Part 7 (1/2)

The final American League game remained, the next afternoon, and it was scarcely less than what had come before. The Tigers scored in the first on a single, a pa.s.sed ball, and an infield out. The A's tied it in the second on dash and daring-a walk, a stolen base, a sacrifice, a hit batsman, a double steal. The run came at a high price, for Reggie Jackson, the Oakland slugger and leader, severely tore the hamstring muscle of his left leg in a collision at the plate and was carried from the field, finished for the year. The lead run (the winning run, it turned out) came in the fourth on an error, a sacrifice, and a single by Gene Tenace. The pitchers took it from there-Fryman for the Tigers, Blue Moon Odom and then Vida Blue for the A's. In each of the last three innings, the Tigers put the tying run on first base and could not advance him. Their difficulties-the difficulty of all baseball when it is well played-were so evident that announcer Jim Simpson murmured at one point, ”This is a game that requires no description.” The Detroit elders, who had come so far on so little, died at last because of their lack of speed. (They had stolen only seventeen bases all year.) They were reduced in the end to playing the game one base at a time, which is the least rewarding way to travel the 360 feet around to home. Their demise (with the Oakland players leaping and hugging all by themselves) was the hardest to watch of this hard baseball year.

The survivors, gathering in Cincinnati for the Series opener, came together in an atmosphere of almost palpable letdown. All the players, it seemed, were less aroused about the games to come than relieved about the ones just past, and as one watched the Reds cheerfully taking their cuts during pregame batting practice it was hard to discount their evident conviction that their most dangerous opponents of the year had already been buried. They looked over at the hairy young A's, in their outlandish green-and-gold-and-white costumes, with a patronizing curiosity that was perhaps shared by the great majority of baseball fans everywhere. Oakland, to be sure, was the best the AL had, but the National, by every comparable measurement, was by far the stronger of the two leagues. The Oakland pitching was good-perhaps even first-cla.s.s-but Reggie Jackson, the team's only certified slugger, was over there uncomfortably balancing on crutches, and, anyway, who had ever heard of a major-league team wearing mustaches? (Charlie Finley's ugly little scheme of paying each of his players to grow a mustache as part of a promotion stunt last June had a cheerful, unexpected result. The players-most of them, at least-liked their new and wildly variegated whiskers and long locks, and remained unshorn through the summer, and in time this eighteen-nineties look became a proud attribute of the squad. During the Series, the young and exuberant and showy A's sometimes suggested a troupe of actors in a road company of Cyrano de Bergerac, laughing backstage in their doublets or swaggering a little on the streets after the show. The Reds, by front-office decree, were as clean and barefaced as Kiwanians.) In spite of the imbalance of styles, and the imbalance of talent in the lineups which seemed so strongly to favor the Reds, both teams were equally avid for the reputation and honors that would accrue to the new champion. Over the past two decades, the fall cla.s.sic has usually offered a match between a famous champion and a new challenger-the Orioles against the Pirates, Reds, and Mets; the Cardinals against the Tigers and Red Sox; the Yankees against almost everybody. Now, relieved of this allegory, we looked at the two clubs with total surmise, wondering not only which would win but whether one of them might not also represent the game's next dynasty.

The sense of mild anticlimax persisted in Cincinnati right through the first game, which the b.u.t.tercups (or Bushwhackers, or Pale Feet) won by 32. Gene Tenace, the Oakland catcher and, on his record, a rather minor member of the A's entourage, struck a two-run homer off Gary Nolan his first time at bat. The Cincinnati rooters near my seat behind third base smiled at this accident in a rather indulgent manner: these things happen sometimes in baseball, and their catcher-slugger, of course, was named Bench. Tenace came up next in the fifth and hit another one out, thus accounting for all the Oakland runs, and this time the hometowners sprang up and cried ”Aw, come onn!” in unison. Tenace was the first man in history to hit home runs on his first two World Series at-bats. Still, the fans went home in the end only a bit cast down, and the tone of the afternoon was somehow struck by two banners that had been towed over Riverfront Stadium by circling airplanes-”OAKLAND HAS WEIRD UNIFORMS” and ”WOMEN'S LIB WILL DESTROY THE FAMILY.” The Oakland pitchers, I noticed, had allowed only two walks and a single to those first three Red batters.

