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

by Mark Frost

  Before the Series Darrell Johnson had identified Perez as the man they needed to stop to shut down the Big Red Machine. Perez had simply slaughtered Pittsburgh’s pitching during their three-game sweep of the Pirates in the National League Championship, hitting over .400 and driving in four runs. But Tiant had hung the collar on Tony during his Game One shutout, striking him out twice and baffling the canny veteran with his whirling dervish delivery and offbeat timing. “Doggie” had been slow to regain his footing; Perez remained hitless in the Series through Game Four, when Tiant shut him down again, 0–4 with a strikeout. The next night, before Game Five, Sparky dropped his star first baseman a spot in the order behind Bench and calmly reminded him of what might be within his reach: “Tony, if we let this go seven games and you don’t get a hit, your children can tell their children that their grandfather had an all-time World Series record: most at bats without a hit.” Taking their cue from Sparky, the rest of the Reds’ superstars gave him the business about it as well, which turned out to be the only prescription he needed; Perez broke out of his funk that night in spectacular fashion as he won Game Five single-handedly with two towering shots that rocketed out of Riverfront Park, driving in four of the team’s six runs and giving the Reds their first Series lead. “You can’t keep the Big Doggie down,” said Sparky afterward. As the Series moved back to Boston, Tony Perez coming to life did not augur well for the Red Sox’s prospects.

  Tiant went into his windup. This time, at the top, weight perched precariously on his right leg, his back turned completely to home plate, Luis tossed in a little extra head feint, a peek up toward the left field lights, and after that extra embellishment he dropped down and let go of a nasty three-quarter sidearm curve that broke low and a foot away from the outside corner. The crowd oohed in appreciation at his flourish before the ball had even left Luis’s hand, and then jumped to their feet and cheered when Perez futilely leaned forward from the waist and lunged across the plate at it, almost a gesture of surrender. Tony Kubek remarked on the air that he wasn’t even sure Perez had seen the ball leave Tiant’s hand. For the ninth time in a row during this World Series—and for the fourth time on strikes—Luis Tiant had won the battle with Tony Perez.

  Left fielder George Foster came up for the first time with one out. If Tiant’s byzantine deliveries had baffled Perez and most of the other Reds to date, Foster had proved the most immune to them; he had registered four of his five hits in the Series—all singles—during Tiant’s first two outings. Wary of Foster’s power, Tiant started him with a fastball that missed outside.

  Foster was twenty-six, tall, lean, and muscular, a quiet country kid from Alabama who had been drafted out of high school by the San Francisco Giants. He had no sooner made the parent club in 1971, playing left field beside Willie Mays—the fellow Alabaman he’d grown up worshipping—than the Giants appeared suddenly to give up on him, trading him to the Reds for backup shortstop Frank Duffy, who had been edged out by the unexpected emergence of Davey Concepcion. That trade had been engineered by the Reds’ advance scout, Ray Shore, a former player and brilliant evaluator of talent, who had been with the club for a decade and was never shy about stating his strong opinions to general manager Bob Howsam. In 1968 the Reds and Shore had in essence invented his job, becoming the first major-league team to send a seasoned eye ahead of the team to scout the squad they were scheduled to play next. Shore’s nickname “Snacks”—and his ample midsection—testified to the dietary perils of living almost the entire season on the road. He compiled a detailed notebook for every team in the National League, with a page devoted to each of their players’ specific situational tendencies—at bat, on the bases, in the field, or on the mound. Copies of Shore’s reports were distributed throughout the organization before every series, and when Sparky Anderson took over in 1970, he embraced this innovation and relied heavily on Shore’s findings; Sparky believed this extra intelligence gave him an edge in games that translated into five to fifteen additional wins during a season. By 1975 the Reds’ success had persuaded most of the other teams in baseball, after the initial skepticism they had expressed at the expense involved, to employ an “advance scout.”

