Game Six (26 page)

The book on Bernie was to bust him with fastballs inside, then get him to chase low and away; his power was almost exclusively to the opposite field. Carbo had grown up as the only left-handed hitter in his neighborhood, where they were often short of kids to field complete teams; right field, as a result, was the first position vacated, which meant any ball hit in that direction became an automatic out. So Bernie grew up learning to hit the other way and muscle the ball to left—the home run he’d hit in Game Three at Riverfront had been a towering shot to left field—and since coming to Boston he’d made the Green Monster his best friend.

Now Eastwick came back inside and low for a ball, 1–1.

Joe Morgan turned, saw that his outfielders had crept in too far, and urgently waved them back; the only run that mattered now was the tying one, the man at the plate, and he wanted his defenders arrayed in the deepest parts of the park to take away extra bases if Carbo managed to hit one in the gap.

Eastwick delivered another smoking fastball inside and higher, just missing the corner; Bernie didn’t appear to pick up the pitch out of Eastwick’s hand and reacted late but laid off it, and Davidson called ball two.

Bernie Carbo had never exactly qualified as someone living
the examined life, but the sight of his old teammates and manager when the World Series began in Fenway Park inspired some perspective-taking. During a workout on the field the day before Game One, Bernie sought out Sparky, asked if he could speak to him, just the two of them alone for a moment sitting on a groundskeeper’s bench in the outfield. In his typically endearing, fumbling way Bernie tried to apologize for the terrible behavior that ended his time with the Reds, and how he felt he had betrayed the fatherly care and affection Sparky had shown to him.

“You said to me then that someday I’d be playing for somebody else and that I’d see that you cared about me, that you cared about what happened to me then and later in my life. I was immature then, and didn’t understand what you meant. Now I do.”

Bernie had to pause for a moment to control his emotions. Sparky kept quiet for the same reason.

“And I just wanted to thank you,” said Bernie finally. “For everything you did for me.”

After two pitches inside, Bench called for the cutter on the outside corner, and Eastwick threw his purest pitch of the night. Bernie swung for the fences, late, missed by a foot, and looked terrible doing it. As he watched from first base, Rico Petrocelli’s guts churned; no way Carbo was catching up to this guy’s fastball tonight. Two balls, two strikes.

Sparky took his time responding to Carbo; he still didn’t know the full extent of Bernie’s substance problems, and would be shocked when he eventually did. Given the interest he’d taken in Bernardo, his shamed departure from the Reds had been one of the manager’s greatest personal disappointments. But Sparky had been doing some perspective-taking of his own in the last few years. He’d always concealed his own feelings from the people he lived and worked with, just as his father had done; that’s what men who’d grown up during the hard times of the Depression had done by necessity. You did what’s right; you obeyed and enforced the rules as you’d learned them, whether your employees or kids liked it or not. Much of the anguish between fathers and sons during the tumultuous sixties
and early seventies had resulted from this rigidity, and for Sparky it had come at a painfully personal cost; after he bullheadedly insisted that his teenage son, Lee, cut his long hair—and Lee just as stubbornly refused—an awful yearlong estrangement had resulted. Sparky loved his son dearly—it had truly broken his heart—and they had only just recently reconciled, after another blowup between them ended in a transcendent moment of insight and forgiveness: Sparky realized and admitted he’d been wrong.

“I was putting my image of what was right ahead of my love for my son. I was ashamed of myself. I was being the child, and Lee was being the man. I wasn’t man enough to father my own child.”

That moment changed Sparky for good; and he had vowed never to hide his feelings again. He was also living with the knowledge that one of his closest friends—Milt Blish, the LA car dealer who had given Anderson a life-saving job when his playing career ended and before his managerial career began—was dying of cancer, and facing his mortality with a grace and courage that had inspired Sparky to reevaluate many of his own hard-driving values. The human connections are what matter most in life, he’d come to realize, maybe they’re
all
that matter; certainly more than anything to do with a
game.
He had already told Milt that he would dedicate whatever happened in this World Series to him, and for the first time in his own life, Sparky felt at peace with himself; in other words, it was a perfect moment for this conversation with Bernie Carbo to occur.

