by Mark Frost
And Carbo soon began to produce. He recorded his best season in the Reds’ system in 1968, for Sparky Anderson’s pennant-winning team in Triple-A Asheville. Sparky insisted on calling him “Bernardo,” moved him from third base to the outfield, and for the first time in his life treated the boy like a man—Sparky came to regard Bernie almost as a son—while expecting him to act like one in return. He disciplined Bernie hard, drilled him on the fundamentals, sure of his natural talent, equally determined not to allow this screwup kid to let it go to waste. Although he initially rebelled under Sparky’s tough love, Carbo credited Anderson with teaching him to grow up, how to approach and play the game like a professional; Sparky single-handedly turned the class stooge into a ballplayer. The first in a series of surrogate fathers Carbo desperately needed and would find in baseball, Sparky frequently invited Bernie into his home, where Sparky’s wife Carol and their two young sons and daughter adopted him as well. One season later, after an exceptional year in Triple-A, Carbo made the big club during Sparky’s first year at the helm in Cincinnati and more than fulfilled the organization’s high expectations of him; he hit .310, with twenty-one home runs and sixty-three RBIs, played in his first World Series with the Reds, and the Sporting News named him the National League Rookie Player of the Year. A storybook beginning and a once wayward promise fulfilled, but it went nowhere but downhill from there.
Hoping to buy a house and make Cincinnati his home, Carbo was bitterly disappointed when after his outstanding rookie season the hard-line Reds front office refused to renegotiate his contract. Without the benefit of counsel a good agent would have afforded, Bernie ill-advisedly held out until near the end of spring training and slumped badly when he signed and reported, out of shape both physically and mentally. His drug and alcohol use accelerated, and both his performance and playing time plummeted; this was no ordinary sophomore slump. During another acrimonious contract negotiating session the following spring with GM Bob Howsam, Carbo lost control of his senses; he reached over, grabbed Howsam by the tie, dragged him across the desk, and began to beat and choke him. People rushed in to yank him off and hustle the still raging Carbo out of Howsam’s office; at Howsam’s insistence the incident was covered up and never publicly revealed, but a month into the 1972 season, the Reds unloaded Carbo in a dismissive trade to St. Louis. After two mediocre seasons with the Cardinals, Carbo was dealt again in the fall of 1973, going to the Red Sox along with starting pitcher Rick Wise. During his first visit to the Red Sox clubhouse at Fenway, Carbo saw an old man in a tattered raincoat shuffling around, handed over a twenty, and asked him to fetch him a cheeseburger and fries. The food arrived soon afterward, delivered by a locker room attendant who clued Carbo in that he had just placed his order with team owner Tom Yawkey.
As a fourth outfielder and left-handed designated hitter, Carbo became a steady contributor to the 1974 Red Sox, hitting twelve home runs and driving in sixty-one, finding much more common ground in the team’s looser clubhouse than he had with the regimented Reds and Cardinals. Kindred free spirits Bill Lee, Rick Wise, and Jim Willoughby welcomed him into their playfully anarchic circle. Carbo found a comfort zone as the Red Sox’s informal court jester, delighting the press with his goofy, offbeat pronouncements: “If baseball execs are Nixon,” he once told them, “I’m Woodstock.” Bernie soon took to traveling everywhere with a stuffed toy gorilla that he dressed in a Cardinals uniform and named “Mighty Joe Young,” often deferring to the monkey in interviews. Hoping to now make a home in Boston, and with his wife pregnant with their second child, Carbo made a personal appeal after the 1974 season to Tom Yawkey, who had subsequently befriended him after their awkward introduction, for a $10,000 raise. Team officials offered him $4,000—Yawkey always avoided turning players down himself—and Carbo became the first Red Sox player to file for the newly available option of independent salary arbitration. He lost the arbitration, but the next week found a check in his locker, from the personal account of Tom Yawkey, for $10,000. Bernie and his wife bought their house; he had found another father figure.
