Down to the Last Pitch: How the 1991 Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves Gave Us the Best World Series of All Time

by Tim Wendel

  Yet Avery will tell you that the biggest miracle in his life is his son, Evan. Born in 1994, three months premature, Evan Avery wasn’t expected to survive. Years after his father was out of baseball, Evan graduated from high school, where he played football and baseball.

  TERRY PENDLETON A key figure in the Braves’ ’91 run, Pendleton led the league with a .319 batting average, along with twenty-two home runs and eighty-six RBI in 1991. He tied for the league lead with 303 total bases, helping him earn the National League MVP Award, as well as Comeback Player of the Year honors. He retired in 1998 after fifteen years in the majors, which saw him average .270 and capture three Gold Gloves (in 1987 and ’89 with St. Louis and in ’92 with Atlanta) as the best defensive player at his position.

  In 2002, Pendleton joined the Braves’ staff as the hitting coach and he had a major hand in helping such young hitters as Andruw Jones. The Braves collected three hundred doubles in a season nine times in franchise history, including each of the last eight seasons (2003–2010) in which Pendleton served as the hitting coach. In 2011, he became the team’s first base coach.

  TOM GLAVINE After winning the National League Cy Young in 1991, the left-hander went on to capture the award again seven years later. Glavine would lead the league in victories five times in his twenty-two-year career. He would finish with a 305–203 record in the majors and be elected to the Hall of Fame in 2014.

  JOHN SMOLTZ An eight-time All-Star, Smoltz won the Cy Young Award in 1996. After starting much of his career, he became a reliever in 2001 after Tommy John surgery. A year later, he became only the second pitcher in history to enjoy both a 20-win season and a 50-save season (the other being Dennis Eckersley). Smoltz is the only pitcher in major league history to top both 200 victories and 150 saves in his career.

  Smoltz, who once organized the golf outings by the Braves’ pitchers, continued to excel at the game after his baseball days were over. Tiger Woods said Smoltz, who had a plus-4 handicap, is the best golfer outside of the PGA Tour that he has seen. Smoltz became a broadcaster, doing games for TBS and the MLB Network.

  DEION SANDERS Despite potential on the diamond, playing for the Braves, New York Yankees, Cincinnati Reds, and San Francisco Giants, “Neon Deion” proved to be even better on the gridiron. He played in the National Football League with the Atlanta Falcons, San Francisco 49ers, Dallas Cowboys, Washington Redskins, and Baltimore Ravens. He was on Super Bowl champion teams in San Francisco and Dallas. Besides bringing the Tomahawk Chop to Atlanta, he’s also credited with making the do-rag bandana a sports fashion statement.

  An outstanding cornerback and kick returner during his fourteen-year football career, he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2011. He was an analyst with CBS and then the NFL Network.

  ALEJANDRO PEÑA The right-handed reliever stayed in Atlanta for another season before moving on to pitch for Pittsburgh, Boston, and Florida, with a brief return to Atlanta. He retired after the 1996 season and became a pitching coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers in the Dominican Republic.

  GREG OLSON In 1992, Olson was behind the plate when a collision late in the season, this time with the Houston Astros’ Ken Caminiti, broke his right ankle. After one more season in Atlanta, Olson was released to make room for catching prospect Javy Lopez. He still lives in the Twin Cities area.

  MARK GRANT A leader of the rally caps, Grant never recovered from the shoulder injury that sidelined him for all of the ’91 season. After pitching only forty-three more games at the big-league level he joined the San Diego Padres’ television broadcasts, teaming up with Mel Proctor, Matt Vasgersian, and, most recently, Dick Enberg.

  OTIS NIXON The leadoff hitter and top base stealer returned atop the Braves’ lineup after serving his sixty-day drug suspension. He hit .294 with forty-one stolen bases during the 1992 regular season and added another eight bases in the postseason. In a curious twist, he made the final out of the 1992 World Series when he attempted to bunt for a base hit with a runner on third base with two out.

  From 1994 to ’97, Nixon played in the American League, with Boston, Texas, and Toronto, before returning to the National League with Los Angeles. He finished his seventeen-year career fittingly back in Atlanta. In the 1999 National League Championship Series against the New York Mets, Nixon made one of the key plays. After the Braves had given up 5–0 and then 7–3 leads in Game Six, he stole second base in the eighth inning and went to third when the throw sailed into the outfield. Nixon would score and the Braves won the game in extra innings.

