Dodgerland

by Michael Fallon

  For Dodger fans recounting what happened after the fourth inning of Game Six in 1977 World Series is akin to a southerner’s recounting of the burning of Atlanta or a Japanese citizen’s recounting of the last days of World War II. And recounting the events are further complicated by the fact that, in the minds of the deepest of Dodger fans—those diehards who lived and breathed all things Dodgers in 1977, who watched every possible minute of the World Series, and who, at age eleven, say, had lived a life mostly sheltered from soul-crushing disappointment—the events that began with no outs in the bottom half of the fourth inning were when one was forced to reckon with a hard truth about the world. That is, three particular moments in Game Six, which seemed to come as quick as lightning strikes, or sucker punches from a playground bully, were the stuff of waking nightmares and countless adult therapy sessions for millions of poor Angelenos who had to witness the events. The devastation was just so massive, the Dodgers’ destruction and desolation just so complete. And it was made all the worse by having to watch the rusted-out, crumbling, belligerent, and uncouth Old World city of New York rejoice at crushing the hopes and dreams of the people of Los Angeles.

  After the Series ended, as if to pile on additional injury, it was revealed that local Yankee fans had, before Game Six, found the hotel rooms of two Dodger players—Dave Lopes and Steve Garvey—and left stark messages for the players. “The guy said,” reported Lopes, “‘We’re gonna show you how crazy New York fans are.’ He said he was going to shoot me.”19 In the end it was all so demoralizing and devastating that it’s still difficult for some Dodger fans from that time to put the actual events into words. Still, to keep the historical record clear, one must try.

  Game Six started innocuously enough. The Dodgers, as they had in three of the first five games, scored first in the first inning, when Garvey tripled home two runs. They held the lead until the fourth inning, when, with the score at 3–2, the meat of New York’s lineup—Munson, Jackson, and Chris Chambliss—was due up to face Happy Hooton. At this point there was some reason for Dodger fans, and for the team, to be hopeful. In Game Two Hooton had all but shut down the team’s heavy hitters. Munson had only gotten one hit, a single, while Jackson had gone hitless in four at bats, striking out twice and grounding into a double play, and Chambliss had gone oh for four with one strikeout. However, Munson ripped a sharp single to left field, after which one of the TV announcers commented that, thus far, Hooton seemed to be having some trouble locating his knuckle curve. “He’s gotta get that pitch established and get it over if he’s going to be effective,” said Tom Seaver. Lasorda, aware of the problem, watched Hooton carefully, his face a mask of worry. Yet with his shaky bullpen Lasorda had no choice but to hope that Hooton could get through a few more innings.

  After the single by Munson Hooton took the ball from Lopes, who had received it from Baker, and he scraped his right foot across the front of the pitching rubber as Reggie Jackson came to the plate. Jackson looked placid, as though his mind was elsewhere. He could have been a Tibetan monk, getting ready to recite morning prayers. Hooton, his face the usual mask of misery—upper lip curled, eyebrows furrowed—stared down at Jackson from his perch on the mound at Yankee Stadium.

  And here is where time slows down for the Dodger fan. Here’s where one wonders what Hooton must’ve been thinking at this particular instant, what he thought would be just the right pitch to throw to the dangerous left-handed slugger—who was in his element, in front of the boisterous New York fans, looking out at the easy potshot that was the fence in right field. Here’s where one might wonder why Hooton didn’t throw a different pitch to this dangerous bruiser.

  Up until now, unlike in the League Championship Series, Jackson had had a good World Series. Not a historically great one, but a good one. He had hit just over .350 with two home runs, and while he’d batted in just three runs from his position as cleanup hitter, he had scored seven runs in the first five games, a number that was just two shy of the World Series record. As Hooton leaned back and lifted his left leg to start his stretch delivery, Jackson stood absolutely still, almost unconcerned, peering at Hooton in a sleepy sort of way. As Hooton finished his kick and started his throwing motion, Jackson still had not moved, except to dip his knees slightly. Hooton delivered his pitch, a fastball that Yeager wanted down and in but that crept up right into Jackson’s wheelhouse. In an instant Jackson uncorked, rotating his sizable linebacker’s upper body and powerful arms in a roundhouse swing that, once his bat connected with the pitch, put the ball well back in the lower deck of the right-field grandstand. The boisterous New York crowd leaped to their feet, erupting in glee, as Jackson ran the bases in his unique bouncing trot.

