by Mark Frost
Tiant came right at him with a fastball, taken, strike one.
At Sparky’s urging, Cincinnati’s hitting coach, fifty-one-year-old Ted Kluszewski—one of the greatest pure sluggers in Reds history, a sequoia of a man with Popeye biceps—had counseled Griffey that day to be more patient at the plate and wait for his pitch. Home run hitters didn’t historically have a strong record as hitting instructors—power was still regarded then as more an instinct than a coach-able skill—but Kluszewski, a sensitive, patient, and intelligent man, had worked wonders with the Reds lineup; one could argue that he had also been given an embarrassment of wonders with which to work. But Ken Griffey had been one of “Klu’s” best projects.
Outside, fastball, ball one.
Griffey had been playing organized ball for only six years, and as a kid had hardly even been schooled in the game’s fundamentals. He was a football and basketball star in his hometown of Donora, Pennsylvania, and he played baseball primarily to have something to do during the off-season. A Reds scout, there to check out another player at one of his high school games, put a stopwatch on Griffey and was astonished to realize he motored from home to first base faster than any player he’d ever timed. The Reds drafted Griffey in the twenty-ninth round in 1969 for that one reason: They had just made an organization-wide commitment that, because of the artificial carpet they were installing in their new home, Riverfront Stadium, their club would be built on speed. Although he had college football scholarships on the table, Griffey decided to accept the Reds’ offer of immediate cash: $500 a month to join their team in the rookie league. Their long-shot bet on Griffey’s potential paid off quickly; by 1973 he’d earned a late-season call-up to the big club and hit .384. By 1975, his rapid development had made possible Sparky’s shuffle of Rose to third base, and Griffey responded to his promotion by hitting .305, stealing sixteen bases, and most important, getting on base enough to be driven in ninety-five times by the big guns batting behind him.
Screwball, breaking away from the left-handed Griffey, outside and low, 2–1.
He had also, at Kluszewski’s insistence, started to learn patience at the plate. Drawing sixty-seven walks in 1975, Griffey’s on-base percentage nearly reached .400, the most reliable indicator that he had arrived as a major-league talent.
Griffey swung at a high off-speed curve, fouling it back near the broadcast booth, where Tony Kubek almost caught it barehanded. Griffey chopped the next sidearm breaking ball foul off first base.
Kubek mentioned on the air that Luis Tiant often reminded him of Juan Marichal, the star of the San Francisco Giants’ pitching staff in the 1960s. Marichal, one of the first players to reach the major leagues from the baseball-crazed Dominican Republic, had been known for his high leg kick, which had a similarly distracting effect on hitters. He also possessed extraordinary control and the ability to adapt his pitching style to whatever the circumstances of a game required, all qualities he shared with Tiant. Only a few years apart in age, Marichal and Tiant had briefly crossed paths as teammates in Boston the previous season; after one last stint with the Dodgers, Marichal had recently announced his retirement, and eight years later he would become the first Latin-born pitcher to enter the Hall of Fame.
Tiant’s next pitch, another screwball that Griffey resisted, just missed the outside corner to run the count to full. Griffey’s patience paid off when the payoff pitch missed inside, the first time Tiant had come inside to him during the entire at bat. Griffey trotted to first with a walk.
Second baseman Joe Morgan came to the plate. Standing a trim, compact five foot seven, he looked like a school kid beside the imposing, battle-geared Carlton Fisk, but Morgan was only weeks away from being named the National League’s Most Valuable Player for the 1975 season. Born in Bonham, Texas, Morgan had come of age in Oakland, California, where despite his small stature he’d made himself into one of the toughest players to ever come out of an extremely tough neighborhood. Signing after high school as a low-level prospect with the National League’s new Houston Colt .45s franchise, Morgan shocked everyone in that organization by making it all the way to the big-league club by the end of his first full season in professional ball. Within two years, at the age of twenty-one, he had established himself as the team’s everyday second baseman, the same year they changed their name to the Houston Astros. A pattern had been established that would persist for much of his career, and indeed his life: Joe Morgan striving to overcome the limits imposed on him by other people’s inaccurate perceptions. Morgan’s size played a considerable part in those prejudicial opinions and in those days, in baseball and the South, so did his race. His confidence in himself then had a lot to make up for—and in the opinion of many often turned to arrogance—but it never wavered. And this season, in 1975, as he played for Sparky and the Reds, that great talent had come to full fruition.
