3.Yeager would, in fact, become famous several years later for appearing nude in Playgirl. His team nicknames would tell you all you need to know about Yeager: “Yang” and “Boomer.”
4.The wedding was held there at the suggestion of Mayor Bradley’s wife, Ethel, who was a huge Dodger fan. Kantkowski, “Q+A Steve Yeager.”
5.Kantkowski, “Q+A Steve Yeager.”
6.Widely quoted.
7.Allen E. Hye, The Great God Baseball: Religion in Modern Baseball Fiction (Macon GA: Mercer University Press, 2004), 6; Wayne Stewart and Roger Kahn, The Gigantic Book of Baseball Quotations (New York: Skyhorse, 2007), 34; Joe Garagiola, Baseball Is a Funny Game (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 2005); Jonathan Fraser, Light: The Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball, 2nd ed. (Jefferson NC: McFarland, 2005), 149.
8.Tom Wolfe, “Post-orbital Remorse: The Brotherhood of the Right Stuff,” Rolling Stone, January 4, 1973.
9.Tom Wolfe, “Post-orbital Remorse, Part Two: How the Astronauts Fell from Cowboy Heaven,” Rolling Stone, January 18, 1973.
10.John Hall, “Spring Games,” Los Angeles Times, March 18, 1977.
11.Ross Newhan, “Yeager ‘Hit-No-Run’ Victim in 2–1 Victory,” Los Angeles Times, August 25, 1977.
12.Tom Lasorda with David Fisher, The Artful Dodger (New York: Avon, 1986), 268.
13.His record at the end of August was just 9-7.
14.Scott Ostler, “Garvey Comes Blasting Out of Slump,” Los Angeles Times, August 29, 1977.
15.“Dodger Notes,” Los Angeles Times, August 31, 1977.
16.That the request would go nowhere with the council did not detract from the support Bradley offered the Dodgers, reflecting the feelings of the majority of the citizens of Los Angeles.
17.“Morning Briefing,” Los Angeles Times, September 10, 1977.
18.Ross Newhan, “John Clinches It with 19th Win,” Los Angeles Times, September 21, 1977.
14. Gonna Fly Now
1.The modern World Series, a contest between the champions of the two modern Major Leagues—National and American—was first played in 1903. But the roots of this series go back to at least the 1880s, when a final “World Championship Series” was played between the National League champion and the American Association champion.
2.John Hall, “So Help Me,” Los Angeles Times, October 3, 1977.
3.Tommy John with Dan Valenti, My Twenty-Six Years in Baseball (New York: Bantam, 1992), 214.
4.On September 26 John would get his twentieth win, the first time he had reached that milestone in his career. For the season he would finish second to Carlton in the Cy Young Award balloting.
5.Ross Newhan, “Dodgers Beaten; Sutton Likes Playoff Chances,” Los Angeles Times, Sept. 24, 1977.
6.Starting in the mid-1940s Ozark had played eighteen years in the Dodgers’ farm system, reaching the AAA level several times but never appearing in the Major Leagues. In 1956 he became a player-manager for the team’s A team in Wichita Falls and worked his way to manage the AAA team in Spokane. From 1965 to 1972 Ozark was a coach under Walt Alston. He took over the managerial job of last-place Philadelphia in 1973, and, in 1976, he led the Phillies to their first playoff appearance in twenty-six years.
7.Don Merry, “Phils Glad—Won’t See Reds,” Los Angeles Times, October 2, 1977.
8.Charles Maher, “Russell Makes No Alibis for His Key Errors,” Los Angeles Times, October 5, 1977.
9.The Phillies’ home record in 1977 was 60-21.
10.Don Merry, “Cey’s Home Run Shakes but Doesn’t Rattle Phils,” Los Angeles Times, October 5, 1977.
11.Maher, “Russell Makes No Alibis.”
12.John Hall, “The Leader,” Los Angeles Times, October 6, 1977.
13.Hall, “The Leader.”
14.John with Valenti, My Twenty-Six Years, 215.
15.Charles Maher, “Lasorda Lays It On, Slice by Slice,” Los Angeles Times, October 6, 1977.
