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

by Mark Frost

  They’d been “here” twice before, ’70 and ’72, and lost the World Series both times. That it could happen now again was in the back of everybody’s mind, but no one dared give a voice to it. Every man on the Machine was back on task by the time they filed out in their coats and ties and loaded into the bus for the ride back to the hotel.

  Everyone but Sparky.

  “All I could think about inside was that I’d cost my team another World Series,” he said. “And who knew now if we’d ever have another chance.”

  As he walked out alone to the bus, Sparky felt a pair of iron hands slam down and grip him by the shoulders. Pete, grinning, without a care in the world: Good God, what is wrong with this man?

  “That was the best game I ever played in,” said Rose, finally locating the last man in Boston he hadn’t said that to yet.

  “Are you fucking nuts?” said Sparky, then more quietly, just this once giving words to his torment. “I just lost us the World Series and all you can say is it’s the best game you ever played?”

  Pete Rose, calm and confident as a certified lunatic, looked his manager dead in the eye. “You and I were part of history tonight; that was the greatest World Series game ever. First time I’ve ever been happy about a game I lost. What the hell are you so worried about? We’re gonna win this thing tomorrow, Skip.”

  Sparky remained unconvinced. Rose moved on, happy as a pup, looking for someone else to convert.

  Johnny Bench huddled down in his seat on the bus, shivering, miserable, and feverish, sucking on lozenges to relieve his burning sore throat. Damn New England weather—he felt worse now than he had when the Series began. He saw the Red Sox fans still going crazy, exulting on the streets outside. How in the world are we going to find a way to beat these guys tonight?

  When he got back to his room at the Statler Hilton, Sparky called his wife back home in Southern California with the kids. Carol, his gal since junior high, who always gave it to him straight, listened and commiserated, and then realized there was only one way to puncture her husband’s melancholy.

  “I hate to break it to you, George,” she said, “but everybody here was pulling for Bernie Carbo.”

  That finally brought him out of it; he found the punch line of the cosmic joke. After the call, his old friend Ray Shore, the Reds’ super-scout, came up to the room and sat with him, chewing it all over, until Sparky finally drifted off to sleep at four o’ clock on Wednesday morning.

  GAME SEVEN

  Except for spitting and telling a lie, there ain’t nothing easier to do than quit. Quitting is for losers.

  SPARKY ANDERSON

  THE AFTERGLOW OF GAME SIX CAST A SPELL OVER NEW England that lasted all through the following day. Wednesday, October 22, felt like a holiday in Boston’s downtown business district. Bleary-eyed from their shared late night celebration, workers and bosses basked in the bliss, schoolkids snoozed or skipped altogether, productivity plummeted, and almost nobody cared. Even the weather cooperated, bright sun and a hint of Indian summer warming the air. Photos of Carlton Fisk made the front page of every newspaper in America: Game Six had put baseball, for this day at least, back on top of the country’s consciousness. NBC’s preliminary overnight figures on Wednesday morning revealed that more people had watched Game Six than any other sporting event in television history. Halfway across the country, Cincinnati’s fans marked a quietly anxious day; their team, which all the numbers insisted had been the best in baseball for the last five years, once again was on the brink of losing a World Series to what they had believed, and been told by the media time and again, was an inferior team.

  Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey, looking weary and fragile after a largely sleepless night, but with spirits still riding high after last night’s miracle finish, arrived at his Fenway office shortly after midday and puttered through a low-key, solitary afternoon, knowing his last, best chance for the elusive championship he’d chased for forty-three years was at hand. As evening approached in Boston, thousands flowed back toward Fenway Park and scalpers had a field day, topping the previous day’s record haul. Among those unable to afford after-market prices, many tried to claim early spots on the overhanging billboards nearby that offered glimpses of the field; two fell, one fractured an ankle. Police cleared them all away by game time.

