Hairs vs. Squares Read online

  Astros announcer Loel Passe on July 3: “The pitch, swung on, hit down past third . . . Doug Rader with the grab, gets up, throws to first, he got him out with an unconscious play! . . . I wouldn’t be surprised if the Atlanta Braves stand up in the dugout and give him an ovation!”

  Passe on July 18: “Cedeno drives it deep to right-center field, way back it goes, up against the wall! . . . He may score . . . Here he is, coming around, being waved on. Here’s the throw to the plate. . . . He scores! An inside-the-park home run for the superstar of the future!”

  The future did indeed look golden for the West’s young stars and for talented players like San Francisco’s Speier, Bobby Bonds, and Dave Kingman; Los Angeles’ Steve Garvey, Bill Russell, and Bill Buckner; and Atlanta’s Baker and Garr. The depth in the division was a big reason the Big Red Machine was not a consensus choice to win the West.

  San Francisco was the reigning champion, and the Giants, awash in fresh ocean air and sunny optimism, returned an All-Star cast headed by future Hall of Famers Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, and Juan Marichal. Charlie Fox’s crew was an interesting mix of experience and youth, and they had won the West in ’71 by storming from the gate with a 12-2 record, winning nine straight and eight in a row at Candlestick Park. Even a sub-par season by Stretch McCovey—the big slugger with the scythe-like swing who was slowed by arthritic knees—had failed to stop San Francisco.

  Dazzling in their white uniforms with black-and-orange trim and taking full advantage of Candlestick’s slick, sea-green synthetic surface, the Giants emerged as one of the most exciting teams in baseball. Mays hit the first pitch thrown to him in 1971 over the wall, the 629th homer of his career. Suddenly it was 1951 again—Russ Hodges was behind the mic, and Willie was the eager and energetic “Say Hey Kid,” playing an exhilarating brand of baseball that writer Peter Schrag said “brought jazz” to the grand old game.

  With Mays and Marichal seemingly sipping from the Fountain of Youth and with McCovey, Bonds, Speier, Ken Henderson, Dave Kingman, and the flamboyant Tito Fuentes all contributing, the Giants appeared primed to defend their title.

  Marichal would be a key. The Dominican Dandy blanked Houston 5–0 on Opening Day. With his face often creased in a smile, Marichal was called by some “Laughing Boy.” Gus Triandos, a catcher for the Phillies in the 1960s, said it all seemed too easy for “Manito” Marichal.

  It was one thing to go hitless against Gibson, Koufax, or Drysdale, Triandos thought. You could see the cords standing out on their neck; they looked like they were working. Marichal, Triandos said, just stood there laughing at you. Scout Dewey Griggs noticed the same. Marichal, he thought, never seemed to exert himself. Throwing what Griggs saw as a very good live fastball, Marichal seemed to toy with hitters.

  Giants Hall of Famer Carl Hubbell called Marichal a “natural,” and Branch Rickey thought no pitcher made such magnificent use of his arm as Juan did. The way he used his arm may have had something to do with Marichal’s unique mound delivery. It’s been said that if all the great pitchers in history were placed behind a transparent curtain, Marichal’s silhouette—his left leg thrust high in the air, his right hand holding the ball and nearly touching the mound—would be the easiest to identify. He was the best right-handed hurler in the 1960s; Bob Gibson said Marichal was not only better than he, but he was also better than Koufax. Pete Rose thought Marichal the greatest pitcher he had ever faced.

  Marichal and the Giants began the season eager for another opportunity at the brass ring, but this was not the same San Francisco squad as the season before. Perry had been dealt to Cleveland for southpaw smoke-thrower Sam McDowell, one of two deals made around that time that would haunt the franchise for years. McDowell never fully recovered his fastball or his All-Star form and lasted less than two full seasons in San Francisco. Perry played twelve more major league seasons and won two Cy Young awards and a plaque in Cooperstown. The previous season, the Giants had traded one of their talented young outfielders, twenty-two-year-old George Foster, to the Reds. Foster went on to become a big bopper for the Big Red Machine. San Francisco also parted ways with Dick Dietz, its All-Star catcher in ’71, who was claimed off waivers by the Dodgers.

