Hairs vs. Squares

by Gruver , Ed;

  Gowdy’s voice was instantly recognizable to millions of fans. Author John Updike thought Gowdy’s warm, informal broadcasting style made him sound “like everybody’s brother-in-law.” Unlike many of his peers and those who would follow, Gowdy never relied on catchphrases, preferring instead to describe the action in an easy, straightforward manner. His illustrious peers in 1972 included Chris Schenkel of ABC and Ray Scott of CBS, but to columnist Joe Falls of The Sporting News, Gowdy was television’s premier sports announcer, the successor to radio’s Red Barber.

  The reason he chose Gowdy, Falls wrote in the fall of 1972, was that he “wears so well.” This despite getting the most important assignments, which meant Gowdy was on TV almost all the time. The danger of being overexposed was critical. Nothing is worse for an announcer, Falls stated, than someone turning on the TV and saying, “Oh, him again.”

  That didn’t happen with Gowdy. His approach was smooth and knowledgeable. He didn’t excite viewers with a flamboyant phrase, but he didn’t bore them either. The Cowboy may not have ups, said Falls, but he didn’t have many downs. That Gowdy liked his job and knew what it was about transcended his telecasts and was picked up on by viewers. He wasn’t perfect; he made errors but was quick to correct them.

  Gowdy battled network executives on how best to broadcast games. The Cowboy would listen quietly as Madison Avenue suits went on and on in meetings about how to present periphery events—pregame, halftime, and postgame shows. Finally an exasperated Gowdy would raise his hand.

  “What is it, Gowdy?”

  “Fellas, we’re broadcasting a game. A game.”

  The Cowboy’s cool professionalism fused nicely with Kubek’s boyish, eager approach, which many found refreshing. Falls thought it a pleasant departure from the “rehearsed . . . handsome-face style that is so irritating on TV.” Kubek got away with his lack of TV polish because the former All-Star knew the game so well. Falls favorably compared Kubek to ABC’s college football color analyst Bud Wilkinson as broadcasters who could provide astonishingly accurate predictions of upcoming plays. Gowdy had that knack as well. He noted during a national telecast of a Cubs game that summer that Chicago’s Jim Hickman averaged a home run every seventeen times at bat. It was a pretty good ratio, the Cowboy declared, and as if on cue, Hickman homered moments later.

  Gowdy and Kubek had their critics. Earlier that summer a TV Guide editorial had criticized announcers for talking too much during sporting events. Gowdy and Kubek were among the parties cited. Writer Jack Craig of The Sporting News thought TV Guide’s criticism odd since he had recently sat through a one-sided Pirates-Dodgers telecast and the only thing that had prevented him from switching stations was the “sparkling verbalizing” of Gowdy and Kubek. Their commentary, which he noted was usually directed at fans but sometimes to each other, was not the product of an impromptu approach. It was, Craig wrote, the product of much pregame hustling by Gowdy and Kubek.

  Craig recalled a Saturday telecast at Fenway Park when he had arranged to interview Kubek prior to the first pitch. It was difficult to do, Craig discovered, because Tony spent almost all of the pregame talking with players and gathering information for use in the broadcast. Kubek’s file of material was so large that he used only a portion of it that day in Boston, but it was timely enough that he was able to incorporate it into Red Sox telecasts later in the season.

  Craig considered the between-pitches remarks by Gowdy and Kubek a difficult task made to look easy by their professionalism. They had to get in and out with a complete thought without preempting the report on the next pitch. Kubek had to master that task in his role as color analyst and did it well enough that he rarely got caught in the overflow.

  “Kubek had the proper training and it made a difference,” Gowdy said, referring to Tony’s working the backup game on NBC before moving up to the national telecast.

  Gowdy shrugged off TV Guide’s criticism that he and Kubek were too talkative. “You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” he said. Gowdy remarked that since the audience for NBC’s Monday night baseball games may include more casual fans than the Saturday telecasts, he and Kubek would explain something they knew sounded routine to longtime followers of the sport. On those occasions Gowdy would preface his remarks with an apology of sorts to veteran fans. As far as Craig was concerned, Gowdy and Kubek had little to apologize for. A baseball fan for more than thirty years and someone who knew the game and its subtleties, Craig found Gowdy and Kubek’s comments and remarks “invariably informative, sometimes even provocative.”