“Bernardo,” he said. “I appreciate what you’ve told me, but let me tell you something. If you’ve grown up, I think I had some growing up to do too. We all have our faults. And as soon as we realize that, we become what is known in our society as a man.”

They shook hands, neither of them entirely dry eyed, and wished each other luck.

Now Sparky stepped up onto the top step of the Cincinnati dugout, hands thrust deep in his pockets, to watch Carbo closely; Bernardo had always been a more dangerous hitter with two strikes. Some strong intuitive voice told Sparky to march out there, right
now, yank Eastwick and bring in McEnaney. Sparky always listened to that voice, had learned to trust his instincts implicitly; that, finally, is all a manager has to rely on, what Stengel and Dedeaux had taught him from the beginning of his life in the game, the margin that separated the good from the great.

People won’t even remember half the moves you make that work, but they’ll never forget or forgive you for the ones you
didn’t
make.

Sparky didn’t move.

Eastwick delivered another fastball, low and outside, Carbo late on the swing again, just sending it foul into the stands past third.

Go out there now,
said the voice again.
Make the change and McEnaney will strike him out.
But Sparky’s eyes saw his pitcher dominating a hitter, completely on top of him, Bernardo barely able to get the bat around on the ball.

One more pitch,
said Sparky to himself.
I’ll give him one more.

Bench set up back inside, and Eastwick uncorked a nasty moving cutter headed for the inside corner, running right at Carbo’s hands. At the last possible instant Bernie chopped down at it awkwardly, the ball nearly past him already, and nicked it just as it was about to land in Bench’s glove; the ball glanced sharply down off the plate and bounced away foul. The swing came so late that Satch Davidson had already begun to call out “Ball three,” then changed midstream to “Foul ball!” Bench didn’t hear him make the second call, and yelled at Davidson that Carbo had made contact; as they sorted that out, Bernie stepped out of the box and tried to breathe.

The crowd seemed to lose its breath also; the tension unbearable, their prospects too dim. At third base, Red Sox coach Don Zimmer had to look away; that was one of the worst swings he’d ever seen. Pete Rose caught the pained look on Zimmer’s face and smiled; Carbo looked like a Little Leaguer against Eastwick’s wicked stuff. At second and first, Lynn and Petrocelli felt their hearts sink; Bernie’s swing had actually looked worse with each succeeding pitch. In the Red Sox dugout, Fisk and Yastrzemski glanced at each other and shook their heads: not tonight. On the top step of the Cincinnati
dugout, Sparky stayed put; he couldn’t pull Eastwick now, not after his best pitch of the night. As he settled back into his stance, Johnny Bench had one thought about his old pal Bernie:
He’s done.
In the press box, an entire row of America’s best sportswriters winced, and immediately began chasing down metaphors to convey the sheer naked ugliness of Carbo’s last swing. In the broadcast booth next door Tony Kubek expressed a wiser and more practical perspective: Bernie had protected the plate, fought off a hellacious pitch, and he was still alive.

I just took the worst swing in the history of baseball,
thought Bernie, as he stepped out of the box to regroup.

Perhaps, but Bernie, for all his troubles—maybe because of them—still possessed any hitter’s most valuable asset: He always stayed in the moment, when all that mattered was the next pitch. A pitcher usually didn’t make more than one mistake to a hitter in an at bat, and it was the hitter’s job to be ready for it whenever he did.

And Bernie knew beyond certainty that after that nasty unhittable inside slider, his old minor- and major-league teammate Johnny Bench would come back with the fastball away.

Bench said afterward that his pitchers had thrown only two bad pitches in the entire game. The first was Nolan’s first-inning fastball to Fred Lynn.

Eastwick’s next fastball was the second.

No movement, belt-high, a mediocre pitch over the heart of the plate. Bernie committed to the swing so early he fully extended his arms and actually
pulled it.
Bernie was so unused to seeing a ball he’d hit go anywhere near right center field that he had no idea where it would end up—it didn’t
feel
as if he’d even hit it that hard—so he sprinted down the line, where the first thing he registered made him realize, maybe, could be, yes: Center fielder Cesar Geronimo was turning his back to watch. Stationed off second, Fred Lynn looked up, saw the ball soaring overhead, and just knew. Rico Petrocelli, headed cautiously toward second, wasn’t sure until he nearly got to the base, and by then, every other living soul in Fen
way had leapt to their feet in astonishment and joy, because Bernie Carbo had just deposited Eastwick’s fat fastball over the wall ten rows into the seats of deepest right center for a three-run pinch-hit homer with two outs in the bottom of the eighth inning and tied the god damned game.

