The Roger Angell Baseball Collection

Chapter 9

Prev List Next

Back to Shea then, and a brisk, heartening 73 Metsian victory that brought them to third place, one and a half back. Heartening because Cleon Jones, their brooding and enigmatic left fielder, whacked two homers and drove in five runs. Jones, one of the streakiest hitters imaginable, had apparently ended his season-long unstreak. The next night, the Mets came from behind three times, scoring one run each time, to tie at 33-more hard work-but then suddenly the sea parted, as it did so often in 1969, and one could sense that this week was going to be shining and famous. In the top of the thirteenth, the visitors" Richie Zisk singled off Ray Sadecki, and then Dave Augustine rocketed a deep, high sailer over Cleon Jones" head in left; the ball, descending implacably toward the bullpen, struck the very top of the fence-a fraction of an inch shy of a home run-and rebounded on a line into Cleon"s grasp. Startled, Jones whirled and threw to Garrett, who relayed to Ron Hodges at the plate, who collided with the sliding and truly startled Richie Zisk and tagged him out. One knew-one knew-that Hodges would then drive in the winning run in the bottom of the same inning.

This kind of baseball electrification changes everything, and the Pirates never looked like the same team after that ricochet. At Shea the next night, you could see fans-and, in their dugout, Pirates, too-pointing to the landmark spot just above the "5" in the middle of the "358" sign on the fence, where the Augustine carom shot had struck. Wayne Garrett then singled on the first Pittsburgh pitch of the evening, and the Mets ripped out eight hits and six runs in the first three innings, providing Tom Seaver with his first easy ride in weeks. An enormous crowd, most of them trooping in late after an epochal traffic jam, came to roar in exultation, and there were Met hits that bounced up into the faces of Pirate infielders and through the pitcher"s legs and off the bag at third base, and there were resounding homers by Milner and Garrett and Staub, and the fans shouted "We"re No. 1!" and Jane Jarvis played "You"re the Top" on the organ, and the sign man held up a sign that said "ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!" and the scoreboard showed that Montreal had lost again-their fifth straight defeat-and when it was over (Mets 10, Pirates 2), the Mets really were No. 1: the first team in baseball history to go into first place and arrive at the .500 level on the same evening in September.

From then on-a week and a little more-every Met fan was caught up in a double sport, simultaneously catching the out-of-town news on the scoreboard and watching the dangerous business at hand. It was a time of almost continuous baseball excitement-hazard and reward, silence and shouted relief-from which each of us could select games and moments to store away: Matlack fanning the first three batters of the day, all swinging, and then utterly stifling the Cardinals in a swift, almost eventless 20 shutout; an enormous Sunday conviviality as the biggest crowd of the year celebrated a comeback 52 win over the Cards, nailed down at last by Garrett"s triple and Cleon"s homer and sterling long relief by Parker and short relief by Tug McGraw and the cheerful air full of windblown paper and hundreds upon hundreds of migrating monarch b.u.t.terflies; Willie Mays Night-he was retiring at last, at the end of the season-with speeches and tears and awkwardness and felicity (Willie, wiping his eyes: "I look at the kids over here, and the way they"re playing and the way they"re fighting for themselves, and that say one thing to me: "Willie, say goodbye to America""), and finally the release of the game, against Montreal and Steve Rogers, a 21 bleeder won twice by Cleon Jones, first with a homer and then with a breathtaking running catch in the deepest left-field corner, to save two runs; and then the sad, heavy letdown of an ominous loss to the Expos in the last regular-season game at Shea, with Seaver tired and wild and gone after two, and the Mets" fine comeback from a five-run deficit all for nothing, and the suddenly revived awful doubt (with the cushion down to a bare half game) about whether there would be any more baseball back here this autumn after all.

The crucial final weekend, it will be remembered, was not so crucial after all, because the Pirates miserably and helpfully lost three close games in a row while the Mets waited through two rainouts in Chicago, and by the time play finally resumed there on Sunday the four barely breathing contenders-and the distant, astounding possibility of a five-way final tie-seemed to offer only a statistical menace. Matlack lost a painful 10 duel with the Cubs" Rick Reuschel, but then Koosman had a happier time of it in the nightcap-an error-filled 92 affair that finally did in the Cubs, as Montreal expired, too, in Pittsburgh. Tom Seaver pitched the clincher in the rain on Monday-64 over the Cubs (with whole sectors of the wet, shining stands there absolutely empty)-and Cleon fittingly hit another home run (his seventh in eleven days), and McGraw fittingly got the save (his twelfth, plus four wins, in his last seventeen outings), and the champagne corks flew at last. A final scoreboard study suggests that four teams certainly lost this tattered half pennant but that the fifth just as surely won it. From mid-August on-after August 20, that is-the Cardinals (who finished second, one and a half games back) won 18 games and lost 20, while the terrible exertions of the Pirates, Expos, and Cubs brought them respective records of 2121, 2020, and 1919-deadly, dead-even ball. The Mets, by contrast, went 2713 after August 20, including 21 victories in their last 29 games, which translates out to .675: championship work in any league.

Since it was clear to this experienced fan that the opening games of the American League playoffs between the Oakland A"s and the Baltimore Orioles would offer a not-to-be-missed collision between the two best pitching staffs in baseball, I hopped the Metroliner to Baltimore, confidently postponing the Mets and Reds until the Shea Stadium part of their playoffs-and thereby missing, it turned out, the two best-pitched games of the month. In Baltimore, on an incomparable autumn afternoon and before the customarily comparable hometown crowd, Jim Palmer, the presiding Oriole right-hander, fanned six Oakland batters in the first two innings and went on to whiff six more in the course of shutting out the hairy green-and-gold defending champs by 60. This result was not wholly unexpected, since Palmer had won twenty-two games this year (it was his fourth straight twenty-game season) and his earned-run average of 2.40 was the best in his league. d.i.c.k Williams, the Oakland cogitator, attempted to counter these odds by opening with Vida Blue, the third-best of his three twenty-game winners. The presence of Blue, a southpaw, would deprive the Birds of Rich Coggins and Alonza b.u.mbry, two swift rookie outfielders, who both batted well above .300 this year, but who, being lefties, regularly played only against right-handed pitchers. This was typical baseball strategy, deeply moving in its beauty and profundity, and almost typical in its results: Baltimore batted around in the first inning, driving out Vida and scoring four runs, two of which were registered by b.u.mbry"s and Coggins" replacements. Palmer"s only difficulties were with his control-he threw more than 150 pitches-and with a terrifying line single by Oakland"s Reggie Jackson, which he barely deflected, throwing himself backward on the mound just before it struck him in the face.

