The Roger Angell Baseball Collection (32 page)

—
June 1971

B
ASEBALL, IT SEEMS, HAS
declared an advance special dividend for 1971. The old mutual concern, barely a third of the way into its new business year, has rarely found itself in such splendid early fettle, and its supporters have already been enriched beyond their customary late-summer expectations. These are the latest market quotations on some of the firm’s gilt-edge securities: Oliva, .371; W. Davis, .357; Brock, .352; Torre, .351; Mays, .323; Frank Robinson, .308; Kaline, .321; Brooks Robinson, .304, after a recent sell-off; and the junior Alou Frères, Ltd.—Jesus, .333, and Mateo, .316. Good performances have also been recorded by such comparatively recent issues as Kranepool (.309), Staub (.325), Murcer (a resounding .359), and a new high-flier called Garr of Atlanta (.349). Having thus bankrupted my supply of financial metaphors (even without mention of Bobby Bonds or a Blue Chip named Vida), I will go on to observe, more plainly, that the sluggers have been busily at work, too. The Pirates’ Willie Stargell has twenty-one homers currently in hand, which represents something of a slump from his record opening burst of eleven in April; Hank Aaron has wafted nineteen, Johnny Bench sixteen, Bonds fifteen, and Billy Williams and Orlando Cepeda fourteen each. The American League long-ball hitters are a bit laggard, but it is unsafe to assume that Yastrzemski, Frank Howard, Harmon Killebrew, and the rest will not suddenly catch up in the course of some loud, hot summer week. And the pitching—well, the pitching, in both leagues, has been of such a quality that one cannot entirely understand who it is all these hitters have been swinging against. Vida Blue, the phenomenal young Oakland fireballer, has struck out a hundred and twenty-five batters in a hundred and thirty innings, and has a record of 13 wins and 2 losses. Mike Cuellar, of the Orioles, stands at 10 and 1; Larry Dierker, of the Astros, at 10 and 2; and the Cardinals’ Steve Carlton at 10 and 3. At this rate, all of them have a crack at winning thirty games or more this year. Four pitchers with six or more decisions to their credit have earned-run averages of less than two runs per game—Cooperstown stuff.

Attendance, unsurprisingly is up—a jump of about 220,000 in the American League and better than 358,000 in the National League. The more modest AL mark is probably the more significant, since the NL totals include an artificial boost attributable to the opening of the Phillies’ new ballpark, Veterans Stadium. But even the White Sox, still resident in ancient Comiskey Park and holding what has been recently considered an exhausted franchise, have almost doubled their attendance so far this year. Statistics bore everybody but the superfan (who already knows them anyway), but these are offered with a purpose: to me they suggest that in 1971 most of the baseball news is being made out on the playing field, instead of in the courts or in the front office, its habitat in recent years. And even the kind of baseball happening that is not easily encapsulated in a box score seems to have an unusual savor in this unusual season. There has been the brief retirement of Clete Boyer, the Atlanta third baseman, who almost talked himself out of baseball because he could not bear the character of his general manager, Paul Richards, and said so, repeatedly. Also the bemusement of Alex Johnson, the Angels’ defending American League batting champion, who has walked himself into semi-permanent suspension because he cannot bear to run on the base paths. Also the self-exile of Carl Taylor, a Kansas City outfielder who, dissatisfied with his own professional performance, pushed at an umpire, punched a teammate, and set fire to his uniform in the clubhouse before departing the pastime for a period of time.