  The Reds also used Ray Shore to size up talent they were interested in acquiring, and when the Giants had mentioned that Foster might be available for Frank Duffy, Shore urged the front office to take him. The deal didn’t pay immediate dividends; Foster’s fragile confidence had been severely shaken by the trade, and he failed to make the club out of spring training in 1972. After two seasons split between the majors and minors and winter ball in the Dominican Republic—where they changed Foster’s stance, encouraging him to stand more upright, which seemed to awaken his bat—he stuck with the Reds through the 1974 season, showing flashes of the prodigious power they believed he possessed. When Sparky moved Pete Rose to third in May of ’75 and awarded Foster the regular left field job, their investment paid off: Foster responded with twenty-three home runs, drove in seventy-eight, and hit an even .300. That kind of bat in their lineup behind Bench and Perez added a whole new level of threat to the Big Red Machine, and the Reds felt George Foster had only just begun to realize his potential.

  Foster was a fastidious, deliberate hitter at the plate, almost painfully so, and he stepped in and out of the box twice now—tugging at his belt, digging in his back foot before getting set—a tactic designed to upset a pitcher’s rhythms. The crowd booed but Tiant showed no signs of irritation, patiently waiting on the rubber and then uncorking that lazy, slow dropping curve on the outside corner for a called strike, 1–1.

  On his second throw Tiant challenged Foster, turning his back completely to the plate, giving him the extra head tip, then turning and launching a fastball toward the outside corner. Foster took a fierce cut at it and missed for strike two; that was the pitch he’d been waiting for, and he looked mad that he’d missed it. Tiant didn’t usually give anyone more than one hittable pitch in an at bat, and he had just blown one by Foster to go ahead in the count.

  Foster stepped out again, grabbed some dirt, and rubbed his hands together, and the Boston crowd let him hear their displeasure again. Luis let fly a stream of tobacco juice from the thick wad he kept stuffed in his cheek during games; he was a dedicated cigar man—Cubans from home, naturally, obtained by a lawyer friend who knew ways around the American embargo—and the kick of the nicotine helped sharpen his focus on the mound. It also kept him from drinking water, which he didn’t like to do during games and had never been encouraged to do at any level when he pitched; the concept of “hydration” was still a decade away in baseball’s conservative culture. This contributed to the extreme weight loss Tiant often experienced during a complete game, sometimes as much as ten or twelve pounds.

  Foster made a defensive swing at the next pitch, a low outside curve that he fouled back to the right. Tiant and Fisk sensed an opening and they fed him a high off-speed change that Foster failed to adjust on; catching just a piece of the ball, he lofted it foul down the right field line, where Cecil Cooper retreated to make the catch for the second out.

  Shortstop Davey Concepcion stepped in. He had managed one hit against Tiant in eight at bats so far, a double that drove in a run in Game Four. A tall, gangly kid from Venezuela, Concepcion had arrived ahead of schedule with the Reds after only two years in the minors, in 1970, the year Sparky took over. He played spectacular defense from day one, displaying remarkable range, speed, and a surprisingly strong arm for a six-two string bean who weighed one-fifty soaking wet. The first time he saw him, Gary Nolan said Concepcion looked like he could take a shower in a shotgun barrel. With their powerful lineup, the Reds could afford the luxury of a purely defensive shortstop, but Sparky thought Concepcion could give them more. He possessed a good eye and decent bat speed, and hitting instructor Ted Kluszewski—in his remedial English, Concepcion called him “Klooski”—gradually taught him to be more aggressive at the plate. After sharing duties with shortstop Darrel Chaney for two seaso
ns, Concepcion won the job outright after a strong performance in the 1972 World Series. He was on his way to a breakout year in 1973, and he had just been named to his first All-Star team, when he caught his spikes in the dirt trying to go from first to third on an infield out, broke his left leg, and dislocated his ankle, a nasty injury that ended his season. He bounced back solidly in 1974 and, after finally packing another fifteen pounds on his slender frame, began to show some power, hitting fourteen home runs; Davey wasn’t just out there for his defense anymore. In 1975, the twenty-seven-year-old Concepcion won his second straight Gold Glove award, made the All-Star team as a starter for the first time, and had begun to earn respect around the league as one of the best all-around shortstops in the game.

