Five Seasons: A Baseball Companion (18 page)

In the game—which was played on a subarctic evening—the Mets burst from the mark with a leadoff homer by Garrett, a single by Millan, and an exquisite wrong-field hit-and-run poke by Staub. Catfish Hunter now let the second run slip in on a wild pitch, but then slammed the door shut for good. Tom Seaver, his opposite, struck out nine Oaklands in the first five innings, and then, suddenly bereft of his fastball, was whacked for some frightening line drives in the sixth, somehow surrendering only one counter. Campaneris became the tying run in the eighth: a single, a steal of second off Tom’s big motion and a super-slide under Grote’s super-peg, a trip home on Joe Rudi’s single. In the eleventh, after a succession of frigid agonies, Campy happened again. Met relief man Harry Parker walked Ted Kubiak but fanned Angel Mangual, swinging, with a pitch that utterly fooled Jerry Grote as well. The passed ball put Kubiak on second and brought Campaneris to the plate; he whistled a single up the middle, sending Kubiak and, shortly thereafter, all the rest of us home.

Two misapprehensions about this heartbreaker seem possible—that Seaver should have done better, and that the visitors’ win was somehow undeserved, because of the Mets’ mistakes. Seaver came into this game after 307 innings of work this season—an enormous and exhausting burden for a man who throws as hard as he does. Furthermore, he had never fully recovered from the tender right shoulder that afflicted him in September. Pitching well under all conditions is one hallmark of a $140,000-a-year pitcher, and Tom, at far less than his best, very nearly pulled off a masterpiece—giving up two runs on seven hits, twelve strikeouts, and one walk. Oddly enough, the last figure suggests the aspect of Seaver’s pitching that most awes his fellow professionals. Most big-league hurlers never record a full season in which their combined total of walks and hits given up is lower than the total number of innings they have worked. Among the great fastball pitchers, Walter Johnson accomplished this feat nine times, Sandy Koufax four times, and Grover Cleveland Alexander three. Seaver did it this summer for the third time in his brief seven-year career, which puts him in pretty good company. As for the quality of the Oakland victory, it might be noted that this strategy of waiting for small errors (Seaver’s failure to hold Campaneris close to first, Grote’s passed ball) and then having the right man on the spot to capitalize (Campaneris, Rudi, Campaneris again) was the killing habit, the essential technique of victory, that kept the Yankees on top for more than four decades.

Subtleties were dispensed with the next night, which produced enormous ovations for three heroes—Rusty Staub, who hit a three-run homer in the first, a two-run single in the fourth, and two subsequent safeties; Jon Matlack, who surrendered three grudging hits and one unearned run; and Mike Andrews, miraculously restored, who was sent up to bat in the eighth (ah, there, Charlie Finley!) and shortly trotted back to the dugout in the midst of the loudest and longest accolade ever bestowed upon a pinch-hitter grounding into an infield out. The Mets won by 6–1, retying the Series. Staub’s socko performance at the plate was achieved in spite of the shoulder injury he had sustained in the penultimate playoff game, which still made it impossible for him to throw overhand. He was also the only person on the frigid premises in bare-armed décolletage—not an affectation for a player who had survived three seasons in Montreal, where, as he explained later, outfield weather conditions can be toughening, sometimes even requiring the ingestion of a little cognac after a night game. For Mr. Finley, the evening must have seemed a mite draggy. When he stood up for the visitors’ seventh-inning stretch, the Mets’ folding-sign man flashed him a
“SIT DOWN, YA BUM!,”
and when Andrews came up to bat in the eighth, there were rolling, defiant waves of applause from every part of the park. Finley clapped a bit, too, and then waved his green-and-gold banner. Caligula never had a night like that.

The last winter exercise—the final game in New York, and the coldest baseball game in my memory—offered various perceptions and rewards. This Series, though more crowded and eventful than a samurai drama, had not yet brought us a single game of top quality; between them, the two clubs had so far committed thirteen errors (with a good many other transgressions going forgiven) and had left eighty-four men on base. Strangely, the Mets had outhit the dangerous A’s, who had yet to record a homer; the Mets had won the two free-hitting affairs and, strangest of all, had lost the two close ones because of poor defense. Now we were owed something better. The business at hand began in lively fashion when Rusty Staub, batting against Vida Blue in the bottom of the first, knocked off a burning line foul that entered my part of the mezzanine like a SAM missile and caught a late-coming male patron in the back of the right thigh. He sagged to the steps, while nearby patrons explained, “Staub hit that! Staub did it!” The fan looked pained but ecstatic, like a man who has just received a personal message from Jove.