The next afternoon, b.u.mbry and Coggins combined in the first inning to help fashion a Baltimore run, and in the top of the third b.u.mbry gathered himself at the foot of the left-field fence-staring up and tensing and poising like a cat about to leap onto a bureau-and ascended perfectly to pluck back Sal Bando"s drive just as it was departing the premises. Bando found balm for this disappointment by knocking two subsequent pitches a good deal higher and deeper, both well beyond b.u.mbry"s reach and into the seats; the second of these was the fourth Oakland homer of the afternoon, and was sufficient to do in the Oriole pitcher, Dave McNally, on the wrong end of an eventual 63 score. Catfish Hunter, the splendid Oakland ace (he was 215 this year), gave us a characteristically low-key winning performance-working in and out, flicking the corners, tugging on his oversized cap between pitches, and, in the hard places, striking out batters with his dipping curve.

What I was missing was even better, of course. By the time I got back to my hotel-room TV set on the first afternoon, it was the seventh inning in Cincinnati, and I found that, for the first time in weeks, Tom Seaver"s fastball was alive and well. He was leading by 10 and had fanned nine batters, and within a minute or two he added numbers ten and eleven. My heart sank. Seaver"s hummer comes in to a batter about letter-high; at its best, it is very nearly untouchable, and the way Tom throws it past a hitter-with his powerful body dropping low and driving forward at the instant of delivery-is one of the ornaments of modern baseball. He relies heavily on the fastball on its good days, always seeming to challenge a batter to beat his best with one blow. As strategy, this is straightforward, courageous, and stubborn-and also, in view of Seaver"s record and proud nature, probably unarguable. It is extremely scary to watch, and sometimes, in the late innings of a low-score game against a team of proud and famous sluggers, too scary. With one out in the eighth, Pete Rose hit a homer; with one out in the ninth, Johnny Bench hit another, to win it.

When I caught up with the Mets again the next afternoon (this time via a tiny TV set perched in a corner of a Union News Company stand in Baltimore"s dusty, ancient Pennsylvania Station), they were engaged in another character-builder, once again leading by a bare 10 in the seventh. The pitcher was Matlack, who looked even more commanding than Seaver had the day before; his fastball was riding in on the fists of the right-handed Cincinnati batters, and he was pouring over some scimitarlike curves as well. Between innings, I exchanged glances with some fellow Met freaks in the little crowd of standees, and we shook our heads wordlessly: not enough runs. Wrong again. In the top of the ninth, the Mets put together two walks and a tiny fusillade of singles, most of them just over second base, for four more runs and the game and the tie-and, now, some solid hope.

Another squeaker seemed insupportable, and Rusty Staub took care of that quickly the next afternoon, at Shea, with a first-inning home run over the Manufacturers Hanover sign in center, and a second-inning home run above the right-field auxiliary scoreboard. The latter poke came while the Mets were happily batting around, and a little later Jerry Koosman drove in a run with his second hit of the afternoon, and the Reds began throwing the ball away in rather discouraged fashion, and the score went to 92, and the Gotham hordes were laughing at the Cincinnati pitchers. This kind of breaking apart is perfectly commonplace, of course, though not perfectly or equally acceptable to all partic.i.p.ants. And so in the top of the fifth, Bud Harrelson, airborne in the middle part of a lovely 3-6-3 double play, came down a bit heavily on the sliding Pete Rose, and Pete Rose came up a trifle irritably with an elbow, and then Bud and Pete were rolling and punching in the dirt, and all 53,967 of us came to our feet shouting. First the benches emptied and then the bullpens, with the galloping Met battalion being led-ta-ra!-by Teddy R. McGraw. As ancient custom dictates in these matters, there was a great deal of milling and shouldering but really not much doing-until Cincinnati relief man Pedro Borbon fetched New York relief man Buzz Capra an unexpected clout on the right temple, to which Capra (who had not worked since mid-September) responded vigorously but with understandably poor control. In time, they all streamed slowly off the field, and Borbon, discovering a Met cap on his head (it was Capra"s), furiously s.n.a.t.c.hed it off, bit it, tore it in half, and flung it away. Eventually, Pete Rose resumed his post in left field, to an accolade of garbage and abuse (he outweighs Harrelson by forty or fifty pounds, and Bud is ... well, ours), but when a whiskey bottle plumped to the ground near him, he sensibly withdrew, and Manager Sparky Anderson waved his troops from the untidy field. Shouting and chaos, but no baseball. Then spake the president of the tribe of the Nationals, the goodly Chub Feeney, and so it came to pa.s.s that forth from the home dugout emerged a holy company-Yogi, Cleon, Rusty, Tom, and, yea, Willie himself-and right swiftly did they hie themselves toward the troubled mult.i.tudes, and sweetly did they remind them, with upraised arms and pleading visages, of the hospitality and courtly good will owed the visiting gentle knights, and also of the score, which stood so fairly for the forces of right and good, and of the power of dark-garbed arbiters to erase and reverse such a score in the face of undue hubbub. And lo! the mult.i.tudes were hushed and the play resumed and the memorable foolishness at last concluded.

In the batting cage the next afternoon, the trailing Reds seemed loose and cheerful, while the Mets, now only a game away from the pennant, looked pale and grim. Some of the Reds stared up at the new banners unfurling in the upper deck-"ROSE IS A WEED," "THIS ROSE SMELLS," and others less elegant-and Johnny Bench murmured, "The best thing you can do is get Pete Rose mad." This Rose had led his league (for the third time) with a batting average of .338, rapping out 230 hits (his sixth 200-hit season); by instructive contrast, Felix Millan established a new club record for the Mets this year with 185 hits. When play began, the left-field pack again bayed vociferously at Rose, but then the tension of the game caught everyone up, and a remarkable quiet descended. It was 10, Mets, but then 11 after Tony Perez" homer in the seventh-a waiting, silent sort of game, too close for pleasure. Tug McGraw came on in relief of George Stone and repeatedly pitched himself into terrible difficulties, loading the bases in the ninth and again in the tenth-and somehow wriggled free, helped in no small part by the Reds" inordinate difficulties when bunting. Twice, Tug tiptoed past the wolves" lair at the top of the Cincinnati batting order, releasing screeching cries of hope from the upper decks, but the Met hitters were being utterly smothered by the Cincinnati relief men. In the eleventh, with two out and two on, the visitors" Dan Driessen poled a line drive deep to right; Rusty Staub, running hard, hard, pulled the ball in over his left shoulder and collided heavily with the wall, falling onto his back with the ball still clutched in his glove. Enough Tug for this day, clearly, and when Pete Rose came up in the twelfth, the new pitcher was young Harry Parker. Rose had been on base three times without result, but this time he made sure, whacking a high fastball out over the right-field fence and under the scoreboard. He circled the bases with his right fist held high.