Morgan dug in, took his stance, oversized bat held high, and snapped his left elbow up and down like an airplane flap, one of the most imitated batter’s box tics in baseball. Tiant made a couple of tosses over to first base, trying to keep Griffey close to the bag. Tiant’s stretch windup was every bit as eccentric as his full one; bringing his hand and glove together at chest level as he straddled the rubber, he brought them down to his waist in a series of small bounces, as if they were being lowered by a ratchet. The routine never looked the same way twice, and at any point in the process he might whirl and fire to first; the Old Man had indeed helped teach him a superb pickoff move, one of the best for a right hander in either league.
* * *
THE “BALK”
Before the Series, Sparky Anderson, who’d never managed against Luis Tiant—and only seen him throw in a game once in person, briefly, during the 1974 All-Star Game—had watched film on Boston’s ace and thought he’d spotted something he could exploit. To Sparky’s eye, it appeared that Tiant never brought the ball to a complete stop during that stretch windup and often released his pickoff throws to first base before planting his left foot; the baseball rule book states the pitcher must land that step before throwing or it should be considered an attempt to “deceive the runner” and be ruled a balk, awarding the runner free passage to the next base. Sparky brought these points up to the umpiring crew ahead of Game One—there were later rumors that he’d sent videotape of Tiant to their office ahead of time, which he denied—and he talked it up extensively to the press, a form of psychological warfare to try to gain an advantage for his runners against the crafty Tiant. The Reds had led the National League with 168 stolen bases, and were successful 82 percent of the time they ran; Sparky knew that getting a balk called early, possibly breaking Tiant’s confidence and concentration in the process, could be a key to beating him. National and American League umpires were still administered by two separate organizations, the World Series and All-Star Game being the only two occasions when they actually worked together. The composite umpire crew chosen for the Series had consequently spent extensive time reviewing the balk rule before Game One, which put the issue in the forefront of their minds.
In the fourth inning of Game One, Sparky’s tactic paid off. After Tiant retired the first ten batters he faced, Joe Morgan singled to become the Reds’ first base runner. Tiant made two routine throws to first, then caught Morgan leaning toward second and nearly picked him off on the third; the crowd and Sox first baseman Cecil Cooper thought he was out. After Tiant’s fourth pickoff throw, first base umpire Nick Colosi called a balk and waved Morgan to second. Red Sox manager Darrell Johnson ran out to argue the call, and Tiant rushed over from the mound, both of them shouting at Colosi. Tiant was outraged and for good reason; he hadn’t had a balk called on him in the American League for the last six years. On tape, in NBC’s slow-motion replay, Tiant’s left foot clearly lands before he makes the throw, but at least one of the umpires—from the Reds’ National League, it should be noted—appeared to have been influenced by Sparky’s lobbying; Nick Colosi had swallowed the bait. Morgan later admitted that h
e wasn’t sure an American League umpire would have made the same call, but insisted it was still his job to try to make Tiant balk. Sparky’s mind game had worked to perfection, landing his best runner on second with only one out and a still visibly upset Tiant facing the Reds’ dangerous cleanup man Johnny Bench: advantage Reds. A furious Darrell Johnson and the rest of the Red Sox bench continued to give Colosi an earful from the dugout, stirring up the crowd against him. Colosi—a onetime waiter at New York’s famed Copacabana nightclub, and notorious for his imperial air on the field—came over to stab a finger in the air at Johnson and threaten him with ejection.
“I realized while I was arguing that this was just what Cincinnati wanted me to do,” said Tiant. “I just told myself not to get mad and get back to thinking about pitching.”
