Lu-is! Lu-is!" from 34,724 Beantowners suggested that the oppressive, Calvinist cloud of self-doubt that afflicts Red Sox fans in all weathers and seasons was beginning to lift at last. The fabulous Sox rookies, Jim Rice and Fred Lynn, did nothing much (in fact, they fanned five times between them), but Boston friends of mine encouraged my belief with some of the shiny new legends-the home run that Rice hammered past the Fenway Park center-field flagpole in July; the time Rice checked a full swing and snapped his bat in half just above his hands; Lynn"s arm, Lynn"s range, Lynn"s game against the Tigers in June, when he hit three homers and batted in ten runs and the Sox began their pennant drive. The night before my visit, in fact, against the Brewers, Lynn and Rice had each accounted for his one hundredth run batted in with the same ball-a run-forcing walk to Lynn and then a sacrifice fly by Rice. I believed.

Baltimore came right back, winning the next game by 52, on some cool and useful hitting by Tommy Davis and Brooks Robinson, and the Sox" cushion was back to four and a half. The Orioles" move, we know now, came a little too late this year, but I think one should not forget what a loose and deadly and marvelously confident September team they have been over the last decade. Before this, their last game at Fenway Park this year, they were enjoying themselves in their dugout while the Sox took batting practice and while Clif Keane, the Boston Globe"s veteran baseball writer (who is also the league"s senior and most admired insult artist), took them apart. Brooks Robinson hefted a bat, and Keane, sitting next to manager Earl Weaver, said, "Forget it, Brooksie. They pay you a hundred and twenty-four thousand for your glove, and a thousand for the bat. Put that back in your valise." He spotted Doug DeCinces, the rookie who will someday take over for Robinson in the Oriole infield, and said, "Hey, kid, I was just talkin" to Brooks, here. He says he"ll be back again. You"ll be a hundred before you get in there. Looks like 1981 for you." Tommy Davis picked out some bats and went slowly up the dugout steps; his Baltimore teammates sometimes call him "Uncle Tired." Keane leaned forward suddenly. "Look at that," he said. "Tom"s wearin" new shoes-he"s planning on being around another twenty years. Listen, with Brooks and Davis, Northrup, May, and Muser, you guys can play an Old Timers" Game every day." Davis wandered off, smiling, and Keane changed his tone for a moment. "Did you ever see him when he could play?" he said, nodding at Davis. "He got about two hundred and fifty hits that year with LA, and they were all line drives. He could hit." His eye fell on the first group of Oriole batters around the batting cage. "See them all lookin" over here?" he said to Weaver. "They"re talking about you again. If you could only hear them-they"re really frica.s.seein" you today, Earl. Now you know how Marie Antoinette felt...." The laughter in the dugout was nice and easy. The men sat back, with their legs crossed and their arms stretched along the back of the bench, and watched the players on the ball field. The summer was running out.

The Sox just about wrapped it up the next week, when they beat the Yankees, 64, 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 d.i.c.k 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 embarra.s.sed the Pittsburgh Pirates, winners of the Eastern Division t.i.tle, by stealing ten bases in their first two games, which they won by 83 and 61. 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, 53, and the pennant, 30, 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 gra.s.s 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 encompa.s.s 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 m.u.f.fed 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, 71. "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 30 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 63. 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 53 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 6417 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 crabgra.s.s. 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, pa.s.sing 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 mult.i.tudes, including a nonpaying claque perched like seagulls atop three adjacent rooftop billboards (WHDH Radio, Windsor Canadian Whiskey, Buck Printing), who banged on the tin h.o.a.rdings 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, 21, 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, screwb.a.l.l.s, and semi-fastb.a.l.l.s-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 d.i.c.k 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 gla.s.sed-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 mult.i.tudes 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 51 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 55. The pattern of the game to this point, we can see in retrospect, bears a close resemblance to the cla.s.sic sixth, and an extravagant denouement 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 d.i.c.k Stello.