The finale, the tie breaker, was less good as a game, better as a pageant. Rusty Staub, his right shoulder damaged by his smash into the wall, was replaced by Eddie Kranepool, the only surviving Met from the original 1962 light-opera company, and n.o.body present could have been entirely surprised to see the bases loaded when Eddie stepped up in the first inning, or absolutely astounded when he rapped the first pitch to him on a line into left field for two runs. It was going to be that kind of an afternoon. Tom Seaver, without his fastball this time, pitched with restraint and intelligence-curves, sliders, hard work. The Reds labored, too, and Pete Rose doubled and then came around to tie the score in the fifth. Minutes later, Garrett doubled and then Jones doubled and Milner walked, and the bases were loaded, and Willie Mays-yes, of course, that kind of day-batted for Kranepool. Over-swinging, fooled by the pitch, Willie hammered the ball straight into the dirt (or perhaps off the plate itself), so that it bounded high up in the air and came down, thirty feet up the third-base line, far too late for Clay Carroll, the unhappy pitcher, to make a play anywhere, and another run was in. It was the shortest heroic blow in memory, but, as Mays suggested after the game, box scores and record books do not show the distance of hits, or their luck. Two more runs ensued, and in the sixth Tom Seaver hit a double that Pete Rose ran and dived in the dirt for, all in vain, and then Tom came around and scored, of course-72 now-and grins and cheers and smiles and hugs and handshakes broke out everywhere, and all of us believed.

Somehow it should have ended there, when the scoring stopped, but there were three more innings to be played, which is a long time to put off a party. The cries of joy became chants, the shadows deepened, and there were clouds of paper on the gra.s.s, and sudden ripping sounds in the stands as strings of firecrackers went off. The ninth began, and the waves of waiting celebrants pushed forward in the lower stands, filling up the lower aisles and crowding the railings. There was some enormous urgency visible here-a yearning for the field itself, a need to belong to this event in a deeper way. A temporary fence out beyond the home dugout collapsed with a tearing noise, and then there was a long, tension-filled wait as some frightened wives in the official Cincinnati party were led from their overrun box seats and out through the visitors" dugout. It was frightening, in a way, and so was the enormous horde let loose by the final out, and the sight of Reds and Mets alike (Tug McGraw from the mound, Pete Rose from the base path) running and dodging, as if for their lives, through hundreds upon hundreds of grasping hands, past hundreds of pa.s.sionate, shouting faces. Streamers and papers (and one sudden red flare) and other things came down from the upper deck, and then a great cloud of dust rose and hung over the entire field as chunks of turf began to be torn up and taken away. This sort of riotous unleashing has almost grown into an inst.i.tution in our sports in recent years, and what one makes of it all probably depends on what each of us thinks about a great many complex matters, the very least of which is baseball. Cincinnati manager Sparky Anderson, for instance, was disappointed that the police did not take matters in hand, and he said, "Can you imagine this happening in America?" The answer to that, at least, seems easy.

The convention opened gently in Oakland. Both clubs, recovering from playoffs of bruising intensity, were plainly glad to be in the World Series at all, and they regarded each other with congratulatory speculation. (The A"s had won an eleven-inning squeaker over the Orioles" Mike Cuellar; had lost 54, going down before a shocking five-run Baltimore rally; and then had taken their flag on a 30 shutout by Catfish Hunter.) Any other outcome of the playoffs would have produced teams that had already faced each other in a recent World Series, but A"s vs. Mets was new and promising. I was grateful, too, to have the defending champs back-the grand White Shoes, with their cheerful dash, their proud quarrelsomeness, and the vivid quality of their play. The A"s were probably an even better club than they had been the previous October, with deeper pitching, more speed, and some useful new second-line players purchased with the customary sudden midseason disburs.e.m.e.nt of cash by owner Charles O. Finley. Their fine young center fielder, Bill North, who had stolen fifty-three bases, was out with a sprained ankle, but this was less of a handicap than the sidelining of Reggie Jackson in last year"s Series. This year, Reggie had just concluded a brilliant season-32 homers, 117 RBIs and a certain coming award as the Most Valuable Player in his league. The Mets, we could all see, were outmanned again.

In the opener, the Oakland left-hander Ken Holtzman pitched extremely well and won, while Jon Matlack pitched even better and lost. The day contained a bare few minutes of news. Matlack, falling to a 32 count on Holtzman in the third, came in with a fastball that Holtzman rapped into left field for two bases-and a vivid concurrent editorial on the designated-hitter artifice. Bert Campaneris now hit an easy roller to second, which the almost infallible Felix Millan missed cleanly, for an error and a run; it seemed to me that Campaneris"s burning speed up the line distracted Millan. That same threat now distracted Matlack, who caught Campy leaning the wrong way at first but flung his pick-off throw high, allowing Campaneris to motor safely along to second, from where he scored Oakland"s second and final run, on a single by Joe Rudi. The Mets responded in the next half-a double by Cleon Jones, a run-scoring single by John Milner-but then Reggie Jackson, playing center field for the first time this year, got a splendid jump on Jerry Grote"s line drive and made a dazzling, going-away catch, to amputate the only Met hopes of the day.

Having been given a canape for the opener, we came back the next day for a gigantic goulash of mistakes and wonders that the Mets finally won, 107, in twelve innings. It was the longest World Series game in captivity, and one that absolutely defies elucidation. (A friend of mine, driving his wife and children from New Hampshire to New York City that afternoon, tuned in to the game on the car radio, grateful that it would help pa.s.s the early miles of the trip; the entertainment concluded four hours and thirteen minutes later, exactly at his apartment door.) The excessive happenings included several fly b.a.l.l.s falling untouched out of the dazzling California cerulean for extra-base hits, homers by Garrett and Jones, triples by Campaneris and Bando and Jackson, five Oakland errors, four cannonlike hits by Reggie Jackson, Willie Mays stumbling on the base path, Willie Mays falling twice in the outfield, three hit batsmen, twelve A"s left on base, fifteen Mets left on base, 49,151 disbelieving fans. The sway of the game went first toward the hometowners, who led early by 31 and would have led by more except for a misbegotten squeeze play; then toward the Mets, who put six straight men aboard in the sixth, scurrying around the bases on looped hits and little hoppers and an appalling wild throw past the plate by pitcher Darold Knowles; then back to the A"s again, who tied the game at 66 by bringing across two runs with two out in the ninth inning. The Mets displayed gallantry of their own, to be sure, surviving a bad call at the plate (I still think) by umpire Augie Donatelli that cost them a run in the tenth, and the excruciating tension that falls upon the visiting team in an extra-innings free-for-all like this. In the end, the thing seemed to come down to a clear confrontation between a cla.s.sic undermanager and an inveterate overmanager. Yogi Berra stayed with his ace reliever, McGraw, for six full innings, during which time he surrendered the tying ninth-inning runs; Tug, as usual, was both tough and brilliant-sighing heavily, c.o.c.king his chin at the enemy hitter, staring in for the sign, plucking the ball from his upheld glove like a cup from a tray, and then firing the screwball over the top for the strikeout.

Endless games produce endless possibilities, and so the twelfth brought us Willie Mays up at bat with two out and two on; he broke the tie with another bounced single-barely over the pitcher"s head this time, and barely through second. It was the last hit and last triumph of his career. Jones singled, and the next two Met batters. .h.i.t sure outs to second baseman Mike Andrews, who misplayed them both-a grounder right through the wickets, a terrible throw to first-allowing the last three Met runs to come in. Andrews is not known as a fielder, but he was there because d.i.c.k Williams, the impatient Oakland manager, had used up two better second bas.e.m.e.n along the way. Tom Seaver summed things up a few minutes later in the Mets" clamorous clubhouse. "You couldn"t write a book about this one that would tell anybody how to play this game," he said.

