Dodgerland

by Michael Fallon

  As the Phillies headed into the final weekend of the regular season, facing what was likely to be a vicious knockdown battle against the Pirates, the two races in the American League were wrapping up as well—one with little drama, and the other with enough drama to make up for the first. Going into the last weekend of September, the Kansas City Royals in the American League Western Division faced the Minnesota Twins, a fourth-place team that was nineteen games out of first place. The team from Kansas City had already clinched its third straight division title three days earlier on September 26, when they beat the Seattle Mariners at home. This Royals team was widely underrated, boasting a potent lineup that was spearheaded by a young and dynamic third baseman named George Brett and featured the lively bats of center fielder Amos Otis and designated hitter Hal McRae, speedy corner outfielders Al Cowens and Willie Wilson, a scrappy shortstop named Freddy Patek, and All-Star second baseman Frank White. The Royals also had a tough pitching staff led by ace Dennis Leonard, starters Paul Splittorff and Larry Gura, and closer Al “the Mad Hungarian” Hrabosky. That Kansas City was not given the respect it was due may have been because it could not seem to reach the World Series. For two straight years—in 1976 and 1977—the Royals had been beaten in the American League Championship Series by the New York Yankees.

  As for those Yankees the 1978 season had progressed in many ways similarly to the season prior, with all the histrionics and infighting of a Billy Martin–led clubhouse. Yet in significant other ways the 1978 season was quite a different story for the Yankees. In both 1977 and 1978 the team was a strange conglomeration of fiery, explosively proud characters, whose dislike for each other was written large in events on and off the field and recorded for posterity in the daily newspapers. In both years too the team wallowed in its own inner turmoil, struggling, and failing, to find a regular formula for winning until the season ramped up in the home stretch of the late summer and fall. In both years the low point of the season occurred right around the All-Star break. In 1977, on July 17, the Yankees stood at 50-42, mired in third place behind the Red Sox and Orioles and its manager sagging under the weight of Yankee owner George Steinbrenner’s constant meddling in team affairs. The low point of the season in 1977—the point when the “wheels came off,” according to Jonathan Mahler—occurred on July 21, when the Yankees dropped a game against the Milwaukee Brewers, 5–4, after leading the game 4–0 in the bottom of the ninth. Steinbrenner came within a hair’s breadth of firing Martin then, saying at one point, “When is somebody going to have enough intelligence to say . . . maybe the guy’s in the wrong profession?”4 What happened next, of course, is well documented. The Yankees got hot in late July and remained so all through August, winning twenty-nine of thirty-eight games between July 21 and September 1 to take command of their division. And they went 19-9 in September to win the East by two games over the Orioles and then beat the Royals in the playoffs and Dodgers in the World Series to emerge as world champions—all while being led by the guy who was maybe in the wrong profession.

  If the Yankees were a team in turmoil in 1977, then in 1978 they were a disaster—or, more accurately, they were “the Bronx Zoo,” as Sparky Lyle referred to the team in his diary-esque book (cowritten by Peter Golenbock) about the season. Despite the fact that the Yankees had won an unlikely world championship in 1977, and that Billy Martin had proved himself up to the task of leading his team to the highest achievement in the sport, the Yankee owner couldn’t help but ride his manager, and his team, for much of the season. As a result the Yankees played middling baseball at best, even as their divisional competition had improved significantly. Just after the All-Star break, after a loss at home against the Royals, the Yankees were just 47-42 and stuck in fourth place behind the Orioles, Brewers, and Red Sox—a full fourteen games out of first. Just as in 1977 the clubhouse atmosphere was marked by contention, particularly between Martin and the Yankees’ highest-paid player, Reggie Jackson. But unlike in 1977, at the All-Star break the Yankees’ season seemed all but over.

