Game Six (9 page)

Nolan started him with a fastball that Doyle fouled straight back.

Because their surge to the American League title had coincided with his arrival, the slightly elfin Doyle had been adopted by the Red Sox and their fans as a kind of good luck charm during the ’75 season; seldom, either, does it hurt to be named Doyle in Boston. He was a steadying veteran presence in the locker room, and another hardworking grinder on the field, so he fit right in with the tone set by Yastrzemski, Fisk, and Rico Petrocelli, the team’s acknowledged leaders. The other Red Sox often kidded him that, despite his size, he was far from the fleetest foot on the team, and he walked with a sprightly, splayfooted gait, so naturally they nicknamed him “Ducky.”

With his quick bat, Doyle turned on Nolan’s next pitch, a fastball up in the zone that Doyle chopped sharply on one hop a step to the right of Reds first baseman Tony Perez. The swing imparted considerable backspin to the ball, and it kicked up and caromed off the heel of Perez’s glove, but he had just enough time to pick it up and toss it to Nolan covering first for the out, a step ahead of Doyle.

Carl Yastrzemski stepped into the left side of the box, twice care
fully measuring the outside corner of the plate with a single tap of his bat, then stood erect and lofted it straight and high, and stared down his hawkish beak toward Nolan. With his raptor’s eye, Yaz took the first pitch, a slow curve low and away, for a ball, then laid off a high fastball for ball two. The thirty-six-year-old Yastrzemski was still at any time one of the most dangerous hitters alive; ahead in the count, he was an assassin. Nolan kicked around the mound for a beat, gathering himself, frustrated that he’d missed with both those pitches. He’d gotten Yastrzemski out twice in Game Three by keeping the ball low and inducing grounders to the right side. That’s the signal Bench gave Nolan again now—they’d been battery mates since the Instructional League, had come up to the Reds as rookies, become close friends and then major-league stars together; by now they could almost read each other’s mind on the field—but Nolan missed again with a fastball, just outside, behind to Yaz 3–0 now.

On a signal from Darrell Johnson in the dugout, the Red Sox third base coach Don Zimmer flashed the take sign, something of a surprise; Yastrzemski had led the team in walks, wasn’t ever inclined to chase bad pitches, and Johnson usually gave Yaz the green light under any circumstances, but not here, not in this game; this early in the contest he wanted base runners any way he could get them. Taking all the way, Yaz watched a hittable fastball sail across the meat of the plate for strike one.

Now the payoff: Forced to come back into the zone, Nolan threw a moving fastball that drifted up and over the inside corner, an effective pitch to most batters; Yaz unleashed a full-bodied hack and lashed it past Perez into right field for the game’s first hit. The ball skidded on the damp grass, losing most of its steam by the time Ken Griffey picked it up and tossed it back to Morgan covering second.

Cleanup hitter and catcher Carlton Fisk stood in, the first right-handed bat in the Red Sox lineup. With his broad-boned frame, Fisk looked even larger than his six-two, 225 pounds; he was in fact one of the biggest men to ever play his position. He was raised on his family’s New Hampshire cattle farm, and both of Fisk’s parents had been superb athletes; all six of their children inherited the talent.
Carlton had been the slowest of the Fisks’ four boys to grow into his body; the early nickname his brothers hung on him, “Pudge,” certainly no longer applied, but would stick throughout his life. Harsh New England winters limited Fisk’s early baseball career; basketball was his best and favorite sport early on, and playing center for his small high school against much taller players helped forge his pronounced mental and physical toughness. Those skills earned Fisk a basketball scholarship to the University of New Hampshire, where his older brother Calvin was captain of the soccer team, and as an undersized power forward he led their freshman team to an undefeated season. Despite playing less than a hundred baseball games in his amateur career—many of them as a pitcher; he ended up behind the plate almost by accident, when he replaced his injured older brother in a game—Pudge attracted enough attention from the Red Sox to be selected as a catcher in the first round of the 1967 draft. (His brothers Calvin and Conrad were also drafted by the Orioles and Montreal Expos respectively, but Uncle Sam’s draft took priority. Calvin ended up in Vietnam, and the Orioles had lost interest by the time he returned; Conrad blew out his arm before he ever pitched a professional inning.) Facing the reality that having reached his full height he’d never play for the Celtics, and eager to make a living and reduce the financial burden on his family, Fisk left college after one year to accept an offer from the Red Sox, the team he’d loved since childhood, the only one, Fisk had insisted to all the pro scouts who took an interest in him, that he would ever play for.

