Lou

by Lou Piniella

  But in the fourth game of this series, Zim made the gamble of his life, which still has Red Sox fans scratching their heads: instead of pitching his ace, Luis Tiant, on three days’ rest, or Bill Lee, his veteran lefty (whom he admittedly had no use for), he chose a soft-throwing rookie left-hander, Bobby Sprowl—who had started only one other game in the big leagues—to stem the Yankees’ tide. We thought it was a decoy, that if Sprowl got in trouble early he’d have Tiant or Lee warming up in the bullpen.

  But that was not the case. Sprowl was understandably nervous and couldn’t even get through the first inning, walking four batters. We scored three runs in the first, two more in the second, and pounded out another 18 hits in completing what came to be called the “Boston Massacre.” We left Boston tied for first place, and, as promised to Catfish, I went to a hair salon and got my hair rolled up in curlers with this greasy stuff all over my head. When it was done, I had a frizzy hairstyle, this magnificent Afro perm, for the first time in my life, and, true to his word, Catfish paid for it. I really liked it, too, but more important, so did my wife!

  Zimmer later defended the Sprowl decision, maintaining that his pitching coach, Johnny Podres, had insisted the kid had major-league stuff and was confident he could give them at least five or six innings. As for Lee, who had long been Zimmer’s nemesis, openly feuding with him and calling him names, Zim pointed out that after getting off to a 10–3 start, Lee had lost his next seven decisions and had to be pulled from the rotation. I could understand Zim’s lack of confidence in Lee, but in a game as big as that one, with your lead down to one and first place on the line, don’t you at least have to bring back your ace?

  After the series, Zimmer got a lot of criticism in the Boston papers for not resting his veterans enough in the first half of the season. But while that may have looked valid for a time in early September, it is a tribute to both Zimmer and the makeup of that Red Sox team that, instead of completely collapsing after we caught and moved past them into first place, they won 12 of their last 14 games, including eight in a row at the end, to force the one-game playoff.

  We finished the season almost as hot, winning six in a row to maintain a one-game lead right up to the final day, when, against the Indians at Yankee Stadium, we had a rejuvenated Catfish (who’d won nine of ten decisions in August and September) ready to close it out for us. But after giving up only four runs in his previous three starts, Catfish simply didn’t have it. The Indians knocked him out in the second inning, touching him up for five runs, including a couple of homers. On the other hand, Rick Waits, an unsung lefty, pitched one of the best games of his career for the Indians, a five-hitter, and we were flattened, 9–2. We later learned that after Tiant pitched a 5–0 shutout over Toronto in the season finale, the Red Sox rubbed it in by posting “Thank you, Rick Waits” on their center field scoreboard.

  If this hadn’t been as consequential a game as it was, I might have taken the occasion to start needling Catfish on the bus to the airport. We were famous for that. I loved getting on Catfish for giving up homers—he gave up 374 of them in his career but, remarkably, 250 of them were solo shots. That was his style. He challenged hitters—“Here it is, hit it”—but if he gave up a home run it was seldom preceded by him walking anyone. Whenever we’d come in to Kansas City, Catfish would start up, eager to remind the whole bus that the Royals had traded me after the 1973 season and replaced me in the outfield with Jim Wohlford, a .260 singles hitter who had only 21 homers in fifteen years in the majors (mostly as a part-timer).

  “Here we are. Here’s the town where Lou got beaten out of a job by Jim WOAH-ford. Jim F-ing WOAH-ford. They got rid of Lou here to make room for Jim F-ing WOAH-ford! That’s what they thought of Lou here!”

  I had to listen to this shit every damn time we came in to Kansas City.

  Well, I had to defend myself, and Catfish’s penchant for giving up homers gave me the perfect fodder.

  “All I know, Catfish, is you’ve given up so many damn homers at Yankee Stadium I’ve gotten to know everyone in the front row of the bleachers on a first-name basis! They’ve declared the right field bleachers at Yankee Stadium a hard hat zone! When you’re pitching, I’m no longer bringing my glove to the outfield. I’m bringing a jai alai cesta!”