Red Sox second baseman Denny Doyle trotted over to Tiant on the mound and reminded him to forget about it; Tiant patted him reassuringly on the cheek, and it was clear he already had. While the hubbub roiled on around him, Tiant regained his composure, bearing down and battling Johnny Bench for ten pitches before finally getting him to foul out to Fisk. As the chant of “Loo-eee, Loo-eee!” broke out in Fenway, Tiant then struck out first baseman Tony Perez to end the inning and the threat created by the phantom balk. The Reds would advance only three runners as far as second base during the rest of the game, and the unflappable Tiant cruised to a five-hit, 6–0 shutout victory in Game One.
* * *
Morgan had managed only two hits off Tiant while facing him nine times during the Series, but he’d also worked him for two walks. No one had to remind Morgan to be patient at the plate—with his small strike zone and good eye, he led the majors in bases on balls with 132—and he worked the count full against Tiant now. Morgan not only led the Reds in steals with 67, with Sparky’s blessing he’d become their de facto base running coach, with Ken Griffey, the runner at first, his number one disciple. Morgan ran clinics during their practice sessions, showing his teammates how to measure and hold a precise lead, how to read a pitcher’s motion for tells on when best to break for second, and how to use the threat of stealing to disrupt his concentration. But oddly, for most of the season, with Griffey batting ahead of him, Morgan had forbidden the fleet young outfielder to attempt to steal or even feint toward second while he was at the plate, claiming it distracted him while he was trying to hit, a large part of why, despite Morgan’s tutelage, a man with Griffey’s extraordinary motor had stolen only sixteen bases that season. Although Joe had supposedly “given Sparky the green light” to send runners ahead of him during the Series—more on their unusual relationship to come—Griffey never made a move toward second during Morgan’s first at bat, which ended when he popped a high foul up above the screen that drifted on the wind blowing steadily toward center and died quietly in Fisk’s mitt.
Reds catcher Johnny Bench stepped in. Although more circumspect in his public comments about it than Pete Rose, Bench had been similarly frustrated by the steady diet of off-speed stuff he’d seen from Tiant during the Series. One of the greatest fastball hitters the game had ever known, he felt he was seeing Tiant’s ball well but just couldn’t get his bat on it; he’d had no more success against him to date than Pete Rose, going 1–8 with only one RBI. Still bothered by his cold, his injured left shoulder aching in the cool New England air, Bench took a fastball for a strike, fouled the next one off, and then missed a low slider that broke out of the zone for Tiant’s first strikeout.
The crowd rose to their feet again, Tiant trotted to the dugout, and the Red Sox came in for their first turn at bat.
FIVE
Luis doesn’t want to impress them.
He only wants to beat them.
RED SOX PITCHING COACH STAN WILLIAMS
It’s just a stay of execution for Boston.
JOE MORGAN
FOR ALL THEIR SUCCESS IN 1975, WINNING ONE HUNDRED games to this point, the Red Sox had reached Game Six of the World Series without the presence or benefit all season of a single “traditional leadoff” man. Since the advent of the personal computer in the 1980s, a new breed of baseball statisticians has revolutionized the way players are viewed and evaluated. Although these analysts were initially amateurs working outside the professional structure of the game, most teams have embraced their findings and many now employ at least one full-time “sabermatrician,” after the Society for American Baseball Research, or SABR, founded by Bill James, who is currently a consultant for the Red Sox. Baseball is a game exquisitely suited to measurement by numbers, with a vast trove of available—and, before these passionate wonks came along, previously underutilized—historical records. As they sifted through this remarkable database, breaking down every aspect of the game into new arcane definitions of value—like True Defensive Range, or the number of actual Runs Created—their formulas for the first time provided a solid scientific understanding for many of the game’s traditions, and called into question most of its conventional wisdoms.
