Hairs vs. Squares

by Gruver , Ed;

  Jim Simpson provided the call on NBC Radio: “Ground ball. . . . High hop to Campaneris, flips to Green, Green back to first base. . . . Safe! It’s 2–1 as Bench scores from third!”

  Holtzman struck out Nolan to end the uprising. A pattern had been established that would last throughout this Series. Tenace’s power would plague Reds pitchers; Bench would come to bat fifteen times over the seven games with the bases empty; and Williams, making the first of his staggering forty-two trips, would wear a path to the pitcher’s mound.

  Batting leadoff again in the fourth, Bench walked and took third on Perez’s single to right-center. Menke’s grounder scored Bench, and the Reds tied the game at 2.

  Bench was excelling on defense as well. Tenace watched the Reds’ workouts and witnessed Bench’s whistling throws to second base. “That isn’t an arm,” Tenace told bystanders. “That’s a rifle.” Gowdy called Bench the “human shotgun.” From 1970 to 1976 the Reds played in forty-two postseason games, and opponents stole just two bases off Bench.

  Observers looked forward to the confrontation between Bench and the A’s roadrunner, Campaneris. The Oakland Express was the American League’s premier base stealer from 1965 to 1972, leading the league in steals six times and twice reaching his career-high of 62. He led again in ’72, pirating 54 bases.

  In the third inning Campaneris stroked a one-out single to left and took his lead off first base. Campy had speed to spare, but Bench had thrown out 60 percent of attempting base stealers that season. It’s likely many leaned forward in anticipation of the early showdown between Bench’s cannon-like arm and Campy’s fleet feet. Bench could get rid of the ball very quickly, but Campaneris was known to simply outrun the ball to the bag.

  As Nolan cut loose with a 1-1 curve to Joe Rudi, Campy scorched the soggy synthetic surface with his speed. Gowdy, Kubek, and Reds radio voice Al Michaels—NBC at that time invited the announcers of the participating teams to join the national TV broadcast for their clubs’ home games—analyzed what followed:

  Gowdy: There goes Campaneris, the throw by Bench and he’s out at second base!

  Michaels: Campaneris [had] a pretty good jump. . . . Johnny Bench can throw out anybody if he throws a strike and that’s what he threw to Joe Morgan!

  Kubek: Campy had a good lead off first base but that rifle arm of Johnny Bench. . . . What more can you say?

  Campaneris had plenty to say to second base umpire Mel Steiner, and replays show Campy was correct to dispute the call. He had beaten Bench’s throw, his right foot hitting the bag in a cloud of dirt in the sliding pit as Morgan applied the tag on Campaneris’s calf.

  Oakland got a run back in the fifth, as Simpson told listeners: “Here’s Tenace. . . . Nolan throws him a curve and he lines it down the line, very deep, inside the flag pole and it is a home run! Gene Tenace, who went 0-for-15 and then won the playoff game against Detroit, hit a home run in the second inning off a fastball, hit a hanging Gary Nolan curve and has lined his second home run in two times at bat.”

  The Reds had pitched him more carefully, but still Tenace tagged one. There was fury in Fury Gene’s bat as he became the first player in World Series history to homer in his first two trips to the plate. Nolan thought his pitch “hung like a feather.” Holtzman made the lead stand up by successfully stalling the Big Red Machine. He got Tolan with a slick pickoff move in the third.

  The A’s had agreed that any time any of the Reds’ first three batters got on base, the pitcher would make several throws over to keep the runner close. “Tolan broke when I raised my arms,” Holtzman said, “and we got him.”

  Bench, batting leadoff for the third straight time, doubled to right to start the sixth. Williams, wanting a “fresh arm,” waved in reliever Rollie Fingers. A’s announcer Monte Moore made the calls as the “Cucamonga Kid”—as teammates called Fingers—stranded Bench on second, courtesy of some hard, biting pitches: “Fingers kicks that white shoe in the air, throws a curve and strikes out Perez! That ball really broke! Fingers at the belt, here’s the pitch. . . . Swinging strike three! He left Menke up there.”