Pitching from the stretch, Nolan’s first fastball to Fisk missed high and over the middle of the plate, not the outside corner where Bench had set up.

A much harder thing for Carlton Fisk to accept about baseball was losing; he had never done much of it, ever, in any sport. The passion and fiery will to win that would become the hallmarks of his Hall of Fame career took a beating in the lower ranks of the minor leagues. He occasionally struggled at the plate, but continued to hit for power and play solid defense wherever they sent him, and within three seasons Fisk ended up in Triple-A at Louisville, where
manager Darrell Johnson, the onetime major-league catcher, made a project of teaching him the finer points of baseball’s most complex position. Under Johnson’s tutelage, Fisk earned a September call-up to the Red Sox in ’71 and made an immediate impact on both sides of the plate. During the spring of 1972, when starting catcher Duane Josephson was badly hurt in only the third game of the season, Fisk walked on stage and grabbed the job in his Bunyonesque fists. For Boston fans he seemed almost too good to be true; a towering, ruggedly handsome New Englander with phenomenal power, the strength of an ox, catlike reflexes, fearsome competitive drive, and the balls to call out any pitcher—rookie or veteran—during a game who didn’t measure up to his high standards. Carlton Fisk’s 1972 season played out like a dream; he was named to the All-Star team, hit .293 with twenty-two home runs, earned a Gold Glove, and became the first player in the American League ever named Rookie of the Year by unanimous vote. Comparisons to the Reds’ Johnny Bench, already his generation’s and perhaps history’s gold standard at the position, inevitably followed. The Red Sox, who hadn’t been able to develop a standout catcher in a generation—they hadn’t landed a starting catcher on the American League All-Star team since 1953—appeared to have found a new field general. But in spite of his remarkable debut season, the bitterness of losing the East Division by a half game to Detroit lingered even longer for the driven Fisk than all the postseason accolades. He was nearly inconsolable in the locker room after their final loss, as Tom Yawkey tried in vain to comfort him, stricken more by Fisk’s suffering than his own.

Fisk came back to earth the following year in 1973; although his home run and RBI totals increased, and he made his second All-Star team, his batting average dropped fifty points during the second half of the season. Refusing to take days off, he lost twenty pounds from the heavy workload, visibly tiring down the stretch as pitchers fed him a steady diet of curveballs. He also became something of a lightning rod for opposing teams—not unlike Pete Rose, in this one respect—irritating them with his relentless will to win and as
sertive presence on the field. Prickly Yankee catcher Thurman Munson, an established star considered the best backstop in the American League before Fisk arrived, resented Fisk being selected ahead of him to that year’s All-Star team and took repeated public exception to Fisk’s haughty manner. In early August, with the two teams in a tight East Division race, and deadlocked in the ninth inning of a tense game at Fenway, Fisk blocked home plate after batter Gene Michael missed a suicide squeeze attempt and Munson stormed down the line straight at him. Fisk didn’t yield when Munson crashed into him, tagging him hard for the out. When Munson tried to keep his weight on top of Fisk, in an effort to allow the base runner behind him to advance, Fisk kicked him off and the two ended up in a fistfight that cleared the benches. Unlike Pete Rose, none of what Fisk did in pursuit of winning was consciously or deliberately provocative; it appeared to be simply an expression of who he was and the way he’d been brought up.

Pure Connecticut River granite,
as teammate Bill Lee described him.
Pudge wouldn’t ask out of a game if he had both legs cut off.

Despite winning four more games during the season, the Red Sox finished second in the division in 1973, this time
eight
games behind the Orioles; popular manager Eddie Kasko lost his job, and Fisk’s former tutor Darrell Johnson was brought up from Pawtucket to replace him. Johnson cleaned house in 1974, releasing on the same day three future Hall of Famers who were near the end of their careers: pitcher Juan Marichal, designated hitter Orlando Cepeda, and shortstop Luis Aparicio. This opened up opportunities for many of the youngsters Johnson had managed at Triple-A, and they responded by seizing the East Division lead through the end of June. Both their star catcher and, as it turned out, the Red Sox postseason prospects, ended on June 28 in Cleveland, when in the ninth inning of a tie game Fisk extended his leg to protect the plate on a play at home. The throw came in high, and Cleveland outfielder Leron Lee barreled into him, shredding Fisk’s vulnerable and exposed left knee in a brutal collision. After extensive surgery to repair two torn ligaments, he was placed in an ankle-to-thigh cast and the progno
sis was dire; doctors warned Fisk that not only might his career be over, but he could be left limping for the rest of his life.

