The Machine (29 page)

Then it happened, destiny, the play that changed the World Series, the play that would follow Ed Armbrister for the rest of his life.

Armbrister bunted the ball, and it bounced high off the Cincinnati turf. Armbrister took a step toward first, then stopped. He and Fisk collided for an instant. Fisk shoved Armbrister aside, broke free, and threw to second base to get Geronimo. Only his throw sailed high and into center field. Geronimo got up and raced to third, slid in safely. Armbrister ran to second base.

Madness.

“We’re going to have an argument,” Tony Kubek shouted in the booth. “They may reverse this decision…. They are saying the batter interfered with Carlton Fisk in fair territory!”

That is indeed what they were saying—they being the Boston Red Sox. In many ways, the situation was clear. If the umpire ruled interference, then Armbrister would be called out and Geronimo would be sent back to first base. If he did not, then the Reds had runners on second and third with nobody out.

The rules in baseball have always been vague, open to interpretation, much like the U.S. Constitution. The official rule about interference stated: “Offensive interference is an act which interferes
with, obstructs, impedes, hinders or confuses any fielder attempting to make a play.” In another place in the rulebook, it stated: “It is interference by a batter or runner when he fails to avoid a fielder who is attempting to field a batted ball.”

What did that mean? There seemed little doubt that Armbrister did not fail to avoid Fisk. And it seemed equally obvious that he might have interfered with Fisk, might have impeded him, definitely confused him. But home plate umpire Larry Barnett ruled that Armbrister had not intentionally caused the collision. Armbrister had his own right to run to first base. “It was simply a collision,” Barnett said. This, of course, did not make the Red Sox happy. But what made this moment unique in World Series history was this: the ruling did not make the people in the television booth happy either.

“[Armbrister] has to give room, regardless, so the catcher can make the play,” Kubek shouted. And for the next five minutes or so, Kubek railed on the call. Marty Brennaman, the Reds announcer who was working in the TV booth as well, also thought that Armbrister interfered. Curt Gowdy would only say, “There’s going to be controversy for years to come.” And he was right.

Red Sox manager Darrell Johnson brought in Roger Moret, a tall, skinny left-hander from Puerto Rico. He walked Pete Rose intentionally. Griffey (back in the number-two spot in the lineup) got ready to face him, but Sparky called him back and sent up a pinch hitter, Merv Rettenmund, who promptly struck out. Then Joe Morgan hit a long fly ball to center, and the Reds won the game.

The Red Sox players were insane with fury.

“Gutless,” Dick Drago shouted. “The umpires are gutless…. It’s terrible to have people who don’t give a damn ruining something sixty million people are watching.”

“What are we playing, football?” Bernie Carbo asked. “They don’t give a damn about the game. They proved that tonight.”

“They were lousy,” Boston shortstop Rick Burleson screeched.

“The best teams in baseball are in this series, but the best umpires
aren’t,” Yaz said. “They take turns…why don’t teams take turns? Next year, how about San Diego and the Angels play, no matter where they finish?”

“It was like smashing into a linebacker,” Fisk said, perhaps an exaggeration since Armbrister was five-foot-eleven, 150 pounds. But sometimes exaggeration makes the point. “It’s a damn shame losing a ball game like that…. We lose the damn ball game because the guy is making a joke of umpiring behind the plate.”

Even Boston’s normally quiet and withdrawn third baseman, Rico Petrocelli, could not hold back: “It was interference, pure and simple. Millions of people saw it. But one man says it isn’t. And that’s it.”

Looking back, the Red Sox complaining seems a bit excessive. If Larry Barnett had called interference, he simply would have called the batter out and told Geronimo to go back to first base. The Reds would have had a man on first base, one out, with Pete Rose, Ken Griffey, and Joe Morgan coming up. They might not have scored. But they might have scored. Even if they did not score, the game would have been tied going into the next inning. But the Red Sox players were so lost in rage that by the end of the night they seemed to believe they had been cheated out of their destiny, cheated out of a victory they had earned. The television broadcast stoked that rage. The Boston newspapers stoked that rage more. And beginning the next day, home plate umpire Larry Barnett began getting death threats.

