by Gruver , Ed;
On the rare occasions the Big Red Machine stalled, one of the chief mechanics proved to be Perez. The Reds were a club loaded with stars, and Morgan recognized Rose and Bench as the team’s twin peaks. But he thought Perez as important a star as the Reds had. He was among baseball’s best, a future Hall of Famer, but Perez was also among the game’s most overlooked players.
Perez would play twenty-three years in the majors and be an integral part of six division champions, five pennant winners, and two world champions. He hit 379 homers and plated 1,652 runs and ranks alongside Rogers Hornsby, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Ernie Banks, Mike Schmidt, and Willie Stargell as a run producer. Numbers alone never did Perez justice, however. Morgan thought they didn’t begin to tell who Perez was and what he meant to the Reds.
Like Campaneris, Perez was a native Cuban, born in 1942 in Camaguey to Jose and Teodora Perez. He grew up in a two-bedroom house owned by the sugar mill that employed the Perez family. Tony had an ability to play ball—he was a shortstop for the sugar mill’s team, Central Violeta—and was signed to a pro contract at age seventeen by Tony Pacheco, a Cuban scout for the Reds. Perez was assigned to the Havana Sugar Kings. His bonus cost the Reds $2.50 for an exit visa and plane ticket from Havana to Tampa.
Perez’s family loved him enough to allow him to pursue his career, even though it meant never seeing him. His early years in the United States were a struggle. He had little money and no guarantees he could make a career in baseball. Playing for the Reds’ Class D affiliate in Geneva, New York, in 1960, Perez was a teammate of both a nineteen-year-old Pete Rose and Martin Dihigo Jr., son of the Hall of Fame Cuban and Negro League star.
Perez debuted for the Reds on July 26, 1964, drawing a walk in his first at-bat and then going a combined 0-for-6 in a doubleheader split with Pittsburgh in Crosley Field. In 1967 he earned the first of seven All-Star selections and was named the game’s MVP after his home run off Hunter gave the National League the victory in a fifteen-inning classic that was the longest All-Star Game in major league history to that point.
Perez had driven in 102 runs that summer, the first of seven seasons he would drive in 100 or more. By 1970 Perez was the Big Dog, hammering 40 home runs and driving in 129 and hitting .317 for a Reds squad that steamrolled its way to the World Series.
In ’72 Perez had plated 90 runs for the resurgent Red Machine, and Anderson marveled that the Big Dog could drive in that many while batting behind Bench, who was in the midst of an MVP campaign. Perez figured he would have had more RBIs had he not injured his hand checking his swing earlier in the season. The injury caused him to refrain from pulling the ball with power to left field as was his wont. Because his hand was sore, Perez said, he was hitting a lot to right and right-center.
At the beginning of the ’72 season Rose and Morgan were playing well and would horse around in the clubhouse, saying how well they were hitting. Perez, in broken English, boomed out, “You two guys, you think you so great or something?”
Perez was hitting .220, Rose and Morgan .350. As Perez pointed out, the Reds were in fourth place. “When the Big Dog starts hitting,” Perez said, “we will go to the top.” Two weeks later Perez strolled by Rose and Morgan in the clubhouse. “Hey, what place are we in?” Perez asked.
“First place,” Morgan said. Perez beamed in triumph. “The Dog is hitting .280, and look where we are!”
Bench thought Perez’s positive attitude integral to Cincinnati’s success. Doggie was always up, always had a sense of humor, and had a passion for winning. Because he struggled with the English language, Perez stayed in the background and let others get the credit. Rose called him the silent superstar. Perez didn’t say much, Bench noted, but you were aware of him because of his bat. What Doggie did best, Morgan believed, was win. He was a great clutch hitter, and the Reds never doubted his ability when the game was on the line.
Cincinnati’s season was on the line as the Series switched to the Oakland Coliseum for Game Three. A sudden squall, complete with heavy rain and hail, forced a postponement from Tuesday to Wednesday. The Reds could see the Coliseum from the freeway in their approach. The stadium sat near the Oakland Airport and San Francisco Bay, and the smell of salt air was refreshing as the Reds disembarked from their bus.
