Game Six

by Mark Frost

  But something had since gone terribly wrong between Roger Moret and the Red Sox. In the first week of August, at four-thirty in the morning before a night he was scheduled to start a crucial game against the Baltimore Orioles at Fenway, Moret totaled his new Audi while driving back to Boston from Connecticut, was briefly hospitalized with lacerations to his head and scalp, and according to eyewitness accounts was lucky to be alive. He said he had driven a cousin who was staying with him home to Connecticut after the previous night’s game, then fallen asleep at the wheel while making the return trip early that morning, ramming into the back of a logging truck in heavy fog. He was not fit enough in the opinion of the team to pitch again; for nearly a week after the accident, for the Red Sox, this turned out to be the final straw. A quiet, friendly man who had done everything the team had asked him during his stint, Moret, it now emerged, had all along been contending with a substance abuse problem. Although neither drugs nor alcohol had apparently played a part in the accident, serious concern about his emotional and physical stability now influenced the team’s attitude toward their emerging star. Moret appeared to put the incident behind him and continued to pitch well in the clutch down the stretch. After being named to the postseason roster, he secured the team’s crucial win in Game Two of the League Championship Series with a strong relief outing against Oakland. But Moret was clearly disappointed when Johnson then passed him over for a starting assignment in the World Series, and in his only appearance to date he’d given up the winning hit to Joe Morgan in the tenth inning of Game Three, when Cincinnati took their first lead in the Series, two games to one. Johnson hadn’t called on him since, and as he entered the game now, Moret’s future with the Red Sox seemed very much in doubt.

  After his strong two innings and the heart of his bullpen still in reserve, Sparky decided to let Pedro Borbon take his at bat against Moret, and then continue pitching into the bottom of the eighth. Sparky knew he held an almost unbeatable hand now; a three-run lead and the ironclad insurance of two aces in the hole: His best young relievers, with thirty-seven saves on the season between them—left-hander Will McEnaney and right-hander Rawly Eastwick—began to loosen in the Reds’ bullpen.

  Sparky wasn’t the only person in Fenway who felt that way. During the commercial break, while Roger Moret finished his warm-up tosses, NBC’s veteran director Harry Coyle consulted with producer Chet Simmons in the command truck under the right field bleachers. It was time, they decided, to prepare for the end of the game and the Big Red Machine’s postgame celebration of their first World Series victory. Coyle sent word up to the booth that Tony Kubek should quietly leave the broadcast at the end of the eighth inning and make his way down to the visitors’ clubhouse to prepare for interviews with the new world champions. NBC had brought in some expensive state-of-the-art mobile video cameras for this Series—and had periodically used them for shots from unusual angles around Fenway throughout every broadcast—but the bulky, remote radio microphones that had been designed to go with them required extra setup time, and Kubek needed to leave early to get fitted for his rig.

  Relief pitchers taking at bats for Captain Hook’s Reds were a rare occurrence, but the right-handed Pedro Borbon was the best hitter among them, making it to the plate twenty-seven times in 1975 and batting a more than respectable .292. Dick Stockton, who’d watched Moret pitch throughout the season, made reference to his outstanding fastball and excellent changeup. Pedro Borbon was about to see both of them.

  Borbon chopped awkwardly at Moret’s first pitch, a changeup that he hammered foul into the dirt. He waved futilely at Moret’s second offering—that live fastball Stockton had referred to—after it was already past him. Borbon did manage to just get his bat on the next pitch, another fastball, and squib it down to Cecil Cooper at first, who hustled to the bag and beat Borbon for the first out of the inning.

  Pete Rose briskly followed Borbon to the plate. Rose had faced Moret once, during his brief stint in Game Three, drawing an intentional walk before Joe Morgan drove in the game-winning run with his clutch single. The Reds’ book on Moret was simple: fastball pitcher with decent, but not great, control; swing hard and early in the count before he can set up his effective change.

  Moret went right at Rose with a fastball, which he fouled back to the right side for strike one. Working quickly, Moret threw another fastball high, to even the count. Changing speed—but not his delivery—Moret now came in with his deceptive changeup to the same spot, high and out of the zone, but Rose thought it looked fat and offered on it, and knocked a harmless grounder back just to Moret’s right, which he fielded smoothly and threw to Cooper at first for the second out.

