The Wrong Stuff

by Bill Lee

  During that delay, unbeknownst to yours truly, Johnny Bench was being interviewed for television in the Reds clubhouse. When asked what he’d be looking to do against me when play resumed, John replied that he was going to try to hit me to the opposite field. He had been trying to pull me all afternoon, and I had gotten him out by pitching him away. Bench was now telling sixty-five million Americans that he was going to take the ball to right, and not one of them thought to call me with a warning. Did that piss me off later! I don’t watch much TV, and when Bench and I faced each other after the rains let up, I was unaware of his strategy. John led off the ninth with the score still 2–1. My first pitch to him was a sinker low and away that he hammered to right for a double. Johnson came out to yank me, replacing me with Dick Drago. Dick retired the next two hitters and needed only one more out to give us the win. Davey Concepcion was the next batter. He broke our hearts with a seeing-eye single up the middle that knotted the game up. Then he stole second and scored what proved to be the winning run on a double by Ken Griffey. At the press conference afterward, a writer asked me to sum up the Series so far. I told him it was tied.

  We lost Game Three in Cincinnati, 6–5. That was the Armbrister Game. With the score tied 5–5 in the bottom of the tenth, Ed Armbrister, a backup outfielder, was pinch-hitting for the Reds with Cesar Geronimo on first. While attempting to sacrifice, he bounced the ball high in the air in front of home plate. Armbrister, batting from the right side, was very slow getting out of the batter’s box. Though clean-shaven when the pitch had first been delivered, he had grown a beard by the time he took his initial step in the direction of first base. Fisk crashed into him as he was in the process of fielding the ball. Pushing Armbrister out of the way, Carlton gunned a throw to second in an attempt to get Geronimo. The ball sailed past the second baseman and out to Lynn in center field. Geronimo tried to take an extra base, but Freddy came up with the ball and fired it to third. Catching the ball on one clean bounce, Petrocelli made a perfect tag to nail Cesar for the out. But the umpire blew the call. Geronimo was ruled safe, and the game was as good as over. In looking back on that game, everybody focuses on that brief collision at the plate, not realizing that it was the blown call at third that would eventually kill us. Geronimo scored the winning run on a base hit by Joe Morgan, and yet that’s the play that nobody talks about. Instead, everybody chooses to argue whether or not Armbrister should have been called out for blocking Fisk at the plate. He wasn’t, but he sure should have been. His interference was blatant. Larry Barnett, the home-plate umpire, made the wrong call, and Darrell Johnson didn’t negotiate properly in an attempt to get him to reverse it. He didn’t argue vociferously enough. An energetic display won’t get an umpire to change his call, but it might lend you some protection for the next close play. Many umpires will tread lightly if you intimidate them with enough bluster. Darrell didn’t give it his all. If it had been me, I would have climbed up Barnett’s back and bit his ear off. I would have Van Goghed him.

  A loss like that could have hung us, but, if anything, it only made us play harder in Game Four. An exhausted Tiant had just enough to win that game, 5–4. Luis could hardly lift his arm over his head, and the Reds hit rockets off of him, but it didn’t matter. He had guts, brains, and Fred Lynn in center field. Freddy made more great catches in that one game than I had seen in my entire career. The Reds won the fifth game, 6–2, taking a 3–2 lead in games won. We went back to Fenway, needing to win two.

  Game Six was delayed by three days of rain. When the Series was resumed, Darrell made his fatal error. For the last two years, I had been unhappy with the way Johnson had handled our pitching staff. He left starters in too long and never really established any sort of order in the bullpen. Nobody out there knew what their job was supposed to be. There was no official short man, because Darrell just went with whoever had the hot hand at the moment. When he managed us to the pennant, I attributed it to his talent for falling out of trees, but landing on his feet. He still managed to land on his feet in this game, but he also stubbed all his toes.