  Oh, we had fun. But whenever I had a bad game, I tried to make sure not to be on that first bus back to the hotel. I’d linger in the clubhouse and take the second bus, which was usually mostly the writers, broadcasters, and support people. Because it didn’t matter who you were. If you struck out a couple of times, made a couple of errors, stranded a bunch of guys in scoring position, gave up a couple of homers, you could expect an unmerciful verbal beating from Catfish, Sparky, Munson, Nettles, Rivers, and Co. You had to be able to take it.

  On our way to LaGuardia for the short flight to Boston after that last game, however, there had been no such verbal sparring. For one thing, Mr. Steinbrenner was on the bus, and he was steaming. Losing the last game was bad enough, but earlier in the month, with the Red Sox and us running neck and neck, American League’s president, Lee MacPhail, had held a coin flip in his office on Park Avenue to determine home field advantage in the event we ended up tied. George had been in Tampa, so he’d sent Rosen over to MacPhail’s office to do the flip. As Rosen later told it, he called heads and the coin came up tails, but when he got back to the stadium and called Mr. Steinbrenner to deliver the bad news, the Boss went ballistic on him, screaming, “Ahhhh, I’ve got the dumbest people in baseball working for me! How in the hell could you be so stupid to call heads when everybody knows tails comes up seventy-five percent of the time?”

  That Steinbrenner! Sometimes he could be so irrational, you were just astounded.

  Once on the plane, Mr. Steinbrenner was sitting up front with Rosen, and I could see he was very quiet, making everyone extremely uncomfortable around him, so I decided to take it upon myself to try and loosen him up a little. As soon as we were airborne, I walked up the aisle and stood next to him.

  “What do you want?” he grumped.

  “I just wanted to tell you, Boss, that even though you guys didn’t do your job getting us home field advantage, we’re gonna do ours tomorrow and you’re gonna get an extra gate out of it as well.”

  He looked at me as if I were crazy and shouted, “Get out of here, Piniella!”

  Nevertheless, I’m sure Mr. Steinbrenner was fully aware that we’d taken the liberty of packing for Kansas City and the American League Championship Series, beginning on Tuesday.

  When we got to the hotel, I decided to go to bed early, but as I lay there my mind was spinning and I couldn’t get to sleep. Finally, after tossing and turning for about an hour, I got up, got dressed, and went around the corner to Daisy Buchanan’s, one of Boston’s most popular watering holes, to have myself a Jack Daniels. I walked in, looked around, and, lo and behold, a whole bunch of my teammates were in there, drinking and laughing and having a great time. Right there and then I knew we were gonna win the next day.

  Of course, it didn’t hurt my confidence knowing we also had the best pitcher in baseball, Guidry, going for us, albeit on short (three days’) rest. In his previous two starts, both complete games, Gator had given up only one run, to bring his record to 24–3 with a 1.72 ERA. Having used his best, Tiant, to get the last-game win, Zimmer countered with Mike Torrez, the big, strapping right-hander, also pitching on three days’ rest. Mike had been with us the year before and had won two World Series games against the Dodgers, so we knew him well. He was a workhorse—250 innings for the Red Sox in ’78—and a great competitor.

  From the start, I could see Gator wasn’t quite as sharp as he’d been his previous two outings. In the second, Yastrzemski got him for a leadoff homer that got the Fenway Park crowd worked up and on their feet, and the Red Sox nearly broke through for another run the next inning when George Scott led off with a double and was sacrificed to third, only to be left stranded when Guidry retired the next two batters.

>   In the sixth, I could see Gator was starting to lose a little off his fastball. Rick Burleson led off with a double to left and was singled home by Jim Rice for a 2–0 Boston lead. Right after the Rice single, with the Red Sox’s left-handed power hitters, Yastrzemski and later Fred Lynn, coming up, I moved about four to five feet closer to the right field line to guard against them pulling Guidry. Yaz grounded out, but after we issued an intentional walk to Carlton Fisk, Lynn hit a long drive toward the right field corner that I was able to run down.