  After his playing days were over, Nixon stayed in the Atlanta area, beginning On-Track Ministries. Unfortunately, in May 2013, Nixon was arrested for cocaine possession.

  LONNIE SMITH While he was with the Braves when they returned to the World Series in 1992, by the following season he was on to Pittsburgh before finishing his seventeen-year career with Baltimore. Smith played for three different World Series–winning teams (St. Louis, Philadelphia, and Kansas City). After retirement, he still lives in the Atlanta area and in 2002 he returned to the Braves’ home ballpark and signed autographs.

  “I’ve known how it is to struggle,” he said. “I’ve had the struggles with my drug problems, struggles with a divorce, struggles of having great years and coming back with poor years. Something like [1991] isn’t going to affect me.”

  BOBBY COX He won fifteen division titles (one with Toronto), five pennants, and a World Series in 1995. In addition, Cox was manager of the year four times in three different decades (1985, 1991, 2004–2005) and did it in both leagues. He finished with a 2,504–2,001 record.

  He lives outside of Atlanta, where he has a farm and is a director at a bank in Adairsville, Georgia. Cox makes regular trips to the ballpark to chat with his successor, Fredi Gonzalez.

  In 2013, Cox, Joe Torre, and Tony La Russa were elected to the Hall of Fame.

  Other notables from the 1991 season

  RICKEY HENDERSON After breaking Lou Brock’s all-time steals record, Henderson won a second World Series ring in 1993 with the Toronto Blue Jays. He retired, at least at the big-league level, in 2003 after twenty-five years in the majors.

  “He’s the greatest leadoff hitter of all time,” Oakland general manager Billy Beane said, “and I’m not sure there’s a close second.”

  In the end, Henderson said the only thing that left him perplexed was how others misunderstood “the type of person I really am and what I accomplished. People who played against me called me cocky, but my teammates didn’t.”

  DENNIS ECKERSLEY Before Trevor Hoffman and Mariano Rivera, there was “the Eck.” The right-hander with pinpoint control would go on to save 390 games in his twenty-four-year career and put together several of the best seasons a relief pitcher has ever enjoyed. In 1992, he led the American League with fifty-one saves and became only the ninth pitcher to capture the MVP and Cy Young Awards in the same year.

  “He taught me something about fear,” Oakland manager Tony La Russa said. “Eck tells me he spends the whole game being afraid. Fear makes some guys call in sick or be tentative. He uses fear to get him ready for every stinking time he pitches.”

  BRIEN TAYLOR Two years after the New York Yankees made him the first overall pick in the 1991 amateur draft, Taylor was involved in a bar fight, injuring his pitching shoulder. The left-hander was never the same pitcher and by 1999 he had been released. According to Baseball-Reference.com, he and catcher Steve Chilcott were the only top picks never to play at the major-league level. In 2012, Taylor was arrested on multiple drug charges and sentenced to thirty-eight months in prison.

  JIM LEFEBVRE After being fired by the Seattle Mariners in 1991, Jim Lefebvre took the helm of the Chicago Cubs the following season. Even though he led the Cubs to a winning record, going 84–78 in 1993, he was let go again. After a brief stint with the Milwaukee Brewers, Lefebvre became the coach of the Chinese Olympic team in the 2008 Summer Games. Along with former major-league pitcher Bruce Hurst, Lefebvre tried to raise the ba
r on one of baseball’s last frontiers.

  “At the international level, baseball is still very young in China,” Lefebvre said, “but in time, I really think it could become the number-one team sport in the country. And someday, China will be a world power in baseball.”

  Returning home, Lefebvre tried his best to make sure baseball remained popular with American kids. He worried that showcase tournaments and travel teams were taking the fun out of the national pastime. “The average retirement age of the average baseball player in the U.S. is twelve years old,” he warned youth coaches. “Twelve years old.”