  NBC’s camerawork in the 1972 postseason also drew praise. Future Hall of Fame writer Roger Angell thought NBC’s work alert, subtle, and up to every occasion. It was television at its best, Angell wrote, and it had almost conquered the obstacles and difficulties of covering a spacious, three-dimensional sport in a two-dimensional medium. NBC’s multiple cameras captured vivid close-ups—Rollie Fingers and his waxed mustache, Bobby Tolan and his Lady Liberty stance—and provided viewers with details sometimes missed by fans in the stands. Falls watched some of the postseason games on television and said he saw more than he would have had he been at the ball park. To Falls, NBC’s work in the 1972 postseason was “as masterful as any network could do on any sports event.”

  There would be plenty for NBC to cover as the Fall Classic opened at Riverfront Stadium on Saturday, October 14. Game One of the World Series is like Opening Day of the major league season in that it as much spectacle as it is sport. The stadium banners and bunting, ceremonial first pitch, and inevitable first clash of armor combine to make the game an event. Game One through the years had delivered some of sport’s most iconic performances—Sandy Koufax striking out 15 Yankees in 1963, Bob Gibson fanning 17 Tigers in ’68.

  NBC’s TV broadcast began with its classic theme song followed by panning cameras and Gowdy’s voice-over promoting the World Series matchup and the network’s sponsors: Gillette and Chrysler. As Reds general manager Bob Howsam, resplendent in a red blazer, took up residence in the lower-level blue seats by the Cincinnati dugout and looked across the field at Finley and his extravagantly attired A’s in their gaudy gold jerseys, a record crowd of 52,918 filed along the concrete concourse and into the stadium, filling the levels of green, yellow, and red seats that circled the field. Some unfurled banners aimed at the A’s daily green-and-gold fashion show and their long locks:

  The A’s Have Weird Uniforms

  Women’s Lib Will Destroy the Family

  The Series opener would be played under overcast skies, rain having left huge carpet stains on the synthetic surface, which would itself be a topic of conversation. No one doubted or denied that the advent of Astroturf had altered the way baseball was being played. The ball bounced higher than on natural grass and traveled faster, forcing infielders to play farther back than they normally would in order to have enough time to react. Because the playing surface was as hard and fast as a billiards table, ground balls that would have been slowed on grass scooted through the infield.

  Because of artificial grass, speed rather than power was becoming the name of the game in the National League. The success of 1960s teams like Maury Wills’s Dodgers and Lou Brock’s Cardinals had the league trending back to the era of quickness on the bases, and that trend accelerated in the 1970s. Riverfront’s carpeted confines, however, posed a potential problem for the A’s, who played primarily on grass fields in the American League. In 1972 Comiskey Park was the lone AL stadium to sport artificial surface, and that was only in the infield and adjacent foul territory.

  Synthetic surfaces were a staple of baseball at that time, like Pete Rose’s Prince Valiant haircut and afternoon World Series games. It didn’t require God’s sunlight to thrive, and maintenance was limited to regular vacuuming. Cincinnati was one of six National League stadiums to sport synthetic surface in the 1970s, Houston, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and St. Louis being the others. It was enough, Dodgers longtime manager Walter Alston sa
id at the time, to alter the concept of the game in numerous ways. Since more runs were going to be scored, managers were going to have to be more patient with their pitchers. If only one or two fields had artificial surface, skippers could manage those games as they would on natural grass. Now that half of the twelve-team National League had synthetic surface, managers had come to accept more scoring and wouldn’t be pulling pitchers the way they used to.

  Baseball was entering a new era, one that harkened back to the quick, daring brand of ball Alston had experienced, albeit briefly, as a twenty-four-year-old rookie infielder with the Gashouse Gang Cardinals late in the summer of 1936. With the modern game opening up, teams would be less likely to play for one run in the early innings the way they had a decade earlier. That meant fewer bunting situations, and many wondered whether the bunt was still a viable strategy on artificial surfaces. The slick turf made it difficult to deaden the ball; it rolled so fast that defenses had an excellent chance at a force play.