In 1975, Carbo retired the gorilla and replaced him with a statue of the Buddha, which he kept in his locker, another good luck talisman the team adopted. Carbo came out of spring training with a hot bat and helped carry the Red Sox during the first two months of the season when Carlton Fisk was injured, finishing the year with fifteen homers and fifty RBIs in 107 games. He played a solid outfield, and always had a strong, accurate throwing arm, but with the emergence of Rice, Lynn, and Evans he found it increasingly difficult to break into the everyday lineup. As his dependence on drugs and alcohol deepened, along with the severity of his hangovers, he also lacked the conditioning to go out there every day. By September, beset by a couple of nagging injuries, convinced he’d never get out of Darrell Johnson’s doghouse, Bernie hardly got off the bench and his attention appeared to drift; on occasion, while on the road, other players sometimes wondered if Bernie even knew what ballpark they were in. Bill Lee speculated that, in Bernie’s case, ignorance might actually be an asset; the less thinking he did at the plate, and the more pure reacting he could bring to bear on major-league fastballs with his lightning-quick wrists and Popeye forearms, the better.
In the Boston bullpen, Red Sox closer Dick Drago was warming up on the mound and had already been told by the dugout that he was going in to pitch the ninth. Absent the usual tension of a closer’s close-game situation, Drago had been throwing a pitch, then turning to watch the game like any other spectator, hoping against hope they could find a way to get back in it. Back in the clubhouse, when Bill Lee saw on television that Bernie had actually made it to the plate in the bottom of the eighth of Game Six, against the fireballing Eastwick, with Lynn and Petrocelli on base, he hurried back to the Red Sox dugout to watch their confrontation.
BOSTON FANS had developed a genuine affection for Bernie Carbo, and they cheered him wildly as he dug in at the plate; Bernie didn’t often feel in control of much at this stage of his life, but he came the closest when he had a bat in his hand.
Eastwick stared in at Bench. Fred Lynn watched closely as he took his lead off second. Eastwick surprised Bernie with a moving fastball that broke to the outside corner. Davidson called strike one.
The book on Bernie was to bust him with fastballs inside, then get him to chase low and away; his power was almost exclusively to the opposite field. Carbo had grown up as the only left-handed hitter in his neighborhood, where they were often short of kids to field complete teams; right field, as a result, was the first position vacated, which meant any ball hit in that direction became an automatic out. So Bernie grew up learning to hit the other way and muscle the ball to left—the home run he’d hit in Game Three at Riverfront had been a towering shot to left field—and since coming to Boston he’d made the Green Monster his best friend.
Now Eastwick came back inside and low for a ball, 1–1.
Joe Morgan turned, saw that his outfielders had crept in too far, and urgently waved them back; the only run that mattered now was the tying one, the man at the plate, and he wanted his defenders arrayed in the deepest parts of the park to take away extra bases if Carbo managed to hit one in the gap.
Eastwick delivered another smoking fastball inside and higher, just missing the corner; Bernie didn’t appear to pick up the pitch out of Eastwick’s hand and reacted late but laid off it, and Davidson called ball two.
Bernie Carbo had never exactly qualified as someone living the examined life, but the sight of his old teammates and manager when the World Series began in Fenway Park inspired some perspective-taking. During a workout on the field the day before Game One, Bernie sought out Sparky, asked if he could speak to him, just the two of them alone for a moment sitting on a groundskeeper’s bench in the outfield. In his typically endearing, fumbling way Bernie tried to apologize for the terrible behavior that ended his time with the Reds, and how he felt he had betrayed the fatherly care and affection Sparky had shown to him.
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nbsp; “You said to me then that someday I’d be playing for somebody else and that I’d see that you cared about me, that you cared about what happened to me then and later in my life. I was immature then, and didn’t understand what you meant. Now I do.”
Bernie had to pause for a moment to control his emotions. Sparky kept quiet for the same reason.
“And I just wanted to thank you,” said Bernie finally. “For everything you did for me.”