  The mistake he made was in starting Tiant in Game Six, instead of me. That’s not my conceit talking, it’s just common sense. Those rains had been a godsend, giving our tired pitching staff some much needed rest. Luis found it especially beneficial, but he still needed one more day. On the other hand, too much rest was hazardous to me. I was primed and ready to go on what would have been my normal starting day. But Darrell passed over me to go with his best.

  The choice, wrong as it was, did result in setting up the dramatic events of the magic sixth game. Unable to stay in one place, I divided my time that evening between the bullpen and the dugout. We scored three runs in the first inning, but the Reds got to Luis for three in the fifth and two in the seventh. By the bottom of the eighth, the Reds had a 6–3 lead. Lynn led off with a walk, Petrocelli singled. Cincinnati’s relief ace Rawley Eastwick was brought in, and he struck out Evans and then got Burleson on a fly ball. Carbo was sent up as a pinch hitter. As he walked to the plate, I knew he was going to hit a home run. Eastwick was a fastball pitcher, facing a dead fastball hitter with a strong wind blowing out. It was a scene written for Bernie. I stood up in the dugout and tried to get his attention, pointing to the wall and imploring him to hit it out. Bernie jolted Eastwick’s second pitch, hitting it into the center-field bleachers. When he made contact, everyone in our dugout went crazy; we all knew the ball was gone when he hit it, and that it was now just a matter of time before we would win this game.

  I was in the trainer’s room when Fisk hit his famous twelfth-inning homer off Pat Darcy that ended the game and gave us the victory. It was getting late, and I knew I was going to be starting the next day, so I was stretching out, trying to get some rest. I saw the shot on TV. Carlton golfed the crap out of a fastball. He used a six iron, drawing from right to left and putting a shade of English on the ball. It landed on the left digit of a local green. The drive almost went foul, but Fisk used his body language, ordering it to stay fair, and it obeyed.

  I felt I would pitch well in the seventh game. I had crazy rushes of energy surging through my body, but my mind was mellow and in complete control of the rest of me. I would be starting against Don Gullett. Prior to the game, Sparky Anderson, the Reds’ manager, had announced, “I don’t know about that fellah for the Red Sox, but, sometime after this game, my boy’s going to the Hall of Fame.” Upon hearing that remark, I replied, “I don’t care where Gullett’s going, because after this game, I’m going to the Eliot Lounge.”

  Scoring three runs in the third, we had Sparky’s Hall-of-Famer out of there by the sixth inning. When we scored those three runs, the crowd went wild. But, after we failed to score again, I could feel the paranoia creeping through the stands. It was as if everyone was thinking, Okay, how are we going to fuck this one up?

  We carried that 3–0 lead into the sixth. Rose led off that inning with a base hit. I got the next hitter on a pop-up and then faced Johnny Bench. Swinging at a fastball low and away, John hit a nice two-hopper to Burleson. It was a sure double play. But before I had thrown the pitch, the coaches had moved our second baseman, Denny Doyle, over to the hole, away from second. Rick was ready with the throw, but Denny had to come a long way to get to the bag. Flying across second, Doyle took the toss and fired the ball to first before he had a chance to get set. The throw went sailing into the stands. Instead of being out of the inning, I had Bench on second with two men out. And Tony Perez at the plate.

  I had been having good success with Tony, throwing him my slow, arching curveball, so I thought it would be a good idea to throw it to him again. Unfortunately, so did Tony, who timed it beautifully. He counted the seams of the ball as it floated up to the plate, checked to see if Lee MacPhail’s signature was on it, signed his own name to it, and then jumped all over it. He hit the ball over the left-field screen and several small buildings. The score was 3–2. Pitching with a broken blister in the top of the seventh, I put the potent
ial tying run on. When I walked that lead-off hitter, I was sick with myself. I did not want to come out of that ballgame, but Darrell was right in bringing in Roger Moret. That busted blister had made it impossible for me to get the ball over the plate. The moment it popped, I knew I was finished for the season. Now, all I could do was watch. When Roger allowed that tying run to score, I wanted to dash out and buy some razor blades. For my wrists.