Something better began almost at once—some rabbit-quick infield plays by Bud Harrelson; some darting, quite uncharacteristic fastballs by Jerry Koosman, who said later that the dry, cold air made it impossible for him to grip the ball properly for his meal-ticket pitch, the curve. Jerry also solved the Campaneris problem, with a terrific double-leaning, Warren Spahn pick-off move in the third inning which caught Dagoberto a full eight feet off the bag. Meanwhile, Cleon Jones, who eats up Vida Blue pitches like M & Ms, had whanged a double to the left-field fence and scored on a little eye-hit by John Milner. Blizzards of torn-up paper took wing, rising to vast heights in the windy dark, to the accompaniment of deep, mittened sounds of joy. The chilly air and the pleasure and closeness of the game kept us shivering in our serapes and ski masks and steamer rugs and quilts, and in time there were bits of paper in everybody’s hair, on everybody’s shoulders. The wind rushed up out of the entrance tunnels, lifting the plastic bunting and making the homemade fan banners on the railings flap like laundry, and sometimes, when the cheering faded for a moment, you could hear the stadium itself groaning and creaking like a great ship in the night.

Koosman threw a shutout, it turned out, winning by a bare 2–0, and there were swift plays afield to keep us shouting and pointing—Felix Millan running at full speed away from the plate and pulling down a shallow fly at the last instant between two inrushing outfielders; a heart-stopping leap and catch by Joe Rudi as he crashed into the left-field barrier; Bud Harrelson making wonderful stops and throws all over his spacious rangeland. Once, he robbed Reggie Jackson with an effortless scoop and force-play toss from directly behind second base; Reggie stopped dead in the base path and stared at him incredulously: What are you doing over
there,
man? Then McGraw came in and twice put on the tying runs with walks, and twice survived rifled line-drive outs (Jesus Alou, disgusted, sent his green batting helmet spinning into the air), and the upper decks cried “Dee-fense! Dee-fense!” and Tug pitched out, and in the ninth, all together for the last time this year, we sang “Good-byyye, Char-lee, we hate to see you go-oh-oh!” in a deafening chorus, and the Mets were ahead in the World Series.

I did not go back to Oakland. After the winter party in the stands, and after seeing the exuberant cheerfulness in the Mets’ clubhouse that night, which almost suggested a Series victory celebration, I decided that Finleyland could not contain deeper rewards. What I secretly feared, of course, was almost exactly what came to pass. In game six, Tom Seaver, with very little left but guile (it seemed to me, watching via television), gave up run-scoring doubles to Reggie Jackson in the first inning and again in the third (with an Oakland runner scoring all the way from first because Rusty Staub still could not throw), and a third A’s run came across on still another Met error, by Don Hahn this time. Somehow, the Mets kept it close, but Darold Knowles (in relief of Hunter) came in and fanned Rusty, with two runners aboard, on three fiery fastballs, to nail down the game, 3–1, and tie the Series for the last time. The next day, the A’s won the big game, 5–2, as Jon Matlack’s almost unparalleled streak of sustained great pitching came to an end. In collecting his first six outs of the day, he completed forty-two innings in which he had surrendered exactly one earned run. Now, in the third, in the space of a bare minute or two, Holtzman doubled and Campaneris homered on the very next pitch; Rudi singled and, after an out, Reggie Jackson homered to deepest right-center field—four hits, four runs, one World Championship. The moment Jackson hit his shot, he dropped his bat at his feet and stood stock-still at the plate, watching the ball go, more or less in the style of Sir Kenneth Clark regarding a Rembrandt. I thought he could be forgiven this gesture; he was, after all, the big gun of the A’s, and he had shot us down in the end.

Everyone could be forgiven, it seemed. The Mets’ super pitching had finally been worn away (Matlack’s last two starts had been on three days’ rest), and Oakland had won with its power, its depth, and its own fine pitching (their two top relievers, Rollie Fingers and Darold Knowles, had a combined earned-run average of 0.45 over twenty innings). The Oakland victory represented the first back-to-back championship by any team since the 1961–62 Yankees, and I could not think of any pennant winner in the interim that deserved the title more. If the renewed championship seemed an undue reward for the likes of Mr. Finley, it was the only conceivably sufficient compensation for his mistreated schoolboys. As for the Mets—ah, the Mets! What can one feel for them but gratitude for such a season of prizes, for a summer that lasted, in the end, just two afternoons too long?