  Ken Griffey came up for his fifth at bat of the game, and for the third time swung and connected on the first pitch he saw, another Moret fastball, a low-arcing line drive that Fred Lynn loped in on to make an easy catch and end the inning.

  The Red Sox trotted in, and the crowd tried to rally them with cheers that didn’t carry much conviction. Dick Stockton, who’d seen every game at Fenway that year and often marveled at the fans’ willingness to maintain their energy and keep the team emotionally charged, thought that they didn’t seem to believe it could happen now; the wind had gone out of them ever since Fred Lynn had crashed into the center field wall in the fifth.

  Pedro Borbon began his third inning of work, but McEnaney and Eastwick continued to loosen in the Cincinnati bullpen. The Red Sox had Fred Lynn coming to the plate to lead off in the bottom of the eighth. They hadn’t scored a run now since his big homer in the first—they had managed only three hits off the Reds’ hydra-headed bullpen—and their great rookie hadn’t seemed the same since his collision.

  Time was running out. This would be the Red Sox’s last, best chance to respond.

  FRED LYNN looked a little smoother taking his warm-up swings, starting to feel his legs under him again; after hurtling around American League outfields all season without consequence, this one-sided dispute with the center field concrete had left him physically and mentally shaken, but now the deceptively determined former football star felt back in form.

  Starting off the inning, Lynn stepped to the plate in attack mode. He knew the Reds wouldn’t be pitching around anybody at this point in the game; no waiting for your pitch now, it was time to hack. Although he had never faced him before, he knew Borbon was a sinker ball pitcher, and that was Lynn’s bread and butter.

  Johnny Bench called for a low fastball, Borbon delivered; Lynn saw the ball all the way in and drilled it straight back toward the box, where it kicked sharply off Borbon’s right shin and caromed all the way to the third base foul line. Borbon chased the ball down and prepared to turn and throw, but Bench saw that Lynn was already too far down the line, so he planted himself between Borbon and first and waved both arms at him to hold on to the ball, trying to prevent an unnecessary throw and possible error that would compound the problem.

  The crowd stirred to life. Lynn on first, nobody out, with the first hit they’d managed off Borbon in the game.

  Rico Petrocelli came to the plate, and he couldn’t wait to get there. They were getting too close to their final out now, and his team was going numb in the dugout, half-beaten, staring straight ahead. Lynn’s seeing-eye single had given them a spark of life, but it wouldn’t mean anything if he couldn’t now follow it up. He also knew full well this might be the last at bat of his career.

  Make it count, Rico.

  Borbon made a couple of throws to determine if the line drive hitting his leg would affect his delivery. It didn’t; at this point a gunshot wound wouldn’t have driven the ferocious pitcher off the mound.

  Bench set his outfield and called for the sinker. Petrocelli checked his swing and bounced Borbon’s first pitch high off the plate; quick as a cat Bench had the mask off and pounced on it, but the ball landed just past the on-deck circle along third, in foul territory for strike one.

  A chant began in the depths of the outfield at Fenway and slo
wly spread around the park: “Rico, Rico, Rico!”

  Borbon came back with the sinker, low for ball one, evening the count. Bench wanted a ball on the ground, looking for the double play to kill this threat hard and fast, so he stayed with the call. Rico fouled Borbon’s next sinker straight back, behind in the count 1–2.

  Rico was down to his last strike.

  Another sinker, this one low and away—“Good eye, Rico!”—and the count evened at 2–2. Full life from the crowd now, which rose even higher when Borbon missed again with the sinker.

  Full count, 3–2. Sparky was up off the bench now, pacing, hands thrust in his pockets, feet kicking at the ground. He almost couldn’t bring himself to watch.

  Bench changed things up: called for the fastball high and in, and Borbon hit the target. Still looking for a ball low, Rico was handcuffed, but he managed to square around and fight it off, foul, and keep his at bat alive.

  Another fastball, on the outside corner, another half-desperate swing from Rico, just nicking a fraction of the ball, fouling it down into the dirt and back.

  The crowd seemed to know: This is the at bat. This is where it has to happen. This is where Rico has to come through for us, like he has so many times over the years. He’d always played the game with openhearted passion, that’s what New England’s fans loved about him, a big part of how and why he could deliver so often in situations like these…

  And there it was: Borbon’s sinker didn’t sink—it looked as if he’d failed to firmly plant into his follow-through; maybe that line drive to his right leg was starting to bother him—and missed high for ball four.