  In his 2001 autobiography, Zim recalled his reaction to the play from his vantage point in the Red Sox dugout: “When Lynn hit the ball, I said to myself, ‘That’s extra bases for sure and two more runs for us.’ But as I jumped to the top step of the dugout and craned my head to see where the ball was going to land, I was dumbfounded to see Piniella right there to catch it. I later asked him: ‘Why in the hell were you playing so close to the line?’ That’s why Piniella was a great manager. Ordinarily, a hard thrower like Guidry, you don’t ever figure anyone is gonna pull the ball off him. But Piniella was smart enough to see he’d gotten tired. He used his ingenuity and that catch as much as anything was what won that playoff game.”

  But Guidry later said he wasn’t at all surprised I was in position to make the catch. Remember, this was a very close-knit team and we knew each other well, knew each other’s instincts. “Lou was not the fastest outfielder or the flashiest and probably wouldn’t have wanted to be out there if it was his choice,” Guidry said. “But he knew batters and understood pitchers and always put himself in the best possible position to make a catch. When Lynn’s ball went up, I thought right away, He’ll catch it. I hadn’t even looked to see where he was playing. It was like that with all of our outfielders. I never had to position them. They knew how to play the hitters, and if the ball hit their glove, they caught it. All of ’em, that is, except Reggie!”

  All day long the fans in right field, especially this one guy, had been heckling me. After I made the catch, which put me face-to-face with them right against the right field wall, I momentarily considered handing the ball to the guy as a souvenir. I quickly thought better of it, however, and instead I just yelled at him, “Take that, you asshole!”

  Even though the Red Sox still had a 2–0 lead and Torrez looked strong, I just had a feeling the third time around the lineup we were going to start making some noise of our own to counter the Fenway crowd. And then it started. After Nettles flied out to start the seventh, Chambliss and White both singled. Next, Lem sent up Jim Spencer to pinch-hit for Brian Doyle, who’d been a backup infielder for much of the season and had been called back up from the minors in late September to take over at second base when Randolph went down with a hamstring injury. Spencer was our number one left-handed bat off the bench, but Torrez was able to retire him on a fly to left, bringing up Bucky, our number nine hitter, who was hitting .243 with 4 homers for the season.

  Ordinarily, Lem probably would have also pinch-hit for Bucky in that situation, but with Doyle now out of the game, he had no more infielders. After taking the first pitch for a ball, Bucky fouled the next one off his left ankle and began hobbling around, writhing in pain. This went on for a couple of minutes, and we wondered if Bucky was going to be able to stay in the game. While he was hobbling all around, Rivers, who was in the on-deck circle, yelled at him that his bat was chipped and handed him another one, which the bat boy borrowed from Roy White.

  I remember watching all this from the dugout and expressing my surprise at Torrez, who was just standing there on the mound and not taking any warm-up pitches. As he even admitted to me years later, it was a fatal mistake. Once Bucky finally got back in the batter’s box, Torrez threw him a fastball, belt high and inside, that got just a little too much of the plate, and Bucky drove it high in the air to left. We all leaped to the top of the dugout to see the flight of the ball, and for a moment it looked like Yastrzemski was going to be able to either catch it, or get a carom off the Green Monster. But then I saw him dropping his head, and it was like a pin had pierced a balloon and Fenway Park went eerily silent as Bucky toured the bases for one of the most improbable big-game three-run homers in history. As Bucky is fond of telling people: “Whenever people would come up to me and ask me how many home runs I hit in my career, I used to joke, ‘Only one, but it was a big one.’”

  After the homer, Rivers walked and Thurman doubled him home to make it 4–2. What I’ve always found so ironic is that Bucky’s homer completely overshadowed the tack-on homer Reggie hit leading off the eighth, which actually proved to be the winning run, Reggie once again being “Mr. October”—only nobody remembers it.

  In the bottom of the eighth, with Gossage now pitching for us, the Red Sox closed to within 5–4 on RBI singles by Yastrzemski and Lynn, and just like that, it was a nail-biter again. The first two Red Sox batters in that inning hit balls to me in right, one by Jerry Remy that went for a double and the other by Jim Rice that I was able to catch. But as I came back to the dugout after the inning, I told Lemon that, with the sun now high over the grandstand roof, I just couldn’t see balls hit to right on a line drive trajectory. My private hope was I wouldn’t have to deal with that in the ninth.

