Hairs vs. Squares Read online

  “I think the best description we can use of Gary Nolan,” Gowdy told his audience, “is he’s now a ‘finished pitcher.’”

  The Big Red Machine looked to be a finished product as well. Tom Hedrick was a Reds broadcaster in 1971–72, and he recalled the team’s turnaround. “That trade was made for one guy—Joe Morgan,” said Hedrick, who teamed with Yankees Hall of Fame pitcher Waite Hoyt on Reds broadcasts. “Morgan was the one Bob Howsam wanted. Howsam put together that trade and it was very controversial at the time. The Reds actually got four players out of that trade and that was the genius of Bob Howsam. He was the architect, a guy who was very shrewd on trades. . . . When you hit on turf you have to have a bunch of gap hitters and that’s precisely what the Reds had. That team, with its speed at the top [of the lineup] was built for that stadium.”

  Hedrick recalled the first day of spring training in 1972, when Morgan approached Cincy’s pitchers and told them how he had stolen bases off them in the past. Morgan kept a book on every pitcher in the league. “He was a thinking man’s player,” Hedrick said.

  So too was Rose, who also kept a book, his rating the throwing arms of every outfielder in the NL. Hedrick said Pete made it a point to know everybody, including Hedrick himself, the guy who when Rose joined the Reds had been Sportscaster of the Year in 1970 and a broadcaster for (among other teams) the champion Kansas City Chiefs squads of the American Football League. He broadcast three Super Bowls and nine Cotton Bowls for CBS Radio.

  Hedrick said, “When I first came to the club in ’71 he came across the field and said, ‘I’m Pete Rose. If you need anything just ask me.’ He was a great guy who led by example. He played hard and he expected you to play hard. He also had a big heart and helped a lot of people. Those two guys [Morgan and Rose] played off each other.”

  Hedrick got to know the Reds players. Like others, he was amazed at the huge paws of Johnny Bench—“The biggest set of hands I’ve ever seen,” he said. He called Bench and Yogi Berra the two best catchers he’s ever watched work. Bench, he said, completely revolutionized the position with his one-handed style, and he could do that because he had such big hands.

  “Bench was an amazing talent,” Hedrick said. “He had maturity and charisma. I don’t know what charisma is, but Bench had it.”

  Hedrick thought Tony Perez a great leader. “Pete could be up and down [emotionally] but Tony was always the same,” Hedrick said. “Tony was the ‘good ol’ Dawg,’ as he called himself.”

  The leader of the Big Red Machine, Sparky Anderson, was a baseball genius, according to Hedrick: “Sparky always said he was dumb but he was dumb like a fox. He always wanted to make sure he put his players in the best position to win. He was perfect for that club. He was able to put the egos in the background.”

  Hedrick was impressed by Anderson’s dealings with people. “He always said, ‘It doesn’t cost you a dime to be nice.’”

  Hedrick joined the Reds the same year as Al Michaels, and when Hedrick first heard Al broadcast, he told producer Ken Fouts that Michaels “sounds just like Vinny [Scully].” That wasn’t a coincidence. Until he found his own voice, Michaels emulated the Dodgers’ legendary broadcaster. “If you’re going to imitate somebody,” Hedrick said, “imitate Vinny because he’s the best.”

  Hedrick had emulated Curt Gowdy because the Cowboy was whom Hedrick heard growing up in Massachusetts at a time when Gowdy was in the midst of his fifteen years as the radio voice of the Boston Red Sox.

  “I loved Curt Gowdy,” Hedrick said. “He was my mentor and my idol. He and Vinny and Ernie [Harwell] and Lindsey Nelson were great people who happened to be broadcasters.”

  When Hedrick moved to the Midwest, he emulated Monte Moore, whom he heard all the time on Kansas football and basketball. Moore, who broadcast the A’s in 1972, the team Hedrick’s Reds would face in the Fall Classic, was another mentor for Hedrick.

  “When I did baseball games I sounded like Monte,” Hedrick said. Seeking advice on finding his own voice in his early broadcasting years while working for KWBW, a small station in Hutchinson, Kansas, Hedrick phoned Moore. “He told me, ‘You have to be yourself.’”

  Moore advised Hedrick not to listen to him for three or four weeks and to keep working. Somewhere along the line, Moore told Hedrick, you’ll find your own style. Driving home one night after broadcasting a high school game in El Dorado, Hedrick was listening to the tape of the game when he had a breakthrough. He finally sounded like himself.

