by Gruver , Ed;
Just as strange is that Boston’s base-running gaffe on October 2 mirrored a play that cost the Red Sox in a 3–2 decision to Detroit in the season opener on April 15. Again Lolich was on the mound in Detroit, and again the Boston hitters were Harper, Aparicio, and Yaz. Each lined a single in succession, and following an out, Petrocelli stroked a single to center. Harper scored from third, but as Aparicio rounded the bag heading home, he was held up by Popowski. Luis headed back to the bag just as Yaz stormed into third. Just as he would be months later, Yaz was called out, and the Sox lost by a run.
The impact of that play and resulting loss—the Red Sox would have led Detroit by a game and a half—was still being felt six months later, when another Detroit homer, this by Aurelio Rodriguez in the fifth, put the Tigers in front to stay. Rodriguez added two-out, run-scoring singles in the sixth and eighth innings to make it 4–1, and Lolich finished it off, fanning a season-high 15 to put Detroit back in first place by half a game and clinch at least a tie for the title. Lolich may have been dominant enough to survive the early Red Sox rally—he fanned Smith and would have faced Petrocelli had Boston still been batting—but the debate lingers. Aparicio’s falling remains part of Red Sox lore.
The Tigers took their title the next night, October 3, the penultimate day of the regular season. Their summer running out, the Red Sox reached Woodie Fryman for a run in the first on Smith’s RBI fielder’s choice. Whirling and spinning on the mound, Tiant silenced Tiger bats until the sixth. Cash opened the inning with a walk, was sacrificed to second by Horton, and scored on Jim Northrup’s line-drive single to right.
Kaline’s single to left in the seventh made it 2–1 and ended Tiant’s great comeback season. An infield error cost his successor, “Spaceman” Bill Lee, a run. Armed with a 3–1 lead, Fryman pitched into the eighth and then gave way to reliever Chuck Seelbach, who sealed the deal in the ninth when he retired a trio of future stars—Evans and then pinch hitters Cooper and Oglivie—in order.
To borrow from English poet William Blake, these were Tigers, Tigers, burning bright/In the forests of the night. A continuous chant coursed through Tiger Stadium as Harwell made the game’s final call: “Photographers have lined each side of the Tigers’ dugout. . . . Here’s a fly ball to right field, here comes Kaline. . . . He’s got it! The Tigers are the champions of the East!”
11
Dickens wrote that nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own. This is particularly true in sports. There is something transcendent about the tradition of March Madness, its ecstasy, agony, and frenzy gripping millions of fans; the Masters played amid the sweet scent of Augusta’s azaleas in April; the scarred ice of the Stanley Cup playoffs in May; the NBA finals amid the sweltering heat of June; the sacred lawns of Wimbledon in early July; the big-city spotlight of U.S. Open hard courts in mid-September; college football on crisp fall afternoons; and NFL playoff games beneath snowy skies in December and January.
“To everything there is a season,” The Byrds sang in 1965, quoting both King Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes and Pete Seeger’s “Turn, Turn, Turn.” A time to every purpose under heaven.
October has been heaven for baseball fans. Many of the game’s most hallowed moments have come in October: Babe Ruth’s Called Shot and Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ’round the World”; Enos Slaughter’s “Mad Dash” in Sportsman’s Park and Willie Mays’ catch in the Polo Grounds; Don Larsen’s perfect game in Yankee Stadium and Roy Halladay’s no-hitter in Citizens Bank Park; Bill Mazeroski’s Game Seven blast in Forbes Field and Game Six homers by Carlton Fisk in Fenway and Joe Carter in Toronto; Bucky Dent’s shot over the Green Monster; Reggie Jackson’s three home runs in New York and Pablo Sandoval’s three homers in San Francisco; Kirk Gibson limping around the bases in Dodger Stadium and Derek Jeter racing across the infield in Oakland to execute his flip toss.
Along with the moments there are the memories: Pepper Martin running wild on the bases; Whitey Ford perfectly still on the mound; Sandy Koufax’s flame-belching fastball; Bob Gibson’s scowl; Andy Pettitte’s stare; Pedro Martinez’s glare; Catfish Hunter’s flowing motion; Tim Lincecum’s flowing hair; Lou Brock’s legs; Dave Parker’s arm; Dizzy Dean’s windup; Pete Rose’s crouch; Mickey Mantle’s bloodied pant leg and Curt Schilling’s bloody sock; Joe DiMaggio’s elegance; Jackie Robinson’s defiance; Roberto Clemente’s grace.