  SCOTT BORAS A year after he brokered Taylor’s record $1.55 million contract with New York, Boras negotiated the five-year, $28 million deal that saw Greg Maddux move to Atlanta. The deal reportedly eclipsed the second-best offer by $9 million. Since then Boras has represented a number of baseball superstars, including Alex Rodriguez, Matt Holliday and Prince Fielder.

  JANET MARIE SMITH After being a driving force in the construction of Camden Yards in Baltimore, the architect/urban planner helped with the building of Atlanta’s Turner Field and renovations at Fenway Park in Boston and Dodgers Stadium in Los Angeles.

  CANDICE WIGGINS On November 7, 1991, only a week after the World Series concluded, basketball star Earvin “Magic” Johnson announced that he was retiring immediately because he had the HIV virus. While the sports world mourned Johnson’s sudden exit, a young Candice Wiggins had a much different reaction.

  “Magic Johnson announcing that he was HIV positive probably had a bigger impact on me at the time than my dad dying,” she said decades later. “That’s because Magic may have been HIV positive, but he wasn’t dead. It wasn’t like life was over. There was some hope. Maybe it’s not the end after all.

  “From then on, I really followed Magic Johnson and what he’s done with his fight against this, against the perception of AIDS. It changed from judging people about this issue to how we can help people who suffer from this.”

  Wiggins began to play basketball competitively in large part because of Magic Johnson. She remembered that Pepsi-Cola had a “We Believe in Magic” advertising campaign centered on the NBA star. “That was a great indication of what his impact was with all of this,” she said. “That it was OK to believe in magic, miracles, just life. It was something that was so desperately needed in my life. As a four-, five-year-old, I was desperately trying to make sense of all this—AIDS, my father’s death. But I could understand that Magic Johnson was alive and maybe things could work out.”

  Candice Wiggins went on to become a four-time basketball All-American at Stanford University. After college, she played professional in the Women’s National Basketball Association, with the Minnesota Lynx and the Tulsa Shock, and she became an advocate for AIDS research and understanding.

  In 2011, Wiggins threw out the first pitch at a Minnesota Twins home game and ended up staying for the afternoon at Target Field.

  “Until that point, you have to remember, baseball wasn’t something my family loved anymore,” she said. “It was something that took a person from us. But in 2011, I stayed and I watched the whole game. I got to feel the energy and people told me how it was played and what to look for and I saw that this was my dad’s game. What he loved and was good at. This is what his life was and it was so crazy that it took me years to find it.”

  PETE ROSE How the crime, or at least the perception of it, can change over the years. By the end of the 2013 season, in the wake of the Biogenesis steroids scandal, support grew for Rose to be enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

  After decades of denial, Rose acknowledged that he had gambled on baseball. “I made mistakes. I can’t whine about it. . . . They haven’t given too many gamblers second chances in the world of baseball.”

  Then Rose added that if baseball’s powers that be gave him “a second chance, I won’t need a third chance.”

  Former Commissioner Fay Vincent said that Rose’s statement was “the first time I’ve heard him recognize the reality of the situation. If he had done this twenty-five years ago, or was better advised, it might be different for him. But he handled it as badly as a person can handle it. He kept talking about how we mistreated him and how his rights were violated.”

  USA TODAY BASEBALL WEEKLY Despite a drop in circulation, blamed in large part upon baseball’s labor dispute in 1994, the publication continued to exist. The name was changed to Sports Weekly and it began to cover other sports—football, stock-car racing, basketball and hockey.

  Paul White, the first editor, is the only one from the original staff still employed by USA Today Sports.

  APPENDIX II

  GREAT WORLD SERIES MOMENTS

  With five games decided by a run, four games coming down to the final at-bat, and three extending into extra innings, the 1991 World Series will be remembered as one of the best played. But was it the best ever? ESPN thought so decades later, and commissioner Fay Vincent agreed soon after the fact. But fans of particular teams can latch on to other memorable Fall Classics.

  In Pittsburgh, they will forever cherish the 1960 triumph over the New York Yankees and against Baltimore in 1979. In Cincinnati, there will always be 1975 and the victory against Boston Red Sox, another series that saw five games decided by one run. In New York, there’s the Yankees’ many championships and the Mets’ triumphs in 1969 and ’86.