  Michaels would find his own voice as well, and along with broadcast partner Joe Nuxhall—the latter had the signature signoff phrase, “This is the old left-hander, rounding third and heading for home”—made memorable calls in Cincinnati’s memorable summer:

  Pitch on the way, that ball’s drilled to deep left. If it’s fair it’s gone and it is a . . . fair ball! Hit the foul pole! Johnny Bench hits the foul pole in left for a three-run homer!

  Two down and that will bring Denis Menke to the plate. . . . Pitch to Menke, swung on and hit along the left field line, could be extra bases, it’s down in the corner! Perez could score, he’s being waved in, here he comes. . . . The Reds win it in 10, 5–4!

  Breaking pitch grounded up the middle, Morgan great stop! Flips to Chaney, they get him at second! What a play! Joe Morgan takes a base hit away from Bonds on a sensational play!

  [Glenn] Beckert swings, line drive into right field, a base hit. . . . [Joe] Pepitone coming home, here’s the throw and he’s out by a mile! And now the Cubs have met Cesar Geronimo. As we go around the league they all try him one time and that’s all.

  On August 8 the Reds beat the Dodgers 2–1 in nineteen innings, and on September 1 Rose became Cincinnati’s all-time leader in hits in a 1–0, twelve-innings win over the Expos. Michaels provided a word picture for Reds fans: “The strike-two pitch to Rose. . . . Pete hits a checked-swing chopper toward second. . . . And there’s the record-breaking hit, an infield single by Pete Rose!”

  On September 22 in the Astrodome, Carroll, who set a then major league mark for most saves in a season with 37, clinched the Reds’ second division title in three seasons.

  Michaels made the call: “The Reds are now a strike away from the Western Division championship. . . . The strike-two pitch on the way. . . . Swung on, grounded to short. . . . Chaney goes to Morgan and pop the corks! . . . The Cincinnati Reds are the champions of the National League West!”

  In the American League the race to be best in the West was a little wilder.

  8

  With his team trailing by two runs in the bottom of the ninth inning, it didn’t take Chuck Tanner long to pick a pinch hitter.

  “Okay, Dick,” the Chicago White Sox skipper said to Dick Allen. “Go in and hit.”

  It was late in the day on June 4, 1972, the second game of a doubleheader against the New York Yankees. The Sox had won the first game 6–1, Allen contributing two hits and a run scored as Chicago improved to 24-17 to stay in second place in the West, half a game ahead of Minnesota and three and a half games behind Oakland.

  The doubleheader drew 51,904 fans to Comiskey Park and left another 8,000 hopefuls stranded on the sidewalks surrounding the jam-packed stadium. The crowd inside Comiskey was the old ball park’s largest in eighteen years, lending a festive atmosphere to the proceedings. Thousands had come to see Allen, who was in the midst of an MVP campaign that would see him hit .308 and lead the league in home runs (37), RBIs (113), walks (99), on-base percentage (.420), slugging percentage (.603), and on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS, 1.023). He did all of this while playing his home games in pitcher-friendly Comiskey Park.

  Each of Allen’s homers seemed to come with a story, and June 4 provided one of his more memorable moments: the “chili dog homer.”

  Tanner had chosen to let Allen sit out the second game. “He’s played every inning this year,” Tanner explained at the time, “and he deserves a rest.”

  But as soon as the lineups were posted on the scoreboard—sans the
Sox superstar—team owner John Allyn placed a call to his manager. “Where,” the boss asked, “is Allen?”

  Tanner’s response was unruffled: “I’m saving him for late in the game,” he said. “I’ll send him in to pinch-hit with a couple men on base so he can hit a homer and win the game for us.”

  With left-hander Mike Kekich in control through eight and a third innings, the Yankees led 4–2 in the bottom of the ninth. But when Bill Melton worked a one-out walk and Mike Andrews singled to left, New York manager Ralph Houk emerged from the dugout and waved in southpaw reliever extraordinaire Sparky Lyle.

  Tanner responded by sending a batboy to the clubhouse to summon his slugger. Allen was eating a chili dog when he heard Tanner wanted him to hit. He had chili all over his shirt, so he put on a new one and a pair of pants with no underclothes.

