by Gruver , Ed;
Prior to the Series opener Bench met Jackson for dinner at Scarlata’s, a favorite dining place for Bench. The two talked baseball before Bench dropped Jackson off at the A’s motel. As they walked past the players’ rooms, Bench said he smelled the unmistakable aroma of marijuana. The A’s, he thought, were smoking dope as they got ready for the World Series. Bench was shaken and wondered how could they be doing this.
Bench knew that flower children were alive and well and that the Reds represented the establishment and the A’s, the California kids. Their players landed in Cincinnati wearing mustaches, beards, long hair, and sideburns of every variety—Martin Van Buren–like muttonchops, Mexican-style mustaches, Fu Manchus, and a Snidely Whiplash look. Writer Pete Hamill referred to them as the “mustached bravos.” Columnist Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times said the A’s were “really the Oakland Hair-o’s, a bunch of guys so hirsute you half-expected them to take off their clothes and start dancing at any minute.” He called the A’s starters “eight guys wearing costumes right out of Flo Ziegfeld.”
Baseball writer Joe Trimble of the New York Daily News labeled the A’s “bad guys, the ones with the mustaches and beards.” The Reds were “good guys, the clean-shaven Cincys.”
Even the team nicknames—Swingin’ A’s, the Mustache Gang, the Big Red Machine—conjured up images of Berkeley students taking on the military-industrial complex. This wasn’t going to be a World Series, Bench thought. It was going to be a war between the Bikers and the Boy Scouts, the new and old orders, liberals versus conservatives, the hairs versus the squares.
Bando agreed with Bench that the “Mustaches versus the Machine” angle was the focal point of the media. Captain Sal called it a contrast of different styles. Maverick owner Charlie Finley and his A’s flaunted rules and were cast as casual Californians, but Bando believed the A’s themselves didn’t fully buy into the concept that the Reds represented Middle America while the A’s were anti-establishment. He did believe that young people were likely leaning toward the A’s while older people were rooting for the Reds. One wasn’t going to find hordes of hippies, for instance, in Cincy’s Fountain Square.
On some level, the sixty-ninth World Series was baseball’s equivalent to the 1969 Super Bowl, with the A’s as the shaggy New York Jets of the upstart American Football League and the Senior Circuit Reds cast in the role of the clean-cut Baltimore Colts of the older NFL.
Much was made of what the A’s looked like and supposedly stood for, and a lot of people were forgetting that the Mustache Gang could, as Bench stated, “play the game pretty well.” The A’s had downed Detroit, a team Bench saw as tough but tired and old. With Jackson out for the series, there was really no way the A’s were expected to beat the Big Red Machine. That notion comforted the conservative Cincinnati fans, whose slogan was “Paint the Town Reds” and who felt that when the Fall Classic was finished, their Reds would make the baseball world safe from mustaches, mules, and Charles O. Finley.
Rarely has a World Series featured such a startling contrast in championship clubs. It was a David and Goliath matchup, and while Oakland owned an eclectic combination of personalities and characters with whom people around the country identified, experts favored Goliath. Along with Jackson, the A’s had also lost to injury reliever Darold Knowles, a hard-throwing lefty who owned a 1.37 ERA that season.
Perez’s prophecy that the Big Red Machine would have a “picnic” in the World Series wouldn’t come true, but one made by Knowles would. On the A’s bus ride to Riverfront Stadium for the opener, Knowles announced he had dreamed the night before that Tenace or George Hendrick would be Series MVP.
“I hope you’re right,” Tenace said. “Because if one of us wins the MVP, it means we won the Series.”
Tenace had been given a vote of confidence by Williams following the win over Detroit and was so relaxed for the showdown with the Reds that he almost felt as if the World Series games were spring training exhibitions.
With game-time temperatures in the mid-60s, Reds right-hander Gary Nolan fired the first pitch to Campaneris—“a strike at the knees,” NBC radio announcer Jim Simpson told listeners. Amid the sound and fury inside Riverfront Stadium the sixty-ninth World Series was under way. Riverfront’s flaring lights brightened somber skies overhead. Campy eventually singled, but Nolan, who had a team-high 15 wins that season and a 1.99 ERA, retired Joe Rudi on a fly to Cesar Geronimo in center and got Matty Alou, hitting as usual from deep in the box and far off the plate, to ground to Morgan for a double play.