The Coliseum’s size was impressive, but it was a drab, gray structure. Nancy Finley, whose father Carl had served as Charlie Finley’s right-hand man from the A’s years in Kansas City up to Charlie O.’s sale of the team in 1980, was grateful for the A’s bright uniforms. The vibrant green, gold, and white, she thought, made up for the lack of color in the Coliseum. To some, it looked like an outbuilding of nearby Alcatraz. Writer Furman Bisher thought the Coliseum had all the festive atmosphere of a quarry.
A’s players called the Coliseum “the Mausoleum.” When the Reds arrived at the stadium, Anderson was not impressed. It was raining, and the field was a mess. “It’s ugly,” Anderson muttered. “I thought Charlie O. had more class than this.”
Anderson didn’t know he was being taped by the media and was surprised to hear his comments played back on television that night. The comments prompted Bay Area columnist Glenn Dickey to write, “A team of boors, the Cincinnati Reds are in our midst this week. . . . The boorishness starts with Manager Spark Anderson . . . a short-hair freak.”
Dickey’s characterization of Anderson and the Reds was likely shared by many in the Bay Area. Oakland in the 1960s and 1970s was home to fringe elements ranging from the rebellious Raiders football squad to the funk music scene that produced Sly and the Family Stone, from the Black Panthers to the Hells Angels. Gang-controlled drug crimes pushed Oakland’s homicide rate in the ’70s to double the figures in New York or San Francisco. One murder grabbed the nation’s headlines. In November 1973 two members of the Symbionese Liberation Army assassinated Oakland superintendent of schools Dr. Marcus Foster and wounded his deputy, Robert Blackburn.
There was also a heightened racial tension between the poverty-stricken black community and predominantly white police force. In response to police brutality Merritt College students Huey Newton and Bobby Seale formed the Black Panther Party. In a 1972 televised interview Angela Davis, a former assistant professor in the philosophy department at UCLA and counterculture activist, declared that the “Black Panthers are extremely active in the Oakland community.”
A growing antiwar movement led to rebellious chants of “Hell no, we won’t go!” at college campuses across the country as opposition to the war in Vietnam reached a historic high. In 1972 students at UCLA protested by tearing up draft cards at Meyerhoff Park. The protestors, UCLA All-America basketball great Bill Walton among them, marched through Westwood, staged sit-ins in buildings and streets, and walked out of classes. An editorial in the student-published campus newspaper, Daily Bruin, told students, “Ending the war starts with you, not the next guy. Keep marching, keep it shut down, until the war ends. It’s the only way, people, . . . the only way.”
One day after the freak hailstorm, the sun was bright and the skies blue as Blue Moon Odom, accompanied by the roar of more than forty-nine thousand fans, delivered the first pitch of Game Three to Rose. Odom continued the starvation of the Reds’ top three hitters, striking out Rose and Morgan and getting Tolan to ground out.
Odom’s opposite, Jack Billingham, responded in kind, sandwiching strikeouts of Campaneris and Rudi around a Matty Alou groundout.
The starting time of the game—5:30 on the West Coast—was arranged to accommodate prime-time viewing back east. The field, still lined with white yardage stripes and hash marks from the Raiders’ victory over visiting Buffalo the previous Sunday, was wet and heavy and the air misty, and the players saw extended shadows everywhere they looked.
Williams blamed the twilight start on his boss. Finley insisted on playing a World Series game at night, and the A’s skipper was fine with that as long as the game started at night. He figured Finley forgot that when it was prime time on the East Coast, the sun was still sh
ining low on the West Coast—Low enough, Williams knew, to cast long shadows and screw up hitters. Thanks to Charlie, Williams thought, it was his own team, his million-dollar baby, that was the first to get fouled up by the twilight start.
Due in part to the shadowy setting, Game Three was dominated by the right arms of Blue Moon and Cactus Jack. Odom would fan 11—3 more than his season high—in seven innings; Billingham, 7 in eight-plus innings.
For all of the feisty words leading up to it, Game Three was a quiet affair. In the third inning Rose reached on a walk, stole second, and pressured catcher Gene Tenace into a throwing error that allowed Pete to hustle to third. He was stranded when second baseman Dick Green roamed far to his right and some ten feet onto the soggy outfield grass, making a diving stop of Morgan’s apparent hit for the final out.
