Hairs vs. Squares Read online

  Moore remembered that when Jackson had first arrived in the majors, he had loved to show off the strength and accuracy of his throwing arm. There was one occasion when Reggie made a magnificent throw from deepest right-center field in Yankee Stadium. The ball zipped to third base on the fly, causing everyone on the A’s to talk about it for a long time. The problem was, Moore said, Jackson kept trying to top it. As a consequence, Reggie would make a great throw one day and then fire the ball over the fielder’s head the next.

  Jackson was having problems at the plate as well. He had a big swing and struck out a lot, and the more Reggie struck out, the more he sulked. Moore recalled seeing Jackson brood and fret over his mounting whiffs. The result was that one strikeout would lead to another and perhaps still another, all in the same game. Suddenly the biggest talent in the A’s starting lineup was facing a fragile future.

  The career-saving changes came when Jackson played winter ball in Puerto Rico in 1971. His manager was Frank Robinson, and it was Robby who gave Reggie renewed confidence in his ability. After Frank told Jackson to just go out and play the game and allow his ability to take care of the rest, Reggie believed Robinson all but guaranteed he’d have a good season. Jackson also credited Gary Walker, his friend and partner in the land business, with giving him direction.

  Moore, among others, saw the positive changes in Jackson starting with the ’71 season. Moore said Reggie stopped worrying about his strikeouts. Jackson realized he had a big swing and was going to fan a certain amount of times. When he did, he forgot about it and concentrated on getting a hit the next time. Jackson batted a respectable .277 in ’71, with 32 homers and 80 RBIs. His base running improved, and in the field he worked hard on throwing to the right base, hitting the cutoff man, and using his arm to the A’s advantage. He also became a leader in the outfield, moving fielders into the proper position for different hitters. Moore thought Jackson had a great baseball mind and knew the abilities of every hitter in the American League.

  As Jackson found consistency in his play, he became more of a morale booster. Moore thought Reggie never failed to take a rookie under his wing, take the kid out to dinner, talk to him, coach him, and encourage him. Moore had seen Jackson give clothes to a young player who didn’t have much. Reggie was also fluent in Spanish, and this allowed him to have an influence on Latin players.

  Maturity had come late to the tailor’s son, but by the spring of ’72 it was obvious to Moore and others that Jackson had found himself. The man who had once displayed as many moods as there are days in the week told reporters at the time, “My attitude is better now. Sure I get down when I’m not hitting but I’ve convinced myself to battle back.”

  Jackson’s personal growth and huge potential promised big things for the A’s. Moore said everyone connected with the club in ’72 figured Reggie was ready to have two or three seasons where he hit 40–50 homers every year. He had the mental part licked, Moore said, and since Jackson was sport’s equivalent to a Mach 1 muscle car—powerful and quick—the A’s boasted a man many considered baseball’s best young star.

  “I don’t think there’s been a player since Mickey Mantle that has all the skills Reggie Jackson has,” Moore said at the time. “He’s ready to break out.”

  While Reggie was the most visible member of the Mustache Gang, Mickey Lolich was, by his own admission, the Invisible Man of the Detroit Tigers. “Half the time,” Lolich said then, “nobody knows I’m around.”

  NBC sportscaster Curt Gowdy said Lolich had “always been in the shadows.” He was overshadowed by teammate Denny McLain in 1968 and by Oakland phenom Vida Blue in ’71. In 1968 McLain became a household name with his 31 wins and larger-than-life, Dizzy Dean–style personality. Lolich? He was a guy who hung around; “my sway-backed left-hander,” then manager Mayo Smith called him. But it was Mickey whose three wins in the World Series, including a Game Seven victory over McLain conqueror Bob Gibson, delivered a championship to Detroit.

  In 1971 Blue won 24 games and the American League Cy Young Award. Lolich won 25 games, led the majors in strikeouts with 308, and pitched more innings (376) than any American Leaguer since 1912, when Big Ed Walsh hurled 393.

  It was Lolich who kept the Tigers in contention in 1971, their 91 wins the most of any team that finished second in the majors that season. Early that summer Tigers manager Billy Martin told reporters that his thin pitching rotation would consist of Lolich and whomever and two days of rain. Billy the Kid’s quip was a takeoff on Boston Post sports editor Gerald Hern’s famous poem, “Spahn and Sain and Pray for Rain,” written during the 1948 Boston Braves’ pennant drive.