  Infielders played so deep, they appeared to be playing shallow outfield positions. Reds second baseman Joe Morgan played his position 12–15 feet deeper on the Riverfront rug than he did on grass. Infielders could play better defense, but at bat their hits had to be solid; there were few bad-hop singles on Cincinnati’s carpet. Helping defenders but handicapping singles hitters, the Riverfront rug gaveth and tooketh away.

  Former Orioles veteran Frank Robinson returned to the NL in ’72 to play for Alston’s Dodgers and found the ball did indeed move faster on artificial turf. He found that the ball also bounced higher, and the combination of speed and height was something veteran fielders had to adjust to. Players knew for the most part what a certain type of hit would do on natural grass; Robinson said they weren’t so sure on synthetic surface, and that made for some uncertain fielding.

  Additional pregame conjecture centered on the caliber of ball played in the American and National Leagues. Cincinnati skipper Sparky Anderson, who liked to shoot from the lip, spoke openly about the differences between the leagues: “I’m not saying Oakland can’t beat us,” he told reporters. “But I’m saying that you can’t compare our league to theirs. Our league is tougher from top to bottom. The National League playoffs between Cincinnati and Pittsburgh brought together the two best teams in baseball.”

  Anderson added that if he said the American League was as good as the National League, he’d be lying. Oakland could play in the National League and be competitive, as could maybe Boston too. But they were the only ones, he stated. Privately he told his coaches the Reds would win in four straight.

  Rose didn’t back away from comparing leagues either. The real World Series, he told reporters, had been between the Reds and Pirates. He said people asked every year if he would get two hundred hits. Now how many people get that question in the American League, he asked. Still the man who would become baseball’s all-time hits leader admitted to being impressed by the A’s pitching arms: “I looked at those ERAs,” he said, “and I don’t care if you’re pitching for the Rhode Island Reds in the Chicken League, a good ERA is a good ERA.”

  The 1972 World Series would be the first since 1968 that did not include Robinson. As someone who had starred in both leagues, he was in a unique position to compare the AL and NL, and he did so in an article for Sport magazine. Robinson believed the National League was better and that most ballplayers in the NL shared that belief. The basic difference was personnel. The AL had good players, but the NL had more.

  Robinson pointed to the NL’s readiness to sign black players and the AL’s reluctance to do the same. NL teams were willing to sign any promising prospect regardless of color, he said. The AL was only interested in can’t-miss black prospects. By not signing raw talent that would develop in a few years, the AL missed out on outstanding players. The NL was more willing to employ subs and second-line players who were black. Robinson referred to it as “selective discrimination.” Because of it, the NL got the reputation among blacks as a black player’s league, and since blacks preferred signing with NL teams, that added to the imbalance between the leagues.

  Robinson thought the NL was weighted one way, the AL another way. The recent Yankees dynasty that ended in 1964 had only a few black players. The Red Sox and Senators, he said, had for years only a few “token” blacks. He compared those clubs to the Dodgers, who he said became a dominant team because they had more black players than other teams. The Dodgers also had Koufax and Drysdale, arguably the greatest pitching combo in history, at the top of their rotation. Robinson pointed to the Birds’ conquerors in ’71, the Pirates. They were the first major league team to start an all-black lineup in a game, and they won the World Series. He pointed out that there were black stars and white stars in both leagues but noted that the NL’s stars were mostly black (Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell, Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda) and the AL’s stars largely white (Harmon Killebrew, Boog Powell, Brooks Robinson, Carl Yastrzemski, Rico Petrocelli, Frank Howard). The same was true, he said, when it came to pitching. Many of the NL’s best pitchers (Bob Gibson, Juan Marichal, Ferguson Jenkins, Al Downing) were men of color, while most of the AL’s top pitchers (Jim Palmer, Catfish Hunter, Mickey Lolich, Wilbur Wood) were white. Sure, he said, there were outstanding white players (Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Tom Seaver, Joe Torre) in the NL and equally outstanding black stars (Reggie Jackson, Vida Blue, Tony Oliva, Rod Carew) in the AL, but the balance was bad.

