Game Six: Cincinnati, Boston, and the 1975 World Series: The Triumph of America's Pastime

by Mark Frost

  Working harder than Stallone in a Rocky training montage, Fisk rehabbed the knee throughout a long, cold, lonely winter in New Hampshire. Two hundred and fifty-six days after the injury, he made a cautious return to action in a March spring training game in 1975, catching five innings, feeling gimpy and sore afterward, and conceding that the knee wasn’t fully healed yet. But the next day, a determined Pudge told Darrell Johnson that he was ready to go again. In his first at bat, the second pitch sailed inside, and when he checked his swing, the ball nailed him two inches above the right wrist and cracked the head of his forearm bone. Backups Bob Montgomery, Tim Blackwell, and veteran Tim McCarver filled in admirably, but this second injury turned out to be a blessing in disguise, allowing Fisk’s knee to completely recover by the time Pudge was ready to return to action in late June, two weeks after the energizing arrival of “Ducky” Doyle. When he finally suited up, the Carlton Fisk of 1972 appeared again; he hit .331 with ten home runs in less than half a season, and his commanding presence behind the plate, and in the locker room, steadied the entire Red Sox squad. He had hammered Oakland’s pitches during the League Championship, hitting .417, but with only four hits in eighteen at bats so far against the Reds, Fisk felt he was due for a breakout game.

  The Reds defense put on a power shift, playing shortstop Dave Concepcion a step shy of the outfield grass, moving second baseman Joe Morgan nearly even with the bag, and Rose shallow at third, expecting Fisk to put the ball in play on the left side in his home park. Bench set up outside and low again, but when Nolan delivered his second straight fastball up and into the strike zone, Fisk spanked it through the hole between Rose and Concepcion for a single to left. Yastrzemski advanced to second as George Foster tossed the ball back in to Concepcion.

  Two on, two out.

  In the Reds dugout, Sparky nudged pitching coach Larry Shepard, who moved immediately to the phone on the wall by the tunnel to the visitors’ clubhouse. Reds backup catcher Bill Plummer answered the call in the Cincinnati bullpen beyond right field; moments later, Jack Billingham and left-hander Freddie Norman shed their jackets and began to loosen up. Only thirteen pitches into the game, true to his word, Captain Hook was already prepared to call in the cavalry. Sparky stared down at the floor of the dugout from his seat on the bench, hands stuffed in his jacket, swinging his feet anxiously.

  Alarmed at the ominous way his old friend’s fastball was rising up in the zone—and, much worse, over the plate—Johnny Bench trotted out to settle Nolan down and refresh him on their book for the next Sox hitter, Fred Lynn: low and away, up and in. Unspoken, always, although they both knew it, Bench was also out there to buy a little more time for the men in the Reds bullpen to get ready.

  Fred Lynn, the fourth left-handed bat to step to the plate in the inning, was playing in his 154th game of the year, not including more than thirty spring training games, in a season that began back in March at the Red Sox complex in Winter Haven, Florida. This was only Lynn’s second full year of professional baseball; he had played fifty-three games in Double-A after being drafted, then less than five months in Triple-A at Pawtucket in 1974, before arriving on the scene in the American League like a comet. When he’d hit .419 in two weeks for Boston at the end of their 1974 collapse, a bright future was cautiously anticipated for him—Red Sox watchers were habitually wary, for sound historical reasons—but no one in their right mind would have dared predict what Lynn would go on to do for them in 1975. His fellow rookie outfielder, the now injured Jim Rice, had been in the team’s farm system a few years longer and posted much flashier numbers than Lynn during the time they played together; most scouts and pundits expected Rice to develop and produce sooner. No one appeared to realize that four years in Rod Dedeaux’s baseball academy at USC—winning three straight NCAA titles in the process, and playing in a number of international exhibitions as a result—had turned Fred Lynn into a complete and polished star. At this point not many players had ever made the move from the collegiate ranks straight to the major leagues—a slow slog through the minors after being drafted out of high school remained the beaten path—and not one of them had ever made the leap to stardom with the swift suddenness of Fred Lynn.