People claimed you could hear it a mile away: The loudest explosion of sound even Tom Yawkey had ever heard in his ballpark erupted from Fenway, surely the biggest sonic event in the open air of Boston since Francis Ouimet sank a putt at the nearby Country Club in Brookline in 1913 to win the U.S. Open. The deafening ovation never let up as Bernie flew around the bases in a trance. Hands on hips, Rawly Eastwick stared out at right center field in shock and disbelief. As he passed Pete Rose near third, Bernie shouted, almost incoherently: “Don’t you wish you were this strong, Pete? Ain’t this fun?”

Pete had to smile at the little fuckup: “Yeah, this is fun, Bernie.”

Bernie shook hands with Red Sox coach Don Zimmer as he rounded third, then crossed home plate, chest thrown out with pride like a sprinter at the finish line, welcomed by Lynn and Petrocelli, and they gathered him up and ran him back to the Boston dugout, Bernie thrusting his fists in the air as the crowd continued to roar and his teammates grabbed him and carried him down the steps into their swarming arms. Bill Lee stepped up and pointed three times out toward where the ball had left the park, fixing the moment in memory, then immediately retreated to the clubhouse for treatment on his arm, convinced they would win it now, and that he’d be pitching Game Seven on Wednesday night. Carbo had not only tied the game, he’d also tied a record that had stood since 1959: two pinch-hit home runs in a single World Series. But in the history of baseball, no one had ever hit one quite like this.

Out in the bullpen, Red Sox closer Dick Drago, watching from the mound, where he was warming up to pitch what he thought would be a meaningless top of the ninth to close out a losing World Series, along with the rest of Boston’s relief corps went berserk when they saw Carbo’s ball land in the stands near them. “Then it hit me,
the giant butterflies started,” said Drago. “I’d be coming into a tie game in the ninth, instead of mop-up duty. That’s what any closer wants, the game to be on the line; I pitched better. But I had some work to do now to get my game face on.”

Darrell Johnson, the first man in a Red Sox uniform to get his head back in the game as the jubilation around him continued, calmly told Bernie to grab his glove; he was going in to play left field in the top of the ninth. Yaz would move to first base and the new Red Sox pitcher, Dick Drago, would hit in the next man’s slot. The cheering had abated only slightly as Cecil Cooper stepped into the box—with an impossible act to follow—for his final at bat of Game Six.

Eastwick, cold and furious at himself, came right after him with high heat. Cooper fouled the pitch back. Working quickly, Eastwick went high fastball again, another late foul ball. Then came the slider, Cooper swung, missed badly, and that was that; three pitches, three strikes, and the third out, one man too late. Bench tossed the ball, now an object of contempt, back toward the mound. Young Eastwick looked stunned as he walked in; a negative thought, it appeared, had finally occurred to him.

In the improbably resuscitated, celebratory air of Fenway Park, only one man blamed himself: in the Cincinnati dugout, Sparky, nearly doubled over in pain and despair and disbelief that he hadn’t listened to the voice. Why? Why? Why?

Here came the top of the ninth, and, for the second time that night, it was a whole new ball game.

T
HREE WEEKS BEFORE GAME SIX THE ENTIRE SPORTING
world had been enthralled by an extraordinary heavyweight championship fight, the third between reigning champ Muhammad Ali and his dogged nemesis Joe Frazier. This was the rubber match of their bitter rivalry, and the brutal showdown, contested in the hundred-degree heat and high humidity of the Philippines, ended when Frazier, his eyes swollen blind from a fearful beating, wasn’t allowed by his loyal trainer, Eddie Futch, to answer the bell for the fifteenth and final round. Ali fainted in the ring when it was over, and both men ended up in the hospital that night; Ali claimed he’d never been so close to death. They had billed their fight as “The Thrilla in Manila,” and it more than lived up to the hype, the last time a heavyweight match could be considered a global cultural event, and if there had been any doubt remaining, this victory cemented the legitimacy of Ali’s repeated claims for himself as the “greatest of all time.” His universal fame, and social influence in America, had reached its apex. Many of the same top sportswriters who’d covered that fight were in attendance for Game Six, and the dramatic ebb and flow of what was unfolding this night at Fenway began to remind more than a few of the battle they’d witnessed earlier in the month halfway across the world.