July 1974

I
T’S QUIZ TIME, MR.
and Mrs. John Q. Fan, and here we go with a brainteasing assortment of baseball stumpers! Are you a
real
baseball fan? Do you enjoy matching wits with the savants of the press box, with the Figger Filberts who keep watch over the precious “stats” of the game, and with the hoary historians of the onetime National Pastime? No? Oh, come on—say yes. Good for you! Now get out your pencils and scratch pads, and away we go! Just one little thing before you step up to the plate.… This time, in order to squeeze a little more fun out of our quiz, we’re going to bring you the answers first, instead of the questions. Got that? Play ball!

A: Hank Aaron.

Q
(no peeking!)
: Who is the current major-league leader in lifetime home runs, and also the lifetime leader in total bases and extra-base hits, and the holder of the second-highest lifetime marks for runs batted in and times at bat, and of the third-highest lifetime marks for hits, runs, and games played (with a good chance to move up a notch or two in some of these categories before the end of this season), and the man who with the first swing of his bat in the 1974 campaign tied the previous lifetime-home-run record (the hallowed 714 hung up forty years earlier by the Sultan of Swat, Babe Ruth) and then surpassed that record, and so attained something close to the ultimate sports transfiguration (plus uncounted hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of publicity and commercial sponsorships), by striking his seven-hundred-and-
fifteenth
round-tripper in Atlanta at 9:07
P.M.
on April 8, 1974, in his second time at bat in his team’s hometown opener, thus transporting 53,775 Atlanta Braves fans (on hand in prayerful hope of witnessing the historic four-ply blow live and in person), as well as several hundred national- and local-media persons, and the gratified Atlanta Braves’ owners and front-office nabobs (who had earlier suffered over the horrid possibility that the billion-dollar poke might come to pass, like its immediate predecessor, in some ball park other than the all too rarely occupied confines of Atlanta Stadium), and simultaneously pleasing several million fans and (to be sure) idly curious nonfans watching by national television, who then saw the game stopped in its tracks for almost a quarter of an hour of handshakes, hugs, encomiums, plaque presentations, photos, and assorted ceremonials (and had the opportunity, a few minutes later, to see the whole business, from pitcher’s fateful windup to politician’s fervent speechifying, repeated on a taped replay, under the auspices of an entirely different and extremely forehanded commercial sponsor), and who eventually (in much diminished numbers) resumed watching the game at hand—the Braves, by the way, vs. the Los Angeles Dodgers—perhaps then noticing that a large part of the outfield in Atlanta had been painted (in the style of a pro-football field) to represent a map of the United States, executed in red and white stripes, and also noticing that the stands in Atlanta were almost vacant within an inning or two after the awaited event, and then possibly sighed a deep sigh occasioned by a private and quite uncharacteristic feeling of anticlimax and ennui, and hoped (against hope) that at last the real business of baseball (which is the playing of games, rather than the celebration of history) and the rest of the season might now be allowed to proceed—as, indeed, thank goodness, it has?

Did you get all that right, quiz players? Way to
go!
More coming up in a minute.

It has been a strange season so far, beginning with such a sudden shout, and in retrospect it appears that Hank Aaron’s finest feat this year was the swiftness with which he accomplished his necessary business, thus saving himself and the rest of us from the embarrassment of waiting for an inevitability. That seven-hundred-and-fifteenth homer was a fixed target, of course, and its attainment is more a landmark than a true event. There is something warming and elegant about Hank Aaron’s long conservation of his powers, but lifetime records lack urgency. This was not a sudden prodigy, like batting over .400 or hitting sixty home runs in a single season. Babe Ruth was prodigious; Bad Henry is—well, historic. Most of us sensed some of this, and these differences should not be lost in the current rush of Aaron fame and money and publicity. It was understandable that the baseball establishment should look on Hank’s feat as a fabulous PR opportunity, since the new record so clearly suggests that modern baseball, despite all secret fears to the contrary, is at least as good as, and maybe even better than, baseball in the Babe’s day. This is not provable, and it is not the point. Hank Aaron has not really defeated Babe Ruth, but he has accomplished something far more difficult and significant. He has defeated the averages.