Game Six

by Mark Frost

  Manager Darrell Johnson moved to the top step of the Red Sox dugout, watching Tiant closely. He was always reluctant to remove his best pitcher from any game, but if Luis lost Perez here, he might have to make a move. These were the moments when Tiant reached down into a reserve few other players possessed; he blew a waist-high fastball by the swinging Perez to strike him out and end the Reds threat.

  Sparky clapped his hands, walking the length of the dugout, exhorting his men as they grabbed their gloves and headed out onto the field for the bottom of the fifth. It was a new game again, and the Big Red Machine was alive and kicking in Boston.

  THIRTEEN

  Darrell Johnson has been falling out of trees all season and landing on his feet.

  RED SOX PITCHER BILL LEE

  UP IN THE NBC BROADCAST BOOTH, APPEARING ON CAMERA for the first time at the midpoint of the game, Dick Stockton turned over the play-by-play duties for the second half to Joe Garagiola. Eager to be back in charge of the evening’s narrative, Garagiola turned away from Stockton and went to work.

  Sparky Anderson sent out his fourth Reds pitcher of the game to start the bottom of the fifth inning as thirty-four-year-old Clay Palmer Carroll took the mound. After a few years of knocking around the National League and languishing in middle relief for the underachieving Atlanta Braves, Carroll had caught the eye of Reds super-scout Ray Shore. Shore thought the unheralded Carroll had outstanding command and control, and the ideal psychological makeup for a position that was just then being defined in the major leagues: the dedicated closer in the bullpen. Shore’s report put Carroll on the radar of GM Bob Howsam, and the Reds acquired him mid-season in 1968, as part of a trade for starting pitcher Tony Cloninger. Cloninger never panned out, but “Hawk” Carroll—nicknamed for his prominent beak—immediately won the job as the Reds’ closer. When Sparky Anderson joined the team and brought along his emphasis on a strong bullpen, Clay Carroll became one of the dominant closers in the National League, twice making the All-Star team, averaging sixty-one appearances a season, and saving eighty-nine games for the Reds during their resurgent half decade. In the last year, as two younger closers emerged from the Cincinnati farm system—right-hander Rawly Eastwick and lefty Will McEnaney—the aging Carroll had been eased back into setup and middle relief work. Hawk never complained—off the field he was the pitching staff’s court jester, a good ol’ country boy from Alabama who kept everybody loose—but whenever Sparky put the ball in his hand, he still snarled like a Rottweiler.

  His first assignment: left fielder Carl Yastrzemski. Fenway Park and the Red Sox dugout remained quiet for the first time in the game, as if the Reds’ three-run outburst and the threat of serious injury to Fred Lynn had knocked the wind out of them. Yaz stepped in, looking to breathe some life back into his team and the home crowd. The Red Sox leader was carrying another burden this night that he seldom talked about: His beloved mother, Hattie, who had been a fixture in the stands at Fenway throughout his two decades in Boston, was undergoing chemotherapy, gravely ill since late summer.

  Hawk Carroll was as big and sturdy as a plow horse. His easy throwing motion looked quite a bit like Jack Billingham’s, and he was equally durable, but he had a larger repertoire, four quality pitches he could throw for strikes: a good running fastball, a sweeping slider, a nasty curve, and an outstanding changeup. He started Yaz with a curve that caught the outside corner for a strike.

  Hearing the footsteps of the youngsters coming up behind him, Carroll had won seven games for the Reds in 1975, and saved seven more, his ERA still an outstanding 2.62. This was the fourth time Sparky had called on him in the World Series, but to this point Hawk hadn’t been particularly effective, giving up three hits, a walk, and a couple of runs in less than three innings pitched.

  Hawk tried the same pitch again on Yaz, but missed the outside corner to even the count. He then missed high and outside with a fastball; Yaz had the advantage now, 2–1, and looked for a pitch to hit. Carroll fooled him with a changeup that caught the inside corner and evened the count again at 2–2.

  Yastrzemski tightened his grip as Carroll came inside with a hard curve, and then made a superb inside-out swing, lining the ball to left field for his second single of the game. The Boston crowd came back to life as Carlton Fisk strode to the plate.

  Clay Carroll had never finished high school, jumping to the minor leagues as soon as he was drafted at eighteen, and the evidence suggested he hadn’t been paying much attention during the years he did attend. The funniest clubhouse moment of the Series for Cincinnati had come during the Reds’ weekend workout at the Tufts University field house, when Sparky told the team upon their arrival that at long last they’d figured out a way to get Hawk to go to college.