It was after eleven-thirty Eastern time now, but as phones rang off the hook across America relaying news of Bernie Carbo’s unlikely heroics, the number of sets switched to NBC’s coverage of
Game Six spiked to the highest level the network had ever recorded for a World Series game; more than 76 million people were now tuned in to watch, riveted as the Reds came to bat in the top of the ninth. Joe Garagiola announced that Johnny Carson and
The Tonight Show
would not be seen on NBC that night, as the game continued toward the witching hour.

Sparky still felt sick inside, physically anguished:
All my fault. All my fault.
He had
never
ignored the voice before, and look at the devastating result. He glanced over at his batting coach on the bench, Ted Kluszewski—Klu had been through all the team’s recent disappointments as a coach—and for the briefest moment Sparky let his feelings show, convinced that he had just cost his team another World Series.

This is like being in an axe fight, and coming in second.

Sparky choked back his pain and remorse, clapped his hands, and tried gamely to rally his men as they clattered back into the dugout; they had the heart of their lineup due now, time to forget what just happened, as the Big Red Machine had been able to do time and again during its run, and go back to work.

The new Red Sox pitcher Dick Drago made his final warm-up tosses on the mound. Since being traded to the Red Sox from the Royals two years earlier, the thirty-year-old Drago had split his time between the starting rotation and the bullpen. After they’d selected him out of the Tigers system in the 1969 expansion draft, he’d spent five years as a starter for the fledgling Kansas City franchise. He’d become the lead sled dog on their staff, and pitched well—going 17–11 in his best year—but perpetually suffered from a lack of offensive support on a new team trying to build itself from scratch. So Drago had welcomed the move to the contending Red Sox, and Darrell Johnson put his strong arm to immediate good use. In this era before the extreme specialization of pitchers—which Sparky was just now instituting with the Reds as the wave of baseball’s future—it was far more common to see pitchers move freely between the bullpen and the starter’s role, but it often put them in an awkward limbo that made their contributions harder to value. Drago had
pitched effectively as a starter for Johnson in 1974, but the numbers he posted and the kind of pitcher he was—a pure power fastball pitcher—suggested he might have more to offer in shorter stints closing out games; his ERA in relief that season was a dominating 1.37. When Rick Wise returned from injury as a key starter for Boston in ’75, Drago made a full-time move to the bullpen, and by the time of the stretch drive he had established himself as one of the better relievers in the American League, finishing fifth with fifteen saves. He had gone on to pitch brilliantly in the Championship Series against Oakland, earning a save in the last two games of the Red Sox three-game sweep over the A’s.

A fiery guy, with a big deep voice and personality to match, Drago wore his hair long and sported a piratical black mustache, so he also had the look of the era’s dominant firemen down pat. Almost all favored elaborate facial hair; the nineteenth-century presidential whiskers of Goose Gossage, the lush Cossack foliage worn by Al “The Mad Hungarian” Hrabosky, and the famously fastidious handlebars of Rollie Fingers. Drago also possessed what has since been defined as the ideal psychological makeup for a closer: He thrived in pressure situations, and, limited to a smaller number of pitches per game by definition of his role, he enjoyed going after the game’s best hitters with unadulterated heat.

One of the best in all of baseball came to the plate as Joe Morgan led off the inning. Drago threw him a fastball that ran just outside for a ball.

By his own admission, Morgan had been pressing at the plate during the Series games in Boston, but as the leadoff batter in a late-inning tie, his job was to get on base any way he could manage; Drago knew that one of the most disciplined hitters in baseball wouldn’t be swinging at anything outside the zone. He went right after Morgan with a fastball on the inside corner that the second baseman took a big cut at and missed, 1–1.