The next day (a brilliant, sun-drenched Sunday afternoon), Johnny Bench had more unwanted practice as a leadoff man, as Catfish Hunter and Rollie Fingers confined the Top Three to a lone single and one free trip to first via an error, and the Goldenrods won again, 21. Catfish Hunter, a somewhat unappreciated star (he won twenty-one games in each of the past two seasons, and is one of the few players never to have played a single game in the minor leagues), is a control pitcher of the very first rank, and must usually be scored on in the first couple of innings if he is to be scored on at all. He settled this particular game in the second inning when he struck out the side with two (and eventually three) Reds on base, and in the A's third, left fielder Joe Rudi hit the game-winning solo homer. The hometown crowd, their white-and-scarlet banners drooping, waited in polite but deepening silence for something to cheer about, and their one true yell of the day, in the bottom of the ninth, was suddenly severed when Rudi, in pursuit of a very long drive by Denis Menke, plastered himself belly-first against the left-field wall like a pinned b.u.t.terfly and somehow plucked down the ball. Later, in their clubhouse, the Reds variously attempted a statesmanlike situation report (”We're a bit flat” ... ”Their offense doesn't impress me” ... ”We're embarra.s.sed, you could say”), but their faces were a little stiff, a little shocked. Tony Perez used both hands to enact for Dave Concepcion a couple of Catfish Hunter's half-speed pitches dipping gently over the corners of the plate. ”Nada!” he cried bitterly. ”Nada!”

There was another moment on that same bright Sunday-a moment before the game, which only took on meaning a few days later. In a brief ceremony at the mound, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn presented an award to Jackie Robinson, honoring him for his work in combating drug addiction, and celebrating his arrival, twenty-five years before, as the first black man in the major leagues. Robinson responded, his thin, high voice barely reaching us over the loudspeakers. He was glad to see some of his old Brooklyn friends there-Pee Wee Reese, Joe Black, Red Barber. He introduced his family. He ended by saying that it would be nice to see a black manager standing in the third-base coach's box someday soon. There were handshakes and applause, the party walked away, the microphones were taken down. I had seen Jackie for a minute or two in the tunnel behind home plate-a frail, white-haired old man, with a black raincoat b.u.t.toned up to his chin. I remembered at that moment a baseball scene that I had witnessed more than twenty years earlier-a scene that came back to me the following week, when I read about Robinson's sudden death. It was something that had happened during an insignificant weekday game between the Giants and the Dodgers back in the nineteen-fifties. Robinson, by then an established star, was playing third base that afternoon, and during the game something happened that drove him suddenly and totally mad. I was sitting close to him, just behind third, but I had no idea what brought on the outburst. It might have been a remark from the stands or from one of the dugouts; it was nothing that happened on the field. Without warning, Robinson began shouting imprecations, obscenities, curses. His voice was piercing, his face distorted with pa.s.sion. The players on both teams looked at each other, uncomprehending. The Giants' third-base coach walked over to murmur a question, and Robinson directed his screams at him. The umpire at third did the same thing, and then turned away with a puzzled, embarra.s.sed shrug. In time, the outburst stopped and the game went on. It had been nothing, a moment's aberration, but it seemed to suggest what can happen to a man who has been used, who has been made into a symbol and a public sacrifice. The moment became an event-something to remember along with the innumerable triumphs and the joys and the sense of pride and redress that Jackie Robinson brought to us all back then. After that moment, I knew that we had asked him to do too much for us. None of it-probably not a day of it-was ever easy for him.