16.Mitchell Nathanson, The Fall of the 1977 Phillies (Jefferson NC: McFarland, 2008), 198.
17.Charles Maher, “Lasorda Doesn’t Sound Like a Happy Winner,” Los Angeles Times, October 9, 1977.
18.Maher, “Lasorda Doesn’t Sound.”
19.Jackson, years later in his account of the 1977–78 seasons, had a lot to say about being benched by Martin in Game Five of the American League Championship Series. “He told the press it was because I didn’t hit Paul Splittorff. . . . It was true I didn’t have a great season against him. He was a good left-hander, a mainstay of their staff, great control. Counting the first game of the playoffs, that year I was 2–12 against him, although I hit a double and home run as a Yankee against him, in Kansas City. But he pitched all of us tough. That year he was 3–0 against us. . . . I honestly didn’t know what Billy thought he was trying to do. I don’t know if he was trying to make a statement, show he could win it all without me. . . . What was Billy thinking? I don’t know. At this point, I didn’t know, and I didn’t care why.” Reggie Jackson with Kevin Baker, Becoming Mr. October (New York: Doubleday, 2013), 147.
20.William Mead, The Official New York Yankees Hater’s Handbook (New York: Putnam, 1983), 9.
21.Michael Shapiro, Bottom of the Ninth: Branch Rickey, Casey Stengel, and the Daring Scheme to Save Baseball from Itself (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2010), 83. The A’s general manager, Parke Carroll, was in on the take. Carroll had once worked for the Yankees and once suggested it didn’t matter that his A’s were forever abysmal—as long as the Yankees won.
22.Roy Terrell, “Yankee Secrets,” Sports Illustrated, June 22, 1957.
23.Baseball’s commissioner Ford Frick, as Sports Illustrated explained, testified before the congressional committee, suggesting that collusion did not exist in this case. “Whether the committee was satisfied, no one is exactly sure,” the magazine reported. “After listening to Mr. Frick’s testimony, they just looked blank.” Terrell, “Yankee Secrets.”
24.Shapiro, Bottom of the Ninth, 66.
25.Both widely quoted.
26.Robert W. Creamer, Babe: The Legend Comes to Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 270.
27.Widely quoted.
28.Jimmy Breslin, Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game? The Improbable Saga of the Mets’ First Year (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002), 80.
29.All of this is chronicled in Jonathan Mahler’s 2005 book, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005).
30.No facial hair except mustaches and no hair below the collar.
15. Klieg Lights, Smoke Bombs, and Three Massive Bombshells
1.Jim Murray, “Dodgers Face Baseball’s Version of Krupp Works,” Los Angeles Times, October 11, 1977.
2.Mike Downey, “The Stories Never Stopped, but Neither Did the Abuse,” Los Angeles Times, June 9, 1995. Mantle’s account is a rollicking one, but it seems somewhat exaggerated. According to official records, the game in question, an 8–5 Yankee win, occurred on May 21, 1956. There is no record of an actual fight, however, or of Lasorda knocking down Martin. According to an account by Peter Golenbock, “Martin was involved in a shouting match on the field in Kansas City. Yankee pitcher Don Larson [had] brushed back outfield Harry Simpson of the A’s. In the eighth inning A’s pitcher Tom Lasorda brushed back Hank Bauer. The next pitch went at Bauer’s head. Martin started to run from the dugout onto the field when three Yankees held him back. Martin was swearing at Lasorda, threatening him. With Mantle at bat, Martin made another threat, Lasorda walked over to the Yankee dugout, ‘Come on,’ Lasorda yelled at Martin. The umpires kept them apart.” When Lasorda faced Martin in the top half of the ninth inning, Martin was called out on strikes. Peter Golenbock, Wild, High and Tight (New York: St. Martin’s, 1994), 108.
3.Ross Newhan, “Series: Once More with Feeling,” Los Angeles Times, October 11, 1977.
4.Newhan, “Series: Once More.�
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5.Murray, “Dodgers Face Krupp Works.”
6.Charles Maher, “Ump Was Out of Position to Make the Call—Garvey,” Los Angeles Times, October 12, 1977.