  The game and the Series were, for all intents and purposes, over. Hooton, who clearly had nothing in the tank to shut down the Yankees, was removed after throwing a few pitches to Chambliss. His relief, Sosa, gave up a bloop hit, and another run, and the Yankees now led 5–3 in the bottom of the fourth.

  In the fifth inning disaster would repeat almost exactly as in the fourth. With two out Jackson again came to the plate with a runner at first. Again, he looked calm and self-possessed—though just a tad less so—and again he turned on a first-pitch fastball from a Dodger right-hander (Sosa, this time) and parked it in the stands out in right.

  The Yankees now led 7–3 and would not give up the lead. The Dodgers’ battery, their spirits no doubt crushed by the stunning turn of events, fell completely silent through the sixth, seventh, and eight innings. By the time Reggie Jackson returned to the plate in the bottom of the eighth, the score still 7–3, there was not much hope for the Dodgers. To win now would have been something just short of a miracle. And the Dodgers showed no signs of being able to create another miracle.

  Jackson led off the eighth inning. This time right-handed knuckleballer Charlie Hough was pitching. The crowd stood up and offered an ovation, and now, perhaps aware of what he had already accomplished, Jackson looked anything but placid. He stood more upright than he had in earlier innings. He fidgeted at the plate and seemed completely unprepared as Hough began his high leg kick. The ball came fluttering in—a good-looking looping knuckler that came in low. In the last instant this time Jackson unleashed a powerful uppercut swing. What should have been a high pop-up to center somehow kept carrying, and carrying, and carrying, and everyone in the ballpark—the fans, the announcers, the Yankees, and most especially the Dodgers—could hardly believe it. The ball seemed to have afterburners on it, landing some 470 feet away, in the darkened part of the stands way out in no-man’s-land beyond center field. In his autobiography some years later Jackson would reveal that everything he did in this at bat—the agitated demeanor, the oddly upright stance, the seeming lack of readiness—was premeditated. “The key to hitting a knuckleball is timing,” Jackson wrote. “I got this from Sal Bando, who was a great knuckleball hitter with the A’s. He taught me about how to hit it: ‘Just stand there, Reggie. Don’t even get into your stance. Just face forward, and take a nice full cut.’”20

  Whatever the case it was Jackson’s third straight home run, and Hough’s was the third straight pitch to Jackson to leave the park. It was a historic feat of athletic prowess, and it had killed the Dodgers in the 1977 World Series.

  Interlude

  Postorbital Remorse; or, There’s Always Next Year

  I will express now what I had in my mind at the beginning, that this could well have been the series of the almighty dollar against the Big Dodger in the Sky.

  —Keith Jackson, in the ninth inning of the sixth game of the 1977 World Series

  I think there are going to be a lot of Reggies born in this town.

  —Bill Lee, after witnessing the last game of the ’77 World Series

  You have to be fearless. You have to defy that Big Loss in the Sky.

  —Steve Garvey

  Some years after the 1977 World Series, long after the ball field at Yankee Stadium had been freed of ecstatic and unruly New Y
ork fans, after the confetti and vomit and broken glass had been swept from the grandstands, and after all the furor had died down, Jonathan Mahler reported in his book Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning on the widespread notion that the Yankees’ dramatic World Series victory, and Jackson’s Ruthian display of home run power,1 had all but pulled a bankrupt, crime-riddled, and corrupt city out of the depths of despair. “The tabloids wove Reggie’s three mighty blows into their narrative of the city’s struggle for survival,” Mahler wrote, citing, among other sources, a New York Post editorial titled “Who Dares to Call New York a Lost Cause?” Coming fifteen years after the last Yankee world championship over San Francisco in 1962, the win in 1977 certainly did thrill a city hungry for some good news, even if the tabloids’ claims were somewhat dubious. “What Reggie Jackson did here Tuesday night,” wrote Mike Gonring, a staff reporter for the Milwaukee Journal, “in the sixth and deciding game of the World Series would have been unbelievable, had not so many people witnessed it.” Gonring noted that, for the series, Jackson had slugged five home runs in all and ten RBIs, which were both records. “It was totally preposterous. Absolutely incredible,” the scribe wrote, echoing the near-universal sentiments of baseball fans around the country.2

