Dodgerland

by Michael Fallon

  Though the Boston faithful took the loss hard—alternately seeing the tragedy as yet another instance of the “curse of the Bambino” or as the fault of the weak-hitting Yankee shortstop who would forever forward be known as “Bucky Fucking Dent”—the Yankees were pleasantly stunned that things went their way (even if they always seemed to do so). For New York it was a pleasant bit of vindication after such a long and tedious year of struggle and strife. After the game, as one sportswriter described, the Yankees sat in the subdued visitors’ clubhouse, eschewing the traditional explosion of emotion and bubbly spirits, and together they just relished the moment. Players talked about whatever came to mind—“the sun, the Rocky Mountains, new and old managers, candy, God, revenge, and other pertinent topics”—anything but the ball game.13

  They didn’t need to talk about the ball game. After all, the Yankees had won and once again were the American League champs—and no one could take that away from them.

  28

  Chronic Hysteresis; or, Another Yankees-Dodgers Rematch

  Father, friend, and locker room inspiration that will never be forgotten.

  —Davey Lopes, on the death of Jim Gilliam

  It’s hard to win a pennant, but it’s harder losing one.

  —Chuck Tanner

  It was, as Yogi Berra might have said, déjà vu all over again in both the National League and the American League Championship Series. For the second straight year the NL West champion Dodgers faced the NL East champs, the Phillies, for the National League title. And in the American League the Yankees faced the Royals for the third straight year. In both cases as well, because of the history of the previous year, two teams—the Phillies and Royals—had something to prove against their rivals, the Dodgers and Yankees.

  In the American League Championship Series, the Yankees, who hardly had time to catch their breath after their dramatic victory in Fenway Park on October 2, flew to Kansas City for the opening game. And they promptly continued their seasonal roll, beating the Royals 7–1 on the strength of a gutsy two-hit pitching performance by rookie starter Jim Beattie and second-year reliever Ken Clay. The sixteen hits that the Yankees’ lineup recorded against the Royals’ starter, Dennis Leonard—which included a double and home run by Reggie Jackson—of course helped as well. While the Royals came back to win the next day, 10–4, the series was never much in doubt once it returned to New York. On October 6 the Yankees won the third game of the series 6–5, coming back in the bottom of the eighth inning on a two-run home run by Thurman Munson that proved to be the difference in the game. In the fourth and final game, the Yankees turned to their ace, twenty-five-game winner Ron Guidry, to shut down the Royals. After giving up a single run in the first inning, Guidry settled down to lead the Yankees to another one-run win, 2–1.

  After the game the Royals, who had now been knocked out of the playoffs by the Yankees three straight times, were understandably stunned—so much so that they seemed desperate for some sort of explanation for their plight. And in their desperation they fixed on a single play in Game Four that they decided made all the difference in the Series. In the fifth inning, with runners on first and second and just one out, and the game tied 1–1, the Royals rookie speedster Willie Wilson attempted to take matters into his own hands by stealing third base. It was a close play, but, as often seems to be the case at critical moments with the Yankees, third base umpire Lou DiMuro shattered Wilson’s hopes. “I couldn’t believe it when he called me out,” said Wilson. “I thought I was in there standing up.” And Wilson wasn’t the only one who thought DiMuro missed the call. “I don’t usually get on umpires,” said Royals first baseman Pete LaCock, “but he didn’t even wait. I saw it on instant replay and he was safe.” Even the Royals’ manager, Whitey Herzog, a veteran of nearly thirty baseball seasons, could not believe the call. “He was safe,” said Herzog. “You could see that. All the world thought he was safe except for the man (umpire) at third. He had him (Wilson) out before he even got there.”1 Whatever the truth of the play, the call on the field turned out to make all the difference, as, one inning later, the Yankees went ahead for good.

  After the game the Royals were crushed—the latest in a string of teams convinced that they were forever cursed to be play second fiddle to the franchise from the Bronx. “Things just don’t look like they ever want to work out for us,” said Kansas City shortstop Fred Patek.2 To many it seemed like just another instance of the ball inexplicably bouncing in the direction of the Yankees, something the Dodgers no doubt recalled from their bad fortune in Game One of the 1977 World Series. Indeed, after the Yankees’ amazing comeback in the American League East from fourteen games back—a distance that had been traveled by only one other team before, the 1914 Boston Braves, who came back to win the pennant after being fifteen games out of first place—the Yankees’ ability to win the big games, over and over, had begun to seem somehow miraculous.