The curious thing about the whole dismal tort is that there is no dispute whatever about the events (the play was perfectly visible, and was confirmed by a thousand subsequent replayings on television), just as there is no doubt but that the umpires, in disallowing an interference call, cited apparently nonexistent or inapplicable rules. Barnett said, "It was simply a collision," and he and Stello both ruled that only an intentional attempt by Armbrister to obstruct Fisk could have been called interference. There is no rule in baseball that exempts simple collisions, and no one on either team ever claimed that Armbrister"s awkward brush-block on Fisk was anything but accidental. This leaves the rules, notably Rule 2.00 (a): "Offensive interference is an act ... which interferes with, obstructs, impedes, hinders, or confuses any fielder attempting to make a play." Rule 6.06 (c) says much the same thing (the baseball rule book is almost as thick as Blackstone), and so does 7.09: "It is interference by a batter or a runner when (1) He fails to avoid a fielder who is attempting to field a batted ball...." Armbrister failed to avoid. Fisk, it is true, did not make either of the crucial plays then open to him-the tag and the peg-although he seemed to have plenty of time and room for both, but this does not in any way alter the fact of the previous interference. Armbrister should have been called out, and Geronimo returned to first base-or, if a double play had in fact been turned, both runners could have been called out by the umps, according to a subclause of 6.06.*

There were curses and hot looks in the Red Sox clubhouse that night, along with an undercurrent of feeling that Manager Johnson had not complained with much vigor. "If it had been me out there," Bill Lee said, "I"d have bitten Barnett"s ear off. I"d have van Goghed him!"

Untidiness continued the next night, in game four, but in more likely places. The Reds did themselves out of a run with some overambitious base running, and handed over a run to the Sox on an error by Tony Perez; Sparky Anderson was fatally slow in calling on his great relief corps in the midst of a five-run Red Sox rally; the Boston outfield allowed a short fly ball to drop untouched, and two Cincinnati runs instantly followed. The Sox led, 54, after four innings, and they won it, 54, after some excruciating adventures and anxieties. Tiant was again at center stage, but on this night, working on short rest, he did not have full command of his breaking stuff and was forced to underplay. The Reds" pitcher over the last three innings was Rawlins J. Eastwick III, the tall, pale, and utterly expressionless rookie fireballer, who was blowing down the Red Sox hitters and seemed perfectly likely to pick up his third straight win in relief. Tiant worked slowly and painfully, running up long counts, giving up line-drive outs, surrendering bases on b.a.l.l.s and singles, but somehow struggling free. He was still in there by the ninth, hanging on by his toenails, but he now gave up a leadoff single to Geronimo. Armbrister sacrificed (this time without litigation), and Pete Rose, who had previously hit two ropes for unlucky outs, walked. Johnson came to the mound and, to my surprise, left Tiant in. Ken Griffey ran the count to three and one, fouled off the next pitch, and bombed an enormous drive to the wall in deepest center field, four hundred feet away, where Fred Lynn pulled it down after a long run. Two outs. Joe Morgan, perhaps the most dangerous. .h.i.tter in baseball in such circ.u.mstances, took a ball (I was holding my breath; everyone in the vast stadium was holding his breath) and then popped straight up to Yastrzemski, to end it. Geronimo had broken for third base on the pitch, undoubtedly distracting Morgan for a fraction of a second-an infinitesimal and perhaps telling mistake by the Reds.

Tiant, it turned out, had thrown a total of 163 pitches, and Sparky Anderson selected Pitch No. 160 as the key to the game. This was not the delivery that Griffey whacked and Lynn caught but its immediate predecessor-the three-and-one pitch that Griffey had fouled off. Tiant had thrown a curve there-"turned it over," in baseball talk-which required the kind of courage that baseball men most respect. "Never mind his age," Joe Morgan said. "Being smart, having an idea-that"s what makes a pitcher."

Morgan himself has the conviction that he should affect the outcome of every game he plays in every time he comes up to bat and every time he gets on base. (He was bitterly self-critical for that game-ending out.) Like several of the other Cincinnati stars, he talks about his own capabilities with a dispa.s.sionate confidence that sounds immodest and almost arrogant-until one studies him in action and understands that this is only another form of the cold concentration he applies to ball games. This year, he batted .327, led the National League in bases on b.a.l.l.s, and fielded his position in the manner that has won him a Gold Glove award in each of the past two years. In more than half of his trips to the plate, he ended up on first base, and once there he stole sixty-seven bases in seventy-seven attempts. A short (five foot seven), precise man, with strikingly carved features, he talks in quick, short bursts of words. "I think I can steal off any pitcher," he said to me. "A good base stealer should make the whole infield jumpy. Whether you steal or not, you"re changing the rhythm of the game. If the pitcher is concerned about you, he isn"t concentrating enough on the batter. You"re doing something without doing anything. You"re out there to make a difference."