In Nolan, A’s hitters were facing a man who owned one of the best change-ups and one of the most deceptive pitching motions in the majors. One of the reasons for the success of Nolan’s change-up was that he threw it off the same motion as his fastball. Nolan lifted his leg high, then drove it forward as he drove his right arm down.
“He throws every pitch in the same way—the left leg kick and the right arm coming through,” Gowdy said. “He’s had that rhythm all year. That’s why his change-up is so effective because the change-up is thrown with the same leg drive and arm drive as his fastball. It deceives the batter.”
Simpson told his listeners that since Nolan didn’t have the flaring fastball he used to due to arm problems in 1968–69, he had to make good pitches, had to have good control. “If he does not make good pitches, does not have good control,” Simpson stated, “Gary Nolan is in trouble.”
Ken Holtzman, making his first mound appearance in Riverfront Stadium since no-hitting the Reds the previous June 3 while with the Cubs, faced Rose, Morgan, and Tolan in the bottom of the first. Sporting an 11-5 lifetime record against the Reds going into Game One, Holtzman didn’t allow a ball to leave the lime green infield. This first collision between Cincinnati’s celebrated table setters and the A’s stylish pitching was significant.
“Look at the first three men in this Cincinnati lineup,” Kubek said during the season, “and I don’t think there’s any other team in baseball that can put three men up who have as good eyes or are as good hitters or run as well as Morgan, Rose and Tolan.”
“It’s an impressive front three,” Gowdy responded. “They can get in there and set the table for Bench and Perez.”
The pressure Morgan, Rose, and Tolan put on a defense, Kubek stated, was significant: “They’re hit-and-run threats, they’re base-stealing threats, you’ve got to be moving around [defensively], leaving your position . . . a lot of pressure. You’ve got to play more shallow, especially on the artificial surface. [The ball] can scoot by you.”
Viewers settled in for a clash that extended even to the umpires. The A’s and Reds knew balls and strikes were called differently in the two leagues. AL umps gave the high strike; NL umps, the low strike. AL hitters hacking away at high strikes produced more pop-ups; NL hitters golfing for low strikes produced more grounders. The result was often low-average hitters with higher home run totals in the AL and more high-average hitters in the NL since some of those ground balls were going to get through the infield on artificial turf. The differences extended to how the league umpires dressed (NL umpires in black jackets and pants; AL umps, in navy blue blazers and gray slacks), how they stood behind home plate, and where they stood to cover second base.
AL umpire Jim Honochick worked the 1972 Fall Classic, and he knew there would always be differences among umps in style and technique. The rule book stated that the strike zone extends from a batter’s armpits to his knees, but Honochick knew every umpire had a different interpretation. Early Wynn, a major league pitcher from 1939 to 1963, complained that the strike zone had shrunk “like a cheap suit.” Wynn’s complaint, umpire Ron Luciano wrote, was lodged at a time when the strike zone was “a bit larger than Australia.” The strike zone varied in part because of the size differences of the players and the umpires. A smaller hitter would have a smaller strike zone; so too would a smaller umpire. The 6-foot-4, 300-pound Luciano couldn’t bend as low behind home plate as the 5-foot-9, 175-pound Rich Garcia, so the top
of Luciano’s strike zone was higher than Garcia’s. Ed Runge, an American League umpire from 1954 to 1970, was said to have a strike zone that stretched from dugout to dugout; he wanted the hitters to swing the bat. Runge was the home plate ump in the 1967 All-Star Game when a record 29 batters struck out.
Differences also extended to the wearing of chest protectors. Some umps wore them inside; others, outside. Honochick liked the latter style for health reasons. Unless an ump was foolish or careless enough to stick his arms out, Honochick believed there was no way he could be injured while wearing the outside protector. The same couldn’t be said for inside protectors. Lou Jorda, whom Honochick considered a fine umpire, was working a game at the Polo Grounds and was hit over the heart while wearing an inside protector. His heart was damaged, and Jorda was done umpiring.
Honochick understood all the differences, but he didn’t think AL and NL umpires should work independently of each other during the season. Major league umpires, he thought, should have uniformity in the way they worked.
Game One had a National League umpire, Chris Pelekoudas, behind home plate. It was the second Fall Classic for the Chicago native, and if the A’s were looking for positive omens, they might have found one in the fact that in Pelekoudas’s previous World Series, in 1966, a similar AL underdog—the Orioles—had upset the NL favorite, the Dodgers. One other omen for fans who couldn’t get enough of October baseball involved Honochick, who was working first base in the opener. This was his sixth and final World Series, and each of the previous five had gone the full seven games.