Working harder than Stallone in a
Rocky
training montage, Fisk rehabbed the knee throughout a long, cold, lonely winter in New Hampshire. Two hundred and fifty-six days after the injury, he made a cautious return to action in a March spring training game in 1975, catching five innings, feeling gimpy and sore afterward, and conceding that the knee wasn’t fully healed yet. But the next day, a determined Pudge told Darrell Johnson that he was ready to go again. In his first at bat, the second pitch sailed inside, and when he checked his swing, the ball nailed him two inches above the right wrist and cracked the head of his forearm bone. Backups Bob Montgomery, Tim Blackwell, and veteran Tim McCarver filled in admirably, but this second injury turned out to be a blessing in disguise, allowing Fisk’s knee to completely recover by the time Pudge was ready to return to action in late June, two weeks after the energizing arrival of “Ducky” Doyle. When he finally suited up, the Carlton Fisk of 1972 appeared again; he hit .331 with ten home runs in less than half a season, and his commanding presence behind the plate, and in the locker room, steadied the entire Red Sox squad. He had hammered Oakland’s pitches during the League Championship, hitting .417, but with only four hits in eighteen at bats so far against the Reds, Fisk felt he was due for a breakout game.

The Reds defense put on a power shift, playing shortstop Dave Concepcion a step shy of the outfield grass, moving second baseman Joe Morgan nearly even with the bag, and Rose shallow at third, expecting Fisk to put the ball in play on the left side in his home park. Bench set up outside and low again, but when Nolan delivered his second straight fastball up and into the strike zone, Fisk spanked it through the hole between Rose and Concepcion for a single to left. Yastrzemski advanced to second as George Foster tossed the ball back in to Concepcion.

Two on, two out.

In the Reds dugout, Sparky nudged pitching coach Larry Shepard, who moved immediately to the phone on the wall by the tunnel
to the visitors’ clubhouse. Reds backup catcher Bill Plummer answered the call in the Cincinnati bullpen beyond right field; moments later, Jack Billingham and left-hander Freddie Norman shed their jackets and began to loosen up. Only thirteen pitches into the game, true to his word, Captain Hook was already prepared to call in the cavalry. Sparky stared down at the floor of the dugout from his seat on the bench, hands stuffed in his jacket, swinging his feet anxiously.

Alarmed at the ominous way his old friend’s fastball was rising up in the zone—and, much worse, over the plate—Johnny Bench trotted out to settle Nolan down and refresh him on their book for the next Sox hitter, Fred Lynn: low and away, up and in. Unspoken, always, although they both knew it, Bench was also out there to buy a little more time for the men in the Reds bullpen to get ready.

Fred Lynn, the fourth left-handed bat to step to the plate in the inning, was playing in his 154th game of the year, not including more than thirty spring training games, in a season that began back in March at the Red Sox complex in Winter Haven, Florida. This was only Lynn’s second full year of professional baseball; he had played fifty-three games in Double-A after being drafted, then less than five months in Triple-A at Pawtucket in 1974, before arriving on the scene in the American League like a comet. When he’d hit .419 in two weeks for Boston at the end of their 1974 collapse, a bright future was cautiously anticipated for him—Red Sox watchers were habitually wary, for sound historical reasons—but no one in their right mind would have dared predict what Lynn would go on to do for them in 1975. His fellow rookie outfielder, the now injured Jim Rice, had been in the team’s farm system a few years longer and posted much flashier numbers than Lynn during the time they played together; most scouts and pundits expected Rice to develop and produce sooner. No one appeared to realize that four years in Rod Dedeaux’s baseball academy at USC—winning three straight NCAA titles in the process, and playing in a number of international exhibitions as a result—had turned Fred Lynn into a complete and polished star. At this point not many players had ever made the
move from the collegiate ranks straight to the major leagues—a slow slog through the minors after being drafted out of high school remained the beaten path—and not one of them had ever made the leap to stardom with the swift suddenness of Fred Lynn.