Game Six (24 page)

For whatever reason—education, entitlement, or the arrogance of youth produced by both—like many of his contemporaries, Lee did not suffer fools or their authority gladly, and to his way of thinking
most of baseball, and the Red Sox in particular, had more than its share of both, starting with manager Darrell Johnson. Johnson’s decision halfway through the weekend’s rain delay to push back Lee’s scheduled start in Game Six and throw Tiant instead had inspired a furious public tirade from the southpaw. Not unlike the way in which Jack Billingham had gone after Sparky, Lee called out Johnson in the press, calling the decision dumb and gutless, maintaining he should have been allowed to make his start in Game Six while giving Tiant an extra day of rest—which Lee, like few others, knew he needed—before hurling a decisive Game Seven. Missing from Lee’s protest was, of course, any possibility that he might not win his Game Six start, but that was part and parcel of his confident makeup. He also knew that a cold, wet night in Boston was tailor-made for the baffling array of off-speed stuff with which, in a brilliant effort, he had held the Reds firmly in check through eight innings of Game Two, before the Red Sox bullpen let the game slip away in the top of the ninth. Darrell Johnson smoothed over Lee’s anger to reporters—after unloading on him angrily in private—and stacked all the chips he had left on Luis Tiant as previously announced. Bill Lee was the only Red Sox pitcher Johnson did not dispatch to the bullpen for the start of Game Six, although he hadn’t seen fit to use any of those other arms yet, a lack of action that by this point in the evening had driven Lee half-crazy; watching from the dugout, he knew that Luis hadn’t had his best stuff since the fifth inning and was out there pitching on guts and guile alone. As the seventh inning stretch ended, Lee couldn’t stomach any more and headed back up the tunnel to the clubhouse for some stretching and meditation, part of his usual between-starts regimen. If Game Six turned out to be another season-ending loss, it was all on manager Darrell Johnson as far as Bill Lee was concerned, unless the Red Sox could somehow dig down deeper now than they’d ever had to go and rally to even this Series.

Which, as the home team came to the plate in the bottom of the seventh, appeared less likely than at any other point in the evening; the team, for the moment, looked deflated and stale, stunned by the
relentless way in which Cincinnati had caught and overtaken them, almost sleepwalking into the bottom of the seventh. The Reds recognized the symptoms, they’d seen it time and again; opponents absorbed so many body blows from the Big Red Machine by the late innings that they simply lost the will to fight back. That’s when the finishers in Sparky’s superb bullpen went to work nailing shut the coffin.

Pedro Borbon strode out for his second inning of work on the mound. John Kiley gamely initiated a traditional rallying cry on his Hammond, and the fans tried desperately to encourage them to fight, clapping rhythmically as second baseman Denny Doyle led off the inning. Pete Rose edged in at third, protecting against the possibility of a bunt.

Borbon, who was to put it mildly prone to bouts of overexcitement, had been so pumped up in his first inning that he overthrew a lot of his pitches. He missed here for the same reason with his first fastball, outside for ball one.

A snappy dresser off the field and on the road, Borbon liked to present himself as the model of an upscale businessman, in keeping with the Reds’ conservative team philosophy. Whenever they traveled, he always carried an expensive designer leather attaché case in support of that image, a cultivated executive look and style.

Borbon came back with the fastball in on the hands and overpowered Doyle, who swung late, hit it on the handle, and popped up weakly to Dave Concepcion at short for the first out. As Carl Yastrzemski came to the plate, the crowd began to clap again in support of their captain. Borbon came inside with a sharp breaking ball that Yaz thought dropped out of the zone, but Satch Davidson called it a strike. Yaz stepped out of the box, letting Davidson know under his breath, without looking at him, what he thought of the call. Borbon’s next pitch, fastball, came in low again. Yaz laid off, and this time Davidson agreed with him, evening the count at 1–1.

But according to his Reds teammates, the only things Borbon ever carried in that fancy briefcase of his were a brick to give it the appearance of heft, a steel comb for his immaculate Afro, and two
razor-sharp spurs for the fighting cocks he raised and trained back in the Dominican.

Borbon’s next pitch, a nasty breaking ball, fooled Yastrzemski, and he chopped it into the dirt, a weak grounder to Morgan at second, who had to run in to make the play, fumbled it slightly, and fired to Perez as Yaz hustled down the line, out by two steps. Two outs.