  The Yankees had drafted him out of high school, as the sixtieth player chosen, but Lynn turned them down flat; he had a football scholarship in hand from USC, and hadn’t yet decided which sport to favor. He was also determined to become the first person from his family to go to college. Growing up in Southern California, he had dreamt of one day playing for the Dodgers, but they failed to select him in the first round of the 1973 draft, and the Red Sox grabbed him in the second—the twenty-eighth pick overall—one slot ahead of Los Angeles. Lynn’s stock had fallen when a few pro scouts somewhat mysteriously returned mixed reviews after his stellar USC career, centered on unfounded projections that he wouldn’t be able to hit left-handed pitching at the major-league level. All of which only made him more eager to prove them wrong, and that he had done, with prejudice; feeling uncannily at home in Fenway Park, Lynn tore up major-league pitching from day one, and when he ran out onto the diamond on Opening Day he was already the swiftest, surest center fielder the American League had seen in many years. He defended his turf with the fearlessness of the sturdy football player he’d been, hurling his body after every ball hit his way, making one game-saving highlight-reel play after another. Fred Lynn checked all the boxes: He hit for average, he hit for power, he played lights-out defense, he could run like a gazelle, and he had a strong and accurate throwing arm. He was also unfailingly polite, keenly intelligent, thoughtful, and cooperative with the press and public, and modest almost to a fault. “Lynn mania” hit critical mass one amazing June night in Detroit when he belted three home runs, a triple, and a single, while driving in ten; from that point on the whole country started paying attention, and by the end of his rookie season, writers had run out of superlatives. The only apt comparisons they could find were with baseball’s immortal trinity of center fielders, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, and Willie Mays, and when you lined up the numbers, only DiMaggio’s rookie record stood up to what Fred Lynn had accomplished in his first full year, at the age of twenty-three. After hitting .364 in the Sox’s League Championship Series sweep over Oakland, Lynn had skipped the champagne—he didn’t like the taste—preferring to celebrate with a glass of milk. It was as if Joe Hardy from Damn Yankees had suddenly materialized wearing a Red Sox uniform. No wonder they adored him in Boston.

  But the six-month-long season, the endless travel, dealing with all the extra attention he’d attracted with his remarkable performance, had slowly worn Freddy down. He was having trouble maintaining his weight, and for the first time in years had dropped below 180 pounds. Although he’d continued to hit for average, ending the season at .331, his power numbers had dropped precipitously during the second half of the season. He’d launched only five home runs since the All-Star break, and when he came to the plate in Game Six on October 21, Lynn hadn’t hit a home run at Fenway Park in more than a month. The recent rain delay, the subject of more gripes over the lost weekend than the I.R.S., had actually done Fred Lynn a world of good. Four solid days of rest, at home in his own apartment twenty minutes from the ballpark, away from the insistent spotlight of the media, had restored the sharpness to his eye and the jump in his bat. He’d noticed the difference just the day before, when he took an extended batting practice session in the cage under the stands, and today before the game. His bat felt quick and lively again, but as was his habit, the private, self-possessed Lynn hadn’t mentioned it to anyone, and as he dug in and stared out at Nolan an extra surge of adrenaline fired through him.

  Up in the NBC broadcast booth, Dick Stockton made the play-by-play call as Gary Nolan missed with his first pitch to Lynn, up and away. Just as Stockton outlined how drastically Lynn’s home run production had fallen off over the season’s final days, Nolan made his first mistake of the game, a grooved fastball that moved slightly to the right, belt-high,
dead over the heart of the plate. Lynn jumped on it, a smooth, flawless swing, and the crowd rose to its feet as the ball sailed up, over, and past the Boston bullpen, toward the stands in right field. The Red Sox pitchers in the pen leapt from their seats, jumping up and down, waving their caps wildly as Lynn’s towering shot passed over their heads and landed ten rows back. Yaz crossed the plate with the game’s first run, clapping as he waited for Fisk to join him; the two of them together greeted Lynn as he glided around the bases and touched home, and then they escorted him to the dugout, where his teammates mobbed him and Darrell Johnson clapped him heartily on the back.