  Right-hander Joe Coleman joined Lolich as a 20-game winner for Detroit in ’71, and by late September Martin was so impressed with Lolich’s efforts that he allowed him to bat for himself in the eighth inning of a game the Tigers were losing 3–2 to the Yankees. The standard move is to pinch-hit for the pitcher in such circumstances, but Martin was giving Lolich every opportunity to earn the highest number of wins for a Detroit lefty since Hal Newhouser’s 26 in 1946.

  That Lolich suffered from invisibility was surprising—not only because of his success on the mound, but also because as writer Ray Robinson noted in 1972, Mickey was one of the most unusual looking athletes in America at that time. The thirty-one-year-old native of Portland, Oregon, carried a paunch that caused New Yorker baseball writer Roger Angell to compare him to an aging Irish middleweight and Robinson to state that Lolich appeared to have done his training in a barroom or a brewery.

  The likable Lolich agreed. Noting his portly physique during his playing days, he described himself as the “beer-drinker’s idol.” All the fat guys watched him, he told reporters, and told their wives, “See, there’s a fat guy doing okay. Bring me another beer.”

  Robinson noted that Lolich’s stomach rolled out like a niagara over his belt, his pants drooped continuously as if the Tigers couldn’t find a tailor in town, and his uniform number 29 was drenched in sweat before the fourth inning was over. Robinson thought Lolich’s face had softness about it, but if it did, it belied the fighting spirit Martin and others were well aware of.

  Martin thought Lolich “a battler,” a guy he could give the ball to every four days and get a top performance just about every time. Lolich, in whom the fires of competition were well banked, returned the praise to his fists-first skipper. “I’d do anything that guy wants,” he told a reporter while nodding in Martin’s direction.

  Lolich’s relationship with McLain was another matter. There was talk that Mickey was critical of McLain’s attitude, and it was noted by sportswriters at the time that McLain, who was flying his own plane at the time, didn’t give Lolich a lift back to Detroit following the 1969 All-Star Game. Lolich was quoted as calling it “a crummy trick” and was reported to say that McLain “just doesn’t ever think of his friends or teammates.” Lolich denied saying anything as harsh as that about McLain and stated he and Denny would always be friends.

  When the former mound mates met in the opening game of a May doubleheader in ’71—McLain having been dealt to Washington—their duel in Detroit was advertised as a mutual vendetta. With a crowd of fifty-two thousand crammed into Tiger Stadium that Sunday, Lolich four-hit the Senators and won 5–0.

  On August 21 Lolich beat Milwaukee 7–2 to win 20 games for the first time in his career. Afterward a congratulatory note was wired to Lolich. It was sent by Denny McLain.

  Lolich grew tired of the comparisons to McLain and Blue. He was his own man, a guy who loved motorcycles, collected pistols, and enjoyed archery and slot-car racing. Though many athletes prefer to be apolitical, Lolich openly favored Hubert Humphrey over Richard Nixon in the 1968 presidential race.

  In baseball’s conformist circles Lolich was considered by some a “flake”—not surprising since in baseball many southpaws are considered crafty and crazy, wily and wild. Except Lolich was not a left-hander early on. As a toddler he favored his right arm, but when he was two years o
ld, he rode his tricycle up the back of a parked motorcycle. The motorcycle fell on him, breaking his collarbone and causing damage to his right arm. Doctors ordered exercise and therapy for the injured wing, thus marking Mickey’s transition to southpaw. He would still do many things right-handed, including batting and writing.

  Despite excessive use, Lolich’s left arm never suffered disrepair. His 29 complete games in ’71 topped the American League, and his innings pitched dwarfed that of famed contemporary and National League iron arm Ferguson Jenkins. Lolich would say his arm felt tired at times but never sore.

  The Tiger ace earned his stripes over the course of thirteen summers in Detroit. He did, in fact, seem destined to play for the Tigers. Michael Stephen Lolich was born September 12, 1940, the same day Schoolboy Rowe kept the Tigers in first place in the AL pennant race by beating the Yankees. Mickey’s father was a parks director, and his job kept his kids outside and close to playgrounds and athletic and exercise equipment.