Be it soft, intoxicating afternoons amid sun-streaked fields or frigid nights beneath the lights, October has been a time to laugh, to weep, to dance, to mourn, to gain, to lose.
Reputations have been gained and lost in October, dynasties born and died. Some players and teams embrace the intense, pressure-cooker moments played out against a backdrop of howling zealots; others turn away from them.
Adding to the anticipation in 1972 was the fact that the A’s, Tigers, Reds, and Pirates were terrific teams playing beautiful baseball. They were as keenly aware as the fans that there was something special about playoff baseball. Johnny Bench, still dealing with the spot on his lung found earlier in the 1972 season, was convinced as the Reds prepared to meet the Pirates that a man could be half dead or dying at the beginning of the baseball postseason but that his adrenaline would get him through.
As the Reds gathered in Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium early in the overcast afternoon of Saturday, October 7, for the start of the second season, Bench knew the playoffs had what he called a “different kind of intensity” about them. Joe Morgan, making his first postseason appearance, looked across the Tartan Turf at the Pirates and thought Cincinnati’s playing Pittsburgh for the pennant was what baseball was all about.
The Reds had known well before the All-Star break that they were on their way to the Western Division title. The Reds weren’t cocky, but they did have the attitude all great teams have. When they took the field, they expected to win. Their opponents, Morgan thought, only hoped to win. They knew some opponents were beaten before the first pitch because they feared the Reds’ power, speed, and skill.
The Pirates would not be intimidated, and the Reds knew it. Morgan believed Pittsburgh was the only team in the National League that gave Cincinnati cause for concern. The reigning World Series champions were loaded with big-time talent. In catcher Manny Sanguillen the Bucs had a backstop many believed to be the equal of Bench. The Reds’ catcher believed it and many were looking forward to the battle between the two All-Stars. That summer Bench had told Curt Gowdy and Tony Kubek on an NBC Game of the Week telecast that Sanguillen was as good a catcher as there was in the National League.
The comparisons between Bench and Sanguillen were centered as much on their differences as their similarities. Bench was an Oklahoman; Sanguillen, Panamanian. Bench was cool; Sanguillen, fiery. Bench was power; Sanguillen, quickness. In 1970 Bench was considered a throwback to the greatest catchers in history—Mickey Cochrane, Bill Dickey, Josh Gibson, Gabby Hartnett, Roy Campanella, and Yogi Berra. But in 1971 Sanguillen rose up to challenge Bench as the best backstop in baseball. Bench had led the Reds to the 1970 World Series; Sanguillen and the Pirates had won it all in ’71. Bench had won the Reds’ only previous playoff encounter, a three-game sweep in ’70.
Sanguillen was the more consistent hitter; Bench, the more powerful. Johnny was a better run producer, but Manny was faster afoot and a superior base runner, a throwback to Cochrane, the Hall of Famer with the Philadelphia Athletics and Detroit Tigers. Teammates called Sanguillen the “Roadrunner”; he was adept at legging out doubles. Both he and Bench could throw well, and while Sanguillen was quicker behind the plate and better at handling balls in the dirt, Bench had a quicker release and a more accurate peg. On a personal level, Manny was married; Johnny was single. Yet whatever their differences, they were alike in many ways. Both were relentless in their work ethic, and both excelled at handling pitchers. From the first, Bench was a take-charge guy behind the plate. Reds pitchers called the rookie “the Little General.” Sanguillen, a former infielder and outfielder, to
ok longer to develop, but by 1972 Bucs boss Bill Virdon was telling reporters Sanguillen was as good an all-around catcher as any, including Bench.
By October ’72 the two stars shared a mutual admiration. Sanguillen called it an honor to be compared to Johnny Bench. He said Bench was the best catcher he had ever seen. He couldn’t watch himself play, so he left it to others to compare. Of the comparisons Bench said if some believed he was the best, he was proud. But if someone said Sanguillen was better, Bench wasn’t offended. It made him work harder to make everyone believe he was best.