  For many of the Yankees, men who had spent much of their lives playing baseball and who prided themselves on being at the height of their difficult and challenging profession, the constant sparring between Martin and Jackson, and the near-constant meddling of their owner in the affairs of the team and decisions of the manager, grew exceedingly tedious during the 1978 season. In early July Lou Piniella complained to the press about the bad atmosphere in the clubhouse, suggesting there were a number of players who simply didn’t want to be there. Sparky Lyle agreed, saying both he and Piniella wanted to get out, and there were likely others. “George is pissing everyone off with all this crap between him and Billy,” wrote Sparky Lyle about early July, “and Billy’s pissing the players off, and those things alone are enough to destroy a ball club.” Much of the tension was also likely unavoidable. “It’s too bad that Reggie and Billy had to clash,” said Lyle, “but the way both of them are, that’s something that’s going to go on forever. Neither one of them is going to let a dead dog die. No way, and neither one of them is gonna get any good out of it.”5

  Lyle’s statements turned out to be prescient. As a result of the lingering feud between the two men, during the loss against the Royals on July 17, with the score tied 7–7 in the tenth, Reggie Jackson decided to publicly defy his manager. After a leadoff single by Thurman Munson, Jackson came up to bat. It was a critical moment in a critical game for a struggling team, and manager Martin, playing the odds as best he knew how, signaled for Jackson to bunt Munson into scoring position. After Jackson’s first bunt attempt was a foul ball, Martin had second thoughts and signaled for him to swing away. But Jackson ignored this signal and attempted to bunt again, again to no avail. On the third pitch, with Martin now fuming from the dugout, Jackson attempted to bunt again on the third pitch, this time popping out to the catcher. Jackson’s defiant act, which was in opposition to every notion of how the game is supposed to be played, was noted not only by Martin but also by his teammates. “Knowing how the game was played,” said relief pitcher Sparky Lyle of the incident, “I knew Reggie wasn’t bunting to move the runner. He was bunting to get back at Billy.”6

  Things exploded quickly after this latest affront by Jackson. Martin, furious with a player he thought overrated and overpaid, suggested to upper management that Jackson should be suspended for the remainder of the season. Upper management, however, settled on a five-game suspension for the outfielder, who not only was unapologetic about the incident but also played dumb as to what exactly he had done wrong. Martin grew only more furious at the slights, and, when a rumor began circulating that Steinbrenner was seeking to “trade” Martin to the White Sox in exchange for their manager, Bob Lemon, Martin lashed out at both the owner and his overpriced star, Jackson. “They deserve each other,” Martin told a Chicago sportswriter. “One’s a born liar, and the other’s convicted.”7 A day later, as a result of the outburst, Steinbrenner sent his team president to Kansas City, where the Yankees were playing, to fire Martin, and, having caught wind of the impending move, Martin preempted Steinbrenner one last time by calling a press conference and announcing a tearful resignation.8

  The gods of sports occasionally grant victory to the undeserving and unvirtuous. At least that’s what long-suffering Red Sox fans had long told themselves as a kind of consolation for their years of futility. For much of the twentieth century, since their last World Series victory in 1918, Boston fans had endured a long stretch without a championship, punctuated by several heartbreakingly epic collapses and by the long stretches of dominance by their rivals the New York Yankees. But now, in July 1978, with the Yankees sputtering in fourth place, and the New York team’s management and clubhouse in turmoil, Red Sox fans dared to hope that this might at last, after six long decades, be their year.

  At the end of August the Red Sox remained in first place, now seven games ahead of the Yankees, who had moved into sole possession of second place. Despite Boston’s strong lead in the div
ision, there were some reasons for Red Sox fans to worry. First off, seven of Boston’s final thirty games would be against the Yankees, leaving them vulnerable to a team that seemed to be surging at just the right time. Meanwhile, as fate would have it, the Red Sox’s lineup was struggling with a devastating spate of injuries just as the pennant race was heating up. For instance, Boston’s intense All-Star shortstop, Rick Burleson, strained ligaments in July and was out for about a month. Veteran outfielder–first baseman Carl Yastrzemski hurt his back in July and his wrist in August, while catcher Carlton Fisk suffered cracked ribs. Third baseman Butch Hobson had bone chips in his right elbow, as well as cartilage and ligament damage to both knees, and, on August 25, starting second baseman Jerry Remy chipped a bone in his left wrist when the Angels’ Rick Miller slid hard into him during a steal attempt. Perhaps worst of all, steady outfielder Dwight Evans suffered a concussion on August 28 when he was hit in the head by a pitch. “And we didn’t have a strong bench,” said Red Sox pitcher Bob Stanley. “We got Frank Duffy to fill in for Burleson and he didn’t do the job. . . . I remember Yaz coming in after one loss and saying, ‘I’ve got a feeling we’re going to blow this thing.’ I think a lot of guys felt that.” Stanley wasn’t the only one who was concerned. “In 1975,” Dwight Evans said, comparing the current season to the year Boston fell to the Big Red Machine in the World Series, “we were together. In 1978 we weren’t together. We did not jell for some stupid, strange reason.”9