  Early in the season McCovey suffered a broken right forearm in a collision with Padres catcher John Jeter and missed two months. Before long Bonds would suffer a broken spirit due to the dealing of his close friend, Mays. He sulked and slumped his way through the season. Marichal, suffering from a lumbar disc in his spine that robbed him of his trademark high left-leg kick, lost eight straight. The Giants spent the first four days of the season in first place but slipped to 9-16 and six games behind when Mays was traded to the New York Mets on May 11 for reliever Charlie Williams and cash.

  The blockbuster deal was made for several reasons. Mays was batting just .184 at the time, and the Giants had young outfielders like twenty-two-year-old Garry Maddox and twenty-one-year-old Gary Matthews they could bring up to the big club. The defending champs quickly fell from contention, but young Jim Barr hurled himself into baseball’s record books when he retired the last 20 Pirates he faced in an 8–0 win on August 23 and the first 21 Cardinals in his next start on August 29, an eventual 3–0 win. The 41 straight batters set down is an MLB record that stood until 2009, when Mark Buehrle broke it.

  Economics played a part in the Giants’ transformation. Owner Horace Stoneham was losing money, the team losing more than $600,000, and for the first time in team history not paying a stock dividend. Stoneham simply couldn’t guarantee Mays a job once the longtime superstar’s playing days were over.

  As the sun was setting on a singular icon in San Francisco, it was rising for what would become an iconic foursome in Los Angeles. The durable Dodger infield of Garvey, Russell, Lopes, and Cey had come together in Chavez Ravine.

  There have been other famous infields in major league history: the Chicago Cubs of 1906–10 featured Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, Frank Chance, and the less publicized Harry Steinfeldt; the Philadelphia Athletics of 1911–14 had their celebrated “$100,000 infield” of Eddie Collins, Frank “Home Run” Baker, Jack Barry, and Stuffy McInnis; the Brooklyn Dodgers’ “Boys of Summer” had squads of Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges, and Billy Cox.

  The Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance double play combination was immortalized in a 1910 poem by Franklin Pierce Adams titled “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon”:

  These are the saddest of possible words:

  “Tinker to Evers to Chance.”

  Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,

  Tinker and Evers and Chance.

  Decades later, writer Bill Schroeder penned a poem honoring a Dodger infield that set a major league record for longevity by playing together nine years and is now considered one of the greatest in history.

  The ’72 season was the first in which Garvey, Lopes, Russell, and Cey—all products of the Los Angeles farm system—wore Dodger Blue at the same time. Russell, a sandy-haired twenty-three-year-old, was the first of the four to solidify his position when he moved from the outfield to shortstop to replace the retiring Maury Wills in ’72. Garvey, a clean-cut All-American who had bulging forearms like Popeye; Lopes, a fiery, mustachioed road runner; and Cey, nicknamed the penguin because he seemed to waddle when he ran, all saw playing time for manager Walter Alston in ’72.

  If the Robinson-Reese-Hodges-Cox Dodgers of the ’50s were the celebrated “Boys of Summer,” the ’72 Baby Dodger Blues were the Boys of Spring. Over the next nine years “The Infield” would start 833 games together; combine for 21 All-Star selections, with each man earning at least three; earn five Gold Gloves; produce one league MVP, one NLCS MVP, and one World Series MVP; and win four division titles, four NL pennants, and one world championship.

  From 1973 to 1981 the Dodgers were 498-335 in games started by The Infield, a .598 winning percentage. In games in which at least one member of the four didn’t start, the record dropped to 306-267-1, a .534 percentage. Over a full season, Los Angeles
averaged 97-65 when The Infield started, 87-75 when it didn’t.

  In their final game together—Game Six of the 1981 World Series in Yankee Stadium—Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda penciled the four in at the top of his lineup: Lopes, Russell, Garvey, Cey. Russell thought it unusual that Lasorda would do that since it wasn’t very often that those four were at the top of the batting order. Just a fluke, Russell surmised. Considering The Infield’s place in baseball history, it was entirely fitting.

  The components for the Dodgers’ dream infield arrived in ’72, and so did Don Sutton, another of their building blocks for future championship seasons. The NL’s Rookie of the Year in 1966—he debuted on April 14, the same day that fellow future Hall of Famer and 300-game winner Greg Maddux was born—and won 12 games for a sterling staff that boasted Koufax, Drysdale, and Claude Osteen and won the NL pennant. Sutton endured losing seasons the next three years despite posting respectable ERAs. He was also prone to surrendering gopher balls at an alarming rate—25 in 1969, 38 in ’70.