  The Yankees’ victims in the 1977 World Series, the Dodgers, meanwhile were performing seemingly preordained feats of their own against the frustrated Phillies. In the first two games of the series, at the Phillies’ tough home ballpark—Veterans Park, where the home team had recorded a 54-28 record in 1978—the Dodgers barreled over Philadelphia to take a commanding 2-0 lead in the series. This was despite the pregame predictions of Phillies manager Danny Ozark that his team, which had ended the season on a high after vanquishing division rival Pittsburgh, would take the series in three straight games. In the first game L.A. came out swinging, collecting four home runs—including two by Steve Garvey, who also tripled—against a succession of Phillies pitchers. In the game every Dodger starter had recorded at least one hit by the sixth inning. It was, in a word, a complete shellacking. “Hell,” said Phillies first baseman Richie Hebner after the game, “we play good baseball at home but we haven’t won one (playoff) game here yet. I don’t know why.” Though the in-your-face comments of their opponent’s manager may have rankled some in the Dodger clubhouse, after the game various Dodgers revealed they had been inspired by something else. In the Inglewood Hospital back home, Dodger coach Jim Gilliam, several weeks after having suffered a brain hemorrhage, was facing a grim prognosis. As the days wore on it seemed in fact that the Dodger coach was unlikely ever to recover, and so the Dodgers responded in the only way they knew how. “We dedicated the playoffs and Series to Jim Gilliam,” said Dave Lopes after Game One of the National League Championship Series, “and that’s all I could think about and that’s why you saw me getting mentally ready and as psyched up as I could. Every time I went to the plate I thought about him, and I could hear the Devil (Gilliam’s nickname) talking to me. . . . We’re coming at them with everything we’ve got, and hopefully it will be enough.”3

  In Game Two, with Tommy John on the mound serving up his sinking fastball, the Phillies flailed away in frustration, recording just four hits and no runs in a 4–0 loss. Afterward, they had nothing but kind words for John’s gutsy complete-game performance. “I had pitches to hit,” said meaty Phillies outfielder Greg Luzinski, “but I hit ’em in the ground.”4 From there it was just a matter of time before the Dodgers clinched the series. In Game Three in Los Angeles, the Phillies did momentarily come to life, knocking Don Sutton out of the game in the sixth inning and handing the Dodger ace his first postseason loss of his career. Afterward, even though they still faced an uphill climb in needing to win two more games in L.A. to take the series, the Phillies were defiant. “Everybody said we were out of it,” said Greg Luzinski. “But a lot of crazy things can happen.” Luzinski, who had been quiet in the first two games of the Series, had recorded three hits in Game Three, including a home run. “We knew if we could beat Sutton and get a shot at (Doug) Rau,” said Richie Hebner, “that there was a chance. . . . We’ve been fighting and scrapping all year.”5

  The Dodgers’ Series-clinching victory, when it came, was the dramatic, unlikely sort of win that baseball fans live for. With Jim Gilliam still in the hospital, and still com
atose, and with the hometown stadium filled to capacity, the Dodgers scrapped and fought and emerged victorious in a dramatic, back-and-forth ten-inning, one-run game. The hero of the game, unlikely as it seemed, was Bill Russell, while the goat was, just as unlikely, a usually sure-handed outfielder on the Phillies named Garry Maddox. Before the last out was recorded, the home crowd had had a lot to cheer for: Doug Rau’s gutsy performance, pitching through trouble well enough to keep the game close for the Dodgers; Rick Rhoden’s strong showing in long relief, giving up just one run on a home run by Garry Maddox; Dusty Baker’s four-hit day, capped off by a clutch RBI against the Phillies’ starter Randy Lerch; Steve Garvey’s home run in the sixth, his fourth in the four-game Series; and so on. The winning rally came in the bottom of the tenth, after Dodger closer Terry Forster had clamped down on the Phillies in the top of the inning by recording two strikeouts against the heart of their order. With two outs against the tough Tug McGraw, Ron Cey started the Dodger rally with a walk. Then Baker, who had been unstoppable all evening, hit a hard line drive to center field. Even in the most ordinary of circumstances, against a barely adequate fielder, it was a routine play that should have ended the inning and extended the game. And in this case, setting up to catch the batted ball in “graceful, loping strides,” was one of the best outfielders in the game—a multiple Gold Glove winner whose nickname, “the Secretary of Defense,” said it all.6 But Maddox missed the ball. When Bill Russell followed up with a bloop single up the middle, the fleet center fielder tried to make amends by turning a tough play, rushing in from his position as Cey rounded third and headed for home, but it wasn’t to be. Maddox couldn’t come up with the ball, and Cey scored, sending the Dodgers back to the World Series.