  In the seventh the Reds rallied behind a leadoff single from Concepcion. Testing Tenace’s arm, Concepcion broke for second on a steal attempt. Tenace, figuring the Reds might run in this instance, had called a pitchout and pegged a strong throw to second. Believing Campaneris had tagged Concepcion high on the shoulder, Steiner called him out. It was the Reds’ turn to argue, and the Series film backs them up, Concepcion sliding under Campy’s tag.

  “The umpire said he tagged me on the shoulder, but I didn’t feel it,” Concepcion said.

  “The replay showed that Campaneris did not tag him,” snorted Anderson. “It was the turning point of the game.” Rose followed by working Fingers for a walk, and Vida Blue was brought in to face Morgan. A wild pitch sent Rose to second, and after walking Morgan, Blue got out of the jam by retiring Tolan on a foulout to Tenace.

  The Big Red Machine had one more chance against Vida in the ninth. In a situation strikingly similar to Game Five of the National League Championship Series, pinch runner George Foster was on third. With Rose at bat and two outs, Williams headed to the hill again. Bando moved closer to the plate from his position at third base. Rose tried a two-out squeeze and fouled off a bunt. Blue stared in for the sign as Moore made the climactic call of Game One: “Vida Blue winds, here’s the pitch. . . . High, bouncing ball on the infield, they’re gonna have to hurry. . . . Kubiak has got it, throws to first. He’s got him! And the Oakland A’s have won the first game of the 1972 World Series! The final score of an exciting ball game: Oakland 3, Cincinnati 2!”

  “If Kubiak plays me right,” Rose snapped in the postmortem, “then he never gets me. I’m not impressed with the A’s. Outside of Gene Tenace they didn’t do much. They only got four hits so I’m not impressed with their offense. They had a couple shots at double plays and they didn’t make them so I’m not impressed with their defense. Johnny Bench threw out the only two guys who tried to steal so I’m not impressed with their base running. And Holtzman didn’t throw as hard as when he was with the Cubs.”

  Rose’s frustration would last throughout much of the Series. Over the previous decade he had been baseball’s most consistent hitter, hitting over .300 eight straight seasons and collecting more than two hundred hits five times. But he didn’t get a hit in Game One and didn’t reach base. It was another trend taking shape that would slow the Big Red Machine in its drive to win a world championship.

  Oakland’s win was a tribute to the detailed scouting reports provided by Al Hollingsworth and Sherm Lollar. Known as “Boots” during his major league career, Hollingsworth had pitched for the Reds and four other teams from 1935 to 1946. Lollar had been an All-Star catcher in the 1950s with the St. Louis Browns and Chicago White Sox and had also played for the Cleveland Indians and New York Yankees.

  Hollingsworth followed the Big Red Machine for their final thirty-two games of the season and provided a report that was among the most extensive Williams had ever seen. It detailed how to pitch to the Reds, where to play them in the field, how the Reds played hitters, and how they pitched. The reports were instrumental in pitching to Geronimo (a .275 hitter that season, he would bat just .158 against the A’s) in the second inning and also informed the A’s that Rose liked to bunt in situations similar to the one in the ninth. Williams relayed the info to Blue, and Vida responded by throwing fastballs rather than the off-speed pitches that Rose would have preferred.

  “I was hoping for a curve that I could bunt,” Rose admitted. “But he fed me fastballs.”

  Blue’s pitch selection was a credit to Hollingsworth and Lollar, the A’s answers to Shore. The advance work of these super scouts would prove as instrumental in determining the World Series winner as anything that happened between the white lines. Kubiak thought the reports provided by Hollingsworth and Lollar picked up on even the most obscure tendencies of the Big Red Machine.

  Prior to the Series the A’s
went over the reports on the Reds so thoroughly that by the time they took the field at Riverfront Stadium, they felt as if they had been playing Cincinnati all season. Kubiak retired Rose for the final out of Game One on a grounder that was anything but routine on the rain-stained rug; the ball was hit over the mound and to the right of second base. A startled Rose asked reporters afterward, “How the hell could [Kubiak] be in that spot?”

  Kubiak said it was the combination of the A’s detailed scouting reports and the fact that he had played with Pete in the minors that led him to know what Rose would do in certain situations. That’s what intelligence does, Kubiak said. “It helps you out.”