  When you have a dog in the fight, things can become downright personal. I can already hear those in Oakland saying I forgot about the Athletics defeating Cincinnati in 1972 (a World Series with six games decided by one run) or those in Washington remembering when the Senators rallied past the Giants in 1924, with Games One and Seven both going twelve innings and Walter Johnson being the hero.

  Perhaps it’s best to focus on particular moments of true greatness in the World Series. “Give me a scene or two the viewer cannot forget,” a Hollywood producer once told me. “The setup, the payoff—all the rest I can finesse. But that big scene? I always need help with that.”

  So, with that in mind let’s focus on the unforgettable moments. The ’91 World Series offered two all-time classics, maybe more. Kirby Puckett hit that clutch home run to win Game Six and an evening later Jack Morris pitched into the night and nobody, not even his manager, dared stand in his way. We also had amazing plays at the plate involving David Justice and Mark Lemke. So, how do they stack up against some of the best World Series plays ever?

  CHRISTY MATHEWSON’S SHUTOUTS (1905): Against the Philadelphia Athletics, Mathewson won Game One for John McGraw’s New York Giants with a four-hit shutout. Three days later, he pitched another four-hit shutout and on one days’ rest he put up a five-hit shutout. His line for the Series? Three victories, twenty-seven innings pitched, eighteen strikeouts and one walk.

  JOHNNY PODRES’ CLINCHER (1955): In Game Seven, the Brooklyn left-hander shut out the Yankees, and the Dodgers were bums no more. In the sixth inning, left fielder Sandy Amoros made a running catch, which started a crucial double play.

  DON LARSEN’S PERFECT GAME (1956): Larsen didn’t know he was pitching on October 8, 1956, until he arrived at the ballpark. That was Yankees’ manager Casey Stengal’s way of keeping his pitchers on their toes. Despite a lackluster outing in Game Two against the Dodgers, Larsen made the most of his opportunity by delivering a perfect game. He threw ninety-seven pitches—seventy-one of them for strikes.

  BILL MAZEROSKI’S HOME RUN (1960): Despite being outscored 46–17 in the first six games, the Pirates found themselves in a deciding Game Seven against the powerful New York Yankees. Bill Mazeroski made sure they didn’t miss a chance at the remarkable upset when he hit a walk-off homer. No matter that the light-hitting second baseman had only forty-eight home runs in his five-year career. Mazeroski hit one of the biggest ever as the Pirates celebrated their first championship in thirty-five years.

  BOB GIBSON’S RECORD SEVENTEEN STRIKEOUTS (1968): When the Cardinals’ staff ace struck out th
e Tigers’ Al Kaline to tie Sandy Koufax’s World Series record of fifteen K’s, St. Louis catcher Tim McCarver went out to the mound. McCarver wanted to tell Gibson what he had just accomplished, but the Cardinals’ pitcher just told him, “Give me the damn ball.” After briefly acknowledging the cheers from the hometown crowd, Gibson got back to business, fanning Norm Cash and then Willie Horton to win Game One of this memorable World Series.

  “That day Bob Gibson was the toughest pitcher I ever faced in any particular game . . . ,” Horton later said.

  CARLTON FISK’S REPLAY FOR THE AGES (1975): Game Six had already been one to remember before the Red Sox catcher led off the bottom of the twelfth inning with the score tied at six-all. Bernie Carbo’s three-run homer had tied it with Cincinnati seemingly poised to capture the World Series. Boston’s Dwight Evans’ great catch at the wall made sure it stayed tied, setting up Fisk’s dramatic shot. His long fly down the left-field line struck the foul pole as Fisk waved it fair, becoming one of the most replayed home runs in baseball history.

  REGGIE JACKSON’S THREE HOME RUNS (1977): Some shy away from the spotlight, while others embrace it, and nobody reveled in the attention more than “The Straw That Stirred the Drink.” With the New York Yankees on the verge of defeating the Los Angeles Dodgers for the championship, Jackson made sure the title belonged to Gotham. In the fourth inning, the New York slugger homered off Burt Hooton. In the fifth, he did likewise to Elias Sosa and then Jackson drove the ball an estimated 450 feet off knuckleballer Charlie Hough in the eighth. In the end, it was a performance that even had Dodgers first baseman Steve Garvey applauding.