  Johnny Bench set up outside and Carroll nailed his target with a fastball for a called first strike. The Reds’ infielders put a shift on for the pull-hitting Fisk, as Joe Morgan moved almost directly behind second base; with Perez holding Yaz on first, an enormous hole opened up between them, daring Fisk to punch the ball to the right side.

  Carroll missed outside with a curve to even the count. In the on-deck circle, Fred Lynn swung the bat easily as he loosened up, demonstrating no lingering effects as yet from his collision with the wall.

  Carroll came inside with a running fastball, and Fisk hit it on the screws, a screaming two-hopper pulled toward third. Playing in, Pete Rose snagged it as he stutter-stepped to his left, a tailor-made double-play ball, but then as he turned, he caught his spikes in the dirt and stumbled, and as he continued to stagger, he whipped the ball to Morgan at second for the force-out on Yastrzemski, while Fisk made it safely to first on the fielder’s choice. Rose ended up on his hands and knees, all his strengths and weaknesses as an infielder on display during his first defensive chance of the game; the result was neither pretty nor perfect, but the Reds still had their first out of the inning.

  “Rose did everything but bite that one,” said Garagiola.

  Fred Lynn came to the plate and impatiently swung at Carroll’s first pitch, a low fastball running away from him. He caught it off the end of the bat, lofting it to short left field, where George Foster pulled it in for the second out. Lynn’s swing had appeared fluid but considerably less powerful, as if he might have been protecting his back, and Tony Kubek speculated that the extent of the damage Lynn had suffered in his collision might not yet be known.

  Rico Petrocelli came up next, with two outs and Fisk on first. Carroll crossed him up with the first pitch he threw, a fastball motion resulting in a beautifully camouflaged slow curve, and Rico hit it almost accidentally with a checked swing, straight out to Davey Concepcion at short, who made the short toss to Morgan for the force on Fisk at second, and just like that the Red Sox’s fifth inning was over.

  As he walked to the dugout, feeling pretty pleased about his best outing in the Series to date, Carroll looked toward the bullpen and saw that Captain Hook already had his next pitcher warming up. After just getting into the flow of the game, Hawk Carroll was done for the night.

  RED SOX MANAGER Darrell Johnson now faced his toughest dilemma of the game. His eyes had told him that Luis Tiant was beginning to tire, and the Reds lineup no longer seemed fooled or bewildered by his diminishing stuff. Johnson’s emotions urged him to stick with Tiant as long as he could; they were still tied with the Reds, and with his battler’s heart, Luis might find a way to keep them in the game. Johnson had gone through the same argument with himself during Game Four in Cincinnati; when he’d gone out to start that night, Tiant had discovered that the mound in Cincinnati was higher than any he’d pitched from all year, and it adversely affected his balance and delivery in the early frames. Pitching with only a one-run lead in a hostile park after four innings, refusing to yield, Tiant had adjusted his windup to the higher mound and willed his way out of trouble in nearly every subsequent inning. When Darrell Johnson finally walked out to the mound after the Reds’ Cesar Geronimo reached first with a lead-off single in the
bottom of the ninth—fully intending to take Luis out and hand the ball over to his closer Dick Drago—Tiant had read him the riot act.

  “What the fuck you doing out here, man?” said an indignant Tiant. “This is my ball game, I’m gonna finish this fucker. Get the fuck out of here.”

  Johnson, almost laughing at his man’s sheer audacity and perhaps more than a little intimidated, walked back to the dugout and let Tiant go back to work. Reds pinch hitter Ed Armbrister bunted Geronimo to second for the first out, then Tiant walked Pete Rose, putting the winning run at first. After Ken Griffey lined one to deep left center, where Fred Lynn made his game-saving over-the-shoulder catch for the second out, Tiant got Joe Morgan to pop out to first, and the Red Sox had won Game Four to even the Series at two games apiece.

  Obsessively charted pitch counts dominate the regulated lines of starting pitchers in the twenty-first century, each with their own rigidly established limits, almost no one allowed to throw more than 100–120 in a game. On this night in Cincinnati, when he had far from his best stuff, Luis Tiant had thrown 163 pitches for his second complete-game win of the 1975 Series, one of the gutsiest performances in World Series history, but at what cost? Although the rain delay had given him an extra day of rest from his usual turn in the rotation, how much could El Tiante have left this late in the season, at his age, after 292 innings of work?