  Boston faced New York in a crucial series at home in September 1978. The results were such an unmitigated disaster for the team—especially in front of four sold-out crowds at their home park—that it quickly earned a pet name: the “Boston Massacre.” The Red Sox’s trouble began in the first inning of the first game, on September 7, when former Yankee pitcher Mike Torrez, whose record for Boston at the time was 15-8, gave up six hits and five runs. In the second inning Torrez was replaced by Andy Hassler, who promptly gave up seven hits and four runs in two innings, thus spotting the Yankees a seven-run lead after three innings. As if that weren’t enough, the Yankees scored five more runs in the top of the fourth inning, and that was all she wrote—the Yankees took the game 15–3 on the strength of twenty-one hits and six innings of solid relief pitching by Ken Clay, who had come in to replace starter Catfish Hunter when he strained his groin in the fourth inning.

  The next game, on September 8, was much the same story—the Yankees exploding for seventeen hits and thirteen runs in a 13–2 victory. The two-game devastation was almost unprecedented, akin to a mob-like revenge killing spree, and people around the league suddenly took note. “Boston’s got the best record in baseball,” said Yankees scout Clyde King at the time. “I could understand if an expansion team fell apart like this. It can’t go on . . .” Even members of the Yankees were shocked at the turn of events. “We knew the Red Sox were hurting going into this Series,” noted Sparky Lyle at the time, “but this is ridiculous. Evans was beaned last week, and he’s still dizzy, and because of it he dropped a long fly ball that cost them, and he had to leave the game. Fisk has cracked ribs, and he made two throwing errors. Burleson booted one, and so did Scott, and Burgmeier threw one away too.”10

  Still, despite all the injuries, the sheer scope of the devastation—especially after the Yankees won the third game 7–0 on the strength of team ace Ron Guidry’s two-hit pitching, and then won the fourth game 7–4—was mind-boggling. “How can a team get 30-something games over .500 in July,” said Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk, “and then in September see its pitching, hitting and fielding all fall apart at the same time?” And while the explanation provided by the Yankees’ Reggie Jackson—“This team [the Yankees] is loaded with tough guys. This team is loaded with professionals”—was the sort of giddy one-upmanship that is often found in the thick of pennant races, especially between two rivals like New York and Boston, one thing was clear: now, on September 11, the two teams’ fortunes had suddenly reversed.11 Ever since July 24, the day after Yankees manager Billy Martin resigned, the Yankees had recorded a 39-14 record, while the Red Sox had gone 25-28. After the Yankees’ “Boston Massacre” sweep at Fenway, the two teams had exactly the same record—86 wins against 56 losses—and were tied for the Eastern Division lead.

  The Philadelphia Phillies came to Pittsburgh on September 29 for an evening doubleheader, needing just one win in four games to clinch the National League East crown. But the Pirates, clearly harboring their own aspirations for 1978, promptly won the first two games in dramatic fashion and closed within one and a half games of the division leaders. In the first game, with the score tied in the bottom of the ninth, the Pirates’ leadoff batter, Ed Ott, tripled against pitcher Ron Reed and then came around to score on the play when outfielder Garry Maddox booted the ball. In the second (twilight) game, with the score tied 1–1 in the ninth, the Pirates rallied to load the bases with no outs. With Phil Garner coming to the plate, the Phillies brought in reliever Warren Brusstar, who had pitched well for the team all season, winning six games against three losses and recording a 2.33 ERA. Brusstar never got a chance to record an out, as, before he could retire Garner, he balked in the winning run.