Pittsburgh had won the East by eleven games; Cincinnati, the West by ten and a half. Bench believed the Bucs the strongest team in baseball, besides the Reds. The Pirates, with 96 victories, and the Reds, with 95, were the two winningest teams in the majors. The Reds knew Pittsburgh’s strengths, and that only added to the pressure Cincinnati felt going in despite having won eight of the twelve meetings between the two teams that summer.
The book on the Bucs, as provided in part by Baltimore scout James Russo the previous October, was that runners could take liberties with Pittsburgh’s arms in the outfield, the exception being Clemente, who Russo said had the greatest arm in baseball. During the ’71 Series Gowdy was moved to comment on Clemente’s “beautiful, whirling throws.” Base stealers were advised not to take chances with Sanguillen unless they could get a jump on the pitcher. Pirate pitchers had the respect of opponents, Steve Blass being considered the ace. Opposing hurlers concentrated heavily on stopping the Bucs’ big hitters yet considered Clemente essentially scout-proof.
The Pirates were a steel-tough team in a steel-tough town, and their home, Three Rivers Stadium, with its cylindrical shape and carpeted interior, mirrored the Reds’ Riverfront Stadium. Gowdy thought Three Rivers “magnificent” and Riverfront “breathtaking.” Bench said the two clubs shared another similarity. The Battlin’ Bucs and Big Red Machine believed these were the two best teams, and it was all going to come down to a best-of-five series. “They knew they were good, and we knew we were good,” Pirates pitcher Bruce Kison said.
Unlike its sister stadium in Cincinnati, Three Rivers initially had dirt base paths rather than cutouts around the bags, but Pittsburgh’s Tartan Turf made for truer bounces than did the grass in its predecessor, Forbes Field’s “House of Thrills.” It also made for some hard sprints in the outfield.
“A ball off this synthetic turf really comes off quickly,” Pirates radio voice Bob Prince told NBC viewers during the 1971 World Series. “Anything hit on a line in between those outfielders, they don’t run to cut it off; they run to just catch up to it.”
Pirates second baseman Dave Cash recalls the artificial turf being “lightning fast.” When it got wet, he added, “it got faster.” But that helped the Bucs because, as Cash says, “We were a team built for speed. But if you were a team that had guys in the outfield who couldn’t run, it was going to be a long day.”
The battle for the National League pennant and Ohio River bragging rights commenced under leaden skies. Oddsmakers opted for Cincinnati, but Bench didn’t think the Reds should be favored. On the eve of Game One the Reds were still seeking to smooth out some pitching problems—Don Gullett was recovering from hepatitis, and Gary Nolan had developed an abscessed tooth that had to be pulled just prior to the playoffs. On top of that, no one outside the Reds’ clubhouse knew how tense this team was. Cincinnati’s players had not forgotten the 1970 Fall Classic.
To the 50,476 who strolled across the Fort Duquesne Bridge and into the stadium perched at the confluence of the Ohio, Allegheny, and Monongahela Rivers, the Game One mound matchup offered a startling collision of contrasting styles.
Gullett hailed from Kentucky; Blass, from Connecticut. Gullett was a compact southpaw who Bench said could throw a ball through a car wash and not get it wet. Bench knew what to expect from Gullett: Don would take the mound and deal.
Blass, a right-hander, delivered his pitches in a scattering of arms and legs that ended with a lurching move to his left. The book on Blass was that he was a good but not overpowering pitcher. While Gullett relied primarily on his fastball, Blass’s repertoire included sinking and riding fastballs, an excellent slider, and a good curve and change-up. Gullett was all about power. Blass was a control pitcher whose electric slider was effective if he could hit his location. Orioles skipper Earl Weaver had said the previous October that while Blass was quick for the first four or five innings, he would “fold like a suitcase” in the late innings. Blass proved Weaver wrong when he went the distance to win Games Three and Seven.
Blass and Gullett were intelligent pitchers who knew how to win. Because of his health issues in ’72, Gullett’s 9-10 record was misleading. In ’72 the Reds won each of the three games he had pitched against the Pirates. In the 1970 NLCS he had closed out two victories, including the series clincher, in Cincinnati’s sweep of Pittsburgh.