  Hollingsworth helped A’s hurlers by advising them not to let Bench beat them with his bat. One way to do that was to not throw Bench any fastballs or curves, just a steady stream of sliders. Another way was to turn Cincinnati’s cleanup hitter into a leadoff batter, which the A’s accomplished in Game One.

  In Game Two, played on a sun-drenched Sunday afternoon with Jackie Robinson looking on from the commissioner’s box, the Reds’ slugger found himself in the same situation when facing Hunter.

  There’s an adage in postseason baseball that your momentum is your next day’s starting pitcher. The A’s, armed with a one-game lead, looked to build on their momentum by sending their ace to the mound. A control pitcher with outstanding off-speed stuff and a moving fastball, Hunter on this splendid afternoon was a Cat toying with his prey—always putting his off-speed stuff out there and then taking it away. The crafty Catfish threw his entire repertoire at the Reds: fastballs, sliders, and change-ups, going up and in on one pitch, nicking the corner with the next.

  Cincy’s sluggers were familiar with Holtzman from his years with the Cubs, but Hunter was an unknown. Their only knowledge of the Cat came from the occasional All-Star at-bat and Cincinnati’s scouts. But Morgan and his mates knew that while you could scout a pitcher and read all the reports, until a hitter stood in the batter’s box and saw how fast the pitches were coming and how much movement they had, the arm speed and the arm motion, the hitter really didn’t have a feel for what he was facing.

  Before another Riverfront record crowd of 53,224 and amid what Simpson referred to as a “brilliant, sunshiny afternoon,” Hunter helped his own cause in the second inning. The Catfish followed singles by Bando and Dick Green off Ross Grimsley with a two-out single to left to score Hendrick with the game’s first run.

  In the bottom of the inning, Bench, wearing a cherry red turtleneck and long sleeves beneath his bright white jersey, led off with a ground single. Perez walked. The Reds would eventually load the bases, but the Catfish clamped down:

  Moore: Menke dug in at home plate for Hunter’s pitch. . . . It’s a swinging strike three! Hunter threw the high, hard one right by him. . . . Geronimo. . . . Swinging strike three! [Hunter] got another one! So Ross Grimsley will have it on his shoulders. . . . Here’s the 1-2 pitch. . . . [Hunter] struck out the side! Catfish Hunter, displaying fantastic courage with a runner at third and nobody down, strikes out Menke, Geronimo and Grimsley!

  Cincinnati’s struggles with the Cat continued. The Big Red Machine was finding out what American League hitters already knew. The Catfish, Bobby Murcer said, didn’t overpower hitters with his stuff; he beat them by being one of the savviest pitchers to ever take the mound. Bench believed it. Hunter, he said later, was tough.

  In the third, Rudi turned on Grimsley’s thigh-high fastball on the inside part of the plate and drove it toward the left-field bleachers.

  Moore: Pitch to Rudi is hit up into the air in deep left field. . . . That baby has really got a charge in it and it is going and theerrrrree she goes! A home run for Joe Rudi!

  Rudi would make the play of the Series—one of the great plays in World Series history—in the ninth. Hunter, his long hair flowing almost to the shoulders of his kelly green jersey, hurled eight shutout innings, then surrendered a leadoff single to Perez in the ninth. The Cat was tiring, and he had hoped to get Menke on inside pitches. Instead Hunter’s first pitch was a mistake: a fastball down the middle. Menke was a line-drive hitter who Gowdy noted didn’t hit the ball well to right but could pull it to left. That is precisely what Menke did, lifting the ball into the menacing sun field.

  Gowdy: There’s a long drive to deep left. . . .

  “I thought it was out,” Menke said. So did Hunter. Rudi thought the same, and so did the A’s watching from the dugout. Three Octobers prior to Carlton Fisk’s performing the most memorable bit of body language in baseball history, members of the Mustache Gang were using body language to will the ball to stay on the A’s side of the wall.

  Gowdy: That ball is going, going. . . .

  As he flipped his sunglasses down and began tracking the ball, Rudi saw that this was exactly the kind of play he’d worked on with legendary Yankees outfielder Joe DiMaggio—a drive almost straight over his head. This one was a little to Rudi’s left, and as he broke back on the ball, he put his right hand out to feel for the twelve-foot wall. When Rudi spotted the ball through his shades, it was on the edge of the sun; there was no sky between the sun and the ball. If it had been hit a few more inches to his left, Rudi knew there was no way he would have caught it.