The Reds threatened in the fifth, but with runners on second and third Rose was called out looking. Pete protested violently, screaming at home plate umpire Mel Steiner and slamming his bat into the dirt at home plate. A’s fans, seeing Rose in person for the first time, littered left field with eggs and assorted produce. Reds rooters responded by unfurling a “Rose Garden” banner behind where Pete positioned himself in left field. It was all reminiscent of the 1934 World Series, when Cardinals left fielder Joe “Ducky” Medwick was the target of apples, oranges, and grapefruits tossed by irate Tigers fans.
Billingham was in serious trouble just once, when Oakland loaded the bases with one out in the sixth. But Cactus Jack got Bando to ground to Morgan for the inning-ending double play. Other than that rally, Williams thought his offense was sleepwalking through Game Three.
Bench believed there was another reason for Oakland’s lack of offense. After seeing the A’s attack in the first two games, he wished Cactus Jack could have started Game One. Bench believed that of all the Reds’ pitchers Billingham was the one whose style was most suited to beating the Mustache Gang. Cactus Jack pitched to corners and had a sinker and big slider, and Bench believed that was the best way to get the A’s out.
The game’s lone run came in the seventh and was provided by Perez. The Big Dog began the inning with just the second hit of the game for Cincinnati, a ground single to left.
Denis Menke sacrificed Perez to second, and Geronimo lofted a soft single to shallow center. The A’s home field betrayed them. The ball came to a sudden stop on the sodden turf, and as center fielder George Hendrick slogged in to retrieve it and then returned the ball to the infield with a surprisingly casual underhand throw, Perez raced home.
Curt Gowdy would call what happened next “the most surprising play of the Series.” As he rounded third, Perez slipped on the slick grass near the coaching box. Bando’s shouts of “Home! Home!” were drowned out by the big crowd. Perez got up and ran as Campaneris, his back to the infield, held the ball. The throw had gone to Campy rather than to the proper cutoff man, Green.
Perez thought the A’s might get him when he went down, but since he had been waved home, he got up and kept going. Maybe Oakland could have got Perez, Tenace said, but Campy had his back to the infield, and there was no way for him to hear Bando above the crowd noise.
Leading for the first time in this Fall Classic, the Reds sought an insurance run in the ninth against Blue, who had replaced Odom an inning earlier. Blue Moon wanted to stay in. “It was,” he said, “one of the best games I ever pitched.”
Williams announced following Game Two that rather than start Game Four, Vida would be used out of the bullpen. Williams later said he made a mistake in not telling Blue of his plans. Vida shrugged it off. “I’ll do anything they want,” he told Sport magazine’s Al Hirshberg on the flight to Oakland. “If being there [in the bullpen] helps the team win, that’s where I go.”
Rose thought it a brilliant move by the A’s skipper. The Reds, he said, would look at that left-hander warming up and know what they were going to have to face if they knocked the starter from the game.
Vida retired Rose on a lineout to second but then walked Morgan and surrendered a single to Tolan. Williams headed to the hill and brought in Fingers to face Bench. Rollie ran the count to 3-2, then was joined by Williams and Tenace in a mound conference. Prior to heading to the hill, Williams told pitching coach Bill Posedel that he was going to go the mound and act like he was giving Fingers hell because he shouldn’t be giving Bench anything to hit with first base open. Williams was going to wave his arms and act like he was calling for an intentional ball four. At the same time he was going to tell Fingers to throw the ball over the plate for strike three.
“Bench will never know what hit him,” Williams said. He had tried the ploy a few times in the minors, but it had never worked. This would be the first time he tried it in a major league game. Posedel was stunned Williams would try such a Little League stunt in the World Series. He looked at his skipper and asked, “What the hell are you talking about?”
Bench saw Fingers raise his hand as if objecting to something William was telling him. Despite the pantomime Williams was telling Fingers to be sure he threw a breaking ball because if he threw a fastball and Bench realized what the A’s were trying to pull, he would hit the hell out of the ball.
Fingers said Williams was “pointing everywhere, and all the while he’s telling Tenace and me how Gino is going to stick his arm out and then hop back behind the plate.”
Tenace extended his right hand to indicate an intentional walk. Watching from the dugout, Williams wasn’t confident the A’s could pull it off. Morgan, leading off third, figured it out and yelled to Bench, “Be alive! They’re going to pitch to you!”
Fingers was playing it cool, acting nonchalant, but when he looked over to third and heard Morgan yelling, he got rid of the ball—quickly. “I don’t know whether Bench heard him or not,” Fingers said. “He looked about half-ready.”