  Petrocelli trotted down to first with the walk—a tenacious, battling at bat—and Lynn moved over to second. First and second, nobody out.

  Right fielder Dwight Evans was due up next, all of a sudden representing the tying run for the Red Sox. Sparky had seen enough. He hopped up the steps and strode to the mound, signaling for his right-hander, Rawly Eastwick, who grabbed his jacket and slid it over his warm right arm, refused a ride from the waiting baseball golf cart, and jogged in toward the mound.

  Rawlins Jackson Eastwick the Third, three days shy of his twenty-fifth birthday, had just completed a sensational rookie season, doing most of his work after the All-Star break, when he overtook teammate Will McEnaney and tied for the National League lead in saves with twenty-two. Eastwick had been in the Reds organization since 1969, an intelligent, aloof, upper-middle-class kid from suburban New Jersey who was an odd duck in the jockocracy of the Reds’ blue-collar locker room. He liked to read, write, paint still lifes and landscapes, and instead of hitting the bars preferred antiquing when they were on the road, but he had delivered consistently between the lines down the stretch and saved his best stuff for last; Eastwick had recorded the win for the Reds in both Game Two and Game Three of the Series, pitched three scoreless innings that kept them in Game Four against Tiant until the final out, and nailed down Don Gullett’s win in Game Five with a save. This would be his fifth appearance in the six games they’d played, and most of the writers and broadcasters in attendance felt that if he came in and put out the fire here to finish off the Red Sox, Rawly Eastwick was hands-down their choice for the World Series’ Most Valuable Player. Few doubted that he would do just that. Up in the press box, sportswriter Dick Schaap had already started to collect the ballots; this thing, the game’s senior scribes had decided, was all but over.

  Dwight Evans would have something to say about that. He’d faced Eastwick three times in the Series, striking out swinging to end a late threat in Game Two, then tagging him for his dramatic two-run ninth-inning home run that sent Game Three into extra innings, and flying out to deep center in Game Four. Evans liked the matchup, felt he saw the ball well out of Eastwick’s hand, and the success he’d had earlier against him filled him with confidence.

  Sparky handed Eastwick the ball, left him to the moment, and the pitcher completed his warm-up tosses out of the stretch to Bench.

  Lynn at second, Petrocelli at first; both had a feeling Dewey Evans was about to come through, and so did the rest of the Red Sox lined up along the top step of the dugout. The crowd shared that feeling, and most rose to their feet as Evans stepped into the box. The Reds and their coaches moved around restlessly, prowling the dugout; Pedro Borbon couldn’t bring himself to abandon this confrontation for the clubhouse and stayed on the bench to watch. The game’s unique pendulum swing of desultory lulls and tense, anticipatory highs had reached its zenith in Fenway Park.

  Eastwick’s first pitch betrayed a hint of butterflies, an incomplete delivery that sent his fastball flying high and tight. He was a classic power pitcher, threw a hard fastball with movement in the zone that tailed or even seemed to rise, and when he was on—as he had been for much of the last three months—Eastwick was as close as a pitcher can get to unhittable.

  Eastwick challenged Evans with his second fastball, and Dewey swung from his heels, a home run cut that nearly knocked off his helmet, but he missed it low for strike one. Eastwick came back with the same pitch and same location—running in on Evans’s hands—and he fouled it back to fall behind in the count, 1–2.

  Eastwick had pleasantly surprised the Reds with his dominant second-half surge; most of Bob Howsam’s brain trust had thought he was a season or two away from meaningful innings, but every so often “the light just goes on”—as Sparky put it—and a major leaguer suddenly arrives. Eastwick’s confidence snowballed, and he explained his surprising success this way: “I never have a negative thought. This radiates to the hitter. He can feel it when you know you’re going to get him out.”

  Evans fouled Eastwick’s next fastball back as well, a more defensive swing to stay alive against Eastwick’s pure smoke. Eastwick really leaned into his next pitch, another fastball that missed just outside, and cracked into Bench’s mitt with an audible thump: 2–2. Bench signaled he wanted the next one inside, and the runner snaked in on Evans’s hands, and again he fought it off foul to stay even in the count.

  Then Eastwick came back with a dart, his first low pitch of the at bat, a fastball that appeared to crease the zone right at Evans’s knees, but Satch Davidson wasn’t buying; Bench and Eastwick looked disappointed—Bench appeared ready to dispute Davidson’s sanity, but bit his tongue—and the count went full to 3–2.