Pelekoudas’s road to serving as crew chief in the 1972 World Series was an interesting one. He had failed a tryout with the 1934 Cardinals and began umpiring while serving in World War II as an Army Special Services officer. He worked in the minors from 1948 to 1959, then got his first big major league assignment in 1961 when he was named to the crew for the second All-Star Game that summer. He worked the 1967 and ’75 All-Star Games, as well and the NLCS in 1969 and ’73. On August 18, 1965, Pelekoudas ordered an apparent Aaron home run nullified because Aaron had stepped out of the batter’s box when he made contact. Pelekoudas was also the first ump to eject Gaylord Perry for using an illegal greasy substance on the ball. He was a witness to history on several occasions: Willie Mays’s four home runs in 1961; six no-hitters, including Koufax’s in 1963 and Sandy’s perfect game in 1965; the first game at Shea Stadium in 1964.
In October ’72, Pelekoudas’s crew included Mel Steiner and Bob Engle of the NL and Honochick, Frank Umont, and Bill Haller of the AL. Umont was a former NFL player, a tackle for the New York Giants from 1943 to 1945. Haller was the older brother of Tigers catcher Tom Haller, who had just made his final appearance as a player on October 4. The Hallers had made major league history on July 14, 1972, when they became the first brothers to appear in the same game as home plate umpire and catcher. Bill Haller also appeared in an El Producto cigar commercial that summer. He was one of the last umpires to wear an outside chest protector and in 1980 was involved in a now legendary confrontation with feisty Orioles skipper Earl Weaver. Honochick gained national fame when he appeared in one of the many sports-celebrity commercials sponsored by Miller Lite beer. After putting on glasses, Honochick finally recognized his fellow Miller Lite pitchman. “Hey! You’re Boog Powell!”
High-profile umpires like Honochick and Luciano were a bridge to colorful showboats in blue from the past like John “Beans” Reardon and those in the future—namely, “Dutch” Rennert and “Cowboy” Joe West.
Nolan sailed through the first two outs in the top of the second. Just twenty-four years old, he had a history of neck and shoulder problems, but on this day he was strong. He looked like the pitcher who had led the league with a .750 winning percentage, and he and Bench were working well together. Hendrick drew a two-out walk, and Tenace stood in. Nolan was moving the ball around, not trying to overpower the hitters. But he veered from his breaking pitches and tried to slip a fastball past Tenace. Gowdy made the call: “There’s a long blast to deep left. . . . That one is going and it is . . . gone! A home run for Gene Tenace! And the A’s grab the lead in the top of the second inning with a two-out, two-run homer by Gene Tenace, who hit only five homers all year.”
Bench was startled. Nolan had left a fastball over the plate, and veteran Game of the Week viewers remembered a meeting with the Cubs in Riverfront that summer when Nolan had tried to slip a fastball past Jim Hickman only to see it go sailing over the same left-field wall. But Hickman had 17 homers that season; nobody had said anything about Tenace having power. It was surprising since Ray Shore had scouted the A’s for a month, and “Snacks,” as Shore was called by Anderson and others, could have taught Sherlock Holmes about super sleuthing.
As far as Sparky was concerned, Shore was baseball’s answer to the CIA and the FBI. He had every Oakland player pinpointed—what he hit, what he didn’t hit, where to play him, how to play him. The Reds’ reports on Oakland’s offense told Cincinnati pitchers it was key to keep Campaneris off base and to limit the damage done by Alou, Rudi, Bando, and Epstein. Shore told the Big Red Machine’s bombers—Rose, Morgan, Bench, Perez, et al.—that while he wouldn’t say Oakland had the best pitching in baseball, the A’s were good. To give Reds hitters a barometer with which they were familiar, Cincinnati’s super scout compared Hunter to Rick Wise and Blue to Steve Carlton.
Anderson thought Shore’s report accurate, but it wasn’t when it came to Tenace. His 1-for-17 in the ALCS included some hard outs, and his lone hit was the series winner. Because Tenace had been stinging the ball and didn’t strike out as much as the A’s other catcher, Dave Duncan, Williams had played an educated hunch when filling out his lineup.
