Waiting for Teddy Williams (30 page)

For the third game, in Shea Stadium, the Mets had saved their best pitcher, who had pitched the first, fourth, and part of the seventh game in their National League championship series against Atlanta. All-Star Mario “Pancho” Vila was the most unorthodox pitcher in major-league baseball. During the regular season he had compiled a record of 32–4.

Villa hailed from Mexico City and had grown up watching tapes of Luis Tiant and Fernando Valenzuela. Like Tiant, he spun around and looked at the center-field wall, tipping his chin skyward, leaning back nearly parallel to the ground, throwing his glove straight up and his left elbow out toward the batter and releasing his humming fastballs and sinking off-speed deliveries (it was said he had eight distinct breaking pitches) from no one knew exactly where. His release point was one of the great mysteries of baseball.

Pancho Villa, E.A. discovered, was difficult to imitate. He seemed to be part baseball pitcher and part prima ballerina, but that wasn't the tough part. The tough part was that he was also part illusionist. At some point during the Mexican hurler's serpentine gyrations, the hitter lost track not just of the baseball but of Villa's throwing hand, so that the ball seemed to come at them sometimes from the scoreboard, sometimes out of Villa's left spike, but more often than not out of thin air about halfway to the plate. While E.A. rendered a fair approximation of Villa's motion at BP during the Sox off-day practice at Shea Stadium, and again the next morning before the game, what he couldn't duplicate was Villa's release point.

VEAH STYMEES
sox Moon's headline read the morning after the Mets took game three 6–0 behind Villa's three-hitter and Miller Jacks's two home runs and four RBIs. But the Alien won again the next night in New York, 7–4, and Boston now had three opportunities to win the one remaining game they needed to become World Champions.

The following night at Shea the Sox started where they'd left off the night before, taking a 4–1 lead into the bottom of the fifth inning behind a young pitcher named Sullivan, who had played at Boston College and started the year at Bristol. That was as far as they got, though. Jacks homered again in the fifth with two men on, then doubled in a run in the eighth, giving the Mets a 5–4 win. Sullivan, for his part, pulled a groin muscle in the last of the eighth and was out for the rest of the Series.

Back at Fenway in game six, Spence used two journeymen minor-league pitchers who had helped the team in August and September but were no match for the Mets' powerful lineup. Jacks, who was hitting .640 in the Series, was, if anything, inspired by the cascading boos from the Fenway Faithful each time he came to the plate. He blasted three home runs and knocked in seven runs, and the Mets won 18–2 behind Koyoto, with Villa scheduled to pitch the seventh game against the Alien, whose arm had been on ice for three days.

Having come so close that he could nearly taste the champagne (not that he liked it), the Legendary Spence appeared to have lost his last shot to win a championship and keep the Sox in Boston.

I
N KINGDOM COMMON
the morning of the seventh game of the World Series dawned bright and sunny, with the wind backing around out of the southeast. The wind snapped and popped the red-and-white bunting on the hotel railing and the second-story porches of the brick shopping block and the streamers on the Colonel's sword and hat and the huge, rippling banner on the bat factory saying, go sox. Teddy and Gypsy, leaving for Fenway in the Late Great Patsy Cline as the sun rose, were pushed all over the southbound lane of I-91 by the hard-gusting fall wind.

Across the state line, in the mountains of New Hampshire, the colors had peaked a week and a half before, then held there, the fall foliage more brilliant than anyone could remember, and the little towns along the interstate were colorful with bunting and with huge placards hanging outside businesses that said
BOSTON RED SOX, NEXT WORLD CHAMPS
. Closer to Boston, biplanes and crop-dusters trailed huge letters across the cloudless blue sky proclaiming
BOSTON RED SOX WORLD CHAMPIONS
. And every other car and pickup sported bumper stickers depicting the Curse of the Bambino saying
BOSTON, NUMBER ONE
. Life-size stuffed macaws in Sox uniforms, right down to bright red socks, were the most popular souvenir item throughout New England.

Outside Fenway the line of spectators waiting to get into the stadium stretched all the way down Boylston past Kenmore Square. People without tickets had packed into Lansdowne Street in hopes of acquiring a home-run ball.