Back in the Cincinnati dugout, the most respected columnist in America—Red Smith of the
New York Times
—asked Sparky how he saw the play. Sparky paused, and then, with the comic’s timing, he said: “To be honest with you, I don’t see that well.”

Ken Griffey sat in the Reds clubhouse, and he tried to show that smile, tried to let everyone around him know how happy he was that the Reds won. But he was angry. He was confused. He was trying to make sense of the last three days, and he wasn’t getting anywhere.

On Sunday, he hit the double that scored Davey, the winning run. In the
Cincinnati Enquirer
on Monday morning, the headline read: “Bench Double Brings Winner.” Bench’s double? His double had led off the inning. It didn’t bring in any runs. And even if you grant that Bench had come around to score, he only scored the tying run. The headline was just wrong. Numerous people called the newspaper and angrily charged that it was driven by racism. They were trying to make a white man, Johnny Bench, the hero of a game that a black man, Ken Griffey, clearly won. Ken did not charge racism. He did not want to say anything about it. He kept to himself.

And then, on this night, with the score tied, with the bases loaded, with a fastball pitcher on the mound—damn, Griffey loved fastballs—Sparky had pulled him for a pinch hitter. Why did he do that? Ken hit .305 for the season. He hit lefties well. Sparky had not pinch-hit for him since July. It made no damn sense at all.

Ken came up with a theory: Sparky did not want him to be the hero. Sparky loved his big hitters—he loved Joe, he loved Pete, he loved Johnny—and maybe that was it. Maybe he called for a pinch hitter, not because he was worried that Ken would fail, but because he was worried that Ken would succeed. Maybe Sparky did not want him to get the Most Valuable Player Award for the World Series. The more Ken thought about it, the more sense it made to him. It all went back to what Sparky had said all the way back in spring training: “Those four are royalty,” he said of Johnny, Joe, Pete, and Doggie. “The rest of you are turds.”

Ken continued to smile, but he seethed. He wanted to tell someone his theory. He waited for a reporter to come by and ask him how he felt about Sparky sending up a pinch hitter for him in the tenth inning with the bases loaded and glory there to be had. He wasn’t going to hide his feelings this time. No, he was going to put it out there for everyone to hear.

No reporter came around.

October 15, 1975

CINCINNATI
REDS VS. RED SOX

World Series Game 4
Reds lead the Series 2–1

The Armbrister War raged into its second day. The
Boston Globe
found a law scholar and asked him to analyze the interference rule—he ruled that Armbrister did in fact interfere. An anonymous umpire, though, fought back for his brothers in blue: “[Fisk] just made a lousy throw to second base. And he’s trying to take it out on Barnett, but it shouldn’t happen that way.”

Fisk said he tossed and turned until about five in the morning.

“Did you finally get to sleep?” he was asked.

“No,” Fisk said. “I finally woke up my wife.”

Barnett, it was breathlessly reported, slept very well. He had no regrets about his call that night. He never would regret the call.

“I did not hear a word from Mr. Fisk saying he had been run into by Armbrister when it happened,” Barnett said. “And I did not hear Armbrister say a word to me. But all of a sudden when the throw went into center field, then I hear a lot of talk about interference.”

He shrugged.

“If I had to do it again, I would do it all over again,” he said. “I know I am right.”

Ken Griffey did not sleep well. He could not shake off the sting from the night before, and in truth he never would. But crazy things kept happening in that 1975 World Series, and on that Wednesday, Ken Griffey found himself in almost precisely the position he had been denied the night before. This time, Boston led by a run, 5–4, but everything else was the same. Cesar Geronimo led off the inning with
a single. Ed Armbrister was sent into the game to sacrifice-bunt, and this time he managed to do so without setting off a riot. Geronimo moved to second base. Then Pete Rose walked. So Ken came up to face Luis Tiant with the game on the line.

El Tiante had not been as sharp this game as he was in the first—he gave up two runs in the first inning, one of those on a double to Griffey, and the Reds had him staggered. But they could not put him away. And for the rest of the night, Tiant bewitched, bothered, bewildered them. “I don’t know what the guy gets by with,” Pete said, and he shook his head. Mystical.