  Staring up into the sharp glare, Rudi positioned himself on the edge of the warning track, then poised for an instant. With a sudden leap he turned and pinned himself chest-first against the wall, reached up with his glove hand, and pulled in Menke’s drive. Williams thought Rudi’s left arm looked at least eight feet long as he stretched to make the catch.

  Gowdy: It is caught by Rudi! Joe Rudi robs him of extra bases against the wall! What a grab by Joe Rudi!

  Simpson sounded just as stunned in making the call on NBC Radio: “The pitch. . . . Lined to left field. . . . Back goes Rudi, looking up. . . . He’s got it! Against the wall! . . . Hendrick is all the way over in left field slapping Rudi on the back.”

  Williams called the catch “unbelievable.” Rudi’s spectacular grab ranks among the best in World Series history: Willie Mays’s in 1954, Sandy Amoros’s in ’55, Ron Swoboda’s and Tommie Agee’s in ’69, and Al Gionfriddo’s in ’47 against Rudi’s mentor, DiMaggio.

  Simpson called it the fielding gem of the Series. Hunter thought it might have been the best play in the history of the World Series. The Reds had watched the play from the top step of their dugout. A double for sure, Bench thought, maybe even a homer. As Rudi literally laid out against the wall, the Reds at first thought he had trapped the ball. But when Rudi caught it, he turned his glove so the ball wouldn’t pop free when he hit the wall. The ball was showing white through the webbing of his glove, and Rudi retrieved it with his right hand, then held it up for all to see, and then fired it back to the infield to try and double up Perez. Rudi pulled his glove away fast because if it had hit the wall, the ball probably would have popped out.

  “It was not my greatest catch,” said Rudi, who would make a running, tumbling grab at Shea Stadium in Oakland’s 1973 World Series victory over the New York Mets. “But it certainly was the most important one I ever made.”

  Williams cried, “No! No!” when he saw Rudi displaying the ball for the umpires. Williams believed it gave Perez the chance to avoid the double play and cost the A’s when Perez later scored. When you get this close to the mountain top, Williams thought, you can’t let the little things kill you.

  Rudi would build an All-Star career out of doing the little things right. He was a thinking man’s player. Jackson compared him to NBA great Bill Bradley, who played for a New York Knicks squad that was a contemporary of the A’s and was in the midst of its own championship season, playing the same kind of smart defense as the A’s.

  Anderson knew now that the Reds had seriously underestimated the A’s. Oakland’s left fielder showed in Game Two that the Big Red Machine was in for a Rudi awakening. It seemed perfectly fitting that Rudi hailed from Modesto, California. The name of the town where he grew up and married his high school swe
etheart contains a most apt description of the A’s quiet star: Modest. Reggie thought Rudi the nicest guy in the league, an underrated, underpaid, self-made star.

  Robinson compared Rudi’s “total reliability” as a player and teammate to that of Al Kaline. Rudi could do it all—hit for average (he batted a team-best .305 in 1972), hit for power (19 home runs, .486 slugging percentage), bunt, and field.

  The only thing Rudi didn’t do despite being featured on the cover of The Sporting News that summer was generate a lot of publicity. He was baseball’s quiet man, its Mr. Nice Guy, and he got more ink from not getting ink than anything he did on the field.

  His style, Rudi said, was to keep his mouth shut, do his job, and keep out of people’s way. His style on the field was more pronounced. When he dug in in the batter’s box, he displayed a closed stance—left foot planted at the plate, right foot in the back of the box—and semi-crouch. His bat was on his shoulder, a cardinal sin among hitting coaches. But his quick swing equaled a quick and nimble mind. In Game Five of the ’74 World Series, Rudi rightly believed during a disturbance in the outfield that Dodgers reliever Mike Marshall, who had neglected to throw warmup pitches during the delay, would go with his fastball. Dodgers pitchers had successfully jammed Rudi with inside fastballs the game before, and the astute A’s star figured Marshall would try to do the same. Marshall did, and Rudi deposited the pitch over the left-field wall for the final run of the Series.