  With the pitcher’s spot due up third in the home half of the sixth, Johnson decided he had to give the man who’d brought them this far the benefit of every doubt, and so Luis Tiant went out to start the sixth inning.

  GEORGE FOSTER led off the sixth for the Reds, and for once he stepped immediately into the box, ready to go to work. Tiant went right after him with a fastball that tailed up and in; fooled by the pitch, Foster made an almost protective check swing and accidentally put a slow grounder in play to the left of the pitcher’s mound. Quick as a cat, before the hard-charging Rico Petrocelli could even reach it, Tiant darted to his left and snared the ball, ran a couple more steps before he could stop, then turned and fired a fastball to Cecil Cooper at first base to beat Foster by two steps. A superb defensive play, executed with flair, the best by a Red Sox player in the game so far.

  The next man, Davey Concepcion, watched a Tiant changeup float by him for a ball, then took a home run rip at a fastball and missed for a strike. Tiant missed outside with another fastball, then came inside with a sidearm slider that Concepcion hit off the hands toward right field. Dwight Evans drifted back a few steps to his right and easily made the catch for the second out of the inning. Fred Lynn backed up the play, but as he walked back to center moved with a visible hitch in his stride; Tony Kubek kept a close eye on Lynn, sensing a developing story.

  Darrell Johnson now felt a little better about his decision to leave Tiant in the game, but still kept his two relievers, Burton and Willoughby, throwing in the Boston pen.

  Reds’ center fielder Cesar Geronimo leaned back from a first-pitch fastball that missed inside, then watched a second one crack into Fisk’s mitt for a called strike on the outside corner. When Tiant came back inside with his third straight fastball, low and inside, Geronimo made a terrific inside-out swing and whacked a low screaming liner past a diving Rico Petrocelli at third. As it flew over the base, umpire Larry Barnett immediately signaled fair ball, then had to jump out of the way as it shot past him and hit the face of the grandstand, where it cut sharply back to hug the foul line and bounce at a nearly ninety-degree angle into shallow left field. World Series umpire crews always carry two extra men to patrol the foul lines, and left field line umpire Dick Stello ran out onto the grass to follow the ball. Before Carl Yastrzemski could run in and reach it, shortstop Rick Burleson sprinted out to grab the dying ball and fired to Denny Doyle covering second. Reds first base coach George Scherger screamed at Geronimo, almost halfway to second, to put on the brakes; he did, just in time, and retreated to first with a single. At any other park in baseball, Geronimo’s ball would have run all the way down the line to the outfield wall for a double; once again, the architectural quirkiness of Fenway Park, and a typical hustling effort by the Rooster, had saved its home team a base.

  But Cincinnati now had six hits off Tiant, tying the Red Sox in that department as well, and putting the go-ahead run at first.

  For the third time in the game, Sparky had sent his best pinch hitter, Terry Crowley, to the on-deck circle to bat for a pitcher. This time, with Geronimo reaching first, the left-handed Crowley finally made it into the batter’s box. In his second season with the Reds, Crowley had come over from the Orioles in another of Bob Howsam’s smaller, clever acquisitions for the Big Red Machine.

  Tiant came in with a fastball, low for ball one; Fisk held his glove in place and Tiant stared in at Satch Davidson, both of them unhappy with the call.

  Crowley had made only one other appearance in the Series so far, striking out against Tiant in Game Four when batting, as he was here, for reliever Clay Carroll. But Sparky had saved him for another reason: During his five years with Baltimore in the American League Crowley had seen Tiant pitch frequently, and had faced him more than any other Reds hitter; he was more than familiar with Luis’s bag of tricks.

  Tiant made a casual throw to first, sending Geronimo back to the bag, then tossed his soft marshmallow curve to Crowley, catching the outside corner for a strike to even the count.

  Crowley, a Staten Island native, could play any position on the field except catcher, which made him an unusually valuable bench player, but he had spent most of the postseason riding the pine. Given the time he had on his hands, during this World Series he was also moonlighting for his hometown newspaper, dictating a “you are there” column for the Staten Island Advance after every game.