  An exasperated Alston sent Sutton to the bullpen in ’68 and wondered aloud if Sutton would ever learn to pitch. By late May 1971 Sutton was suffering the same crisis of confidence. Nursing both a sore elbow and a 1-5 record, he considered walking away from the game. Only two people at the time knew Sutton’s state of mind—he and his wife Patti. Sutton had never been more dejected.

  Two things turned the twenty-six-year-old right-hander around: he went to an arm specialist, and Dodgers coach Red Adams straightened out Sutton’s pitching form after watching films of Sutton’s starts from 1966 on. Adams told Sutton he had been pitching more from the side rather than coming over the top, and that was putting a strain on his elbow.

  Sutton made adjustments to his mechanics and developed a hard curve and a screwball to throw when he fell behind in the count and hitters were sitting on his fastball. A most artful Dodger, he won his first four starts in awesome fashion—beating the Reds in the season opener on a three-hitter, shutting out Atlanta on a two-hitter, spinning a five-hitter against Montreal, and blanking the streaking Mets. Sutton was undefeated in seven games overall, had three shutouts, and owned a ridiculous 0.89 ERA.

  He was particularly effective at home in Dodger Stadium, pitching amid the warm sunshine and pastel surroundings of Palazzo O’Malley and beneath a Dodger Blue sky. For the ’72 season he would go 11-4 with a 1.76 ERA in Dodger Stadium and 8-5 with a 2.49 ERA away from the friendly confines of Chavez Ravine.

  Sutton meticulously kept two books during the early years of his career. One was a diary in which he detailed each of his mound outings; the other was a personal scouting report on opposing hitters. Some say Sutton kept something else: a block of sandpaper, which he allegedly used to doctor baseballs. He was supposedly nicknamed “Black and Decker” by grease ball artist Gaylord Perry, who is said to have handed Sutton a bottle of Vaseline and received sandpaper in return. When Sutton was being searched one night on the mound, the umpire found a note in Don’s uniform pocket: “You’re getting warm, but it’s not here.”

  What Sutton did have was a variety of four pitches, each with varying velocity. His screwball acted like a change-up and nosedived when it approached home plate. He also developed a one-fingered curve, fully extending his index finger around the ball while the nail of his middle finger dug into the ball. Sutton called it a “slurve”—half slider, half curve. With a good fastball, sinker, and excellent slider and the ability to change speeds on his curve very well, Sutton had roughly the same assortment of pitches as Jim Palmer in the American League. Sutton didn’t have the same style of delivery as Palmer; the Dodger ace’s motion was a little shorter and quicker, not as long a motion as his Orioles counterpart.

  Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully described Sutton as a “stiff-backed pitcher.” In other words, he didn’t curl his leg in his windup and delivery. He drove off the rubber well with his back or right foot, but if he kept his front leg too stiff, his pitches had a tendency to sail high. Dodgers coaches wanted him to bend his leg a little but keep it firm. Scully likened it to the “fulcrum principle,” where you get a stiffness to challenge you, and that’s how you push off.

  The Dodgers got a great push to start the season. Unlike their pitch-and-putt predecessors of the 1960s, Wes Parker, Willie Davis, Frank Robinson, and Jim Lefebvre banged baseballs toward the teal-colored walls of Dodger Stadium. After splitting with Cincinnati to open the season, they marched through Georgia like Sherman’s troops, their offense afire and their pitching putting down enemy retaliation. Thirtysomethings Maury Wills, Manny Mota, Claude Osteen, and Jim Brewer joined with fortysomething Hoyt Wilhelm and younger types like Tommy John to put the Dodgers atop the division into early June.

  While the Dodgers, Reds, and Astros battled for the division lead the first three months of the season, an aging Aaron was in the midst of his relentless pursuit of Ruth. The Hammer had hit a career-high 47 homers in ’71, bringing his total to 639 as the season began.

  Aaron had several of Ruth’s and Ty Cobb’s career marks in sight, but it was the Babe’s home run record—714—that represented the Mount Everest of baseball. One of the ironies of Aaron’s career is that he was not a home run hitter to begin with. When he broke in in 1952, he wasn’t even a power hitter. He weighed 160 and hit a total of nine home runs at Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

  Aaron helped the Indianapolis Clowns win the Negro League World Series in ’52, when Braves scout Dewey Griggs purchased his contract for $10,000. He had another offer from the New York Giants, who had just had another former Negro League star, Willie Mays, debut for them the previous May. Aaron had the Giants’ contract in hand, but when the Braves offered fifty dollars a month more, he signed with Milwaukee. That fifty dollars was the only thing that kept Mays and Aaron from being teammates.