  Everywhere, that is, but in the Reds clubhouse. In a locker room dominated by the outsized presence of the Reds’ four superstars, ever since Concepcion had joined the team as a twenty-one-year-old rookie, he had seemed—and been treated by his fellow infielders—like a goofy kid brother who was always a half step behind and never realized the joke was on him. He longed to be taken seriously and be accorded the same reverential treatment that he saw Rose, Morgan, Bench, and Perez receive; a tough task when their nickname for you is “Bozo,” a jab at his colorful and occasionally mismatched wardrobe. During the recent off-seasons Davey had been greeted as a huge star back home in Venezuela, the biggest his country had produced since fellow shortstop and future Hall of Famer Luis Aparicio, and he couldn’t comprehend why the same level of appreciation hadn’t come his way in America as well. But what almost amounted to a generation gap still divided him from the Reds’ Big Four, who were all mature men, all over thirty with the exception of Bench—who was twenty-seven but had seemed years older than his age since the day he arrived. Although Tony Perez had taken Concepcion under his wing as a mentor off the field, whenever the team gathered, Davey became the frequent target of the star players’ jokes and wicked one-liners, and when he tried to respond with zingers of his own—in often comically fractured syntax; his English was still shaky—it often backfired into even bigger laughs at his expense. None of their ribbing was entirely malicious, but it never seemed to end, and within the confines of the team’s culture his search for commensurate status with that formidable quartet remained a steep hill for Davey Concepcion to climb.

  Nor did he seem to have earned much respect from the man facing him on the mound. Tiant nicked the outside corner with a low, moving fastball for strike one, then challenged him with a hard, high fastball that Concepcion fouled back, quickly behind in the count 0–2. Sniffing blood, the crowd began their chant “Loo-ee, Loo-ee, Loo-ee.” Tiant stared in for the sign, still and composed as a statue, turned his back to Concepcion, and sidearmed a curve over the outside corner. Concepcion lifted a lazy fly ball to center field, almost to the spot where Fred Lynn was stationed; he hauled it in for the third out of the inning and cantered toward the dugout.

  All felt right with the world in Fenway and for fans glued to their TVs and radios throughout New England: The Red Sox had the early lead, and it seemed clear that for the third time in this Series their hero, El Tiante, had his mojo working.

  SEVEN

  Baseball is a wholesome game, which should instill and encourage the highest moral values.

  AMERICAN LEAGUE PRESIDENT BAN JOHNSON

  THAT FIRST “WORLD SERIES” IN 1903, BETWEEN THE BOSTON Americans and Pittsburgh Pirates, almost failed to take place because of a labor dispute. Pittsburgh’s players were under contract through the middle of October and obligated to play, but Boston’s season had ended on September 28. Before they agreed to take the field against the National League champion Pirates on October 1, the Americans insisted on two additional weeks of guaranteed pay and a 75 percent cut of the gate. Their heated negotiations with Boston’s owner Henry Killilea stalled—public sentiment tilted heavily toward the players—and Pittsburgh threatened to withdraw unless Boston’s players would commit. At the last minute the Americans grudgingly settled on their regular salary for the length of the Series, and a fifty-fifty split of Killilea’s profits.

  The World Series began with three games in Boston, and an unprecedented level of local interest prompted the creation of the first separate “sporting sections” in the city’s six daily newspapers. The other phenomenon sparked by this Series sounds unsavory if not downright illegal by today’s standards but, in that rough-and-tumble era, was considered as integral to the game as peanut vendors: Big-time gamblers from all over the East Coast had descended on Beantown to make book on the Series; a feverish wave of wagering gripped the city’s hotel lobbies and saloons, and the contagion apparently spread to more than a few of the players.

  Regular season ticket prices doubled for the Series: fifty cents for standing room, a dollar for grandstand seats, a buck fifty for a field box. More than fifteen thousand spectators crowded Huntington Avenue Grounds for Game One, overwhelming capacity in the stands. The surplus crowd flowed onto the playing field itself, where police made liberal use of their nightsticks to herd spectators behind ropes strung in front of the bleachers. Each league had supplied one umpire for the Series, and they hastily decided that any ball rolling into the crowd beyond those ropes would be ruled a ground-rule triple. With their reliable ace Cy Young taking the mound in Game One, Boston had emerged as a prohibitive favorite in the betting line, which brought heavy action on the Pittsburgh side and set the stage for shenanigans. Suspicions began immediately as the peerless Young, entirely out of character, piped pitch after pitch straight over the plate; Pittsburgh hit him hard. Three of Boston’s fielders, among the finest defensive players in the American League, committed four errors between them through the opening innings, most of them obvious boots. At the plate the Americans’ early at bats smelled equally fishy; Pittsburgh’s starter Deacon Phillippe, a junk artist whose fastball you could time with a calendar, struck out ten of them. The score was 5–0 Pittsburgh by the end of the third inning, and the Pirates stretched it to 7–0 in the seventh, at which point Young shut them down, and the Americans finally plated a few runs to make the final result—7–3—take on the appearance, if not the actual character, of respectability.