There is some temptation to omit any mention of the two central figures of the third meeting, back at Shea Stadium, since neither of them was in uniform. The Mets lost the game by 32 in eleven innings, but most of the emotion of the evening centered on the errant and unfortunate Mike Andrews, who was languishing at his home in Peabody, Ma.s.sachusetts, and on Charles O. Finley, the Oakland vizier, who had subjected Andrews to a medical examination immediately after the conclusion of the twelve-inning debacle and had then dropped him from the squad. The vindictiveness of this maneuver exceeded several low marks previously held by the excessive Mr. Finley, and this time his troops came to the very edge of mutiny. Fortunately, the commissioner quickly restored Andrews, and Manager Williams held a camp meeting for his players, at which he declared his own coming voluntary retirement and total disaffiliation with Finley and the A"s after the end of the season. This may seem a curious form of encouragement for a team in the very midst of a World Series, but it should be understood that the vivid, what-the-h.e.l.l morale of the A"s has always been built out of a shared abhorrence of the man at the top. They display the utter unity of a pack of ragged and sequestered d.i.c.kensian schoolboys, and Charlie Finley is their Gradgrind.

In the game-which was played on a subarctic evening-the Mets burst from the mark with a leadoff homer by Garrett, a single by Millan, and an exquisite wrong-field hit-and-run poke by Staub. Catfish Hunter now let the second run slip in on a wild pitch, but then slammed the door shut for good. Tom Seaver, his opposite, struck out nine Oaklands in the first five innings, and then, suddenly bereft of his fastball, was whacked for some frightening line drives in the sixth, somehow surrendering only one counter. Campaneris became the tying run in the eighth: a single, a steal of second off Tom"s big motion and a super-slide under Grote"s super-peg, a trip home on Joe Rudi"s single. In the eleventh, after a succession of frigid agonies, Campy happened again. Met relief man Harry Parker walked Ted Kubiak but fanned Angel Mangual, swinging, with a pitch that utterly fooled Jerry Grote as well. The pa.s.sed ball put Kubiak on second and brought Campaneris to the plate; he whistled a single up the middle, sending Kubiak and, shortly thereafter, all the rest of us home.

Two misapprehensions about this heartbreaker seem possible-that Seaver should have done better, and that the visitors" win was somehow undeserved, because of the Mets" mistakes. Seaver came into this game after 307 innings of work this season-an enormous and exhausting burden for a man who throws as hard as he does. Furthermore, he had never fully recovered from the tender right shoulder that afflicted him in September. Pitching well under all conditions is one hallmark of a $140,000-a-year pitcher, and Tom, at far less than his best, very nearly pulled off a masterpiece-giving up two runs on seven hits, twelve strikeouts, and one walk. Oddly enough, the last figure suggests the aspect of Seaver"s pitching that most awes his fellow professionals. Most big-league hurlers never record a full season in which their combined total of walks and hits given up is lower than the total number of innings they have worked. Among the great fastball pitchers, Walter Johnson accomplished this feat nine times, Sandy Koufax four times, and Grover Cleveland Alexander three. Seaver did it this summer for the third time in his brief seven-year career, which puts him in pretty good company. As for the quality of the Oakland victory, it might be noted that this strategy of waiting for small errors (Seaver"s failure to hold Campaneris close to first, Grote"s pa.s.sed ball) and then having the right man on the spot to capitalize (Campaneris, Rudi, Campaneris again) was the killing habit, the essential technique of victory, that kept the Yankees on top for more than four decades.

Subtleties were dispensed with the next night, which produced enormous ovations for three heroes-Rusty Staub, who hit a three-run homer in the first, a two-run single in the fourth, and two subsequent safeties; Jon Matlack, who surrendered three grudging hits and one unearned run; and Mike Andrews, miraculously restored, who was sent up to bat in the eighth (ah, there, Charlie Finley!) and shortly trotted back to the dugout in the midst of the loudest and longest accolade ever bestowed upon a pinch-hitter grounding into an infield out. The Mets won by 61, retying the Series. Staub"s socko performance at the plate was achieved in spite of the shoulder injury he had sustained in the penultimate playoff game, which still made it impossible for him to throw overhand. He was also the only person on the frigid premises in bare-armed decolletage-not an affectation for a player who had survived three seasons in Montreal, where, as he explained later, outfield weather conditions can be toughening, sometimes even requiring the ingestion of a little cognac after a night game. For Mr. Finley, the evening must have seemed a mite draggy. When he stood up for the visitors" seventh-inning stretch, the Mets" folding-sign man flashed him a "SIT DOWN, YA b.u.m!," and when Andrews came up to bat in the eighth, there were rolling, defiant waves of applause from every part of the park. Finley clapped a bit, too, and then waved his green-and-gold banner. Caligula never had a night like that.

The last winter exercise-the final game in New York, and the coldest baseball game in my memory-offered various perceptions and rewards. This Series, though more crowded and eventful than a samurai drama, had not yet brought us a single game of top quality; between them, the two clubs had so far committed thirteen errors (with a good many other transgressions going forgiven) and had left eighty-four men on base. Strangely, the Mets had outhit the dangerous A"s, who had yet to record a homer; the Mets had won the two free-hitting affairs and, strangest of all, had lost the two close ones because of poor defense. Now we were owed something better. The business at hand began in lively fashion when Rusty Staub, batting against Vida Blue in the bottom of the first, knocked off a burning line foul that entered my part of the mezzanine like a SAM missile and caught a late-coming male patron in the back of the right thigh. He sagged to the steps, while nearby patrons explained, "Staub hit that! Staub did it!" The fan looked pained but ecstatic, like a man who has just received a personal message from Jove.

Something better began almost at once-some rabbit-quick infield plays by Bud Harrelson; some darting, quite uncharacteristic fastb.a.l.l.s by Jerry Koosman, who said later that the dry, cold air made it impossible for him to grip the ball properly for his meal-ticket pitch, the curve. Jerry also solved the Campaneris problem, with a terrific double-leaning, Warren Spahn pick-off move in the third inning which caught Dagoberto a full eight feet off the bag. Meanwhile, Cleon Jones, who eats up Vida Blue pitches like M & Ms, had whanged a double to the left-field fence and scored on a little eye-hit by John Milner. Blizzards of torn-up paper took wing, rising to vast heights in the windy dark, to the accompaniment of deep, mittened sounds of joy. The chilly air and the pleasure and closeness of the game kept us shivering in our serapes and ski masks and steamer rugs and quilts, and in time there were bits of paper in everybody"s hair, on everybody"s shoulders. The wind rushed up out of the entrance tunnels, lifting the plastic bunting and making the homemade fan banners on the railings flap like laundry, and sometimes, when the cheering faded for a moment, you could hear the stadium itself groaning and creaking like a great ship in the night.