7.Maher, “Ump Out of Position.”
8.Interestingly, Nestor Chylak was the home plate umpire in that series, in the town where he would nearly get brained by a bottle thrower just a few years later.
9.Charles Maher, “The Bleachers’ Heavy Artillery Was on Target,” Los Angeles Times, October 13, 1977.
10.Ross Newhan, “Should Billy Have Let the Cat Out?,” Los Angeles Times, October 13, 1977; Ross Newhan, “Martin Says He’ll Manage without Jackson’s Help,” Los Angeles Times, October 14, 1977.
11.Newhan, “Martin Says He’ll Manage.”
12.“Morning Briefing,” Los Angeles Times, October 15, 1977.
13.Charles Maher, “Baker: ‘We Ain’t Losing . . . We’re Just Behind,” Los Angeles Times, October 15, 1977.
14.“Color Their Mood Blue . . . as in Dodger Blue,” Los Angeles Times, October 16, 1977.
15.Charles Maher, “Lasorda’s Talk Lifts Dodgers,” Los Angeles Times, October 17, 1977.
16.“Color Their Mood Blue,” Los Angeles Times.
17.Bill Shirley, “The Dodgers Win Another Night in the Bronx,” Los Angeles Times, October 17, 1977.
18.Don Merry, “Sutton Thinks It Will Go Seven,” Los Angeles Times, October 17, 1977.
19.UPI, “Callers Threaten Garvey, Lopes,” Los Angeles Times, October 19, 1977.
20.Jackson with Baker, Becoming Mr. October, 181.
Interlude
1.Jackson’s three-homer game was not the first in World Series history. “Babe Ruth had hit three home runs in a single World Series game,” Jonathan Mahler pointed out in his book Ladies and Gentlemen, 337. In fact, Ruth had done it twice. Still, Jackson’s feat was unique in that he did it on three consecutive pitches.
2.Mahler, Ladies and Gentlemen, 337; Mike Gonring, “Jackson’s Incredible Show Ends Series,” Milwaukee Journal, October 19, 1977.
3.Chuck Perazich, “It’ll Be Reggie, Reggie, Reggie on the Label, Label, Label,” Youngstown (OH) Vindicator, October 23, 1977.
4.Mahler, Ladies and Gentlemen, 338.
5.Dave Anderson, “Column,” Miami News, February 6, 1978.
6.Jackson with Baker, Becoming Mr. October, 36–37.
7.Jackson with Baker, Becoming Mr. October, 37. While the Dodgers did put in a bid for Jackson in the free-agent “draft” that year, they never made an actual offer. “They laid back,” Jackson said. “I never did find out why.”
8.This disdain reached a head on June 18 of the year, during a nationally televised Saturday-afternoon game against the Boston Red Sox, when Martin, incensed that Jackson seemingly had loafed on a play, removed the outfielder midinning for bench player Paul Blair. When Jackson tried to confront Martin in the dugout, the two nearly came to blows.
9.This included bench coach Elston Howard, the catcher-outfielder who broke the Yankees’ color barrier as a rookie in 1955. According to Howard’s friend Yogi Berra, he was so put off by Jackson’s habit of calling attention to himself that, when Jackson asked Howard one day how he would have fared on the great Yankees teams of the 1950s and ’60s, Howard immediately deadpanned (much to Berra’s delight): “Fifth outfielder.” Harvey Araton, Driving Mr. Yogi (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), 33.
10.Jackson with Baker, Becoming Mr. October, 167.
11.John Hall, “Dodgers Explain Defeat with One Word—Reggie,” Los Angeles Times, October 19, 1977.
12.Ken Rappoport, AP wire report, October 19, 1977; Hall, “Dodgers Explain Defeat.”
13.Ross Newhan, “Lasorda: Yanks Champs but Dodgers Are Better,” Los Angeles Times, October 20, 1977.
14.Robert J. Banning, “Letter to the Editor,” Los Angeles Times, October 28, 1977; Ron Hart, “Reggie Jackson and Tom Lasorda Get Ugly in Fox Broadcast Booth,” Yahoo Contributor Network, June 26, 2010, http://voices.yahoo.com/reggie-jackson-tommy-lasorda-6292096.htm (site discontinued).