  Lolich developed a strong arm as a boy by throwing rocks and grew up idolizing another southpaw, Yankee great Whitey Ford. Yet it was another future Yankees left-hander, Al Downing, who proved instrumental in Lolich’s signing with Detroit. Mickey starred for Babe Ruth and American Legion teams and dueled Downing in amateur games. Both Lolich and Downing were being scouted by major league teams, and when Downing signed with the Yanks, Lolich figured that rather than battle Al through the minors for a spot on the Bombers, he would sign with the Tigers.

  Lolich reported to the minors weighing all of 160 pounds. By his own recollection he was “skin and bones” but determined to succeed. Called up to the Tigers in May 1963, he made complete games one of his trademarks. One of his more memorable outings came on September 9, 1964, when he beat his idol, Ford, and the Yankees 4–0 at Tiger Stadium.

  Aided by Tigers manager Charlie Dressen, who noted that Lolich was tipping his pitches—he raised his arms higher in his windup when he threw a fastball and lowered them when he delivered a breaking pitch—Mickey won 18 games in ’64 and 15 more in ’65. By 1967 White Sox manager Eddie Stanky was comparing Lolich to legendary Lefty Grove—enormous praise since Stanky had previously labeled Lolich a “second-line pitcher.”

  Flourishing under the tutelage of Tigers pitching coach Johnny Sain, whose laid-back approach appealed to Mickey, Lolich went 9-1 in his final eleven starts of the season, helping bring the Tigers to the brink of a league championship. The “Impossible Dream” Red Sox eventually edged out the Tigers, Twins, and White Sox in one of the great pennant races in history, but the Tigers roared back to win it all in ’68, Lolich beating Gibson in Game Seven.

  The Invisible Man had become a World Series hero, the twelfth pitcher in major league history to win three games in a single Fall Classic. He is still the last to win three straight complete games in one Series.

  Lolich built on his great October by winning 19 games in ’69 and twice striking out 16 in a game. To that point he was a two-pitch pitcher—fastballs and curves. Tigers catcher Tom Haller noted that Lolich at times relied on his rising fastball the first half of a game before switching to off-speed pitches the second half.

  Lolich’s strategy was straightforward: he would try and throw strikes on two of his first three pitches, basically telling the hitter, “Here, hit it.” He would try to get ahead of the hitter in the count, then let the batter get himself out. Martin called him “a thinking guy who knows how to get out of trouble.”

  Art Fowler, Detroit’s pitching coach at the time, cited Lolich’s determination, and rookie right-hander Phil Meeler, whose locker was next to Mickey’s in the clubhouse, was impressed by another Lolich attribute: “His guts,” Meeler said.

  In ’71 Lolich added a cut fastball to his repertoire. It was a pitch Sain had been working with him on for years, but it wasn’t until spring training in ’71 that Lolich began noticing his pitches were dipping and had a new and unusual movement in the strike zone. Some mistakenly believed Lolich’s new pitch was a slider because it broke down and away from hitters.

  Baltimore third baseman Brooks Robinson thought Lolich “just plain tough.” Teammate Boog Powell agreed. He could think of more pleasant things to do, Powell said, than head to home plate to face Mickey Lolich.

  Lolich owned a unique delivery. He would raise both arms high above his head at the height of his windup and then finish his picturesque delivery with an exaggerated low leg drive. The latter earned him the nickname “Lo-Lo.”

  Mickey Mantle thought Lolich “threw easy,” without great strain and with a smooth motion. But Lolich often surprised hitters, especially National League batters in World Series and All-Star Games, with his sharp breaking stuff and hard four-seam fastballs.

  In the ’71 Midsummer Classic Lolich got the call to relieve in the eighth inning. It came from Baltimore’s Earl Weaver, who was managing the AL stars. Pitching to battery mate Thurman Munson of the Yankees, Lolich protected a late lead. He struck out Bobby Bonds, surrendered a home run to Roberto Clemente, then retired Lee May and Ron Santo on groundouts back to the box. In the ninth Lolich got former World Series foe Lou Brock on a grounder bunted back to the mound. He eventually induced Johnny Bench to pop out to Brooks Robinson for the game’s final out. Lolich got the save as the AL snapped an eight-game losing streak.

  “He knows the kind of pitches you have to make here,” Weaver said of Lolich pitching in Tiger Stadium, a renowned hitter’s park.

  Armed with his new cut fastball and what he called a “God-given arm,” Lolich racked up innings and strikeouts in equal abundance. Perhaps to bring a little more color to his performances, he began wearing a blue baseball glove in 1972.