Koosman threw a shutout, it turned out, winning by a bare 20, and there were swift plays afield to keep us shouting and pointing-Felix Millan running at full speed away from the plate and pulling down a shallow fly at the last instant between two inrushing outfielders; a heart-stopping leap and catch by Joe Rudi as he crashed into the left-field barrier; Bud Harrelson making wonderful stops and throws all over his s.p.a.cious rangeland. Once, he robbed Reggie Jackson with an effortless scoop and force-play toss from directly behind second base; Reggie stopped dead in the base path and stared at him incredulously: What are you doing over there, man? Then McGraw came in and twice put on the tying runs with walks, and twice survived rifled line-drive outs (Jesus Alou, disgusted, sent his green batting helmet spinning into the air), and the upper decks cried "Dee-fense! Dee-fense!" and Tug pitched out, and in the ninth, all together for the last time this year, we sang "Good-byyye, Char-lee, we hate to see you go-oh-oh!" in a deafening chorus, and the Mets were ahead in the World Series.

I did not go back to Oakland. After the winter party in the stands, and after seeing the exuberant cheerfulness in the Mets" clubhouse that night, which almost suggested a Series victory celebration, I decided that Finleyland could not contain deeper rewards. What I secretly feared, of course, was almost exactly what came to pa.s.s. In game six, Tom Seaver, with very little left but guile (it seemed to me, watching via television), gave up run-scoring doubles to Reggie Jackson in the first inning and again in the third (with an Oakland runner scoring all the way from first because Rusty Staub still could not throw), and a third A"s run came across on still another Met error, by Don Hahn this time. Somehow, the Mets kept it close, but Darold Knowles (in relief of Hunter) came in and fanned Rusty, with two runners aboard, on three fiery fastb.a.l.l.s, to nail down the game, 31, and tie the Series for the last time. The next day, the A"s won the big game, 52, as Jon Matlack"s almost unparalleled streak of sustained great pitching came to an end. In collecting his first six outs of the day, he completed forty-two innings in which he had surrendered exactly one earned run. Now, in the third, in the s.p.a.ce of a bare minute or two, Holtzman doubled and Campaneris homered on the very next pitch; Rudi singled and, after an out, Reggie Jackson homered to deepest right-center field-four hits, four runs, one World Championship. The moment Jackson hit his shot, he dropped his bat at his feet and stood stock-still at the plate, watching the ball go, more or less in the style of Sir Kenneth Clark regarding a Rembrandt. I thought he could be forgiven this gesture; he was, after all, the big gun of the A"s, and he had shot us down in the end.

Everyone could be forgiven, it seemed. The Mets" super pitching had finally been worn away (Matlack"s last two starts had been on three days" rest), and Oakland had won with its power, its depth, and its own fine pitching (their two top relievers, Rollie Fingers and Darold Knowles, had a combined earned-run average of 0.45 over twenty innings). The Oakland victory represented the first back-to-back championship by any team since the 196162 Yankees, and I could not think of any pennant winner in the interim that deserved the t.i.tle more. If the renewed championship seemed an undue reward for the likes of Mr. Finley, it was the only conceivably sufficient compensation for his mistreated schoolboys. As for the Mets-ah, the Mets! What can one feel for them but grat.i.tude for such a season of prizes, for a summer that lasted, in the end, just two afternoons too long?

Landscape, with Figures

- July 1974 IT"S QUIZ TIME, MR. and Mrs. John Q. Fan, and here we go with a brainteasing a.s.sortment of baseball stumpers! Are you a real baseball fan? Do you enjoy matching wits with the savants of the press box, with the Figger Filberts who keep watch over the precious "stats" of the game, and with the h.o.a.ry historians of the onetime National Pastime? No? Oh, come on-say yes. Good for you! Now get out your pencils and scratch pads, and away we go! Just one little thing before you step up to the plate.... This time, in order to squeeze a little more fun out of our quiz, we"re going to bring you the answers first, instead of the questions. Got that? Play ball!

A: Hank Aaron.

Q (no peeking!): Who is the current major-league leader in lifetime home runs, and also the lifetime leader in total bases and extra-base hits, and the holder of the second-highest lifetime marks for runs batted in and times at bat, and of the third-highest lifetime marks for hits, runs, and games played (with a good chance to move up a notch or two in some of these categories before the end of this season), and the man who with the first swing of his bat in the 1974 campaign tied the previous lifetime-home-run record (the hallowed 714 hung up forty years earlier by the Sultan of Swat, Babe Ruth) and then surpa.s.sed that record, and so attained something close to the ultimate sports transfiguration (plus uncounted hundreds of thousands of dollars" worth of publicity and commercial sponsorships), by striking his seven-hundred-and-fifteenth round-tripper in Atlanta at 9:07 P.M. on April 8, 1974, in his second time at bat in his team"s hometown opener, thus transporting 53,775 Atlanta Braves fans (on hand in prayerful hope of witnessing the historic four-ply blow live and in person), as well as several hundred national- and local-media persons, and the gratified Atlanta Braves" owners and front-office nabobs (who had earlier suffered over the horrid possibility that the billion-dollar poke might come to pa.s.s, like its immediate predecessor, in some ball park other than the all too rarely occupied confines of Atlanta Stadium), and simultaneously pleasing several million fans and (to be sure) idly curious nonfans watching by national television, who then saw the game stopped in its tracks for almost a quarter of an hour of handshakes, hugs, encomiums, plaque presentations, photos, and a.s.sorted ceremonials (and had the opportunity, a few minutes later, to see the whole business, from pitcher"s fateful windup to politician"s fervent speechifying, repeated on a taped replay, under the auspices of an entirely different and extremely forehanded commercial sponsor), and who eventually (in much diminished numbers) resumed watching the game at hand-the Braves, by the way, vs. the Los Angeles Dodgers-perhaps then noticing that a large part of the outfield in Atlanta had been painted (in the style of a pro-football field) to represent a map of the United States, executed in red and white stripes, and also noticing that the stands in Atlanta were almost vacant within an inning or two after the awaited event, and then possibly sighed a deep sigh occasioned by a private and quite uncharacteristic feeling of anticlimax and ennui, and hoped (against hope) that at last the real business of baseball (which is the playing of games, rather than the celebration of history) and the rest of the season might now be allowed to proceed-as, indeed, thank goodness, it has?

Did you get all that right, quiz players? Way to go! More coming up in a minute.

It has been a strange season so far, beginning with such a sudden shout, and in retrospect it appears that Hank Aaron"s finest feat this year was the swiftness with which he accomplished his necessary business, thus saving himself and the rest of us from the embarra.s.sment of waiting for an inevitability. That seven-hundred-and-fifteenth homer was a fixed target, of course, and its attainment is more a landmark than a true event. There is something warming and elegant about Hank Aaron"s long conservation of his powers, but lifetime records lack urgency. This was not a sudden prodigy, like batting over .400 or hitting sixty home runs in a single season. Babe Ruth was prodigious; Bad Henry is-well, historic. Most of us sensed some of this, and these differences should not be lost in the current rush of Aaron fame and money and publicity. It was understandable that the baseball establishment should look on Hank"s feat as a fabulous PR opportunity, since the new record so clearly suggests that modern baseball, despite all secret fears to the contrary, is at least as good as, and maybe even better than, baseball in the Babe"s day. This is not provable, and it is not the point. Hank Aaron has not really defeated Babe Ruth, but he has accomplished something far more difficult and significant. He has defeated the averages.