15.“As soon as the word was out that you were going up, even before any official announcement, your life changed. You were no longer just another officer candidate. That was what an astronaut who had never been up really was: not an astronaut but an officer candidate. As soon as you were chosen you were a new person around the Manned Space Center and around Clear Lake. It was like election, salvation. You had just been certified by the powers that be as someone who officially possessed The Right Stuff.” Tom Wolfe, “Post-orbital Remorse, Part Three: The Dark Night of the Ego,” Rolling Stone, February 15, 1973.
16.Wolfe, “Post-orbital Remorse, Part Two.”
17.Rappoport, AP wire report.
18.Cyndy Garvey claimed that there was a hidden spout on the bottom edge of the case.
19.Garvey with Meisler, Secret Life of Cyndy Garvey, 211–12.
20.Wolfe, “Post-orbital Remorse, Part Three.”
21.Wolfe, “Post-orbital Remorse, Part Three.”
22.Payne and Ratzan, Tom Bradley, 212–13.
16. Rediscovering Baseball
1.Roger Angell, “The Sporting Scene with Sudden Endings,” New Yorker, November 14, 1977.
2.The mark shattered the previous league record of 2,755,184 fans, set by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1962.
3.Baseball’s following had risen 3 percent since 1974, while NFL Football, struggling with a lack of offensive scoring in its games and dominated in the 1970s by small-market teams like the Steelers, had fallen 3 percent over the same time period.
4.The only clear exception to the rule—the one team whose tickets sales had declined—were the Oakland A’s, who found themselves with an owner who was, after selling off all of his star players, seeking to liquidate the franchise.
5.Charles Maher, “News of Baseball’s Demise Is Greatly Exaggerated,” Los Angeles Times, September 27, 1977.
6.Gordon Verrell, “Unity a Dodger Plus, Says Cey,” The Sporting News, January 14, 1978.
7.Maher, “News of Baseball’s Demise.”
8.John with Valenti, My Twenty-Six Years, 221.
9.Verrell, “Unity a Dodger Plus.” Cey had reason to be magnanimous. A few days after the interview, on January 15, his wife, Fran, would give birth to their second child, Amanda Beth Cey.
10.Verrell, “Unity a Dodger Plus.”
11.Ross Newhan, “The Good Scout,” Los Angeles Times, January 17, 1978.
12.Another version of Lasorda’s ailment suggested he actually had contracted a case of food poisoning during his stay in Santo Domingo, where he was a celebrity at the local restaurants and cafés. The Sporting News, January 21, 1978.
13.Lasorda had to turn down an invitation to a White House prayer breakfast, though he did accept an invitation from Frank Sinatra to spend four days as his Palm Springs houseguest.
14.Newhan, “The Good Scout.”
15.Newhan, “The Good Scout.”
16.Newhan, “The Good Scout.”
17.The other players offered for the megastar in addition to Rhoden were Lee Lacy, Rick Sutcliffe, and Rafael Landestoy.
18.Crawford batted .333 against the A’s in that series, slugging one home run and one RBI in six plate appearances over three games.
19.Bob Oates, “Monday Is Aching to Get Back to Work,” Los Angeles Times, February 12, 1978.
20.Oates, “Monday Is Aching.”
21.Oates, “Monday Is Aching.”
22.The amount of average annual rainfall in Los Angeles is just under fifteen inches.
23.Skip Bayless, “Mr. Garvey Replaces Mr. Lincoln,” Los Angeles Times, February 26, 1978.
24.Ross Newhan, “Lasorda Says NL Champions Can Be Even More Productive This Season,” Los Angeles Times, February 26, 1978.
25.“Dodger Notes,” Los Angeles Times, March 2, 1978; Ross Newhan, “Lasorda Names Lopes Captain,” Los Angeles Times,
March 2, 1978.
26.Newhan, “Lasorda Names Lopes Captain.”
27.Newhan, “Lasorda Names Lopes Captain.”
Dodgerland Page 51