Around noon E.A. started throwing BP. The wind in Fenway had dropped somewhat, and already several thousand fans were on hand to watch him pitch like Pancho Villa. Miller Jacks watched E.A.'s contortions from the sideline and sneered. So did the big lummox, sitting behind the Sox dugout with the wax effigy of his father, Maynard Senior, beside him.

E.A. had never heard anything like the tremendous rumbling of the crowd thronging into the stadium for game seven. It sounded like the ocean during a huge storm. Or like a hurricane approaching.

“Welcome to Fenway Park, folks, on a warm and very windy fall afternoon. A good afternoon for baseball, Red Sox fans,” said the Voice of the Sox. “And what a day it is as the Boston Red Sox take the field against one of the most feared teams in recent baseball history, the National League Champion New York Mets, in the seventh game of the World Series . . .”

The waves of applause seemed to extend out into Boston and beyond, where Red Sox fans by the hundreds and thousands were watching or listening to this last hurrah. From the deep conifer forests of northern Maine to the seashore villages of Cape Cod to the resort towns of the White Mountains, New England looked half abandoned. Everyone who wasn't at the game was in front of a television screen or next to a radio.

The Gloucester fishing fleet was watching the game on small portable TVs. Bars were packed. Town halls and fire stations were showing the game on large-screen sets, and through the worn old speakers of the Philco, Gran could see the big tubes pulsing green and gold and red and silver. The colors reminded her of Christmas, a detestable time of year, in her estimation, when everyone except her pretended to be cheerful and generous.

“. . . here in Fenway, as the Alien Man prepares to take the mound against Mario Villa, the mood can only be described as electric . . .”

Bucky Dent leaped up onto the warm, curved wooden top of Gran's old console and got ready for a long catnap, while back in Boston the PA announcer boomed out, “And managing the Red Sox, the one, the only, the Legendary—Spence.”

Out of the dugout, cap already off for the national anthem, came the winningest active manager in baseball, and cheers shook the hallowed old ball park to its foundation.

 

In and out, up and down the ladder, from more different angles than the Faithful had seen since the days of Luis Tiant, the Alien mixed his 75-mph fastball, his incomparable slider, his curve, and his change, pitching less with his throbbing arm than with his heart and simply outfoxing the Mets over the first three innings. By the time he set down the ninth hitter, the Fenway crowd was on its feet for every pitch, screaming as if that would be the pitch to bring them their championship.

Pancho Villa was as sharp as ever. E.A. imagined he could hear Villa's fastball humming all the way from the bullpen, where Spence had sent him to watch the game. Traveling from the pitcher's hand to the plate in just over a second, the baseball was a pale blur. Despite the BP session with Ethan that morning, the Sox hitters were unable to touch him. Going through their order for the first time, Villa struck out eight and got the ninth on a weak grounder to short. Even Sally was unable to muster anything more than a long foul ball against him.

The Mets left two men on base in the top of the fourth but failed to score. In the bottom of the inning, the Sox leadoff hitter walked. On a 2–1 count to the number-two hitter, a good contact man, Spence, coaching third, played one of his hunches by starting the runner. The two hitter got a fastball on the outside of the plate and drove it into the gap in right center, not far from where E.A. was standing in the bullpen. The crowd was up and thundering. New York's right-fielder chased down the rolling ball, his back still to the plate, as the lead runner rounded second. Spence never hesitated. Windmilling his arms, shouting, “Go go go,” he waved the man around third, running a few steps beside him in foul territory. The throw came in to the Mets' second baseman in shallow center, who relayed it to the catcher, and the runner slid tinder the tag to score. Villa came back and struck out the next three Sox hitters, but the way the Alien was pitching today, E.A. thought one run might well be enough.

In the top of the fifth, with two outs, Miller Jacks doubled into left center but was stranded when the Alien struck out the next hitter on a sky-high eephus pitch that brought down the house.

Spence went out to the third-base coaching box to yet another thunderous ovation. No more than half of the fans at Fenway could have known what a brilliant call he'd made on the hit-and-run that had gotten them their lead. But they all knew their team was ahead by a run, with the game half over.