  Two left-handers took their turns on the mound at Fenway beginning at eight-thirty Wednesday night, offering another stark study in contrasts: quiet, shy, conservative, twenty-four-year-old Kentucky country boy Don Gullett, a Cincinnati Red since the day he left high school, purveyor of the nastiest fastball in the National League; and Bill Lee, the twenty-six-year-old Southern California college graduate, the motormouth rock-and-roll philosophizer, an artist at heart who disdained the whole fastball-strikeout phenomenon as “fascist.” Lee took great pride in being a pitcher, not a “thrower,” and particular pleasure in outthinking the kind of home run/fastball hitting sluggers that filled the Reds lineup. Don Gullett didn’t do much of anything outside of what Sparky told him to, or give it much thought before, during, or after that he was willing to talk about; his remarkable record, 75–39 over the previous five years, spoke for itself. Gullett had been outdueled by Luis Tiant at Fenway in Game One, but then rebounded with the Series’ most dominating win back home in Cincinnati in Game Five; that was the pitcher Sparky desperately needed to show up for Game Seven.

  “After this game tonight,” said Sparky at his pregame press conference, trying to light a fire, “Don Gullett’s going to the Hall of Fame.”

  “After this game tonight,” said Lee on hearing that comment, referencing his favorite nearby neighborhood watering hole, “I’m going to the Elliot Lounge.”

  Rotating broadcasters as it had done all Series, NBC tapped its number one on-air team to call Game Seven, Curt Gowdy, alongside his former partner during Gowdy’s years in Boston—still the venerated radio voice of the Red Sox—Ned Martin; and the stalwart Tony Kubek. When NBC executive Chet Simmons arrived at the production truck at Fenway Wednesday morning, director Harry Coyle was cutting together the highlight package from Game Six for use on the network’s weekly baseball show. Joe Garagiola, who would work Game Seven on radio with the Reds’ Marty Brennaman, was there that morning as well, in the process of lobbying Coyle that he should be allowed to revoice the winning Fisk home run call for the highlight reel, replacing the young and relatively unknown Dick Stockton. Simmons, to his credit, stepped in and diplomatically told Garagiola that Stockton had made the original call, and they were sticking with it.

  A few hours before the game, Sparky was working in his cramped little office in the visitors’ clubhouse agonizing over his lineup card again when the phone rang; it was Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey, calling to tell him that, no matter what happened in Game Seven that night, Yawkey wanted to thank him for everything Sparky and his team had done to make this such an extraordinary World Series, and for everything Sparky himself had done for baseball.

  “I won’t be able to come down and congratulate you if you win tonight,” said Yawkey. “So, if you do, I’m congratulating you in advance.”

  The crowd cheered wildly as the happy, loose Red Sox starters lined up between first and home during pregame introductions. The eight Reds starters and Sparky lined up along the third base line, silent, grim, and purposeful.

  If it hadn’t followed so immediately on the heels of Game Six, what followed in Game Seven would be better remembered as a classic in its own right. Bill Lee, tuned up to pitch the biggest game of his life, set down the Reds in order in the top of the first, striking out Joe Morgan—Sparky, reversing course on instinct again, had inserted Joe back into the second spot of his order, dropping Griffey down to seventh—for the first time in the Series. Red Sox manager Darrell Johnson had not only penciled last night’s hero Bernie Carbo into his starting lineup, he had him batting leadoff, only the second time he’d started against a left-hander all year. Although he discovered that the bat he’d used to hit his historic h
ome run had been stolen overnight, Bernie’s impressive streak continued. Carbo crushed Don Gullett’s fourth pitch of the game and sent a towering double off the very top of the Green Monster in left center; only the wind, which had shifted and was blowing in tonight, kept Bernie from notching his third home run of the Series. But when Denny Doyle followed by flying out to right, Carbo failed to advance to third when Ken Griffey’s off-line throw skittered away from cutoff man Davey Concepcion. Carbo would have scored from third when Carl Yastrzemski then grounded out to second; few seemed to notice or care at the time about this early missed scoring opportunity, but Bernie had hardly slept after Game Six, which his lack of an alert response on the bases here seemed to indicate. Fisk—who hadn’t even gotten home until four that morning, couldn’t get to sleep himself until seven, and then only for three hours—followed Yastrzemski and was greeted with a tremendous ovation, but struck out on a Gullett fastball to end the inning.