Borbon looked completely in control, but Sparky already had his bullpen humming again, getting his twin rookie closers ready, left-hander Will McEnaney and right-hander Rawly Eastwick, the best closing duo during the season in all of baseball.

Carlton Fisk came to the plate, and now the rhythmic clapping from the crowd was down to only a handful of people. Taking a deep breath, checking his bat, knowing this might be his last chance in the Series, Fisk watched the first pitch from Borbon miss outside for a ball. Working quickly, Borbon came right back with a challenging fastball that Fisk swung on and missed to even the count at 1–1.

Throw strikes: That was the mission, for Borbon or any member of Sparky’s bullpen at this stage of the game. Don’t walk anybody; make ’em put it in play and let that tremendous defense behind you go to work. Borbon came back with another slider thrown with the same sidearm motion as the last fastball, and just as Fisk swung, it dropped out of the zone and he chopped another weak grounder into the dirt, which Davey Concepcion scooped up on the second bounce and chucked to Perez at first.

No sound from the crowd. The seventh inning was over, only the second time in the game that they’d meekly gone out in order, and just like that the Red Sox were down to their last six outs.

H
E’D THROWN
110
PITCHES IN THE GAME NOW. HIS FASTBALL
, landing consistently up in the strike zone, had visibly lost its sting, and the Reds had torched him for eight hits and five runs in the previous three innings. Darrell Johnson’s devotion to his team’s star pitcher and emotional leader now moved beyond reason as he sent Luis Tiant back out to the mound to start the top of the eighth. They trailed the best team baseball had seen in a generation by two runs, with only two innings left to rally or the Series would be lost. Johnson had a deep, rested, and ready bullpen to turn to in order to keep the game in reach. Watching now on television, each in his own separate clubhouse, pitchers Jack Billingham and Bill Lee—one long done for the night and into his third beer, the other trying to mentally and physically prepare for a tomorrow that might never come—simply couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw Tiant emerge from the dugout.

A dread silence from the crowd as Reds center fielder Cesar Geronimo came up to open the inning.

First pitch, fastball, on the inside half of the plate, and Geronimo, greeted by exactly the pitch he was looking for, turned on it. High and deep, just inside the right field foul line. Way back in the seats. Gone. The Reds’ eleventh hit off Tiant in the game and Geronimo’s second home run of the Series.

Reds, 6; Red Sox, 3.

A cascade of boos echoed around Fenway, not directed at Tiant, but at manager Darrell Johnson as he finally left the dugout to do what everyone else in the park knew should have been done at least an inning earlier. Johnson signaled the bullpen, asked his pitcher for the ball, and as Luis Tiant made the long walk in, the crowd rose for one last standing ovation. Pitching coach and former teammate Stan Williams was the first to greet him, with a handshake and embrace, and the rest of the coaching staff and reserves soon followed. Stoic but clearly downcast, Luis gathered his warm-up jacket and took a seat on the bench. His night, his season, and his World Series were over.

With Reds pitcher Pedro Borbon due up—and for once, no pinch hitters in sight—Red Sox left-hander Rogelio “Roger” Moret rode in and accepted the ball from Darrell Johnson on the mound. The tall, rail-thin, twenty-six-year-old Moret—who uncannily resembled what a young Luis Tiant Sr. might have looked like in his prime—had turned in a brilliant 1975 campaign, his third full year with the team. A native of Puerto Rico, signed as a free agent out of high school, he had, like so many of his Red Sox teammates, found himself as a pitcher while playing for Darrell Johnson in the minor leagues. Moret had been astonishing during his first full season with the Red Sox in 1973, leading the American League in winning percentage with a 13–2 record, but then taken a step back in ’74, finishing 9–10. Beginning the 1975 season in the bullpen, Moret reentered the rotation as the fifth starter in late June and down the stretch helped propel the team to the pennant, finishing the year at 14–3, topping the league in winning percentage for the second time in three years. With his record now at 41–18 during his tenure in Boston—and the recipient of a revised mid-season contract from a pleased and generous Tom Yawkey—Moret seemed poised to become a fixture in the Red Sox rotation for years to come.

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. Dur
ing 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 slowly 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.