  In the weeks immediately following the Series, Reggie Jackson lapped up the accolades and attention, in one moment affecting an aw-shucks kind of humility and in the other boasting in the manner of Muhammad Ali or Broadway Joe Namath. “Love me or hate me,” Jackson crowed to one interviewer in the aftermath of Game Six, “but you can’t ignore me.”3 In interviews Jackson attributed his success not to his own playing prowess but to the Lord (“God allowed me to do that”) and to some sort of humanitarian impulse (“I’ll tell you what I was thinking . . . I did this for all of us. Take it. Enjoy it. And let’s do it again”).4 And to anyone who had doubted him, Jackson spoke bluntly. “At last I feel I’m a Yankee,” he said.

  Later, before the start of the 1978 season, a more circumspect Jackson admitted that, for much of 1977, he had hardly felt secure about his role on the team. “To me, the Yankees were always Mantle and Ford, Joe DiMaggio, and Ruth and Gehrig. . . . But now I think I belong.”5 In his autobiographical account of the 1977 and 1978 seasons, published long after his playing days, Jackson would go much deeper. “I know all the stories about how I said they’d name a candy bar after me if I played in New York,” Jackson said. “How I was longing to come and play on the big stage and become Mr. October. Most of it is just that—stories. I was already a star before I came to New York, and I was going to take my star with me anywhere I went. In fact, New York was about the last place I thought I would end up.” As to what was Jackson’s first choice of team to play for before the 1977 season, he gave a surprising answer. “My real first choice was the Dodgers,” Jackson wrote.

  To me, the Dodgers made perfect sense. They were a good team. I played in the World Series there in 1974 [while he was on the Oakland A’s], and the ballpark felt small to me. . . . I always hit the ball very well there. I always loved the environment there. . . . They had a manager who was full of energy in Tommy Lasorda. They had a great farm system, great ownership in the O’Malleys. I always admired the family: They were minority conscious, and they had always been community conscious. There were the team that signed the first black player, Jackie Robinson—they had a great history. Their values were something you wanted to be around.6

  Jackson pointed out that his left-handed bat would have been a great complement for a team overloaded with right-handers. Furthermore, he continued, Jackson was, unlike with New York, very fond of the city. “Los Angeles was a good spot for me in many ways, on and off the field. . . . And I know the Dodgers wanted me. Al Campanis, their general manager, was always trying to get me in a trade. A small ballpark, in a fast league. It was the place dude!”7

  Success, of course, provides the means to whitewash over all manner of misbehavior and contention. Not only were the drama, backbiting, and sniping in the Yankees’ clubhouse in 1977 erased by Reggie Jackson’s epic three swings, but his feat on that one October night in the Bronx changed the very way he was perceived as a ballplayer. The truth was this: Yes, Jackson was at times a dangerous, often very intelligent, if flawed hitter (his tendency to overswing, and his prodigious ego about his ability, meant that he went down swinging an inordinate amount of the time). However, he was rarely admired by his teammates, his managers, even by the fans. In fact, Jackson was often derided as one-dimensional, or a showboat or hot dog, and even as a loafer who cared little for the welfare of his team. Throughout the 1977 season Billy Martin in particular had been open about his disdain for Jackson.8 And while Jackson suggested that Martin’s feelings about him were racially motivated, the truth was that many on the Yankees’ coaching staff (and its player roster, truth be told) had problems with Jackson’s high self-regard.9

  Even Reggie Jackson’s hallmark nickname, “Mr. October,” did not originally mean what it came to mean. The nickname had been coined as a sarcastic jab at Jackson by Thurman Munson, who had found the outfielder as repugnant as anyone, at the beginning of the World Series, not at the end. How sarcastic is up for debate. Many believe that Munson was pointing out how terribly Jackson had played during the AL Championship Series against the Kansas City Royals. (Jackson had gone two for sixteen in the crucial series, collecting just one RBI and no extra-base hits.) However, Jackson would contend that Munson was still somewhat jokingly supporting Jackson when coining the nickname. “It was after the second game of the Series,” Jackson said, “and he (Munson) was sticking up for Martin against me. He told the media, ‘Billy probably just doesn’t realize Reggie is Mr. October.’”10 Whatever the case Jackson embraced the nickname, and after his mighty heroics in the World Series the nickname just seemed to fit.