The statistics of baseball form the critical dimensions of the game. Invisible but ineluctable, they swarm and hover above the head of every pitcher, every fielder, every batter, every team, recording every play with an accompanying silent shift of digits. The true, grinding difficulty of this sport is to be found in its unwinking figures, and ballplayers on the field are in compet.i.tion not just with the pitchers and sluggers of the opposing team but with every pitcher or batter who ever played the game, including their past selves. Some aspects of fielding are not perfectly measurable, and good or bad managerial thinking is similarly obscure, but each pitcher and hitter is absolutely without illusion about the current level of his professional competence and the likely curve of its continuation. The red-hot spring hitter knows he will not stay up there at .472; the averages will get him. The veteran knows he will break out of his 0-for-22 slump-but when, when? At night, in his hotel room on the road, the manager rereads the day"s new c.u.mulative team stats and thinks about his not so dazzling rookie outfielder: the figures spell Tulsa. In the next room, a thirty-two-year-old pitcher slowly rubs his aching shoulder and silently reruns his numbers (ERA 3.81; W 5L 8; HR 12; CG 0), which are beginning to say something to him about his next year"s salary and his chances of a ten-year-man"s pension. Only the superstar, with his years of averages and numbers safely banked in the record books, has longer thoughts-perhaps about his precise eventual place in the history of this game, and about the players (some of them now old, some of them now dead) who at this moment bracket his name in the all-time totals. His figures may have begun to spell another destination: Cooperstown. None of this is secret; none of it is hard to understand. The averages are there for us all to read and to ponder, and they admit us to the innermost company of baseball. On that same evening, the true fan, comfortably at home with his newspapers and The Sporting News and his "Official Baseball Guide"s and his various record books and histories, notes the day"s and the week"s new figures, and draws his conclusions, and then plunges onward, deeper into the puzzles and pleasures of his game.

A: Jim and g.a.y.l.o.r.d Perry.

Q: Which pair of brothers have together pitched the most winning games in the major leagues?

Ah, friends, this one hurts. The answer here is a brand-new one-a mark hung up on April 23 of this year, when g.a.y.l.o.r.d Perry, on his way to a dazzlingly successful early season, won his second game of the year for the Cleveland Indians. g.a.y.l.o.r.d, now thirty-five, has subsequently run his record to 141, and tops all pitchers in both leagues with an earned-run average of 1.27. His achievement so far is curious as well as astounding, since he seems to have abandoned the infamous spitball with which he used to fan so many batters, enrage so many managers, and mystify so many umpires. Faced with a new ad-hoc (and con-g.a.y.l.o.r.d) ruling this year which permits an umpire to call an automatic ball on any pitch that appears even faintly perspiring in its flight, and to eject a hurler for a second offense, Perry (or so he claims) has gone to a fork ball that behaves very much like its damp cousin as it crosses the plate-that is, like a diving pelican. Wet or dry, g.a.y.l.o.r.d Perry deserves homage, but one cannot entirely help wishing that he had stayed down on the family farm in Williamston, North Carolina, this summer. The new brother-pitcher record-composed of g.a.y.l.o.r.d"s pre-1974 lifetime mark of 177 wins, plus his first two this year, and Jim Perry"s 194, plus his first this year (also for the Indians)-erased an ancient mark much beloved of press-box historians and other baseball loonies: the 373 victories scored by Christy and Henry Mathewson. The latter sibling was not quite as effective as his celebrated bro, having appeared in a total of three games for the Giants during the seasons of 1906 and 1907, during which he ripped off a lifetime mark of zero wins and one defeat. That sum, carefully added to Christy"s 373, had topped all comers until now. There was a brief further flurry this spring when some statistical mole discovered that three brothers-Dad and John and Walter Clarkson-pitching in baseball"s Pleistocene era, had put together a lifetime conglomerate of 386 wins. But the Perrys have now topped that, too, and the last word on the foolish matter may have been said by a visiting baseball writer at Shea Stadium last month who murmured, "Cy Young and his sister have still got them all beat."

A: Al Benton and Bobo Newsom and (in a way) Satchel Paige.

Q: Name two (or three) pitchers who pitched to both Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle.

Benton"s and Newsom"s careers as hurlers encompa.s.sed both 1934 and 1952, which were, respectively, Ruth"s last and Mantle"s first full years in the majors. Paige is perhaps subject to challenge, since the big leagues" old racial barriers made it impossible for him to pitch against the Babe in anything but exhibition games.

A: Dan Brouthers, Nick Altrock, Bobo Newsom, Mickey Vernon, Early Wynn, Ted Williams.

Q: How many players can you name whose active careers spanned at least four calendar decades?

An infuriating question, answerable only by zealots wearing bottle-bottom eyegla.s.ses who have wasted their lives groveling in the fine print of the baseball record books. Brouthers, a Hall of Fame slugger and first baseman, appeared in his first big-league game in 1879 and his last in 1904. Newsom"s career stretched from 1929 to 1953, Vernon"s and Williams" from 1939 to 1960, Wynn"s from 1939 to 1963. Nick Altrock"s span is 1898 to 1924, or maybe even 1933, but he barely merits inclusion, since most of his appearances after 1912 (he was a left-handed pitcher) were token affairs-an inning or two per year. He may be remembered by a few elders (including this scribe) as a beloved long-time coach with the Senators who used to team with Al Schacht in a clown act between the games of doubleheaders in baseball"s sunshine days.*

More infuriation?

A: Dodgers, Cubs, Browns, Senators, Red Sox, Senators, Browns, Tigers, Browns, Tigers, Senators, Dodgers, Browns, Senators, Dodgers, Athletics, Senators, Yankees, Senators, Giants, Athletics, Senators, Athletics.

Anybody got the question? Oh, come on, this one is easy.

Q: Name in order all the major-league teams for which Bobo Newsom pitched. (Or, variantly, name the pitcher who served more terms as a Senator than Strom Thurmond.) A: c, King Kelly; 1b, Ted Kluszewski; 2b, Harvey Kuenn; 3b, George Kell; ss, Don Kessinger; of, Willie Keeler, Al Kaline, Ralph Kiner; p. Sandy Koufax, Tim Keefe, Jim Kaat, Jerry Koosman.

Q: Name an all-time-best lineup of players with names beginning with "K."