  But with one out, and Burleson on first via a walk from Goose, my worst fears were realized when Remy hit a soft liner over the infield right at me—and right in the sun. I saw the ball when it left Remy’s bat, then lost it as it was going over the infield. But I didn’t panic and didn’t let Burleson know I’d lost it. I took a couple of steps backward to give myself a little more time to recover when the ball came out of that sun, and hopefully to keep it from getting past me. As it was, it dropped a few feet to my left. I lunged to cut it off and was able to pick it up on one hop and fire a throw over to Nettles at third. Again, the key was not to show panic, and because he wasn’t sure whether I was going to catch the ball, Burleson hesitated and stopped at second. I’ll say this, my throw to Nettles was one of the best throws of my career.

  The play, of course, loomed ever larger when Rice, up next, flied out to me in right center—this time the ball was in the air and not blocked by the sun—for what would’ve been a game-tying sac fly had Burleson advanced to third. Now it came down to one final moment of intense drama—Goose, tiring himself after facing thirteen batters in relief, versus Yaz, the Red Sox icon who’d been the hero and the American League MVP in the Sox’s 1967 “Impossible Dream” pennant season. It was only fitting, and I can only imagine how absolutely shocked—and immediately deflated—the Fenway fans were when Yaz, who’d already knocked in two of the Red Sox’s runs with his homer in the second and an RBI single off Goose the inning before, hit this sky-high pop-up to third. Watching from right field, I felt as if time stood still, waiting indefinitely for the ball to come down into Nettles’s glove.

  Looking back, I find it amazing to see how fragile that win was, and my play ended up counting for a lot more than I realized at the time. As Goose later recalled, “Our entire season was decided on that one play Lou made on Remy. It’s as simple as that.”

  There’s nothing more fun than playing in a game like that, in which you can cut the tension with a butter knife. That’s how you’re supposed to respond. Don’t let the situation overwhelm you. When it was over, we knew we had just beaten the second-best team in baseball. No challenge would be greater than this one.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Tampa Red-Ass

  You’ve heard the phrase “came from humble beginnings”—well, that was me, although I never realized it or felt it at the time.

  I was born August 28, 1943, in Centro Español Hospital on Bayshore Boulevard in Tampa, Florida, one of four hospitals in Tampa that practiced socialized medicine, and for my first seven years I lived with my parents, Margaret and Louis, both Spanish immigrants, along with Mom’s parents, her two brothers, Mac and Joe Magadan, and Mac’s wife, in a three-bedroom house, with an outhouse in the back, on Conrad Street, just off North Howard Avenue
in Tampa. Both my uncles, Joe and Mac, had a huge influence on my baseball career, taking me out to play and teaching me the game in my formative years, and after I turned pro they would use their summer vacations to go see me in whatever cities I was playing in.

  In poker or anywhere else, where we lived was what you would call a “full house.” A few years later, when my brother Joe was born, we finally had to move to a bigger house in West Tampa Heights. Joe was a good athlete, too, but he was afflicted with polio as a young man. He’s always been an inspiration to me.

  At dinner my parents and my uncles would sit around the table and talk baseball, and the conversations regularly would become quite loud and heated. They all had strong opinions, and it’s fair to say there were many arguments in our household over the game of baseball. Always, though, there was a sense of family. We didn’t have a lot of money, but we were rich in everything else that really mattered.

  In those days, West Tampa, along with Ybor City, was the center of the cigar industry, with at least fifty cigar factories within a five-mile radius, and most of the people working in them were immigrants from Cuba and the northern part of Spain. The factories are almost all gone now, victims of the slow but sure demise of the Tampa cigar industry, which began in 1959 when Fidel Castro took over in Cuba and cut off the supply of Cuban tobacco to the United States.

  My whole world back then existed in a seven-block area of North Howard, and my mom would not allow me to stray from there. Only after I became a teenager would I ride my bike over to the causeway that connects Tampa and Clearwater and go crabbing. I’d bring a big sack with me and walk along the grass flats, catching blue shell crabs, bringing back three dozen or more to the neighborhood. I’d keep a dozen or so for us, which my mom would cook up in a big pot with hot sauce and put over spaghetti, and then sell the rest.