  Despite the disappointment of losing two close games, the Phillies regrouped and on September 30, the second-to-last day of the 1978 regular season, held on to win finally against the Pirates, 10–8. Interestingly, in the game Phillies starting pitcher Randy Lerch helped his own cause by slugging two solo home runs and holding on long enough—five innings—to get the win, thus clinching the team’s third straight Eastern Division title.

  In Los Angeles the Dodgers closed out the season in San Diego on Sunday, October 1, then hopped on a Monday-morning flight to Philadelphia in time for a Wednesday-night game at Veterans Stadium. In the American League, meanwhile, as of October 1 the Royals would have to wait to find out who would be their own playoff opponent. Having lost a fourteen-game lead over the Yankees as late as July 20, and then finding themselves two and a half games behind the Yankees on September 17, over the last two weeks or so of the regular season the Boston Red Sox had come roaring back. In the team’s last thirteen regular-season games, the Red Sox went 11-2—including winning their last eight in a row—managing to tie the Yankees on the last day of the season when New York lost its final game at home against the lowly Cleveland Indians. The tie forced a one-game playoff to decide the final division champion; it was the first such one-game playoff in the American League since 1948, when the Cleveland Indians had faced the Red Sox after the two teams were tied at the end of the regular season.

  “It was strange, but for a game that was so important to both teams,” said Sparky Lyle, “there was very little tension. . . . The general consensus [among the Yankees] was ‘We’re going to win tomorrow.’ We just knew we were going to win.” And, true to Lyle’s prediction, the Yankees did crush the Red Sox’s hopes, though the tight 5–4 nail-biter was immediately deemed a classic by all who watched. “It was a tremendous day,” Lyle continued. “I’ll tell you, it really was like being in the seventh game of the World Series.”12 Though the Red Sox got to the seemingly invincible Ron Guidry, whose record to that point was an astounding 24-3, and led 2–0 after six, the Yankees fought back in the seventh inning off Mike Torrez. With two out and runners on first and second, the Yankees’ number-nine hitter, the light-hitting shortstop, Bucky Dent, came up to bat. Dent, who had little power, was not the best option for the Yankees at this point in the game, but the team had no choice. An injury to Willie Randolph, the Yankees’ usual second baseman, had left the team few infield options. Despite the less than optimal matchup, what happened next further burnished the Yankee legend. That is, in 1978, against their bitter rival the Boston Red Sox, New York experienced another Yankee miracle that put the team back in the playoffs against the Royals for the third straight year.

  The moment couldn’t have been any better scripted: It is a loud seventh inning in front of a tense Fenway crowd, and Torrez, who seemingly has his
best stuff today, is pitching a gem. The diminutive Dent, meanwhile, seems overmatched and overwhelmed. Choking up on the bat, Dent is barely able to hold off on the first pitch, which is low and almost in the dirt. After hacking at the second pitch, a change-up that fooled him, Dent swings wildly at an inside and low fastball, sending the ball into his instep and bringing out the Yankees’ trainer. A few moments later, after the application of some ethyl chloride to relieve the pain, and with a new bat brought to him by the batboy, Dent steps back in. A muted and tense wave of whistles and cheers spreads through the crowd. Torrez winds and delivers another fastball, this one right over the plate, and Dent slaps at the ball. “Deep to left,” says Yankees television announcer Bill White, his voice rising as the ball sails over the Fenway Park short fence known as the “Green Monster.” “Yastrzemski . . . will not get it! It’s a home run! . . . A three-run home run for Bucky Dent! The Yankees now lead by a score of three to two.”

  The camera follows the unlikely hero, trotting around the bases with his head down, clapping once but seemingly fully aware of how unlikely was his contribution to the game. “And look at that Yankee bench, led by Bob Lemon,” says White. “And a happy Bucky Dent. Yankees now lead three to two. Well, the last guy you expect to hit a home run just hit one in the screen. Bucky Dent!”