  Unlike many pitchers, he never iced his arm after games. He would instead stand in the shower and soak his arm under hot water for up to thirty minutes. The water was hot enough to turn his arm bright red, but within a couple of days he would be throwing on the sidelines in preparation for his next start. NBC color analyst Tony Kubek, who had hit against Lolich in the sixties, noted the lefty’s “live arm” and said his fastball often had more movement as the game wore on. It’s not unusual for pitchers to throw harder as the game progresses. Nolan Ryan, a Lolich contemporary, often had his fastball timed at 92–94 m.p.h. in the early innings and 96–98 m.p.h. in the latter.

  By the start of spring training in ’72, the man who had entered the minors as “skin and bones” had matured physically and as a professional. Lolich’s expanding repertoire on the mound was matched by his expanding waistline. He filled out a Tigers uniform that was classic in its simplicity—white with black trim and an old English “D.”

  Lolich was part of a long line of hefty lefties, portly southpaws like contemporary Wilbur Wood and later incarnations like Sid Fernandez, Terry Forster, (whom David Letterman famously called a “fat tub of goo”), David “Jumbo” Wells, and C. C. Sabathia.

  Gowdy said on a Game of the Week telecast in July 1972 that Mickey “might not be as good a pitcher if he was trim and lean.” Kubek said Lolich told him he felt stronger when he had “a little weight” around his middle. Lolich said when he was throwing well, no one mentioned his belly. It was only when he lost a few games that some would say he was out of shape.

  Regardless of what the critics thought of his shape, Lolich and the Tigers were planning on shaping their destiny in ’72. They were determined to be invisible men no more.

  2

  As Reggie Jackson and the shaggy young A’s reveled in their renegade ways, Johnny Bench and the Cincinnati Reds arrived at their spring camp as clean-cut and close shaven as Kiwanis Club members.

  Unlike Oakland owner Charlie Finley, Reds general manager Bob Howsam strictly enforced the three S’s among his players—clean shaves, high socks, and shiny black cleats. Howsam even trimmed the mustache from the Reds’ traditional team logo. For decades the franchise logo had honored baseball’s first professional team—the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings. It featured an old-time player sporting a black handleb
ar mustache. Howsam, however, felt that the image, no matter how time honored, was no longer representative of his Reds. In 1968 the player in the Reds’ logo was shorn, and a clean-shaven image was presented to the public.

  If the A’s green-and-gold uniforms and white shoes struck some as garish—“Wednesday Night Bowling Club uniforms,” according to Sports Illustrated—Cincinnati’s white-and-red accoutrements were so conventional that they might have been worn by 1930s Reds’ southpaw Johnny Vander Meer. The Reds’ hierarchy insisted upon the concept of “team” regarding the appearance and conduct of every one of its players.

  When Howsam’s lieutenant and chief enforcer, Dick Wagner, noticed during a televised game in Atlanta that Rose had scrawled his uniform number 14 on the back of his batting helmet in black ink to distinguish it from others in the Reds’ helmet rack, he dialed long-distance to Atlanta and got word to Rose to remove the numerals so that his helmet conformed to those worn by his teammates.

  Cincinnati skipper George “Sparky” Anderson was smart enough to know that hair length didn’t make a man play better or worse. But he did believe that when men operated as a team, there had to be behavior guidelines. Anderson felt that if the Reds’ organization didn’t have discipline on dress and manners and cleanliness, it didn’t have anything.

  Still it wasn’t their all-American boy appearance that made the Reds contenders in the National League. It was a ferocious offense—fronted by Hall of Fame caliber stars in Bench, Rose, and Tony Perez. Together they formed the heart and soul of the Big Red Machine, a moniker said to be the creation of one of three people—Rose, Cincinnati Enquirer sportswriter Bob Hertzel, or Los Angeles Herald-Examiner baseball writer Bob Hunter.

  Team historians John Erardi and Greg Rhodes trace the nickname to a July 4, 1969, article written by Hertzel. Hunter says he gave the Reds the name after hearing that Cincinnati had outslugged Philadelphia 19–17. Hunter thought of the Reds’ uniform colors, and in previewing a series with the Dodgers, made mention of the invasion of the “Big Red Machine.” Rose claims he hung the tag on the Reds at a time when Pete was driving a red 1934 Ford. That car was his little red machine, Rose said, and the team he played on was the Big Red Machine.