With Luis Tiant winning his two complete games, Drago had made only one appearance in a save situation in the Series so far, nine days earlier, way back in Game Two, coming in to replace
starter Bill Lee in the ninth inning with a one-run lead, nobody out, and Johnny Bench on second after a leadoff double.

Drago leaned into his next fastball and hit the low outside corner, a beautiful unhittable strike, to go ahead of Morgan 1–2.

Prior to his stint in Game Two Drago had warmed up and sat down twice before coming into the game—a frequent bullpen routine resulting from Darrell Johnson’s chronic indecision; his relievers often lost their edge in the process—and after retiring Tony Perez and George Foster, Drago induced Reds’ shortstop Dave Concepcion to hit a ground ball to second base.

Drago overthrew his next effort to Morgan, a fastball that soared high to even the count at 2–2.

But Red Sox second baseman Denny Doyle had been handcuffed by Concepcion’s grounder—although the game’s official scorer ruled the tough chance a single—and Johnny Bench scored the tying run for the Reds. After Concepcion quickly stole second, Ken Griffey doubled him in for the run that would win Game Two to even the Series at one apiece; Dick Drago was tagged with that uncomfortable loss, and the tough competitor had been itching to get another shot at the Reds ever since.

Drago’s next fastball seemed to fool Morgan, and he just caught a piece of the ball, popping it up softly down the first base line, where Carl Yastrzemski—now wearing his infielder’s mitt—drifted over to make the easy catch for the first out.

Johnny Bench came to the plate, the first time Drago had ever faced the best-hitting catcher in the game. This was the kind of confrontation both men thrived on: dead-red fastball against dead-red fastball hitter. The crowd stirred to life in anticipation.

But instead of straight heat, Fisk signaled for the slider, a perfect call and a great delivery that appeared to be headed for the outside corner then broke sharply away from the plate. Bench appeared to break his wrists at it before holding off, but when both Fisk and Satch Davidson deferred to first base umpire Art Frantz, he signaled that Bench had resisted: ball one. The crowd booed its disapproval.

Drago came back with the fastball now, inside, and Bench turned on it, driving the ball hard on the ground toward the hole at short. Guarding the line, Rico Petrocelli showed why he’d always been one of the best infielders in Boston club history, racing three steps to his left, scooping it deftly with the glove hand, and beating Bench to first by three steps with his strong arm. Two outs. The crowd jumped to its feet.

Tony Perez dug in, the last of three future Hall of Famers in a row to step to the plate. Dick Drago had been a four-pitch pitcher as a starter, but he predominantly used only two as a closer: fastball and hard slider. Drago started Perez with the fastball, which tailed inside for ball one.

Sparky continued to pace in the Cincinnati dugout. The bad feelings just wouldn’t go away. His two best men quickly down, only the Big Dog left; with all the momentum on their side and the crowd back in the game, he dreaded what the Red Sox might do now in the bottom of the ninth.

Drago threw a slider low that just missed the zone for ball two, but Fisk didn’t complain:
That’s it, just keep the fastball away from the outside of the plate on this guy, don’t let him extend his arms.
Drago came back inside with the fastball, running in on the handle, and Perez couldn’t lay off it; he sliced a looping pop fly foul down the first base line and Yaz put it away for out number three.

Three up, three down. Dick Drago had retired the heart of the Big Red Machine, momentum had shifted with the force of gravity; the fired-up Red Sox now had a chance to steal Game Six in the bottom of the ninth.

BETWEEN INNINGS
Tony Kubek had left the booth and made his way down toward the clubhouses on ground level. NBC executive Chet Simmons, producer Roy Hammerman, and broadcast director Harry Coyle wanted Kubek in place to conduct interviews immediately after the game was over, and both felt certain it was going to
end soon, probably now in Boston’s favor. Coyle instructed Joe Garagiola that he should now use Dick Stockton as his color man for the remainder of the game, without referencing Kubek’s sudden absence on the air.