  As Allen hefted his bat—at forty ounces it weighed a half-pound more than those used by other sluggers his size in the early 1970s—Tanner sent Jorge Orta in to pinch-run for Andrews. When Allen was announced as a pinch hitter, Andrews, who had been Lyle’s roommate on the Red Sox, shouted at Lyle, “Sparky, you’re in deep shit now!”

  Allen strode to the plate, took a strike and then a ball. The next pitch was one he’d remember the rest of his life. Yankees announcers Phil Rizzuto and Frank Messer made the call on WABC radio:

  Rizzuto: Lyle against Richie Allen, what a battle. The two top men facing each other. . . . The pitch. . . . Oh, he creamed one! And the ballgame is over! Holy cow! I don’t believe it! Richie Allen pinch-hits a three-run homer and the White Sox beat the Yankees.

  Messer: It’s a fantastic finish for the White Sox and you could just feel the drama building up for that possible moment. Then when they got the two men on, the league’s top hitter and the league’s top reliever confronted each other and that was the result.

  Sparky Lyle threw him a slider, Allen said, “and it wound up in the seats.” It wound up some 370 feet away in the left-field grandstand, winning the game for the White Sox 5–4. It was the ninth walk-off home run of Allen’s career.

  For the Sox and their delirious fans, it was a giddy, heady moment not seen on Chicago’s South Side since the Sox were contenders in 1967. So much so that the crowd refused to leave Comiskey Park and spent the next thirty minutes after the game standing, cheering, and hollering.

  To Allen it was a memorable moment, one of many for the Sox that summer. In a year when Seals and Crofts scored a top hit with “Summer Breeze,” winds of change were gusting through the Windy City. Yet unlike the changes that had caused other major cities in the Midwest to falter, Chicago had made the difficult transition from manufacturing to a modern economy due in part to the vision of its mayor, Richard Daley.

  Daley was called by biographer Adam Cohen an “American Pharaoh”, and just as the pyramids in Egypt reflect the vision of leaders of long ago, much of modern-day Chicago is a testament to Daley’s dogged determination. The Sears Tower, O’Hare International Airport, McCormick Place, and Dan Ryan Expressway were all built at the behest of a boss who stood astride his city’s politics like a colossus for more than two decades.

  Like New York’s Fiorello LaGuardia and Philadelphia’s Frank Rizzo, Daley was a larger-than-life figure whose impact on his city has lasted longer than his terms in office. Daley was also a White Sox fan, and like his fellow South Siders in the summer of ’72 he watched as Allen, Tanner, Wilbur Wood, Carlos May, Jay Johnstone, Stan Bahnsen, “Beltin’” Bill Melton, Walt “No Neck” Williams, Rich “Goose” Gossage, and Terry Forster produced a season of excitement that built over the course of the hot summer, thanks in part to the enthusiastic radio calls of new Sox broadcaster Harry Caray on WTAQ/WEAW.

  On May 21 the Sox trailed California 8–6 in the bottom of the ninth. With two out and two on, May faced reliever Alan Foster.

  Caray: There’s the pitch. . . . There’s a long drive. . . . Way back! It may be. . . . White Sox win! . . . Listen to the crowd. . . . How about that! Holy cow, what a thrill! . . . This puts the White Sox in first place in the Western Division! This crowd is wild! Everybody’s screaming. . . . I’m the only calm guy in the ball park!

  May’s upper-deck shot completed a stunning comeback that served to put Chicago one half-game ahead of the A’s. Much to the delight of their fans, the White Sox and Caray were just hitting their stride.

  On July 23, in another Sunday doubleheader, the Sox beat the Indians in the opener at Comiskey but trailed 3–1 in the bottom of the eighth in the nightcap. Once again the Sox showed a flair for the dramatic. Ed Hermann’s home run and Allen’s RBI groundout combined to tie the game, setting the stage for May’s leadoff at-bat in the ninth. On the mound for the Indians was reliever Ed Farmer.

  Caray: There’s a long drive. . . . Way back. . . . It might be. . . . The Sox win a doubleheader! Carlos May just hit his second home run of the game! . . . What a blast! High into the right-center field stands and the Sox have won this doubleheader!

  Eight days later the Sox were in Minnesota’s Metropolitan Stadium for a two-game set with the Twins. Both clubs were in need of a win to keep pace with the A’s, whose .622 winning percentage was the best in the league. The Met was a big ballpark with power alleys that seemed as wide as the Grand Canyon.