One of the most stubbornly enduring ideas in baseball had been that you stick your speediest player at the top of the lineup, turn him loose, and hope that a lot of stolen bases translate into runs, a notion that for a number of reasons the game’s new statistics had largely discredited. (The last man to fit that profile for the Red Sox, outfielder Tommy Harper—who’d set a team record for steals with fifty-four in 1973—had been traded after the ’74 season to make way for promising rookies Jim Rice and Fred Lynn.) A more refined philosophy had begun to emerge that you should send the man with the best on base percentage (hits plus walks plus hit-by-pitches, divided by at bats plus walks plus HBP plus sacrifices) to the plate first in the hopes of then bringing him around, as Sparky Anderson was able to consistently do with Pete Rose, who stole not a single base in 1975, but reached first more than 40 percent of the time.
In 1975 Boston’s manager Darrell Johnson didn’t possess that luxury; the highest OBPs among his regulars belonged to Fred Lynn and Carlton Fisk, men he wanted and needed deeper in his lineup because of their ability to drive in runs. His Red Sox had stolen only sixty-six bases all season, and the co-leaders on Johnson’s squad were Lynn and the disabled Jim Rice, both with ten; Sparky’s Reds had six regulars with as many as or more steals than that, including catcher Johnny Bench. Johnson’s best option was probably reserve outfielder Bernie Carbo, who’d drawn a lot of walks and performed well in the leadoff spot earlier in the season, but he had been injured and gone cold down the stretch; Johnson decided to hold Carbo in reserve as his number one left-handed pinch hitter in the Series. The fastest man on the Red Sox was Juan Beniquez, a onetime shortstop, utility outfielder, and sometime designated hitter whom they had recently tried to convert to third base, with little success. But baseball had decreed that the American League’s new and still controversial designated hitter rule would not be used in this Series. (In response to charges that this was unfair to teams that had depended on it during their regular season, starting in 1976 the DH was allowed in the Series during even-numbered years, until 1986, when the current rule of using it only during home games in American League parks in every Series went into effect.) With the DH position unavailable to him, Johnson preferred to use the right-handed Beniquez in platoon duty against left-handers, and had penciled him in as his leadoff man in Games Four and Five, against Reds southpaw starters Freddie Norman and Don Gullett. In Game One, also against their ace Gullett, Johnson had somewhat randomly used his power-hitting right fielder, Dwight Evans, as the leadoff man. In Games Two and Three, against Reds right-handers Jack Billingham and Gary Nolan, left-handed first baseman Cecil Cooper went into the top slot. None had proved markedly successful. For Game Six, Johnson decided to go back to Cooper again.
The twenty-five-year-old Cooper, a tall, rangy line-drive hitter, had batted a solid .311 for the season, with respectable power numbers in 305 at bats. A quiet, unassuming, and intelligent team player from the Houston area, he was the youngest of thirteen children and had been taught the game
by his father and two uncles, who had all played in the Negro Leagues. Drafted by the Red Sox in 1968, Cooper finally earned a spot with the parent club in 1974, but found himself struggling for playing time after the splashy emergence in ’75 of Fred Lynn and Jim Rice. Rice’s big bat won the left field job early in the year, which allowed Johnson to permanently install Carl Yastrzemski at first base—a transition for their gracefully aging captain that had been gradually under way for two years—which pushed Cecil Cooper out of his everyday position. A streaky hitter, Cooper had gotten hot and stayed that way throughout the summer, fighting for and finally earning his spot as the team’s regular DH against right-handed pitching. He had appeared in only thirty-five games at first, a solid if unspectacular defender whenever Yaz needed a day off, but when Rice’s hand was broken by a pitch in late September, Cooper saw a lot more action at first when Yastrzemski shifted back to left. Cooper had had his own brush with danger in the batter’s box on September 7, when he was hit in the face by an inside fastball and had to be carried off the field on a stretcher. He returned to the lineup a few games after the beaning, but his productivity at the plate tailed off dramatically for the rest of the season. In the ruthless arena of the batter’s box, pitchers quickly discovered that they could pitch Cooper inside, where the human instinct for self-preservation hindered his ability to make a committed swing just enough to throw off his superb professional hitter’s timing.