They knew, too, when Villa struck out the side again, that a single run might have to suffice.

In the dining room of the Common Hotel, even the mounted cougar, moose, deer, and trout seemed to be watching the TV screen. At the end of each half inning the men leaned forward in their chairs and peered out the window to watch Moon, hunkered down on the bat factory roof like a gargoyle, Sox cap pulled low over his ears, stand up and climb his homemade ladder to post another big white wooden o in the proper column. Only then did the score become official in the Capital of the Red Sox Nation.

With two outs and two runners in scoring position in the bottom of the sixth, the score still Boston i, New York o, the plate umpire rang up Sally on a slider out and down. The ump had appeared to pause for a split second before raising his arm. Maybe it was this hesitation. Or maybe Spence was looking for an opportunity to ratchet up his team and the Fenway Faithful for the last three innings. But as the umpire's right hand rose heavenward and Sally headed back toward the dugout and the crowd howled its displeasure, Spence started down the base line from the coach's box, walking as slowly toward the plate as a gunfighter, holding on to his cap to keep the wind from blowing it off his head. The crowd's anguish changed to wild applause. Every man, woman, and child in Fenway Park, plus millions of TV viewers throughout New England, believed they knew what was coming next.

Sally ran back up the line to intercept his manager.

“Exactly where was that pitch?” Spence demanded.

Sally shrugged. “Close. Maybe a strike. My pitcher throws it, I want it for her. I don't pull the trigger. My bad, chief.”

“Maybe a strike,” Spence said. “And maybe not a strike.” He stared hard at the umpire, who stared back. But this time, to everyone's astonishment, Spence did not press the issue.

In the top of the seventh, the Alien walked the Mets' leadoff hitter on four pitches. He struck out the next man, the crowd now chanting, “Eight, eight, eight”—eight outs to go. But the next man in the Mets' lineup hit a double off the right-field wall, sending the runner on first to third, and as much as he hated to go by the book, Spence did, signaling for the Alien to issue an intentional walk to set up a force at every base. The following batter hit the first pitch directly over second base on one sharp hop. The Sox's rookie shortstop dived for the ball, which miraculously disappeared in his outstretched glove, the glove coming down hard on top of the base, the shortstop bouncing to his feet like a trampoline artist and gunning out the batter by four steps, turning what had looked like a certain two-run single into an inning-ending double play.

Boston failed to score in the bottom of the seventh, and though the lummox would have loved to sneak into the Sox dugout and knuckle-punch the Alien Man in the arm, as he had E.A. during the division playoff with the Yankees, he couldn't figure out how to get away with it. He was still pretty sure that the Mets would get to the Alien anyway and that the Sox, true to form, would find yet another ingenious way to lose the game and the Series. History, after all, was on his side.

“SIX, SIX, SIX,” chanted the crowd as the graying pitcher walked out to the mound and got ready to put the lid on the New York Mets for the next to last time that afternoon. The wind was blowing harder now, gusting first from one direction, then another. It added an eerie melody to the crowd noise, as if the old ball park were crying out to the team to do at last what they had failed to do for so many years, failed to do for a lifetime, actually, for fourscore years and more. At home in Vermont, E.A. thought, the deer and moose on Allen Mountain would be disoriented by the wind, which confused scents, made it difficult to hear predators and prey alike. He felt something of the same disorientation. What had the Colonel once told him? That it was no fun to fish or play baseball in the wind. It made what should be fan a chore.

In the top of the eighth, the Alien got the first two Mets on long flies. Both started out to straightaway right, but the wind pushed them toward deep center, where they were catchable, though they jittered about like Wiffle balls, and an inexperienced fielder might not have corralled either one. Now there were only four—“FOUR” roared the crowd—outs to go.

Next up was Miller Jacks, who, on a 1–2 count, smashed a line drive straight back at the mound. The crack of the ball shattering the elbow of the Alien's pitching arm was audible in the broadcasting booth and so was Spence's roar as he charged out of the Sox dugout toward Jacks, now jogging down the line toward first and jabbing a taunting finger at the Alien, sitting on the mound and rocking and holding his elbow, his face stricken with anguish and disappointment.