  Bill Lee could never have gotten away with all his off-field irreverence and verbal bravado if he wasn’t able to back it up during a game; on the mound, where he mattered, he was every inch as tough a competitor as Luis Tiant. Facing Tony Perez to lead off the second, Lee tossed him a 60 mph curve that dropped in like a slow-pitch moonball for a called strike and drew cheers from the crowd. First made famous by a Pittsburgh Pirate pitcher in the 1950s named Rip Sewell, the “Eephus pitch”—a nonsensical piece of slang attached to it by one of Sewell’s teammates—had since become a treasured knickknack of baseball mythology. In a long career Sewell gave up only one home run off his tantalizing Eephus, to Ted Williams in the 1946 All-Star Game, but only after throwing him one that Williams swung on and missed, and then announcing he was going to throw him another. A mere handful of pitchers had both the skill and showmanship to employ the Eephus in the years since Sewell; Bill Lee, not surprisingly, was its most devoted current practitioner, to the point where he’d named his variation on Sewell’s theme the “Leephus pitch.” So Tony Perez took a good long look at his “Leephus” as the ball softly descended into Fisk’s mitt, taking the time to consider and then decline Lee’s invitation to foolishly hack at it, but you could see its pace and trajectory lodge into Big Doggie’s formidable sense memory. He then grounded the next pitch sharply to third, where a superb defensive play by Rico Petrocelli saved a base hit. George Foster followed by belting Lee’s next pitch off the middle of the Monster, but after playing the carom perfectly, Bernie Carbo cut down Foster at second as he tried to stretch it to a double with a powerful sidearmed peg to Denny Doyle. Yaz ended the inning with a third strong defensive effort, tagging Davey Concepcion out before he reached the bag at first, after grabbing an errant throw from Rick Burleson.

  While Lee blithely cruised during his first trip through the Reds lineup, Gullett struggled with his control, ringing up strikeouts but frequently overthrowing and missing the zone with his formidable heater. He walked Carbo after striking out Lee to open the bottom of the third, then gave up a right field single to Doyle, the first and only man on either team to have now hit safely in all seven games of the Series. Carbo advanced on the play to third, and Ken Griffey missed his cutoff man, Concepcion, for the second time in the game while trying to throw Carbo out. Yaz then came through in the biggest at bat of the game with another sharp single to right, driving in Carbo for the first run of the game, and when Griffey missed Concepcion with his third straight throw, as Doyle ran to third, Yaz alertly advanced to second behind Doyle, removing the possibility of an inning-ending double play. That exceptional piece of base running forced Sparky to signal Gullett that he should now intentionally walk Carlton Fisk to load the bases, to better match his southpaw against left-hander Fred Lynn. Gullett responded by striking out Lynn for the second out of the inning, but then his release point mysteriously deserted him; he walked the ever-patient Petrocelli on a full count to force in Doyle and reload the bases, and then surrendered his fourth walk of the inning on four straight pitches to Dwight Evans to force in Yastrzemski. Gullett finally recovered, striking out Rick Burleson to end the threat, but for the second time in consecutive nights and games, the Red Sox had seized an early 3–0 lead. Captain Hook reluctantly cranked up his bullpen—Pedro Borbon and Jack Billingham got up to work—while the Fenway crowd rejoiced, beginning to believe that the glorious promise of Game Six was about to be fulfilled.

  After setting down the Reds without incident in the top of the fourth, Bill Lee, who prided himself on his hitting, pulled a single to right off Gullett to lead off the bottom of the inning, advanced to second on a wild pitch, and reached third with one out when Bernie Carbo did his job by grounding to Morgan at second. But for the second time in the early going the Red Sox squandered a prime scoring opportunity, when Doyle and Yaz failed to hit the ball out of the infield; the first uneasy hint of past misfortune insinuated itself into some of the Boston faithful.

  The Reds finally appeared to have something going when Concepcion led off the top of the fifth by legging out an infield single. Denny Doyle was then unable to handle a bad-hop ground ball from Griffey; Doyle was charged with an error, and Concepcion advanced to third: first and third with nobody out. Bill Lee, who never seemed to mind giving up hits or pitching into a jam—he considered it more “democratic” to let hitters put the ball into play and allow his defenders to participate in the game—then struck out Cesar Geronimo with a perfect rainbow curve. With runs he desperately needed on base, Sparky had no choice but to then send up pinch hitter Merv Rettenmund in Gullett’s spot. Displaying his best stuff of the night in the most critical at bat of the game so far for the Reds, Lee induced Rettenmund into an inning-ending double-play grounder, Boston’s second of the game.