  After the game Maddox couldn’t explain what happened. “I don’t think it was a tough play at all,” he told reporters at his locker. “It was very routine. It was a line drive right at me that should have been caught. I missed it. Nothing distracted me. This is probably something I’ll never forget the rest of my life.”7 And his teammates were just as stunned as Maddox. “If he has that play to make a million times,” said Phillies third baseman Mike Schmidt, “he makes in 999,999 times.” (The man who hit the ball, meanwhile, Dusty Baker, tried to defend his fellow outfielder after the game. “The toughest thing to catch in the outfield,” Baker said, “is the low, sinking line drive that’s scalded out there. It looks easy but it’s the toughest play there is out there.”) Even Danny Ozark couldn’t seem to comprehend what happened. “It seems like all the bad things happen to the good guys,” he said.8 For the Dodgers, however, the victory was sweet, and the win led to an uncharacteristic outpouring of emotion—the Dodgers comporting themselves, according to one source, like “25 sailors on the first night of a 30-night leave.”9 After the requisite mob scene at home plate in the bottom of the tenth inning in Game Four, the Dodgers left the field, screaming profanity as they crossed through the stadium tunnel to the clubhouse. In the clubhouse, then, for nearly forty minutes, Lasorda loudly proclaimed his love for any and all players in his proximity, while Steve Yeager asked loudly over and over where the party would be. Young pitcher Lance Rautzhan, soaking up the scene despite his modest contributions on the season, held his four-year-old son as he spritzed Rick Rhoden with champagne. Even Steve Garvey, a noted nondrinker on a club of good-time players, sat drinking a beer while he was interviewed by two radio announcers about being named the Series MVP.

  A day later, unfortunately, the inevitable news came. Jim Gilliam passed away in the hospital where he had been ever since collapsing nearly a month before. At a funeral held in the morning, in the off day before the first game of the World Series, his manager from his playing days Walt Alston spoke fondly of Gilliam. “The first ball that came to him, he dropped,” Alston said of his introduction to Gilliam in Montreal in 1951. “It was the first time he had ever played the outfield. The next ball that came out there was over his head. He turned his back, ran out and caught it over his shoulder. I don’t remember him ever dropping a ball again.” Alston pointed out that he had seen Gilliam play for a total of sixteen seasons over his career—two at Montreal, and fourteen for the Dodgers. “I don’t think he ever changed,” said Alston. “He was the same the first time I saw him as the last—a quiet, hard-working ballplayer and a great guy. . . . He could do so many things that most people didn’t know about. He could play pool, he could play bridge, and he could play baseball. But more important than all of that, he could relate to people so that he was just as good off the field as on it. In all the years we worked together, there wasn’t a cross word ever between us. He was the ideal ballplayer and the ideal human being.”10 Officiating at the funeral was the Reverend Jesse Jackson, and pallbearers (both active and symbolic) included a host of former and past Dodger players and coaches, including Dave Lopes, Steve Garvey, Lee Lacy, Joe Black, Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, and many others. Gilliam left behind his wife of many years, Edwina, and four children—two boys and two girls—as well as an entire team who admired him.

  In 1978, then, the inevitable had occurred again. New York had somehow again won it all in the American League, and Los Angeles had beaten the powerful Phillies, setting up a rematch between the Yankees and Dodgers for another world championship showdown. It would be the tenth such meeting between the two teams in the World Series, going back to the days they both were in New York—the most of any two teams in the league—and it would be the third time the two teams had met in back-to-back World Series. And while fans of the also-rans across the country—in Kansas City, Boston, and Philadelphia—could not be consoled after their teams’ losses, much of the rest of the country looked forward to another matchup between the Boys in Blue and Mr. October and his Pinstriped Bombers.