  There didn’t seem to be much dispute that the Americans had thrown Game One, but curiously, neither was any outrage in evidence, or much beyond mild protest voiced in Boston’s customarily volatile press. Baseball and gambling had become so connected in many people’s minds at this point—and, after all, this was just an “exhibition,” with nothing but bragging rights at stake—that the whole unseemly spectacle was treated as little more than business as usual. Whether Boston’s players were in on the fix, expressing their displeasure at the hard deal they’d cut with their owner, or dogging it to ensure that the Series would go the distance so they’d collect their full salaries remains unknown; Cy Young, the most celebrated of the players involved, never commented on the issue. Perhaps discouraged by their team’s halfhearted charade, a much smaller and more manageable crowd showed up for Game Two; the Americans’ players showed up for it as well and won handily 3–0. That convincing victory revived the city’s interest in the Series, and an unruly mob once again swarmed over Huntington Grounds Park the next day for Game Three, requiring the efforts of the city’s riot squad and, at one point, both teams’ players armed with bats to clear them off the field. Nearly nineteen thousand people had squeezed into a park built to hold fewer than half that number, jamming in alongside the length of the foul lines and shortening the outfield’s dimensions to less than 250 feet. This time the umpires ruled that any ball landing or bouncing into that crowd would be a ground-rule double. In the midst of that teeming sea of humanity, and some questionable plays by Boston’s fielders that once again raised the specter of fixing, the Pirates won Game Three by a score of 4–2.

  The World Series, along with trainloads of Boston’s fanatic Rooters—and their spiritual leader, saloon owner Michael T. “Nuf Ced” McGreevey—now shifted to Pittsburgh.
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  GARY NOLAN took the mound in the bottom of the second inning in Game Six, still seething at himself for the gopher ball he’d served up to Fred Lynn. Feeling he’d let his teammates down, and with Jack Billingham and Fred Norman continuing to throw in the Reds’ bullpen, Nolan knew that Sparky wouldn’t hesitate to pull him now at the first sign of trouble.

  Nolan opened the frame with his best fastball of the game and caught the outside corner for a strike against Red Sox right fielder Dwight “Dewey” Evans.

  The tall, powerful twenty-three-year-old Evans had just finished his third season as the Red Sox right fielder, but amid all the hype and excitement created by the startling debuts of rookies Fred Lynn and Jim Rice he had become something of a forgotten man in 1975, which the modest and personable Evans hadn’t seemed to mind one bit. He was a consummate team player, who demonstrated remarkably little hunger or fondness for the spotlight. Born, like Lynn, in Southern California, Evans had spent some of his early childhood in Hawaii—and drew some of the island’s hang-loose ways into his soul—until his family moved back to the San Fernando Valley when he was nine and his baseball obsession began in earnest. He had been drafted by the Red Sox in 1969 after an outstanding high school career as a third baseman, but on the strength of his remarkable throwing arm they converted him to the outfield. After steadily advancing through the minors, Evans jumped a step to Triple-A Louisville under manager Darrell Johnson in 1972. (The Red Sox relocated this franchise to Pawtucket, Massachusetts, after the 1972 season.) Although he had progressed rapidly through their system, Evans struggled against the better pitching at this higher level, taking too many pitches and swinging defensively instead of attacking the ball. He was on the verge of being sent back down when Johnson intervened, arguing that Evans should be given one more week to find himself; DJ saw more potential in the quiet Evans than any of his previous managers. He suggested that Dewey slightly shorten his stride as he stepped into pitches, which quickened his bat and helped immediately. Boosted by DJ’s confidence in him, Evans broke through that week and then went on a tear, leading the International League in RBIs and winning its Most Valuable Player award by season’s end, which earned him a September call-up to Boston in the middle of a pennant race. By June of the following season, Evans had laid claim to the Red Sox right field job, then held on to it with his remarkable defense while his power and patience at the plate steadily improved.