Baseball thrives on personality, but the cult of the team is even more essential to its well-being than the cult of the star. Two decades ago, the sixteen major-league clubs were entirely distinguishable; one knew them by heart and could recognize them as quickly and surely as one recognized the different flavors in a jar of sourballs. Now there are twenty-four teams, split into four subdivisions, and, because of expansion and the shifting and scattering of franchises, there sometimes seem to be no more than half a dozen teams that are
known
to us—not just the names of their stars or managers but the way they play ball, the way they look on the field, the way they are remembered. Only sharper competition, marked by the arrival of new challengers at the upper levels of contention, can alter this, and it is precisely that phenomenon which has brought such a sense of quickening and excitement to the young season. Who does not know the news? The Baltimore Orioles, who so admirably and drearily discouraged all opposition in their division for the past two years, took wing in rather leaden fashion this year, thus permitting hope in such unexpected places as Boston and Detroit; the world champions have only recently retaken their accustomed topmost perch, and there may be a good deal of teetering and flapping there before all is secure. Meanwhile, the American League West has been entirely dominated by the startling Oakland A’s, a team heretofore notable only for its white baseball shoes and the Caligulan whims of its owner, Charles O. Finley, who has fired ten managers in ten years. The National League East is once again the scene of a two- or three-team fight that may not be resolved until the final days or hours of the season. The contenders—the Cardinals, Mets, and Pirates—have offered a sustained lesson in different styles of winning baseball; the best of the three may be the Cardinals, back from two years of utter despond, whose new style is hitting. The Cincinnati Reds, last year’s pennant winners, are in disarray, their pitching almost nonexistent and the other parts of the Big Red Machine sputtering badly or in the repair shop. Their demise was predicted even before the season started; their successors at the top of the National League West, everyone agreed, were to be the Dodgers—an excellent prediction entirely ignored by the San Francisco Giants, who almost ran away from the field in the first six weeks. Many of these clubs, it will be noticed, have honored, familiar names, but as 1971 contenders they are not at all the same good old clubs we thought we knew—as we may discover when we call on the good old (or, in most ways, much better and not so old) Giants in their airy seaside home.

Before that journey, though, a brief further look should be directed at the Mets, whose baseball personality has subtly altered. Last year, the memory of their brilliant, unforgettable success of the previous autumn seemed to hang on them like a sea anchor. They played somberly, warily, and, in the end, exhaustedly, as if they had forgotten how many games they had once captured on sheer exuberance. This season is much more like ’69; the players are mature, but one sometimes catches glimpses on the field of that same mad young expectation—the conviction that the team just might win every single game from now to October. This is a hope still unreinforced by such baseball realities as the long ball. The team has won on hitting by gentle belters like Jerry Grote, Dave Marshall, and Bud Harrelson, and by the surprise of the year, if not the century, Eddie Kranepool, now in his tenth summer in a Mets uniform. The pitching has been excellent, of course—most especially the bullpen of McGraw, Taylor, and Frisella—and Nolan Ryan has succeeded Jerry Koosman as the stopper next to God, Tom Seaver. Watching Ryan work can be wearing; a typical Ryan inning (as confirmed by my scorecard of a recent game against Houston) consists of a walk, another walk, a swinging strikeout, another swinging strikeout,
another
walk, and a line drive straight into the glove of the right fielder. One way or another, he gets the job done—he has won six games so far, and has an earned-run average of 1.72. For that matter, watching the Mets in almost any game can be exhausting; things are often settled, along about the ninth or tenth or eleventh inning, by a piece of wild baseball luck—an enemy drive that
just
falls foul, or a Metsian screamer that suddenly becomes the game-closing DP. This kind of baseball requires a superior infield, enormous team courage, and strong-hearted, insatiable fans—exactly what the Mets have the most of.

Giant fans are famous front-runners. Made wary over the years by the Giants’ obligatory June swoon and patented furious, insufficient September rush, which have kept the team habitually in second place, the fans have stayed away from Candlestick Park in notable numbers. It is in many ways an excellent place to avoid—a dour, wind-whipped gray concrete tureen that is currently being enlarged, of all things, so that it may similarly test the loyalties of pro football fans this autumn. When I arrived there on a Friday night in mid-May, I thought for a moment that I would be just in time for the Forty-Niners’ opening kickoff, because the fans around me were accoutered in mackinaws, scarves, gloves, and watch caps, and carrying steamer rugs and Thermosed fortifiers. But they were baseball fans, in sensible Bay-side evening attire, who had finally appeared in real numbers to see the beginning of a three-game set against the Dodgers and warily to encourage their Giants, off to the greatest start in their history, with a lead of eight full games in their division. The Dodgers added to the wind-chill factor with two instantaneous runs on a long double by Willie Davis, but reassurance was quickly supplied. The second home-sider to come to the plate was Chris Speier, a thin twenty-year-old shortstop, still only in his second year of organized baseball, who has nailed together the Giant infield for the first time in a decade and driven San Franciscans into an uncharacteristic tizzy of admiration; he lofted one of Al Downing’s pitches up into the westerly gale, which carried it over the right-field fence. The next pitch was hit somewhat more firmly by Willie Howard Mays and disappeared in the direction of San Leandro. It was Speier’s first major-league homer (he waved his clenched fist in the air as he rounded the bases), and, with its successor, it raised the record for most combined home runs by a still active shortstop and center fielder on the same team to six hundred and thirty-seven.