  From the get-go, something about the Dodgers-Yankees rematch felt familiar, close at hand. It wasn’t a feeling of déjà vu, exactly, unlike with the League Championship Series. This was more the opposite: a realization that, although we knew the world had grown a year older, the 1978 World Series was the same as the year before. This was like a science fiction time loop—a.k.a. chronic hysteresis, as occurred in the popular 1977 young adult novel I Am the Cheese by Robert Cormier. In that story the lead character lives and relives the same experience over and over, like a long loop of film playing again and again. In the 1978 World Series, just as the year before, the Dodgers—who had essentially the same lineup as in 1977—came into the series in a confident mood. They were focused and intent on exploiting the weaknesses of an overpaid Yankees team. They seemed halfway assured of their inevitable victory. And looking over the teams’ separate lineups, pundits generally agreed with the team from L.A.

  Despite their comeback against the Red Sox, the Yankees’ clubhouse, and particularly its pitching staff, had been torn apart by injuries this year. The team had lost so many starting pitchers in 1978—including Don Gullett, Andy Messersmith, and Ken Holzman—that manager Bob Lemon had been forced to go with a shaky four-man rotation throughout the playoffs that included one untested rookie, Jim Beattie, and one ailing veteran, Catfish Hunter, who was struggling with chronic shoulder soreness and other issues. Meanwhile, the Yankees had lost their starting second baseman, Willie Randolph, for the series. His place would be taken by an untested rookie, Brian Doyle, who had batted just .192 in a limited role on the season. Chris Chambliss was suffering through hamstring troubles. Mickey Rivers was ailing. And on and on. The Dodgers, meanwhile, were relatively healthy, boasting a pitching staff with a surfeit of starting pitchers—John, Sutton, the rookie Bob Welch, left-hander Rau, Hooton, Rick Rhoden—and several young live-armed relievers. Plus, the boys were loose and focused, dedicating what they expected to be their World Series run to “Devil” Gilliam. Even an editorial in the hometown paper seemed to confirm what everyone believed. “The Dodgers have learned a few things since last year’s series, such as how to fight with each other in the locker room,” suggested a cheeky editorial title
d “Let’s Get World Serious.” “Like a lot of people we know, the Dodgers are older and meaner, and intent on achieving ultimate success before it’s too late. There is no need for inspiration: the mere thought that winners make more money is sufficient. And, as a wise editor once told us, it does not matter how you play the game, so long as you win.”

  An additional boost to the Dodgers was the fact that, unlike in 1977, the World Series started in Los Angeles. The Series also, unlike the year previous, started with a convincing Dodger win. In Game One it was the Dave Lopes show. Wearing, like the rest of his teammates, a black patch on his right arm with a white “No. 19” embossed on it in tribute to his friend Jim Gilliam, the Dodgers’ second baseman slugged two home runs and collected five RBIs in the Dodgers’ convincing 12–5 win. Also contributing to the Dodgers fifteen-hit barrage were Dusty Baker, who homered in the second inning and collected three hits; Bill Russell, who had three hits and scored a run; and Steve Garvey, who had two hits and scored once. The Dodgers’ starter, Tommy John, was solid enough to get the win, scattering eight hits and five runs by the Yankees over nearly eight innings of work. By the time he was removed with two outs in the eighth, one reporter noted, John had forced the Yankee battery to hit twenty ground balls.

  After the game someone pointed out that the last time the team won the first game of a World Series was 1963, the year that the Dodgers famously swept the Mantle-Maris-Berra-era Yankees (and the only time the Yankees have ever been swept in a Series). Lasorda shouted that this was all dedicated to Gilliam. “We are determined to dedicate a world championship to him,” Lasorda said. Lopes explained, meanwhile, that he was in a groove. “I’ve probably never been more relaxed,” he said. “I’m relaxed because I’m very confident that we’re the best team until the Yankees prove otherwise.”11 And in fact, in his behavior on the field in Game One, Lopes almost seemed to be challenging the Yankees to respond. After his second home run, for instance, Lopes thrust his fist in the air as he rounded the bases, coaxing the home-crowd fans to respond with a kind of “Dodger power” salute—even as his opponents watched and seethed.