No single answer is right here, but this is a game that can be played for hours on end among badly bitten fans or, solo, by insomniac baseball freaks in the darkest hours of the night. Utterly useless disputes and time-wasting reveries can ensue, thus providing some of the true secret rewards of fandom. Your team, of course, can play for any letter of the alphabet; if you start with "C," for instance, it is possible to come up with an All-Hall-of-Fame lineup. "K" is more rewarding than one might think at first, however. It isn"t easy to relegate Chuck Klein, Charlie Keller, Harmon Killebrew, Ken Keltner, Tony Kubek, or Highpockets Kelly to the bench, as I have done, but with pinch-hitters like that, one probably doesn"t need a very deep bullpen: Jim Konstanty, Ray Kremer, Ellis Kinder, and Alex Kellner. (Harvey Kuenn, incidentally, never did play second base, but my manager, Eddie Kasko, is not afraid to experiment a little with a lifetime .303 hitter like Harv.) Let"s add Eddie Kranepool to the club, for good luck, and the back-up catcher, of course, is Clyde Kluttz. Probably I have left somebody out. If you need a little help in scouting him, take along Paul Krich.e.l.l.

And just one more-absolutely the final one.

A: Three feet seven inches.

Q: How tall was Eddie Gaedel, the midget whom Bill Veeck sent up to bat as a pinch-hitter for the St. Louis Browns against the Tigers on August 19, 1951?

Gaedel walked, of course (which was the whole idea), and the rules of the game were instantly changed to prohibit such high unseriousness. The story is not complete, however, unless one adds: A: Pearl du Monville. (Yes, I know, I know, but this is part of the same question. Stop complaining.) Q: Name the midget who was signed up to pinch-hit for a big-league team in James Thurber"s Sat.u.r.day Evening Post story "You Could Look It Up," published a full decade before Veeck"s coup.

You could look it up.

This interrogative outburst has been inspired by the recent publication of two significant (and significantly different) volumes of baseball records. One is the long-awaited new edition of The Baseball Encyclopedia (Macmillan; $17.95), which attempts to update the epochal first edition, of 1969. The other is The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball (Grosset & Dunlap; $5.95 paperback, $14.95 in the regular edition), which presents the essential data of the game in year-by-year rather than biographical fashion. Macmillan"s original Baseball Encyclopedia was recognized almost from the instant of its publication as the most accurate and rewarding book of baseball records ever compiled. The original edition (let"s call it "Mac I") had its beginnings in the mid-nineteen-sixties, when a group of young computer scientists who had allied themselves as Information Concepts, Inc., approached Robert Markel, an executive editor at Macmillan, and suggested that it was high time that the new capabilities of computer science be permitted to go to work on the vast, almost oceanic depths of essential baseball statistics that had acc.u.mulated over the years. They had found the perfect partner, for Markel had previously published a number of original and most successful sports books, including The Glory of Their Times, by Lawrence S. Ritter, which is a glowing re-creation of the early days of big-league baseball as told by some surviving Nestors of the game. Markel was enthusiastic about the new proposal, and became even more enthusiastic when he learned that ICI had independent financial backing that would begin to support the enormous costs of programming the work and building the essential data bank-a Fort Knox of stats. The ICI planners-notably, two men named Paul Funkhouser and David S. Neft-had in mind an eventual computerization of baseball that would hook up the scoreboards in all the big-league parks to a single central electronic brain, which would also pick up and print and store all the statistics of the game as they happened. In computer circles, this is known as "real-time" work. It could also be called dream-time work, for the costs of the scheme were admittedly phenomenal, and organized baseball is not known for its instant response to brand-new ideas or to unexpected financial disburs.e.m.e.nts of any nature. In any case, the cost of the preparation of the data for Mac I sailed right through the independent financial backing and up into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, effectively postponing the advent of ICI as an instantaneous electronic sports colossus, but not before it had provided Macmillan with a data bank of incomparable value and interest. The primary source of the data was the daily "official sheets" of baseball statistics kept by the American League (since 1905) and by the National League (since 1902). For corroborative evidence and for the statistics of all the nineteenth-century contests, the compilers consulted local libraries and ancient newspaper files, and the precious records of famous baseball students like the late Lee Allen, the official historian of the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, and John Tattersall, a Philadelphia steamship executive. (Tattersall has compiled a history of every home run ever struck in major-league compet.i.tion, including the inning, the number of men on base, and the pitcher.) All this digging yielded a formidable body of figures (the first-draft specifications came to eight thousand pages), and included a few corrections of famous old individual statistics: Ty Cobb"s hallowed Most Hits was raised from 4,191 to 4,192, as the result of two previously overlooked games he played in 1906.

Mac I came out in the fall of 1969, to instant success. Priced at twenty-five dollars, it eventually sold some fifty thousand copies in the bookstores, plus another fifty or sixty thousand via book clubs and mail orders. It is an elegantly organized, beautifully printed and laid-out volume of 2,337 pages, containing (among a great many other things) a statistical summary of the changing team averages over the years; a summary of individual leaders in batting, pitching, fielding, and so on; a year-by-year roster of all the teams and their players and statistics (the dates, here and elsewhere, go back to the National League of 1876, and also include vanished big leagues like the Players League, the American a.s.sociation, the Union a.s.sociation, and the outlaw Federal League); an alphabetical roster of every major-league player and his batting record; an alphabetical roster of all pitchers and their pitching records; a register of managers; and a description of every World Series game, with accompanying data. The book, in short, was a self-certifying cla.s.sic that made its fortunate purchasers wonder how they and the game had ever got along without it. My own copy, its spine lettering almost worn away by my ceaseless browsings and burrowings, is now kept under lock and key, for the volume is irreplaceable.

Irreplaceable, alas, despite its official replacement, Mac II, which came out in June. My first misgivings about the new edition were instantaneous when I noticed that the price had been dropped to $17.95 and the number of pages cut by more than a third, to 1,532. How, I wondered, could anyone have enforced a diet upon a book that carried an additional five years of new players and new records? One could understand the need to keep the price of the new book beneath a range acceptable only to independently languid bibliophiles, but the attempt at a more popular price suggested that the current editors of the work did not understand the necessary dimensions and cla.s.sic purposes of a basic reference work. The makers of Mac II have skimped and shaved, sometimes sensibly but more often oddly or arbitrarily or thoughtlessly. New listings of no-hit games and Hall of Fame members are welcome, and so are descriptions of the new Championship Series games, which were first played after Mac I. Gone, however, is the essential year-by-year roster of all the teams and all their players-the section in Mac I that most warmed and pleased old fans, since it repopulated the playing fields of their recollection with long-forgotten batteries, ancient double-play combinations, and nearly vanished bench-warmers. (h.e.l.lo, Gene Desautels! Ave, Russ van Atta!) Gone from each player"s statistical biography are mentions of important injuries and of years lost to military service. Gone, appallingly, are his accompanying World Series figures-as if these were somehow not germane to the man"s total performance.

What this means in terms of day-to-day usefulness is dismaying. I can imagine, for example, a young fan spending an hour or two musing over Ted Williams" lifetime records. How good was the Splendid Splinter? In the new volume, he would not be able to learn that Williams missed out on some 450 games of major-league action because of his military service in 194345, and some 250 more games for the same reason in 195253. Extrapolating his prime-season figures, the sprout might have discovered that this duty time represented a possible loss of 160 career home runs, which would have brought Williams to a lifetime total of 681-right up there in Aaron-Ruth country.