  A well-developed ego is, of course, a crucial trait for many successful ballplayers. Even among Tom Lasorda’s seemingly congenial and clean-cut Dodgers, there was more than enough ego to go around. What else would explain the bitterness that filled the Dodgers’ visiting clubhouse that night after the World Series ended? As the world celebrated the Yankees’ victory and Jackson’s unprecedented personal triumph, the Dodgers were in a dark mood. In one corner Charlie Hough, the pitcher who served up the third of Jackson’s home runs, sat on a trunk, looking, according to one reporter, like “a broken prize fighter.” “He hit a good pitch,” Hough said, “down and away. Of course, he hits them down and away. Whatever it was, he exploded.” Next to Hough, meanwhile, utility infielder Lee Lacy shook his head in slow wonder, bitterly repeating the slugger’s name within earshot of reporters: “Reggie Jackson . . . Reggie Jackson . . . Reggie Jackson . . .” In another corner Ron Cey stood in front of a mirror, staring at himself vacantly, while Dave Lopes and Rick Monday sat in front of their lockers, heads down and avoiding eye contact with anyone. Catcher Steve Yeager, for his part, was unwilling to be so conciliatory. “I hope you’re not coming over here expecting me to say something,” he told reporters. “Because I got nothing to say. We got beat. We just got beat.”11 The team’s flight home to Los Angeles was similarly torturous. The coaches and a few players sat, slouched and silent, in the front of the plane in a darkened cabin. A few other players, meanwhile, blew off steam and frustration in the back of the plane. When the team reached Los Angeles, only a small subdued crowd greeted them. Without ceremony the Dodgers each went their separate ways for the winter.

  Under Lasorda, however, the Dodgers were careful to strike a certain positive, laid-back, California-esque pose at most times, so once the shock of losing the World Series wore off, the team quickly reverted to form. Don Sutton and Steve Garvey were quick to publicly congratulate the Yankees in general, and Reggie Jackson in particular, for the win. “I think it was a night when he released a lot of emotional tension,” said Garvey of Jackson’s season-redeeming Game Six. “It sure was some performance. I have never seen one like it in my life in a championship game situation.” “Nobody on the
Dodgers should feel ashamed,” Cey said, once he was able to speak. “Give credit where credit is due. The Yankees made all the right plays. Their pitchers made the good pitches and their hitters got the big hits.”12

  If the Dodgers’ response to the loss was confusing, there was probably a good explanation. This was, after all, Lasorda’s team, and the conflicting emotions were a reflection of his style. Outwardly, Lasorda kept a positive outlook, talking about how his players had come together, rising to the challenge in a tough transitional year. “There were things on the line,” said Lasorda, “for me and for the team. People said that you can’t be a big league manager and remain close to your players. They said that with today’s attitudes and salaries you can’t indoctrinate a feeling of loyalty and pride in an organization. I think I proved those people wrong on both counts. My players are proud to be a Dodger in the same way that players used to say that it’s great to be a Yankee. . . . I think we strengthened the attachment between our fans and Dodger blue.” Still, despite the optimistic words, Lasorda’s deeper feelings about the World Series loss were more conflicted than he let on. Lasorda’s ego had been bruised by the dramatic loss, and if you looked closely you could see signs. For one thing, Lasorda had, from all the stress and hard work of his first season as manager, put on thirty-five pounds of extra weight. And after the Series Lasorda was slightly defensive when asked about the team’s prospects for 1978. “I already have a motto,” Lasorda said. “‘We did it before and we can do it again.’” In fact, on October 20, two days after Lasorda and the Dodgers had returned home to L.A., the manager’s positive outlook was all but gone. “We had a tremendous season in many ways,” he told Dodger beat reporter Ross Newhan, “a gratifying season for the organization, the manager, the players and the fans . . . [But] we had a long flight home, and we’re disappointed that we couldn’t bring Los Angeles a world championship. . . . I don’t want to take anything away from the Yankees. We’re too professional to do that. They beat us and there can be no alibis about it. Yet, there is no way that I can consider New York the better team. I wouldn’t trade clubs, period. Man for man I have to take the Dodgers over the Yankees.”13