  Jack Billingham, warming up in the Reds bullpen, turned to Freddie Norman on the other mound to his left.

  “Well, shit,” said Billingham.

  Ignoring the crowd, they went back to work with more urgency.

  As the Red Sox swarmed over him, Fred Lynn stalked around the dugout, fired up, the adrenaline still coursing through him; he hadn’t hit a ball that far in two months, not even in batting practice.

  The crowd continued to buzz as Red Sox third baseman Rico Petrocelli followed Lynn to the plate. Furious at himself for his mistake, Gary Nolan labored at a noticeably fast pace and moved back to the corners, working Rico to a 1–1 count. One of the team’s last remaining veterans of the “Impossible Dream” campaign, after suffering through a frustrating, injury-plagued season, Petrocelli had swung a hot bat through the first five games of the Series, leading the Red Sox in hitting at .368. After Nolan missed outside with a slow roundhouse curve, Petrocelli hammered a low outside fastball to the warning track in the deepest part of center field, where Cesar Geronimo gathered it in at the base of the wall for the final out of the inning.

  To Geronimo’s right, the number had just gone up on the manually operated scoreboard at the base of the Monster: Red Sox 3, Reds 0.

  For the fifth time in six games, Boston had drawn first blood.

  SIX

  You don’t really belong up here if you worry about losing your job. You’re gonna wake up the next morning.

  The sun’s gonna shine again.

  SPARKY ANDERSON

  BEFORE THE WORLD SERIES BEGAN IN 1975, THE CINCINNATI Reds and Boston Red Sox had never faced each other in competition, outside of spring training games, but they shared some common roots in the tangled, untidy origins of nineteenth-century professional baseball. Like most enduring forms of life, the modern game would undergo a long evolutionary process, full of fits and starts, misfires and dead ends, before assuming the shape we recognize today. Emerging as a variant of a number of more primitive games—including most prominently the old English country game of “rounders”—“base ball” first sprang up as a casual, amateur sport throughout many regions of the country, played according to widely varying local rules, in the early 1800s. The game’s first codified set of rules appeared in print in 1845, published by an amateur club called the New York Knickerbockers, and over the next twenty years their prevailing vision of the game slowly incorporated and standardized many of the fundamental concepts we would recognize in its modern incarnation. In the aftermath of the Civil War in the 1860s, as hundreds of thousands of young men returned home, traumatized and determined to establish more peaceful lives, base ball took firm hold as their favorite form of local recreation. Played in parks or open fields, with its emphasis on healthy outdoor exercise and the pleasures of participation as opposed to winning, the game helped knit back together the ravaged social fabric of the country, weaving its way into the summer daylight rhythms of both small town and big city American life. Players in communities began organizing into social “clubs” that scheduled regular games between their members, then with other nearby clubs, and eventually against teams from neighboring areas. These games attracted spectators, offering a free form of lighthearted, open-air entertainment in a bleak era when there wasn’t much to be found. One of those amateur clubs, founded in 1866 as the Cincinnati Red Stockings, three years later declared itself base ball’s first “professional” team and began paying its players a modest wage. Barnstorming around the country on an exhibition tour, charging a token admission to their contests and taking on all challengers, these highly skilled Red Stockings won well over one hundred games over the next two seasons, and changed the national perception of what a “ball club” could be. The team inspired admiration but also a flood of criticism: These players were nothing more than mercenaries, brought in from the outside with no connection to the community they were paid to represent—make that overpaid—and all they cared about was “winning.” This was the first time these charges had been brought against what was by now widely known as the “National Pastime,” and it wouldn’t be the last. But once enterprising capitalists began to smell money in “baseball”—its popularity resulted in the contraction of the name of the game to a single word—there would be no going back to its more innocent, pastoral roots.