Inside Fenway, as the clock neared midnight, the crowd was on its feet, chanting in support as Red Sox second baseman Denny Doyle came to the plate. Doyle took a couple of deep breaths to compose himself before stepping in, but the Reds’ pitcher Rawly Eastwick appeared to be the one in need of composure. Sparky paced the dugout restlessly, his early, profligate use of his bullpen haunting him now.

Eastwick’s first pitch to Doyle came in high for a ball.

Sparky hadn’t wanted to send his young reliever back out there after Carbo’s crushing blow, but he was nearly out of options; left-hander Will McEnaney was his last bona fide reliever in the bullpen, and his only left-hander, so he didn’t want to bring him in until it was absolutely necessary. Beyond that he had right-hander Pat Darcy, a young, occasional starter who had made only one relief appearance in Game Three of the Series, and right-hander Clay Kirby, who hadn’t pitched at all in the postseason and was suffering from arm trouble. Starter Don Gullett, being held in reserve in case of a Game Seven, wasn’t even in the bullpen.

Doyle fouled back Eastwick’s next inside fastball to even the count.

Doyle knew his job as the leadoff man here; get on base any way he could manage. He was a contact hitter who didn’t walk that often—only fourteen times during his three months with the Sox—but Darrell Johnson had told him to make the rattled Eastwick throw strikes.

Eastwick missed high again with the fastball for ball two.

The tall, cool Eastwick looked the same on the mound, but Johnny Bench saw a young pitcher suddenly struggling with his release point, his lower body lagging, a confidence issue manifesting as a mechanical fault. When Eastwick missed high again to fall behind 3–1 in the count, Bench shouted out to him—
Keep it down now!

The crowd revved up. At third base, Red Sox coach Don Zimmer had to shout to get Doyle’s attention, wagging the index finger of his left hand at him: the take sign.

Listening to his catcher, Eastwick used his legs more and brought the next pitch down a notch—Bench thought he’d thrown a strike—but there was no way Doyle was swinging now, and Satch Davidson remained unconvinced: ball four. The crowd erupted and, confused by the noise, Doyle thought for a moment that Davidson had called a strike; the ump, looking irritated, pointed him toward first. Eastwick had lost the least dangerous hitter in the Red Sox lineup on five pitches, and now he had to face their most dangerous one.

Fenway rose to its feet as Carl Yastrzemski came to the plate. His job in this situation under normal circumstances would have been to advance the runner to second and into scoring position, particularly with Fisk and Lynn coming up after him, but Yaz hadn’t been asked to lay down a sacrifice bunt once all season. Sparky decided to play the percentages anyway; he relayed the sign through Alex Grammas, and Rose and Perez crept in on the corners, protecting against the bunt.

On Eastwick’s first fastball—
I’ll be damned
—Yaz squared to bunt; the ball was right over the plate, but he tipped it foul down third.

The crowd quieted and seemed puzzled: What was their manager thinking? Yaz bunting? Now? He could end this freakin’ thing with one swing. Ever the good soldier, even Yaz seemed slightly perplexed, looking down to Zimmer to see if the sacrifice was still on.

Sparky quickly chewed it over: He had to keep Rose and Perez on the grass to get the sure out, but would Yaz be swinging away now? Or was this just a sucker play to draw his infield in?

That’s exactly what it was: On Eastwick’s next pitch Doyle broke for second, and Yaz, choking up on the bat, tried to chop the high fastball past Rose down the third base line, but it bounced foul wide of the line by about four feet.

Sparky popped another piece of gum. Two strikes on Yaz, so the bunt wouldn’t be coming back; Rose and Perez returned to their normal depth, guarding the line against extra bases.

Yaz, at thirty-six, wasn’t the same hitter he’d been in his absolute prime, but he still had more sheer guts and gritty work ethic than any man who’d ever played the game. He’d come to the majors as a kid with extraordinary talent, been tutored in the art of hitting by the man he replaced, the franchise’s irascible genius Ted Williams, and even after becoming a star kept grinding relentlessly to refine his skills. Standing tall in the box, holding the bat straight up and high—one of the most imitated stances in the game; ask any kid in New England—he’d gradually lowered his hands to compensate for whatever fraction of reaction time he’d lost over the last few years, and could still lash out like a cobra at a pitcher’s slightest mistake.