  It’s intriguing to think of a Mays-Aaron pairing in a dream outfield from 1954 to 1973. But while the Giants missed out, so did the Braves. Prior to signing with the Giants, Mays had been scouted by the Braves. He had also been scouted by the Dodgers, and had Brooklyn acted more quickly, Mays might have been one of the fabled “Boys of Summer” and later a teammate of Koufax, Drysdale, Wills, et al. on the Los Angeles Dodgers of the 1960s.

  At the time of his signing, Aaron was an infielder, playing second and short, and owned a cross-handed batting style that defied the rules of hitting. Along with the Cubs’ Ernie Banks, Aaron ushered in the era of the slim sluggers—“wrist hitters” who used very light bats in the 30–32 ounce range. Two years after his signing Aaron broke into the big leagues with the Milwaukee Braves when outfielder Bobby Thomson suffered a broken leg in spring training. Aaron took Thomson’s position in left field and stayed in the Braves’ starting lineup for the next twenty seasons.

  Atlanta spent the entire 1972 season under .500 and eventually fell as far as twenty-five games off the pace in the West, but the thirty-nine-year-old Aaron continued to play with machine-like consistency. He overcame assorted injuries through the years—a knee injury in ’70, nagging back pain in ’71—to become the only player in National League history to that point to hit 40 or more home runs seven times, and his 34 homers in ’72 allowed him to set a major league record for most seasons topping the 30-homer mark—fourteen.

  Like Gibson, Aaron grew up in a poor family; he spent a good portion of his youth in Alabama picking cotton. Also like Gibson, Aaron experienced racism. As he closed in on the Babe, Aaron received hate mail and death threats. The threats were serious enough for Atlanta Journal sports editor Lewis Grizzard to quietly compose an Aaron obituary. In August 1973 Peanuts creator Charles Schultz penned a series of cartoons in which Snoopy attempted to break Ruth’s record, only to be besieged by hate mail.

  Also that summer, Sports Illustrated’s William Leggett asked if this was to be the year in which Aaron took “a moon walk above one of the most hallowed individual records in American sport . . . ? Or will it be remembered as the season in which Aaron, the most dignified of athletes, was be
sieged with hate mail and trapped by the cobwebs and goblins that lurk in baseball’s attic?”

  Ruth’s widow, Claire Hodgson, denounced the bigotry aimed at Aaron and believed the Babe would have enthusiastically supported the historic chase. Ruth, an unprejudiced man, had been the subject of racial taunts by those who believed the Babe had black features.

  Aaron maintained that he wasn’t attempting to eclipse Ruth’s status as the game’s all-time slugger. “He’ll still be the best, even if I pass him,” he said at the time. “Even if I am lucky enough to hit 715 home runs, Babe Ruth will still be regarded as the greatest home run hitter who ever lived.”

  While Aaron spent the summer chasing Ruth’s ghost, the rest of the West was chasing the vapors of the Big Red Machine. Cincinnati took first place for good with a 5–4, ten-innings victory over Houston on June 25. At the same time that the Nixon administration was seeking to suppress protests by the Gainesville Eight and other anti–Vietnam War activists at the Republican National Convention in Miami in August, the Reds were suppressing all challenges as well. The NL West had been baseball’s most competitive division in ’71. By late summer of ’72 the Reds were turning the race into a runaway. One of the anthems of the era was Sly and the Family Stone’s “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” and the Big Red Machine could relate.

  Cincinnati’s style not only made the club a cinch to win the West, but it also captured the imagination of fans. The Reds reached one million in paid attendance faster than any time in the 104-year history of professional baseball in Cincinnati, and their success at the turnstiles was due in part to their 5-foot-7, 150-pound second baseman. No story unfolded at a faster pace than that of the Cincinnati speedster. By early August Go-Go Joe was leading the league in runs scored and was reaching base a remarkable 43 percent of the time.

  Speed and power were a big part of the Reds’ success, but so was pitching. Armed with an arsenal of good off-speed pitches, Gary Nolan took the mound for a July Game of the Week against the Cubs sporting the lowest ERA in the NL at 1.90. By game’s end he had passed eventual NL Cy Young winner Steve Carlton and Mets ace Tom Seaver as the first NL pitcher to reach twelve wins.