With the Reds leading, 21, in the sixth inning of the fifth game, Morgan led off and drew a walk. (He had singled in the first inning and instantly stolen second.) The Boston pitcher, Reggie Cleveland, now threw over to first base seven times before delivering his first pitch to the next Cincinnati hitter, Johnny Bench-a strike. Apparently determining to fight it out along these lines if it took all winter, Cleveland went to first four more times, pitched a foul, threw to first five more times, and delivered a ball. Only one of the throws came close to picking off Morgan, who got up each time and quickly resumed his lead about eleven feet down the line. Each time Cleveland made a pitch, Morgan made a flurrying little bluff toward second. Now Cleveland pitched again and Bench hit a grounder to right-a single, it turned out, because second baseman Denny Doyle was in motion toward the base and the ball skipped through, untouched, behind him. Morgan flew around to third, and an instant later Tony Perez hit a three-run homer-his second homer of the day-and the game was gone, 62. Doyle said later that he had somehow lost sight of Bench"s. .h.i.t for an instant, and the box score said later that Perez had won the game with his. .h.i.tting and that Don Gullett, who allowed only two Boston batters to reach first base between the first and the ninth innings, had won it with his pitching, but I think we all knew better. Morgan had made the difference.

Game Six, Game Six ... what can we say of it without seeming to diminish it by recapitulation or dull it with detail? Those of us who were there will remember it, surely, as long as we have any baseball memory, and those who wanted to be there and were not will be sorry always. Crispin Crispian: for Red Sox fans, this was Agincourt. The game also went out to sixty-two million television viewers, a good many millions of whom missed their bedtime. Three days of heavy rains had postponed things; the outfield gra.s.s was a lush, Amazon green, but there was a clear sky at last and a welcoming moon-a giant autumn squash that rose above the right-field Fenway bleachers during batting practice.

In silhouette, the game suggests a well-packed but dangerously overloaded canoe-with the high bulge of the Red Sox" three first-inning runs in the bow, then the much bulkier hump of six Cincinnati runs amidships, then the counterbalancing three Boston runs astern, and then, way aft, one more shape. But this picture needs colors: Fred Lynn clapping his hands once, quickly and happily, as his three-run opening shot flies over the Boston bullpen and into the bleachers ... Luis Tiant fanning Perez with a curve and the Low-Flying Plane, then dispatching Foster with a Fall Off the Fence. Luis does not have his fastball, however....

Pete Rose singles in the third. Perez singles in the fourth-his first real contact off Tiant in three games. Rose, up again in the fifth, with a man on base, fights off Tiant for seven pitches, then singles hard to center. Ken Griffey triples off the wall, exactly at the seam of the left-field and center-field angles; Fred Lynn, leaping up for the ball and missing it, falls backward into the wall and comes down heavily. He lies there, inert, in a terrible, awkwardly twisted position, and for an instant all of us think that he has been killed. He is up at last, though, and even stays in the lineup, but the noise and joy are gone out of the crowd, and the game is turned around. Tiant, tired and old and, in the end, bereft even of mannerisms, is rocked again and again-eight hits in three innings-and Johnson removes him, far too late, after Geronimo"s first-pitch home run in the eighth has run the score to 63 for the visitors.