  Another throw to first by Tiant, his “A” move this time—the one that Sparky still thought was a balk, but there would be no more of those calls from any ump at a time like this—sent Geronimo diving back to first. His next pitch to Crowley hit Fisk’s target to the millimeter, a fastball that nicked the outside corner to put Tiant ahead in the count 1–2. Crowley fought off the next one as well, another good fastball in the same location, to stay alive.

  Terry Crowley had become one of the Orioles’ first designated hitters when the American League implemented the rule in 1972, but since coming to the Reds and the National League, he had made his living almost exclusively as a pinch hitter. Despite his defensive versatility, he had appeared on the field in only eight games in 1975. Good pinch hitters are a rare breed in baseball; the best can make a living for a very long time, and Crowley was one of them. He would stick around in the big leagues for fifteen years, and he was about to demonstrate why.

  Tiant went back to the slow curve on the outside corner. Crowley swung and blooped a soft liner off the handle that appeared to move in slow motion toward Burleson at short. The ball bounced once, Burleson fielded it cleanly, and then he turned to make the throw for the force-out at second on Geronimo.

  But Denny Doyle wasn’t on the base. With the left-handed Crowley at bat, Doyle had been playing deep in the hole, shaded toward first, and he didn’t have time to get to second ahead of the speedy Geronimo, who had left for second with the crack of the bat. When he realized Doyle wasn’t there, Burleson held up his throw, and by then it was too late to catch Crowley at first.

  Runners on first and second now, with two outs, for the Reds.

  Since no obvious error had been committed on the play—although Burleson could have been held accountable for not recognizing that Doyle was out of position and making a throw immediately to first—the game’s official scorer up in the press box awarded Crowley with a single, the Reds’ seventh hit of the game.

  “Talk about a wholesale base hit,” said Garagiola. “That’s one of those eighty-nine-cent jobs.”

  A recognizable shade of red flared up around the Rooster’s neck; he was angry with himself again as he tossed the ball back to Tiant. But Tiant appeared calm and unflappable, even
with Pete Rose—now 2–3 against him, seeing the ball well out of Tiant’s hand and hitting it hard—coming to the plate.

  The air taut with tension in Fenway, Darrell Johnson stepped up to the edge of the Red Sox dugout again; had he made the right call? Tiant missed with his first pitch, a fastball, inside and low. Rose, alert and focused, now looked for a pitch to hit; when Tiant threw him the slow curve—the same pitch he’d abused for a single in the fifth—it came in a little high and Rose fouled it into the left field stands.

  Tiant tried another fastball, again up in the zone; Rose was ready and spanked it hard up the middle just to the left of the mound, but Burleson, stationed close to second to hold Geronimo close to the bag, glided to his left, scooped it up one-handed, and stepped on second, cleaning up his own mess for the force on Crowley to end the inning.

  El Tiante had dodged another bullet.

  IN THE BOTTOM of the sixth inning the Cincinnati Reds’ fifth pitcher of the game took the mound: twenty-eight-year-old Pedro Rodriguez Borbon. Another discovery of super-scout Ray Shore, the young Borbon had been managed by him during a season in his native Dominican Republic’s Winter League in 1967. Signed initially by the Cardinals before being claimed by the Angels, Borbon appeared in a few games for California late in the 1969 season, but the Angels didn’t hold him in high regard; Shore had Borbon targeted as one of the twenty American League pitchers he liked the most, and Bob Howsam acquired him in a trade after the ’69 season. When Sparky Anderson took over in 1970, he realized that Borbon, as he put it admiringly, was “an absolute animal”: He had the arm to pitch every day, he was fearless on the mound, strong as an ox, and he could literally—as his Reds bullpen mates once discovered on a bet; Borbon took peculiar pride in the strength of his teeth—bite the cover off a baseball. Teammates never needed a bottle opener in the clubhouse; they just handed their bottles to Pedro. In the first inning of his first major-league start, the back half of a doubleheader against the Padres in 1970, Borbon gave up a three-run home run, then on his first pitch to the next batter tattooed fearsome slugger Nate Colbert with a fastball in the ribs. When Colbert took a few steps toward the mound, Borbon dropped his glove and walked right at him, ready to rumble and God knows what else, before teammates separated them. Sparky just shook his head in wonder; he hadn’t given Borbon the order to throw at Colbert, and rookies just didn’t behave that way in baseball, but Pedro Borbon was an altogether different breed of cat.