After two pitches inside, Bench called for the cutter on the outside corner, and Eastwick threw his purest pitch of the night. Bernie swung for the fences, late, missed by a foot, and looked terrible doing it. As he watched from first base, Rico Petrocelli’s guts churned; no way Carbo was catching up to this guy’s fastball tonight. Two balls, two strikes.
Sparky took his time responding to Carbo; he still didn’t know the full extent of Bernie’s substance problems, and would be shocked when he eventually did. Given the interest he’d taken in Bernardo, his shamed departure from the Reds had been one of the manager’s greatest personal disappointments. But Sparky had been doing some perspective-taking of his own in the last few years. He’d always concealed his own feelings from the people he lived and worked with, just as his father had done; that’s what men who’d grown up during the hard times of the Depression had done by necessity. You did what’s right; you obeyed and enforced the rules as you’d learned them, whether your employees or kids liked it or not. Much of the anguish between fathers and sons during the tumultuous sixties and early seventies had resulted from this rigidity, and for Sparky it had come at a painfully personal cost; after he bullheadedly insisted that his teenage son, Lee, cut his long hair—and Lee just as stubbornly refused—an awful yearlong estrangement had resulted. Sparky loved his son dearly—it had truly broken his heart—and they had only just recently reconciled, after another blowup between them ended in a transcendent moment of insight and forgiveness: Sparky realized and admitted he’d been wrong.
“I was putting my image of what was right ahead of my love for my son. I was ashamed of myself. I was being the child, and Lee was being the man. I wasn’t man enough to father my own child.”
That moment changed Sparky for good; and he had vowed never to hide his feelings again. He was also living with the knowledge that one of his closest friends—Milt Blish, the LA car dealer who had given Anderson a life-saving job when his playing career ended and before his managerial career began—was dying of cancer, and facing his mortality with a grace and courage that had inspired Sparky to reevaluate many of his own hard-driving values. The human connections are what matter most in life, he’d come to realize, maybe they’re all that matter; certainly more than anything to do with a game. He had already told Milt that he would dedicate whatever happened in this World Series to him, and for the first time in his own life, Sparky felt at peace with himself; in other words, it was a perfect moment for this conversation with Bernie Carbo to occur.
“Bernardo,” he said. “I appreciate what you’ve told me, but let me tell you something. If you’ve grown up, I think I had some growing up to do too. We all have our faults. And as soon as we realize that, we become what is known in our society as a man.”
They shook hands, neither of them entirely dry eyed, and wished each other luck.
Now Sparky stepped up onto the top step of the Cincinnati dugout, hands thrust deep in his pockets, to watch Carbo closely; Bernardo had always been a more dangerous hitter with two strikes. Some strong intuitive voice told Sparky to march out there, right now, yank Eastwick and bring in McEnaney. Sparky always listened to that voice, had learned to trust his instincts implicitly; that, finally, is all a manager has to rely on, what Stengel and Dedeaux had taught him from the beginning of his life in the game, the margin that separated the good from the great.
People won’t even remember half the moves you make that work, but they’ll never forget or forgive you for the ones you didn’t make.
Sparky didn’t move.
Eastwick delivered another fastball, low and outside, Carbo late on the swing again, just sending it foul into the stands past third.
Go out there now, said the voice again. Make the change and McEnaney will strike him out. But Sparky’s eyes saw his pitcher dominating a hitter, completely on top of him, Bernardo barely able to get the bat around on the ball.
One more pitch, said Sparky to himself. I’ll give him one more.
Bench set up back inside, and Eastwick uncorked a nasty moving cutter headed for the inside corner, running right at Carbo’s hands. At the last possible instant Bernie chopped down at it awkwardly, the ball nearly past him already, and nicked it just as it was about to land in Bench’s glove; the ball glanced sharply down off the plate and bounced away foul. The swing came so late that Satch Davidson had already begun to call out “Ball three,” then changed midstream to “Foul ball!” Bench didn’t hear him make the second call, and yelled at Davidson that Carbo had made contact; as they sorted that out, Bernie stepped out of the box and tried to breathe.