By now, I had begun to think sadly of distant friends of mine-faithful lifelong Red Sox fans all over New England, all over the East, whom I could almost see sitting silently at home and slowly shaking their heads as winter began to fall on them out of their sets. I scarcely noticed when Lynn led off the eighth with a single and Petrocelli walked. Sparky Anderson, flicking levers like a master back-hoe operator, now called in Eastwick, his sixth pitcher of the night, who fanned Evans and retired Burleson on a fly. Bernie Carbo, pinch-hitting, looked wholly overmatched against Eastwick, flailing at one inside fastball like someone fighting off a wasp with a croquet mallet. One more fastball arrived, high and over the middle of the plate, and Carbo smashed it in a gigantic, flattened parabola into the center-field bleachers, tying the game. Everyone out there-and everyone in the stands, too, I suppose-leaped to his feet and waved both arms exultantly, and the bleachers looked like the dark surface of a lake lashed with a sudden night squall.

The Sox, it will be recalled, nearly won it right away, when they loaded the bases in the ninth with none out, but an ill-advised dash home by Denny Doyle after a fly, and a cool, perfect peg to the plate by George Foster, snipped the chance. The balance of the game now swung back, as it so often does when opportunities are wasted. Drago pitched out of a jam in the tenth, but he flicked Pete Rose"s uniform with a pitch to start the eleventh. Griffey bunted, and Fisk s.n.a.t.c.hed up the ball and, risking all, fired to second for the force on Rose. Morgan was next, and I had very little hope left. He struck a drive on a quick, deadly rising line-you could still hear the loud whock! in the stands as the white blur went out over the infield-and for a moment I thought the ball would land ten or fifteen rows back in the right-field bleachers. But it wasn"t hit quite that hard-it was traveling too fast, and there was no sail to it-and Dwight Evans, sprinting backward and watching the flight of it over his shoulder, made a last-second, half-staggering turn to his left, almost facing away from the plate at the end, and pulled the ball in over his head at the fence. The great catch made for two outs in the end, for Griffey had never stopped running and was easily doubled off first.

And so the swing of things was won back again. Carlton Fisk, leading off the bottom of the twelfth against Pat Darcy, the eighth Reds pitcher of the night-it was well into morning now, in fact-socked the second pitch up and out, farther and farther into the darkness above the lights, and when it came down at last, reilluminated, it struck the topmost, innermost edge of the screen inside the yellow left-field foul pole and glanced sharply down and bounced on the gra.s.s: a fair ball, fair all the way. I was watching the ball, of course, so I missed what everyone on television saw-Fisk waving wildly, weaving and writhing and gyrating along the first-base line, as he wished the ball fair, forced it fair with his entire body. He circled the bases in triumph, in sudden company with several hundred fans, and jumped on home plate with both feet, and John Kiley, the Fenway Park organist, played Handel"s "Hallelujah Chorus," fortissimo, and then followed with other appropriately exuberant cla.s.sical selections, and for the second time that evening I suddenly remembered all my old absent and distant Sox-afflicted friends (and all the other Red Sox fans, all over New England), and I thought of them-in Brookline, Ma.s.s., and Brooklin, Maine; in Beverly Farms and Mashpee and Presque Isle and North Conway and Damariscotta; in Pomfret, Connecticut, and Pomfret, Vermont; in Wayland and Providence and Revere and Nashua, and in both the Concords and all five Manchesters; and in Raymond, New Hampshire (where Carlton Fisk lives), and Bellows Falls, Vermont (where Carlton Fisk was born), and I saw all of them dancing and shouting and kissing and leaping about like the fans at Fenway-jumping up and down in their bedrooms and kitchens and living rooms, and in bars and trailers, and even in some boats here and there, I suppose, and on back-country roads (a lone driver getting the news over the radio and blowing his horn over and over, and finally pulling up and getting out and leaping up and down on the cold macadam, yelling into the night), and all of them, for once at least, utterly joyful and believing in that joy-alight with it.

It should be added, of course, that very much the same sort of celebration probably took place the following night in the midlands towns and vicinities of the Reds" supporters-in Otterbein and Scioto; in Frankfort, Sardinia, and Summer Shade; in Zanesville and Louisville and Akron and French Lick and Loveland. I am not enough of a social geographer to know if the faith of the Red Sox fan is deeper or hardier than that of a Reds rooter (although I secretly believe that it may be, because of his longer and more bitter disappointments down the years). What I do know is that this belonging and caring is what our games are all about; this is what we come for. It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look-I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring-caring deeply and pa.s.sionately, really caring-which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Navete-the infantile and ign.o.ble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night o

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