The game was a brisk, noisy affair that kept us continuously, if not warmly, entertained. The Giants went ahead on the second of Willie McCovey’s three hits, were passed in the fourth on a two-run Dodger homer by Duke Sims, and then put the game away, 8–4, in the seventh on a long succession of singles, walks, sacrifices, and Dodger mistakes. Dodger manager Walter Alston made two defensive infield shifts in this inning, and each of his specialists committed an error—the kind of gift that streaking teams like the Giants accept without surprise.

The next afternoon, another big crowd, now reassured by the Giants’
nine
-game lead, saw an even better game—a vivid pitchers’ battle between the Dodgers’ Bill Singer and the perennial Juan Marichal, who has won more games for the Giants than anyone except Carl Hubbell and Christy Mathewson. The innings zipped along, and, washed in sunshine and a river of clean ocean air, I had plenty of time to admire the new Giants and sympathize with the new Dodgers. The Los Angelenos’ Willie Davis, now resplendent in the largest Afro in baseball, is hitting the ball and playing the outfield as never before in his life; his celebrated new teammate Richie Allen is also hitting the ball as never before—which is to say that he is hardly hitting it at all. The Giants, so far, have been entirely free of such mysteries and bad luck. Willie McCovey has sore knees, but they do not prevent him from batting with his old exciting, scythe-swinger’s style. The pitching, recently no deeper than Marichal and Gaylord Perry, has been firmed up by admirable younger arms belonging to Ron Bryant and Steve Stone and a reliever named Jerry Johnson, whose ERA at this writing is 0.70. The outfielders—Mays, Ken Henderson, and Bobby Bonds—are wonderfully fast afoot, an essential attribute on Candlestick’s slick AstroTurf, which now covers the whole infield except for dirt cutouts around the mound and the bases. (The all-chemical lawn is perhaps forgivable at Candlestick, for it has done away with the appalling dust storms that used to swirl among the cowering participants.) Chris Speier, I suspect, is a model of baseball’s infielder of the future, the AstroPlayer—wide-ranging, with extremely quick hands and the ability to get off deep, rifle-shot throws with almost no visible arm-cocking or windup. Old-time Giant front-office men think he may turn out to be the finest Giant shortstop since Travis Jackson, back in the early thirties. (Speier, by the way, is a local product, who still lives at home in Alameda, across the Bay. His fourteen-year-old brother, Bill, one may imagine, is grappling with something of a sibling problem this year. When a reporter recently asked Speier if Bill gave him much flak at the family’s breakfast table, the new star shrugged and said, “Not much. I mean, what can he
say?
”)

Candlestick’s classic pastime—and the best entertainment in baseball this year—is watching Willie Mays. Now just turned forty, and beginning his twenty-first year in the majors, he is hitting better than he has hit at any time in the past six or seven seasons, and playing the game with enormous visible pleasure. Veteran curators in the press box like to expound upon various Maysian specialties—the defensive gem, the basket catch, the looped throw, the hitched swing, and so forth. My favorite is his base-running. He may have lost a half-second or so in getting down to first base, but I doubt whether Willie Davis or Ralph Garr or any of the other new flashes can beat Mays from first to third, or can accelerate just as he does, with his whole body suddenly seeming to sink lower when, taking his turn at first and intently following the distant ball and outfielder, he suddenly sees his chance. Watching him this year, seeing him drift across a base and then sink into full speed, I noticed all at once how much he resembles a marvelous skier in midturn down some steep pitch of fast powder.
Nobody
like him.

No one knows how long Mays can sustain all this. He will sit out perhaps thirty or forty games this year, resting, but the only other concession to age is his habit, in a Giants’ half when he is unlikely to come to bat, of sitting down with the pitchers out in the right-field bullpen, thus saving himself the trip to the dugout. His real race with his years is measured—in the mind of the public, at least—in that perpetual comparison with Babe Ruth’s home-run record of 714. Willie is at 641 as this is written, and he will need three homer-productive years—say, twenty-five more this season, then thirty, then twenty—to make it. I doubt whether he will quite run the course—but I care much less about his breaking the record than I care that the last Mays homer, whenever it comes and whatever its number, be struck with joy.