  Jim Willoughby relieved Moret and got us out of the seventh. He pitched great through the eighth, but in the bottom of that inning, we were done in by the DH rule. Since there was no designated hitter for this Series, Johnson felt forced to lift Willoughby in favor of a pinch hitter. It was a tough decision to make. We either had to take our best shot for a possible run or leave in a guy who had been our best pitcher over the last two months. I thought we should have left Jim in. Willoughby was a good-hitting pitcher, and, by taking him out, we were forced to insert a rookie, Jim Burton, who hadn’t been used much all year. Willoughby was a veteran who had possessed great karma since August. We should have gone with the hot hand.

  Jim Burton, though, came on in the ninth and pitched well. He just had bad luck. After walking Griffey, who was sacrificed to second, he retired Driessen, and then walked Rose. Joe Morgan was the next batter. Burton threw him a hell of a pitch—a slider down and away—but Morgan was just able to fight it off, blooping it into short center field in front of Lynn. Griffey scored the tie-breaking run. We went down in order in the bottom of the ninth, and the Series was over.

  I was upset, at first, about the loss. I was even more upset that I hadn’t started Game Six, allowing Luis his rest. Luis would have won that seventh game; I’m certain he would have blown them away. But I eventually realized that, if it had gone that way, the Series wouldn’t have been as great as it was. That sixth game was something else. I wish I had been in it, but if I had been, I might have gotten jocked worse than Luis—or I might have pitched a shutout. Then we wouldn’t have had Carbo’s and Fisk’s home runs to remember. We didn’t win the Series, but we didn’t lose it either. Baseball won. We were part of an event that we could tell our grandchildren about. I want to win as much as anybody. I felt our loss deep in my guts. But, if we had to lose, we couldn’t have picked a better way. We gave it everything we had from the first pitch to the last.

  Shortly after the World Series, I was invited to tour Red China with a group of U.S. athletes and writers who were going over to study Chinese physical culture. Phil Shinnick, the broad jumper, Dr. Harry Edwards, the man who led the black boycott of the 1968 Olympics, and George Starke, a lineman with the Washington Redskins, were among those going. There were about twenty of us. I had my first reservations about the trip when I discovered how our journey was being routed. We were going from Boston to New York, from New York to Montreal, from Montreal to Vancouver, from Vancouver to Tokyo, and, finally, from Tokyo to Canton. When I inquired why we were taking such a circuitous route, I was told that we could not fly over directly from the States, because our State Department would not give any of us visa clearance. They were not interested in helping what was apparently a radical group of sports activists gain access to a Communist country.

  We were supposed to visit for twenty-one days; I only lasted fourteen. I still have no idea who organized this shindig. We were supposed to be a group of people involved with sports, interested in exploring alternative lifestyles that might enhance our approach to our games. The trip was going to allow us to interact with the Chinese and absorb mass quantities of Eastern consciousness.

  This was a liberal group going over there. Most of the members were long-distance runners, who naturally tend to lean toward the left. Conservatives don’t like marathons, realizing that, though they may add five years to your life, the pain is unbearable. Also, they realize that it’s much easier to climb into a Rolls-Royce and go someplace where your legs can be exercised for you. Liberals, however, know that while physical exertion is sometimes painful, it is also able to cleanse the mind and body. A forty-five-minute run is a gift from God that so exhausts you, you see stars and feel as if you have just spent a month in Tibet as soon as it’s over.

  The Chinese had an amazing sports program. Everybody participates in it; this is not a country of spectators. Every morning at six a.m. the entire Shanghai community would get out in front of their homes and take part in a communal exercise program. These sessions were organized, but participation seemed to be a spontaneous thing. Chinese children seemed able to accomplish more at an earlier age than children in the States. In Canton, I saw kids, seven and eight years old, vaulting over sidehorses. And it was not uncommon to catch sight of a four-year-old running the half-mile before going to school.