  Assisted by physical and judgmental errors by Twins center fielder Bobby Darwin, Allen became just the second man in major league history to that point to hit two inside the park home runs in the same game. Both homers came off future Cooperstown inductee Bert Blyleven. In the top of the first inning Allen roped a drive to right-center. As Darwin took his angle on the ball, his feet slipped out from under him on the grass, and the ball took a strange hop over him and rolled to the fence. Pat Kelly, Luis Alvarado, and Allen all scored for a quick 3–0 lead.

  Jack (“Let’s go the races!”) Drees made the call on WFLD, the Sox’s television network: “He now has a 15-game hitting streak that was interrupted [by] a couple of pinch-hitter appearances where he failed to hit. . . . He’s got this one, lined to center, Darwin over and he falls down! Ball bounces over him, goes back to the screen. . . . Allen is coming to third, they’re waving him in! C’mon Dick, get an inside-the-park home run. . . . He’s got it!”

  In the fifth Allen followed Alvarado’s RBI single with a sinking liner to left-center. Darwin tried to make a shoe-top catch, but the ball got by him. Allen, who was quick as well as strong and had 19 steals on the season, raced around the bases for his major league record-tying second inside-the-park homer in a single game, and Chicago romped 8–1. While Allen’s feat was rare, it has happened since, and Blyleven was once again involved. On October 4, 1986, Minnesota’s Greg Gagne hit a pair of inside-the-park homers to back Blyleven, the same man who had surrendered Allen’s twin blasts.

  It wasn’t just that Allen was thrilling Sox fans with a level of baseball many on the South Side had never seen, but it was also the way he was doing it that gripped their imagination. Almost one month after his record-tying afternoon in Minnesota, Allen made history again. On August 23, in the seventh inning of a tight game, Allen unloaded on a 2-0 offering from the Yankees’ Lindy McDaniel and sent it soaring into the center-field bleachers directly under the Comiskey Park scoreboard.

  Caray, who was broadcasting the game from that area (as was his custom for Wednesday afternoon games), came close to catching the ball in his famous fishing net, which he kept for just such an occasion. Holding a microphone in his right hand and the fishing net in his left, he reached for it but missed. Fans who were in Comiskey that day remember the shirt-sleeved crowd being sent into a state of shock and awe. Caray, screaming into his mic, was stunned by Allen’s blast, which cleared a wall that was 20 feet high and 445 feet from home plate and provided a pair of insurance runs in an eventual 5–2 win.

  Caray: Richie Allen hit one into the center field stands. . . . I almost got it with my net! It hit a fan’s hands right in front of me!

  Allen’s power was prodigious. His sky-scraping homers e
xceeded even the most distant reaches of stadiums and sometimes even their rooftops. Willie Mays once said Allen could hit a ball farther than anybody he’d seen.

  Allen was the “Chisox Colossus” to some, the “Wampum Walloper” to others. A native of Wampum, Pennsylvania, and graduate of Wampum High, Allen was one of nine children of Mrs. Era Allen. Three of his brothers were all-state basketball players, and during Dick’s playing days Wampum High, despite being one of the smallest schools in the commonwealth and boasting an enrollment of just thirty boys, won 82 consecutive games and two state championships. Allen was offered numerous basketball scholarships, but since baseball offered a quicker route out of poverty, he took it.

  It was during his three-plus seasons in the minors that Allen began using his forty-two-ounce bat. When the big bats first arrived in the clubhouse, Allen figured someone had forgotten to take the roots off. They’re tree trunks, he thought. Who’s going to swing that?

  During batting practice it dawned on Allen that he should handle the big bat the same way he would handle a heavy log, by picking it up at one end rather than in the middle. Allen altered his swing so that he was throwing the end of the bat at the ball. The bat became his trademark—its weight alternated between forty and forty-two ounces during his career—and while it looked like a log, he swung it like it was a toothpick.

  In his fourth year in the minors, Allen was sent to Little Rock, Arkansas, a small town torn by racial tension. In the fall of 1957 President Dwight D. Eisenhower had sent one thousand U.S. Army paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to enforce integration and protect nine black students enrolling at the city’s all-white Central High School. Allen, who had just turned twenty, was the first black player assigned to Little Rock. The target of racial slurs, taunts, and crank phone calls, Allen felt dehumanized, as if he was playing baseball inside a prison.