Tenace jumped back behind the plate. Bench was ours, Williams thought. Bench stood frozen as the pitch sliced over the outside part of the plate. Williams called it a “nasty slider.” Fingers thought it the “best slider I’ve ever thrown.” Williams figured he had just grabbed his fifteen minutes of fame by fooling Johnny Bench on national TV. The Coliseum crowd hooted and shrieked as sixty million people watching on national television gawked at the sight of the A’s faking an intentional pass and figuratively pulling down the pants of the greatest catcher in the game.
Bench heard Morgan yell at him to be alive. He could have swung at the ball if it had been down the middle. But since it was down and away he had no chance.
Fingers thought Bench looked like he couldn’t tell if it was going to be a ball or strike and thus figured he might be better off taking it. Fingers thought the pitch couldn’t have been in a better place, and Williams agreed. He said the play wouldn’t work unless the ball broke sharply, adding, “Fingers threw it perfectly.”
Critics screamed that the unconventional A’s would do anything to win. All the proud Bench knew was that the A’s had made him look, in his words, “like an ass.” When a teammate told Bench, “[You] couldn’t have hit that pitch anyway,” it was small comfort. “Everybody Plays the Fool” was a hit song that year by the Main Ingredient, and Bench could relate. “I felt like an idiot,” he said.
On Joe Garagiola’s “World Series Report,” which opened NBC-TV’s Game Four coverage, Bench told the nation the Reds were now aware of the type of ball the A’s played.
The bigger story was Billingham. The twenty-nine-year-old’s 12-12 record that season was deceiving. After dropping his first five decisions, he rebounded to become the Reds’ most reliable pitcher, fronting the Cincinnati staff in innings pitched and strikeouts.
Billingham’s heavy lifting in the latter part of the season belied the fact that in the Reds’ clubhouse Cactus Jack was also Sleepy Jack and responded to calls of “Rip.” His teammates figured anyone who required 12–14 hours of sleep must be kin to Rip Van Winkle, who, legend had it, stole away to take a twenty-year snooze in the Catskills.
Billingham was anything but sleepy in his first outing in Oakland. If he could make the A’s beat the ball into the ground, Billingham believed he would be all right. But he would have to keep the ball low. He was a sinker ball pitcher and knew he would run into trouble if his pitches were up in the zone. Cactus Jack followed his plan perfectly. The A’s three hits off him were of the infield variety, and two of them were bunts. Oakland hit just three balls to the outfield against Billingham.
Clay Carroll closed out Game Three, and Cincinnati went into Game Four seeking to tie the series. NBC viewers were greeted with the network’s opening—the instrumental theme music, Joe Garagiola’s “World Series Report,” and then a camera-panning shot of a cloud-shrouded Coliseum and the classic Gowdy voice-over: “Temperature in the mid-50s. . . . Misting, overcast in the Bay Area. Welcome to Game Four of the 1972 World Series.”
It was a misty, chill night, the weather as crisp and tart as apple cider. Garagiola advised batters to hit the ball in the middle of the bat; anything at the top or near the handle would sting the hands “like a swarm of bees.” The fourth consecutive sellout crowd saw a mound matchup that brought together two of the top left-handed hurlers of the 1970s—Ken Holtzman and Don Gullett. They were key contributors to six consecutive World Series champions from 1972 to 1977, and they dueled deep into the night in Game Four.
Bench was looking forward to the showdown between the fire-balling Gullett and the A’s hitters. “Gullett’s gonna overpower them,” Bench told Garagiola in the pregame. “I think he can beat this club.”
Gowdy opened NBC’s Game Four coverage by asking, “When are the hitters going to start hitting?” The Reds were confident they would reach Holtzman for a couple of runs and even take the Series. They put two runners on in the top of the first before Holtzman put down the uprising by fanning Perez. Gullett blew away the A’s for the first three frames.
The early innings were marked by web gems from Menke at third and Dave Concepcion at short and by the hard slides into Green at second by Bench and Hal McRae. In the top of the fifth Rose sent Alou to the wall in right for the final out. In the Oakland half, Tenace stepped in with one out. Jim Simpson made the call on NBC Radio over the excited roar of 49,410: “Tenace hits this one a long way to left field, down the line. . . . It is gone!”