Seen by reporters as one of the lesser lights on a colorful club considered a big underdog, Tenace was largely ignored by the hundreds of media members milling around as the A’s took batting practice. Anonymity aided Tenace on this occasion. While scribes conducted interviews with Bando, Campy, et al., Tenace was left alone to take additional cuts in the cage. Hunter compared Tenace’s short, compact swing to that of Minnesota Twins Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew. His teammates knew Tenace would eat fastballs for lunch. Fortunately for the A’s, Hunter said, the Reds never did figure out how to pitch Gino.
A report on the A’s filled out in the summer of ’72 by Steve Vrablik, a scout of more than forty years for the Chicago White Sox and then the Seattle Mariners, shows that Tenace was rated as a “3” in power, which was considered good and just below the “3.5” given to Mike Epstein and the maximum of “4” to Jackson.
Williams stated later that the sudden emergence of a balding reserve was “a great story.” In the space of eight days in October, twenty-six-year-old Gene Tenace would become so famous that he would be the target of an assassin’s threat. Jokes about his name—“Tenace, anyone?” and “Tenace the Menace”—became commonplace around the country.
Tenace had become a part of baseball mythology, but he was a better ballplayer than many thought. In limited action he had hit .305 in 1970 and .274 in ’71, and his slugging percentage those two seasons was .562 and .430 respectively. As a starter from 1973 to 1976 he hit 22 or more homers four consecutive seasons with a high of 29 in ’75. His 91 homers over that span ranked third on the A’s behind Jackson and Bando. Two things about Tenace: he never moved from the batter’s box once he stepped in, keeping his feet firmly planted in the same spot, and he had an exceptionally trained eye for a power hitter. He had six seasons of more than 100 walks and twice led the league in bases on balls. Among catchers, Tenace would retire tied for third with Bench and Joe Torre in OPS, trailing Roy Campanella and Yogi Berra.
Tenace paved his path to the bigs by batting .319 with 20 homers in 1969 with Binghamton in the Southern Association. The previous summer he had rapped 21 homers for Peninsula in the Carolina League. Tenace played for Valley High in Lucasville, Ohio, some one hundred miles from Cincinnati, and had been scouted by Reds bird dog Gene Bennet
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Tenace had a stubborn self-belief stemming at least in part from a paternal grandfather who had emigrated from Italy and settled in the steel-tough Pittsburgh area. Tenace was born in Russellton, a coal-mining town in western Pennsylvania. The Yankees operated a farm club in nearby Butler, and Gino grew up a fan of a team that boasted a bevy of Italian American stars: Berra, Tony Lazzeri, Joe DiMaggio, Frankie Crosetti, Phil Rizzuto, Vic Raschi, et al. Tenace’s father, Fiore, was a semipro baseball player—“A pretty good one,” Gene remembered—and he pushed his son to be a good athlete as well. “He drove me to be a big leaguer,” Tenace said, “and when I say ‘drove,’ I’m not kidding. He was on me all the time, telling me to do better.”
Tenace, whose name was Anglicized to Fury Gene Tenace, developed an ulcer at age thirteen. He was also called “Steamboat” because some considered him clumsy. Despite the physical and emotional problems that developed at least in part from his father’s prodding, Tenace helped Valley High win a state championship. The Reds and Yankees scouted him but passed on signing him. The Yankees’ rejection proved particularly disappointing. They were his favorite team, but when Tenace approached one of their scouts, he was told there was no way he would make it to the big leagues. Danny Carnevale, a scout for the then Kansas City Athletics, didn’t agree, and Tenace was selected in the twentieth round of the 1965 draft. He debuted for the A’s on May 29, 1969, going 0 for 4 as Hunter lost to Denny McLain and Detroit in the Oakland Coliseum.
Tenace spent the 1969 and ’70 seasons as Oakland’s third-string catcher before becoming Duncan’s backup in ’71. One year later he was shocking the Reds in the Fall Classic. He was an overnight sensation, and it had taken him only several years to become one.
The Reds trailed 2–0, but Bench believed the Big Red Machine would get to Holtzman. He made sure of it by being a catalyst in both of the Reds’ rallies. He started the bottom of the second with a single to left and took second base on a single by Perez. A walk to Denis Menke loaded the bases and brought up Cesar Geronimo. Williams walked to the mound, pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket to read to Holtzman, then retreated to the dugout. The paper provided details on how to pitch Geronimo. Holtzman induced a pop-out before Dave Concepcion, the stadium lights flaring on his bright red helmet, grounded the ball to his opposite, Campaneris.