  Bill Lee and the Red Sox were now only twelve outs away from winning the World Series.

  Sparky called on Cactus Jack Billingham to face Boston in the bottom of the fifth; after watching Lee record out after out on ground balls, he wanted a sinker-ball pitcher of his own out there on the mound at Fenway. Concerned that Pedro Borbon, the man he would usually go to at this point in a game, had thrown three tough innings the night before, Sparky also wanted to reward the veteran Billingham for his steadying performance in Game Six. After striking out Carlton Fisk on a sinker, Billingham walked Fred Lynn and gave up a single—his eighth hit of the Series—to a determined Rico Petrocelli. Lynn advanced to third when Dwight Evans drove the first pitch he saw to deep center field. The night before, with the wind blowing out, Evans’s ball might well have ended up in the seats, but Cesar Geronimo chased it down for a long, loud out at the base of the wall. Rick Burleson then toughed out a walk to once again load the bases, and the Fenway crowd gave Bill Lee a standing ovation as he walked to the plate for the biggest at bat of his life. Lee gamely tagged a Billingham fastball to almost exactly the same spot in center field, but the wind again held it up, and Geronimo raced back to make his second outstanding catch in a row and end the inning. Another opportunity to distance themselves from the Reds had been squandered; longtime Red Sox fans began to squirm in their seats.

  As the Reds prepared to hit in the top of the sixth, Tony Perez, due up fourth, pulled out his lumber from the bat rack and caught sight of Sparky around the corner, just finishing a smoke, pacing and fretting in the tunnel.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you, Sparky?” said Perez.

  “God damn it, Doggie,” said Sparky, running his hands through his hair, “we’re down three to nothing!”

  “Don’t worry about it, Skip,” said an unearthly calm Perez. “We get somebody on, I’m gonna hit one; I’m gonna hit a bomb.”

  Something about Doggie’s manner got through to Sparky; he walked right into the dugout and, completely out of character, said this to his team: “Look, fellas, we’ve got some outs left here, I don’t want anybody to panic. Don’t go up there thinking home run—somebody get on base and Bench or Perez will hit one out and we’ll be back in it.”

  Following those orders, to lead off the top of t
he sixth Pete Rose singled sharply to right off Bill Lee for his ninth hit of the Series, but Joe Morgan flied out softly to Evans, and then Johnny Bench hit a routine ground ball to short that looked like it would end the inning. Rick Burleson flipped to Doyle at second to force Rose for the second out, but when Doyle turned to complete the easy double play at first he saw the combative Rose barreling down on him like an enraged linebacker about to take out his legs.

  “There are some things you just can’t allow to happen,” said Rose. “And a double play at that point was one of them.”

  The little second baseman leapt to avoid Rose, and his throw sailed wild and high over Yastrzemski’s glove, into the Red Sox dugout, where it landed in Don Zimmer’s lap, Doyle’s second error in the last two innings. A rumor started afterward that Bench had hit the ball so hard he’d knocked the cover half off and that precipitated the bad throw, a story that Doyle later refuted. He also claimed that Rose’s slide hadn’t caused his bad toss either, that his timing to the bag with Burleson had simply been off, but whatever the reason for it, Bench advanced down to second on the error, and instead of being out of the inning, the Reds now had a runner in scoring position with Tony Perez coming to the plate. When he returned to the dugout, Pete Rose slapped hands, pounded teammates on the back, then restlessly prowled up and down in front of the bench, snorting and clapping, shouting at the field, urging them forward. Johnny Bench stood on second, looking in at the Big Dog as he dug in at the plate.

  Please, oh please, thought Bench, give him something off-speed again.

  Bill Lee fumed on the mound, visibly upset by Doyle’s gaffe, but no one wearing a Red Sox uniform—a fellow infielder, his manager or pitching coach, or his catcher—picked up on the cues and walked out or over to take Lee’s temperature and calm their passionate pitcher down. If he matched Luis Tiant’s competitive fire, Lee at this point in his life didn’t quite have his older teammate’s ability to quickly recover his emotional equilibrium after a setback, and it was about to lead him into misfortune.