The crowd seemed to lose its breath also; the tension unbearable, their prospects too dim. At third base, Red Sox coach Don Zimmer had to look away; that was one of the worst swings he’d ever seen. Pete Rose caught the pained look on Zimmer’s face and smiled; Carbo looked like a Little Leaguer against Eastwick’s wicked stuff. At second and first, Lynn and Petrocelli felt their hearts sink; Bernie’s swing had actually looked worse with each succeeding pitch. In the Red Sox dugout, Fisk and Yastrzemski glanced at each other and shook their heads: not tonight. On the top step of the Cincinnati dugout, Sparky stayed put; he couldn’t pull Eastwick now, not after his best pitch of the night. As he settled back into his stance, Johnny Bench had one thought about his old pal Bernie: He’s done. In the press box, an entire row of America’s best sportswriters winced, and immediately began chasing down metaphors to convey the sheer naked ugliness of Carbo’s last swing. In the broadcast booth next door Tony Kubek expressed a wiser and more practical perspective: Bernie had protected the plate, fought off a hellacious pitch, and he was still alive.
I just took the worst swing in the history of baseball, thought Bernie, as he stepped out of the box to regroup.
Perhaps, but Bernie, for all his troubles—maybe because of them—still possessed any hitter’s most valuable asset: He always stayed in the moment, when all that mattered was the next pitch. A pitcher usually didn’t make more than one mistake to a hitter in an at bat, and it was the hitter’s job to be ready for it whenever he did.
And Bernie knew beyond certainty that after that nasty unhittable inside slider, his old minor- and major-league teammate Johnny Bench would come back with the fastball away.
Bench said afterward that his pitchers had thrown only two bad pitches in the entire game. The first was Nolan’s first-inning fastball to Fred Lynn.
Eastwick’s next fastball was the second.
No movement, belt-high, a mediocre pitch over the heart of the plate. Bernie committed to the swing so early he fully extended his arms and actually pulled it. Bernie was so unused to seeing a ball he’d hit go anywhere near right center field that he had no idea where it would end up—it didn’t feel as if he’d even hit it that hard—so he sprinted down the line, where the first thing he registered made him realize, maybe, could be, yes: Center fielder Cesar Geronimo was turning his back to watch. Stationed off second, Fred Lynn looked up, saw the ball soaring overhead, and just knew. Rico Petrocelli, headed cautiously toward second, wasn’t sure until he nearly got to the base, and by then, every other living soul in Fenway had leapt to their feet in astonishment and joy, because Bernie Carbo had just deposited Eastwick’s fat fastball over the wall ten rows into the seats of deepest right center for a three-run pinch-hit homer with two outs in the bottom of the eighth inning and tied the god damned game.
People claimed you could hear it a mile away: The loudest explosion of sound even Tom Yawkey had ever heard in his ballpark erupted from Fenway, surely the big
gest sonic event in the open air of Boston since Francis Ouimet sank a putt at the nearby Country Club in Brookline in 1913 to win the U.S. Open. The deafening ovation never let up as Bernie flew around the bases in a trance. Hands on hips, Rawly Eastwick stared out at right center field in shock and disbelief. As he passed Pete Rose near third, Bernie shouted, almost incoherently: “Don’t you wish you were this strong, Pete? Ain’t this fun?”
Pete had to smile at the little fuckup: “Yeah, this is fun, Bernie.”
Bernie shook hands with Red Sox coach Don Zimmer as he rounded third, then crossed home plate, chest thrown out with pride like a sprinter at the finish line, welcomed by Lynn and Petrocelli, and they gathered him up and ran him back to the Boston dugout, Bernie thrusting his fists in the air as the crowd continued to roar and his teammates grabbed him and carried him down the steps into their swarming arms. Bill Lee stepped up and pointed three times out toward where the ball had left the park, fixing the moment in memory, then immediately retreated to the clubhouse for treatment on his arm, convinced they would win it now, and that he’d be pitching Game Seven on Wednesday night. Carbo had not only tied the game, he’d also tied a record that had stood since 1959: two pinch-hit home runs in a single World Series. But in the history of baseball, no one had ever hit one quite like this.