  The Cincinnati Red Stockings’ guiding force was player/manager Harry Wright, the immigrant son of a professional English sportsman, who had moved to America in 1838 to work as the resident pro for a New York City cricket club. Wright thus grew up playing both cricket and base ball—not entirely disparate disciplines—and turned out to be gifted at both. Although by the time the Civil War ended Wright was past his own athletic prime, he was also a gifted executive with a sharp eye for talent; and in guiding the team he had assembled to their notable success, Harry Wright ended up becoming the origin figure for the modern sport’s field manager. When Cincinnati’s traveling but homesick pros voted to revert to their amateur status after the 1870 season, Wright put down stakes in Boston, where he became the manager of that city’s first professional team, formed in order to join the sport’s first professional league, which called itself the National Association and sounds a lot more organized than it actually was, featuring “franchises” in cities throughout the Eastern Seaboard. Unwilling to mess with a winning formula, Wright named his new team the Boston Red Stockings (both teams’ nicknames referred to the bright crimson leggings worn by their players). Although they shared elements of the same family tree, neither of these teams evolved directly into the teams that would meet in the 1975 World Series.

  Built on a nucleus of players from his Cincinnati road club, Harry Wright’s Boston franchise dominated the early years of the National Association. In 1876 that organization was supplanted by the National League, the oldest of baseball’s governing organizations, which survives to this day, the reason why it’s still often referred to as the “Senior Circuit.” At that juncture, a second Cincinnati Red Stockings team—with no formal connection to the first beyond the name—was invited to join the National League as a charter member. Four up and down seasons later, that ill-fated Cincinnati franchise was kicked out of the league for violating a number of rules, the most serious among them selling beer to its predominantly immigrant German fan base in order to cover expenses. A third Cincinnati Red Stockings team then sprang to life two years later to join a new rival professional league called the “American Association,” known informally as “the beer and whiskey league” for its more alcohol-friendly attitude. Ten years later, after the 1891 season, the American Association went bust—which hastily thrown together “leagues” had a regular habit of doing then—and the Cincinnati Red Stockings (along with the Brooklyn Superbas—later Trolley Dodgers, and then Dodgers—and two other teams) accepted an invitation to jump over and join the National League. Soon afterward they shortened their name to the Cincinnati Reds. Eighty-three years later—some team histories occasionally and incorrectly claim a direct lineage back to the earlier Red Stockings incarnations—these same Reds earned their way into their seventh World Series with what most believed was the strongest team they’d ever fielded; Bob Howsam and Sparky Anderson’s Big Red Machine.

  From the start Harry Wright set the tone for another enduring aspect of the professional baseball manager’s life: never holding on to the same job for long. Wright moved
on to yet another team in 1882, but the Boston Red Stockings he’d founded remained the powerhouse franchise of the National League, winning eight pennants during the next quarter century, and in the process giving life to a demanding and discriminating baseball culture in Boston that would persist into two following centuries. These Red Stockings picked up the name Beaneaters in 1882, and in 1906, they were dubbed the Doves—after their new owners, the Dovey brothers—and then later, under new management each time, the Rustlers and then the Pilgrims, until a fifth set of owners finally settled on calling them the Boston Braves in 1912. That name stuck, and that National League club lived on in Boston—winning only one World Series, in 1914—until 1953, when after falling on hard times they moved to Milwaukee, and then once again to Atlanta in 1966, where the Braves remain to this day.

  The American League—baseball’s “Junior Circuit”—was cobbled together from the bones of a second-tier organization called the “Western League” in 1900, when its president, Byron Bancroft “Ban” Johnson, decided to step up and compete with the established National League, at that point the pro game’s eight-hundred-pound gorilla. The National League had withstood numerous challenges to its preeminence from rival leagues during its first quarter century, and beaten back all comers; despite this, or perhaps because its owners had grown complacent and corrupt from a lack of competition, trouble had long been stirring in the National. The central issue then was the same one that haunts the game to this day: Who in fact represents the “game of baseball,” the players on the field or the owners behind the cash register? National League owners had imposed a punitive salary cap on their field hands; players were limited to a maximum salary of $2,000 a year with no say in improvement of their working conditions, and on many teams they were compelled to pay for their own equipment and uniforms. A mutinous, hastily organized “Players’ League” had sprung up in protest for one season in 1890, but died penniless, and within five years most of its humbled players were out of the professional game. Those that stayed were now bound to their teams for life, by the implementation of a questionable legal doctrine that owners insisted they needed to survive, the infamous “reserve clause.”