  The whole stadium was on edge now. Eastwick reared and delivered a searing fastball toward the outside corner. Evans couldn’t lay off it, swung hard, and missed.

  Down on strikes, one out.

  The burden now fell to Red Sox shortstop Rick Burleson, but the stakes changed; nowhere near the home run threat that Evans represented, he’d hit only six all season. The Rooster would have to go station to station, manufacture something, poke it past the infield, get Lynn around from second, score one run at a time.

  In the home dugout, manager Darrell Johnson walked over to his reserve outfielders Bernie Carbo and Juan Beniquez and told them each to grab a bat. He ordered the left-handed-hitting Carbo out into the on-deck circle, to pinch hit for Roger Moret if Burleson avoided a double play and the right-hander Eastwick stayed in the game. If Sparky played the percentages, as Johnson expected him to, and brought in his own left-hander McEnaney to face Carbo, the right-handed Beniquez would be sent to the plate in his place. Carbo had been periodically swinging a weighted bat and stretching back in the clubhouse since the fifth inning; the routine of the dedicated pinch hitter. Although he’d only been to the plate two times in the Series against his former teammates, Carbo had already contributed: In the seventh inning of Game Three in Cincinnati, pinch-hitting for pitcher Reggie Cleveland, Carbo had homered off Reds right-hander Clay Carroll, bringing the Red Sox within two runs and setting the stage for Dwight Evans’s game-tying home run two innings later. Surely Sparky wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice; Carbo felt certain he was on the field primarily as a decoy to force Sparky’s hand.

  Eastwick came in low to Burleson—Bench was looking for tha
t ground ball and double play again now—and missed for ball one.

  Then, a flash of hope: fastball up in the zone, a hard swing from Burleson, and a line drive toward the Green Monster. But hope died quickly; he’d caught only half of the ball on the bat, and George Foster scarcely had to move to gather it in for the second out.

  Two on, two out, bottom of the eighth, down three runs. Four outs left in the game and their World Series.

  From the public address system booth, Sherm Feller announced “Pinch-hitting for Moret: Bernie Carbo.” Fully expecting Sparky—whom he knew very well—to now emerge from the dugout and pull Eastwick for McEnaney, Carbo hesitated in the on-deck circle, anticipating the move from Sparky for so long that umpire Satch Davidson finally growled at him: “Come on, get in here, time to hit!” Looking across at the Cincinnati dugout, Carbo finally realized that Sparky wasn’t coming out for his pitcher; he was unaware that Sparky, concerned that the right-handed pull hitter Beniquez might hit one to the wall on McEnaney, had made the decision to stay with Eastwick and take his chances with the erratic Carbo. Struggling to quickly gather himself, Carbo turned to his old friend Johnny Bench.

  “Wow,” said Carbo. “I’m gonna hit.”

  Only twenty-eight and already in the eleventh year of his professional career, Carbo had been such a highly regarded prospect coming out of high school in his native Detroit that the Cincinnati Reds had made him their number one pick, and sixteenth player taken overall, in the first amateur free agent draft in 1965—one round ahead of that superstar playing catcher for them now, Johnny Bench. Two years later, Bench had already established himself as the Reds’ starting catcher, while Carbo was still languishing in the minors, where teammates on his first two teams had nicknamed him the “Idiot” and the “Clown.” As those labels suggested, Bernie suffered from some educational shortcomings and concentration issues. He appeared to be a loose, fun-loving, and lovable working-class kid, but his baggage also included an ungovernable temper, an insidious substance abuse problem, and enough personal demons to populate a psych ward; Bernie had grown up with an abusive, alcoholic father and, by his own reckoning, had become an alcoholic himself by the age of sixteen. But baseball, in those days, had its own habit of looking the other way as long as players produced on the field; amphetamine use to fuel flagging energies through baseball’s marathon seasons remained an established part of major-league locker room culture. Jars of amphetamine “greenies” stood readily available—often even a designated water cooler was juiced—at the trainer’s table in every clubhouse. “Don’t go out there alone” was the veterans’ coded phrase for taking their boost. And if the boys needed or wanted to wind down afterward by spending their recreational hours drunk, high, or any combination thereof, nobody was going to say boo about it. In other words, Bernie fit right in.