When was it that Dizzy Dean had his toe broken by a line drive in an All-Star Game, and then ruined his arm forever by pitching before it was quite healed? When was Eddie Waitkus shot by that unknown female admirer? How many World Series games did it take for Lou Brock to steal his record-breaking fourteen bases? When, and for whom, did Rogers Hornsby play in the World Series? Why did Sandy Koufax quit so suddenly? Why did Nemo Gaines require special permission to attempt a career in the majors? How many at-bats did Walter Alston have in the majors? How tall was Eddie Gaedel? Mac I says; Mac II either doesn"t say or mumbles. It"s a pity.**

The Grosset & Dunlap volume, which turned up about the same time as Mac II, is a reference work built primarily around the old yearbooks of the game-every name and every offensive statistic of every season. Career averages are to be found in five "era summaries," and several ingenious codes supply much of the quirky individual details that Mac II has dropped. The "career-interruption" code, for instance, lists seventy-three separate forms of bad news, including "LA-Leg amputated"; "SU-Suspended for hitting or abusing umpire"; "JL-Returned to j.a.panese league"; and "JA-In jail for a.s.sault." The printing and paper and typography are not up to the quality of the Macmillan volumes, but there are a number of counterweighing innovations, possibly even including the sizable and rather fervently written descriptions of each major-league season and its happenings. The best new material here is some averages I have never seen before, including lifetime differences in winning percentages for pitchers and the winning percentages of the teams they played for. The simple lifetime percentages for pitchers, for instance, find Jim Palmer first on the list of currently active players, with .682, and Tom Seaver second, with .640. The lifetime difference list, by contrast, places Bob Gibson and Juan Marichal at the top of the active list, and Palmer and Seaver don"t show up on it at all. Here, too, at last, are the very first comparative performance figures for black, white, and Latin players, which confirm what has so far been only broadly perceptible: a huge overall increase in numbers of black and Latin players since 1947 (but a much smaller one among pitchers); batting averages, slugging averages, and stolen bases notably higher for non-white players than for whites; a cl.u.s.tering of black and Latin stars at the top levels of baseball accomplishment. These figures, as The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball counsels, open enormous areas of speculation that should be explored with care and in the company of sociologists and other experts.

The new reference book, primarily intended for paperback sale, is also the work of Robert Markel, now the editor-in-chief at Grosset & Dunlap, who reunited David Neft and some of the other ICI alumni to put together a different sort of "Fan"s Companion." The data bank compiled for Macmillan was no longer available to them, of course, and the figures in the new work were put together by hand-with a resulting proofreading bill of ten thousand dollars and oculists" fees as yet unknown.

A few moving figures have been observed amid the digit-thickets. On a sunny afternoon in the middle of April, I welcomed the Red Sox in their first visit to the Yankees" sublet, Shea Stadium, and watched Mel Stottlemyre beat Luis Tiant, 21, in a game that was full of early-season false hints. The young Bosox, who had dropped Orlando Cepeda and Luis Aparicio at the end of spring training, showed none of the speed and power and confidence that subsequently distinguished their campaign this year, and the two Yankee scores came about as the result of malfeasances-a wild peg to first by the Boston catcher, and a hit batsman and bases-loaded walk by Tiant. (Tiant, who has the most entertaining and effective move to first base of any right-hander, did not pick anybody off this day. Once, I congratulated him on this highly specialized talent, and he grinned and said, "Oh, my father he had a much better move than me. [Tiant pere was a celebrated Cuban hurler of his day.] He say he used to strike out batters with it.") Further evidences of springtime were the three straight singles rapped out by Yankee third baseman Graig Nettles. Normally a docile batsman, Nettles was enjoying an almost Faustian prosperity at the plate, which eventually brought him eleven home runs in the month of April, tying a league record. He was at a loss to explain this. "I don"t know," he said in the clubhouse. "I"m just seeing the ball better, or something." He looked embarra.s.sed-the proper expression of a player waiting for the averages to bite him.

A month later, there were a lot of new Yankee faces in the dugout, as the result of a wave of late trades by Yankee president Gabe Paul. One old Yankee face, Ralph Houk, was on hand in his fresh guise as the Detroit manager; he seemed genuinely touched by the wave of boos that greeted him as he carried out his lineup card. None of the Yankees, new or old, could do much with Mickey Lolich, who set them down with three hits and won by 52. Chris Chambliss, the large new first baseman whom the Yankees had just acquired from Cleveland, swung mightily and smote several eleven-hop infield grounders. It was the fourth straight Yankee loss.

The next visiting southpaw observed by me was Mike Cuellar, of the Orioles, who even outdid Lolich, surrendering two hits and a single run. This was late May, and the Yanks, now engaged upon an entirely different five-game losing streak, had fallen to last place. They looked dispirited, especially while swinging against Cuellar"s junky screwb.a.l.l.s and curves. At its best, Cuellar"s attack on the plate reminds one of a master butcher preparing a standing roast of beef-a sliver excised here, a morsel trimmed off the bottom, two or three superfluous swishes of the knife through the air, and then a final slice of white off the ribs: Voil!

I caught the Orioles again a few days later, by television, when I saw the Kansas City Royals inflict frightful indignities on Jim Palmer, the Baltimore ace. Palmer, last year"s Cy Young Award winner in the American League, was gone after two and two-thirds innings, having surrendered seven hits and five runs. It was his sixth loss of the year, against two wins, and his record has subsequently gone to three and eight. He is suffering from a bad elbow. Mike Cuellar is still capable of some excellent outings, as I had observed, but he is thirty-seven years old and cannot last for many more summers. Dave McNally, the third member of the celebrated Baltimore corps of starters, is currently b.u.mping along at 76 and a 4.30 ERA, and it may well be that this marvelous triumvirate is nearing the end of its reign. Before it goes, attention and honor should be paid.

McNally, a left-hander, came up to the Orioles from the minors in 1962, at the age of twenty; Palmer, who is right-handed, arrived in 1965, also at the age of twenty, although he was to spend the better part of the 1967 and 1968 seasons in the minors, recovering from an arm injury. The trio was completed at the beginning of the 1969 season when Cuellar, a veteran already in his thirties, came over from the Astros. In the five full seasons since then, the three pitchers have won 297 games while losing 150-a winning percentage of .664, which puts them up among the most effective and famous three-man staffs in history. These would include Eddie Lopat, Allie Reynolds, and Vic Raschi, who won 307 games and lost 143 (or .682) for the Yankees between 1948 and 1953; Bob Lemon, Early Wynn, and Mike Garcia, whose nine-year record for the Indians from 1949 to 1957 was 473293, or .617; and, going back a bit, Lefty Grove, George Earnshaw, and Rube Walberg, who toiled together for Conn

Prev List Next