  The racial makeup of the leagues dictated strategy, Robinson asserted. NL managers played a more exciting, wide-open game because they had more to work with: more speed, more power. The NL had power hitters (Mays, Clemente, Aaron) who could run the bases. The AL’s power hitters (Powell, Killebrew, Howard) were bigger, heavier types who didn’t run as well. Thus AL managers didn’t call for the steal or the hit-and-run as much; they were more conservative than their NL counterparts. A case in point was Oakland’s opponents in the postseason. The Reds stole 140 bases; the Tigers, 17.

  If there was one AL team that could match up with the NL’s best, Robinson said, it was Oakland. And it was because the A’s had tremendous black talent (Jackson, Blue, Campaneris) to go with their white stars (Hunter, Holtzman, Fingers, Rudi, Bando).

  Neither Jackson, balancing himself on crutches, nor Blue toed the company line when it came to league comparisons. The A’s injured slugger said the National League had more depth, better personnel overall, and more good young black players than the American League. Blue told reporters he didn’t believe Oakland had the best club in baseball: “I’d rate Cincinnati and Pittsburgh better,” he declared.

  Their boss, Dick Williams, didn’t agree with the assessment that the AL was inferior. “I’ve seen some pretty bad National League teams on television,” he told the media. “Which team is best remains to be seen.”

  Williams knew he had a good ball club. Not great but good—damn good, he told Sport magazine writer Al Hirshberg in the visiting manager’s office the morning of Game One. As he spoke, Williams lit another cigarette; he was well on his way to his three-packs-a-day average. “I don’t know if we’ll win this thing,” Williams told Hirshberg. “All I want is to win today. That’s all I ever want—win today.”

  Shortly thereafter Williams emerged from the runway between the locker room and dugout and walked toward a swarm of media, officials, promoters, and privileged visitors. An avalanche of questions followed: “Is your pitching rotation set? . . . What about Vida Blue? . . . Does Finley tell you what to do? . . . How will you pitch Bench? . . . How will you stop Tolan and Morgan?”

  Williams didn’t mind the media horde. He knew it beat the alternative—sitting home and watching the World Series on TV. A baseball official approached and whispered something. “Damn right I want to see him,” Williams replied. “He’s my buddy.”

  With writers on his heels Williams walked across the field and embraced a grinning Anderson. Teammates at Fort Worth in 1950 and longtime admirers of one another, they were
two of the friendliest rivals in the long history of the Fall Classic.

  Williams and Anderson had been down the Series road before. Williams’s experience in 1967 had been kind of a drag, as the Buckinghams sang that year, Williams and the Red Sox falling to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games. Anderson had been to the Fall Classic in 1970, the Reds bowing to the Orioles in five games.

  This time around, the Reds were looser, more confident. Tony Perez told team announcer Joe Nuxhall following the win over Pittsburgh that the Big Red Machine was “gonna have a picnic” in the World Series. During a Reds workout on the field Rose spotted A’s shortstop Bert Campaneris, who had been suspended in the ALCS for his bat-throwing incident but reinstated by Commissioner Bowie Kuhn for the Fall Classic.

  “Hey Campy!” Rose shouted. “I just want you to know that bats don’t carry too well in this ball park.”

  Before Game One, Hunter, Bando, and Tenace were at a Cincinnati restaurant when they spotted Johnny Bench surrounded by what Hunter called an “entourage.” The Catfish thought the star catcher was carrying himself like a god and talking big about how the A’s had better not pitch him this way or that way.

  Hunter said he walked over to where Bench was sitting. “I’ll throw it right under your nose if I want to,” the Cat told him. Bench, he said, just stared at him, as though you weren’t supposed to talk to a superstar like that.

  Bench didn’t know what to think of Charlie Finley’s Oakland A’s, with their mustaches and mule. He watched the deciding game of the ALCS on television, and what he saw of the A’s impressed him; they knew how to execute.