Blass had learned a valuable lesson after getting roughed up by San Francisco in the 1971 NLCS opener in Candlestick Park. It was his first postseason appearance, and he thought he had to be a different pitcher in the playoffs, had to be better than in the regular season, when he had gone 15-8 with a 2.58 earned run average and had tied Bob Gibson for the league lead in shutouts with 5. Blass tried to overpower the Giants and was instead overpowered, Tito Fuentes and Willie McCovey hitting home runs in a 5–4 win.
The lesson learned was “Be yourself and go with what got you there.” It was a lesson he carried into ’72. A 19-8 record with a 2.49 ERA established Blass as the ace of the Pirates’ deep staff. He was selected for the All-Star Game, allowed a run in one inning of work, and went on to complete 11 of his 32 starts while averaging seven and a third innings each time out.
Blass considers ’72 his most consistent campaign. He had a chance to win twenty in his final start but took a John Milner line drive off the tip of his elbow in the first inning of a game against the Mets. The play scared Blass, who knew that a drive like Milner’s could break a bone. Blass went to the hospital for X-rays, and though they revealed no broken bones, he nonetheless had team trainer Tony Bartirome bandage him head to toe prior to meeting the press. When the reporters arrived in the clubhouse, Blass was bound like a mummy. He laughed off his practical joke. He had to entertain; it was what he did.
“Steve had a great sense of humor,” Al Oliver recalled. “He was always laughing. But he was also a great competitor and a heck of a pitcher.”
Blass believed he might have won twenty-five games in ’72 if Bucs boss Bill Virdon had stayed with the four-man rotation predecessor Danny Murtaugh had used. Instead Virdon went to a five-man setup, which was something of a novelty in 1972. Virdon believed Blass would have won the NL’s Cy Young award had it not been for Steve Carlton’s historic season. As it was, Virdon gave Blass the ball for the opening game of the playoffs, and following his first pitch at 1:11 p.m., he retired Pete Rose on a leadoff fly to left.
As a player and as a fan of the game, Blass enjoyed battling the Big Red Machine. The Reds felt the same way about the Pirates, and Rose would tell Blass in later years that the Reds-Pirates games of the early 1970s represented the best baseball he had ever been around. Going into the playoffs, Pittsburgh didn’t just hope it would do well; the Pirates knew they would play well because of their postseason success the year before. They had won the World Series in ’71 and felt they matched up favorably with Cincinnati.
“Our team in ’72 was better than it was in ’71,” Oliver stated. “With all the talent we had all Bill had to do was post the lineup, take a nap for seven innings, and then bring in Giusti from the bullpen. The rest was up to us.”
Gullett, meanwhile, believed the Reds were also a better team than the one that had swept Pittsburgh in the 1970 NLCS. “We had retooled,” he remembered. “We picked up Morgan, [Jack] Billingham, [Cesar) Geronimo, and that translated into becoming the Big Red Machine.”
Blass was confident. He had pitched against the Reds for years. He knew what
they were capable of doing, knew they were a great fastball-hitting team.
The second batter Blass faced was Morgan, who was making his playoff debut. Cincinnati’s little big man took his stance at the plate—hands holding his bat high above his ear, feet spread shoulder width—and began pumping his left elbow, as if he were a cardinal, writer Al Hirshberg noted, rather than a Red. Morgan’s distinctive wing-like movement had been taught to him by Nellie Fox in Houston in 1967, when he was still an Astro. Fox believed Morgan could be a better hitter if he kept his left elbow away from his body when he swung. Pumping his left arm was Morgan’s method for reminding himself to do that. It served as his trademark: Go-Go Joe never stops moving.
Gowdy said Morgan pumped his arm so furiously that he expected him to “take off and fly right over the infield.” Kubek noted that Morgan “flaps [the elbow], keeps it away from his body. He’s freer with the bat than having [the elbow] tied up close to his body.”
Blass delivered a sinking fastball, and Morgan turned on it, pulling a home run to right-center on the first pitch he saw in a postseason game. The run typified Morgan’s season in ’72. The Pirates, in particular, were wary of him. He had beat them during the regular season when he had scored from third base on an infield pop-up. Pittsburgh second baseman Rennie Stennett had handled the pop fly easily, almost casually, putting his head down once the ball was in his glove. When Stennett looked up Morgan, was halfway down the line. The startled Stennett threw home, but Go-Go Joe slid in with the winning run.