But even Tiant’s mysticism was fading in the ninth inning. He had thrown more than 150 pitches in the game. There was no snap left on his fastballs, no bend on his curve, he had nothing left but guts. Darrell Johnson left him out there to finish the job. Ken dug in—he could see the ball perfectly. He felt certain that he would be the hero. He and Tiant danced—a strike, a couple of pitches low and outside, a foul ball—and then there was a full count. Tiant threw a fat fastball. And Griffey crushed it to center field. “That,” he would later say, “was the hardest I had ever hit a baseball.”

Fred Lynn raced back on the ball. Nobody since Willie Mays went back on a baseball quite like Fred Lynn. He was fearless and aggressive—the University of Southern California had recruited him as a football player. He saw the ball jump off the bat, and his first reaction was, “I’m going to catch that.” That was always his first reaction. Geronimo headed toward third—he intended to score the tying run. But Lynn stretched out his right hand and caught the ball. And then—this was fitting for baseball’s new role model—Lynn reached out his left arm to make sure the ball stayed in the glove. It was like coaches always said: catch the ball with two hands.

“Was I nervous?” Lynn would tell reporters afterward. “When I got to the ball, my arm had trouble going up.”

Joe Morgan came up next, and Tiant threw a fat fastball to him too, but just as he threw it, Geronimo took off for third base. He was
going to steal third base. Everyone on the Reds knew that Morgan hated when one of his teammates tried to steal a base while he was batting. He popped up to Yaz at first, and the Red Sox won the game. There was an instant just after Morgan popped up the ball—and it would forever be caught on video—when Joe turned his head to glare with anger at his teammate Cesar Geronimo.

“Luis,” a reporter said, “you had to throw 163 pitches out there tonight.”

“I don’t care if I throw 3,000,” Luis said as he puffed away on a fat cigar. “I throw enough to get those guys, right?”

In the Reds clubhouse, Sparky Anderson was happily chatting away with reporters. This was the beauty of Sparky: you never knew how he would react. He would be angry or thoughtful or sad after victories. And sometimes he was happy after losses. “I don’t take anything hard,” he said. “It doesn’t bother me in any shape or form. To me, baseball is fun. If you look at it as a life-or-death thing, then you’re going to have a long struggle.”

Cincinnati Enquirer
columnist Tom Callahan just stared at Sparky and shook his head. Sparky was not taking losses hard? Right. Tell that to his ulcer. It was funny—after all this time, after writing so many columns about the Reds, Callahan still thought of Sparky as a mystery. Sparky was sensitive and also oblivious, he was loyal and also fickle, he was spiritual and obscene, he was, as the headline on Callahan’s column said, voluble and vulnerable.

Callahan never lost his interest in Sparky Anderson. Years later, after he had left Cincinnati and was working for
Time
magazine, Callahan found himself sitting in Sparky’s office, and they were talking about Sparky’s father. That was a hard subject for Sparky. Major league baseball, at heart, is a game of fathers and sons. And while Sparky admired his father, he never felt close to his father.

“He was saying that his father had never been a gentle man,”
Callahan would remember. “He said, ‘My father never played catch with me. That was my grandfather who played catch. My father was a hard man, and we were never close. He was a good man. But he was not gentle.’

“So a few minutes later, the phone rings. And Sparky answers it…it’s his mother. And she’s calling to tell Sparky that his father has died. And now he’s talking to his mother, and he’s saying, ‘Mama, I’m so sorry. He was such a gentle man. Papa was a gentle man.’”

Callahan said it took him a long time to figure out what it meant. But in time he decided that the moment was as close as he would get to understanding Sparky Anderson. He had told Callahan the truth about his father. “But,” Callahan would say, “he told his mother the greater truth.”

October 16, 1975

CINCINNATI
REDS VS. RED SOX

World Series Game 5
Series tied 2–2

Tony Perez stayed at home. He did not want to see anybody. And he did not want to be seen. And anyway, he did not have much choice: his wife, Pituka, had locked him in the bedroom and told him to watch television and sleep. Doggie did not have one hit, not a single hit, in the whole World Series. He was oh-for-fourteen. He was not quite sure what to do. The day before, he had gone out to break the spell, and everyone around town slapped him on the back and shouted, “You’ll get them tonight for sure, Tony!” Only he did not get them. He went hitless again. So now he stayed home.