  There was little emphasis placed on winning in China, and no one associates disgrace with failure after an honest effort. Fear of failure is not encouraged. In America, if you’re the scrawny kid in the group, you’re usually picked last for any games, and, the moment you screw up you’re usually mocked. I didn’t see any of that over there. On the contrary, quite often it was the untalented kid who got picked for a team first. The Chinese placed friendship ahead of competition. They were not concerned with final scores.

  I wish I could say the same for Harry Edwards. He seemed to be keeping a running tally on points scored in a game whose only participants were he and I. Harry resented the fact that I was the only one on the trip making money from sports who wouldn’t apologize for it. To him, I was the bourgeois baseball player, representing everything that was corrupt in American athletics. He told me this, though never in a hostile manner. Harry played the part of the benign uncle who was trying to convert me. But I didn’t need conversion. I had already been down this road and had passed where he was.

  Harry thought it was significant that I came down with the Vancouver flu in Hong Kong. He claimed, “The reason you have come down with this virus is because of your compromised social consciousness. You are now in Utopia and have been forced to deal with the fact that you are a product of the Western world, whose values have been confused.” I disagreed, explaining that I had gotten sick because I had gone jogging. Being six-foot-three, I guess all the coal dust had settled on my head and in my lungs before it had a chance to reach the much-shorter Chinese. Harry said that reply was just another example of my pinnacle-oriented, capitalistic view. Jesus, I can’t stand a guy who can’t take a joke. One evening, at the dinner table, Harry again discussed my need for a higher consciousness, advising me to free myself from my dependence on the almighty dollar and to become one with the masses. I told him, “Harry, you don’t have to go to Chattanooga to see Rock City.” Upon hearing that, Allan Silber and Phil Shinnick spontaneously blew their chicken soup all over the table and laughed so hard that Harry got up and left. And the next day Mr. Edwards came down with the flu.

  Harry had been the one who told Tommy Smith and John Carlos to give the black power sign at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. He was a complex man. He spoke social revolution fluently, but he never did get around to telling me what he was going to do with the three Cadillacs I heard he owned back in L.A. Surely, when the new order took over, those extravagances were going to present him with a dilemma. Harry may have been all for the poor masses, but he sure did have a passion for big cars.

  The worst part of our trip came whenever we held a self-criticism session that featured lots of empty breast-beating. It was the most useless thing I had ever seen in my life. One time the group assembled to discuss the heavy use of marijuana by some members of our entourage. It was felt that this, along with the constant playing of rock ’n’ roll on our cassette recorders, might pose a danger to the spiritual nature of our trip. I didn’t make that meeting. I was asleep when it was held, exhausted from listening to rock ’n’ roll after having smoked too much reefer.

  I did attend one of these sessions in Canton. It was a cold day, below freezing outside. Twenty of us sat in a hotel room with all the windows shut. Before one mea culpa was utte
red, I said, “Gee, we keep talking about raising our consciousness, yet, here we are, breathing in each other’s germs instead of having a window open. Let’s get some air in this joint.”

  I opened all the windows and the group immediately started to split up. The people who, like me, had realized that they were of Western descent and that there was no way we could be Easterners, headed back for the warmth of their beds. The ones who stayed and froze were the ones who insisted on repenting for their sins while saying, “God, I wish I was Chinese.” That was a crock. I realized that the Chinese had their virtues, but, like all human beings, they also had their faults.

  I liked their holistic approach to the treatment of disease. Doctors in China are paid to keep the populace well. Their system is founded on the theories of preventive medicine. I also noticed that none of the homes in Canton had any locks on the doors. There is no fear of theft. The townspeople police themselves and they have committees that make sure the city is kept clean. They really jump on you for littering. You see very little arguing or fighting over there. One argument I did see took place when a cabbie opened his door too fast and knocked over a passing pedestrian. A crowd gathered around the driver and chastised him for being too concerned with getting where he was going to notice who he might bump into on the way there. They are a patient people with a high regard for each other.