A couple of hours before the beginning of the third game (which became a rainout), Charles O. Finley, resplendent in a Kelly-green double-knit blazer, got aboard a crowded elevator inside the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. When it reached the field level, he stood aside to let the rest of us out, and then turned to the young woman running the elevator. ”Listen, dear,” he said urgently. ”I want you to stop at two on the way back up and pick up the boys with the coffee urns. You got that?” Charlie Finley is a man who must do everything by himself, even when fifty thousand paying customers are at the gates. He is a self-made millionaire, in the insurance business. He bought his ball club by himself and, almost entirely without advice, developed and traded for the players who brought him the champions.h.i.+p. (He is also a jock satrap, owning teams in two other sports-the California Golden Seals, of the National Hockey League, and the Memphis Tams, of the American Basketball a.s.sociation-which he operates and oversees in the same shouldering style.) He designed the A's' uniforms. He designed their style of play. (This year's policy of pinch-hitting for the second baseman as early as the second inning is a Finley invention, and reflects his conviction that baseball should open itself more to pinch-hitting and pinch-running specialists.) He used up nine baseball managers in ten years, and imposes strategy upon the inc.u.mbent, d.i.c.k Williams, like a Little League daddy. He is a man who must control every situation in which he finds himself, from arranging the seating at a dinner table to personally dispensing the last five hundred World Series tickets behind the Oakland dugout (an area he refers to as ”my box”). He brings his team mascot, an enormous mule named Charlie O, to all the A's' public functions, indoors or outdoors. In his relations with his players, he has a fondness for the sudden paternal gesture-an arm around the shoulder and the whispered message that the athlete's contract has just been upped by a few thousand for some deed well done. Last year, Finley tried to persuade Vida Blue to change his first name to True. Later, he publicly presented him with a new Cadillac, but this spring, when Blue held out for a very sizable increase in salary, Finley fought him with such unbridled vehemence that Blue fell into a state of embittered withdrawal that accounted in great part for his disappointing 610 record. Mr. Finley believes he enjoys excellent relations with most of his players, and would probably point to his new champions.h.i.+p as the best evidence of their happiness. Yet considerable evidence suggests that the A's were united and matured most of all by their shared individual resistance to the Finley style and the Finley presence. During the Series, Reggie Jackson talked to me about this. ”The man is insulting and meddlesome,” he said. ”This team found itself in the summer, but this is not the way to make a team.”

Finley has already had a notable influence on baseball (scheduling the weekday Series games at night, as was done this year, is an idea he finally sold to his fellow executives), and now, with a hold on the champions.h.i.+p, he will wield more power in the councils of the sport. His prime immediate projects for the game are the addition to the lineup of a designated hitter, who would bat for any other player (probably the pitcher) without requiring him to leave the game, and the use of a bright orange baseball in night games. I hate the first idea, and I would leave the second one up to the players to decide, but both deserve serious testing. Charlie Finley, one comes to realize, is impossible to ignore, like a mule in a ballroom.

The third game, played on a sodden turf and by Pacific Daylight Saving Time, was an austere, nearly eventless affair that finally went to the Reds by a minimal 10. The time zone was perhaps the most important element of the game. The action began at five-thirty in the afternoon, which is prime evening tube time in the East and is also the beginning of twilight in California infields in October. The pitchers-Blue Moon Odom for the A's and Jack Billingham for the Reds-were entranced with this crepuscular setting and struck out batters in helpless cl.u.s.ters. The only run of the evening (and only the second Cincinnati run in the past twenty-one innings) almost didn't get into the books, for Tony Perez, rounding third in the seventh inning, slipped on the wet turf and went sprawling-a sudden baseball bad dream-but then got up and tottered home.

The true bad dream for the Reds had been postponed only for a day. In game four, while struggling against the experienced and capable Oakland left-hander Ken Holtzman, they watched incredulously as Gene Tenace deposited another souvenir in the bleachers, in the fifth, to put them down by 10. In the top of the eighth, however, Dave Concepcion singled and was sacrificed to second. With two out, Vida Blue came on in relief to face Joe Morgan, and walked him. Bobby Tolan socked Blue's first pitch, a fastball, on a line for two bases and two runs, and Concepcion and Morgan slapped hands happily at the plate. The win would tie the Series, and everything was about to be all right after all. Later-a day or two later-Sparky Anderson remarked that he never truly expects a pinch-hitter to hit safely, so what happened next will probably remain vividly in his mind for months or years to come-a nightmare to be experienced a thousand times, always with the same far-fetched and loathsome outcome. It is the bottom of the ninth, one out. Gonzalo Marquez, an Oakland pinch-hitter, taps a single over second. With the count two and one on Gene Tenace, Anderson summons in a new pitcher, Clay Carroll, who has set an all-time major-league record for saves during the season. Tenace singles. Oakland has two men on, and Don Mincher, a large veteran left-handed swinger, now comes up to pinch-hit for the A's-not a true threat, except that Carroll gets his second pitch up a bit and Mincher eagerly whacks it into right field, tying the game and moving Tenace to third. Angel Mangual comes up to pinch-hit. Carroll's first pitch to him is perfect-a fastball in on the hands. Mangual swings, almost in self-defense, hitting the ball down on the handle and nudging a little bleeder between first and second, which Perez or Morgan cannot quite, either one of them, straining, staggering, get a glove on. The game is gone.

Q: your team is trailing, three games to one, in the World Series. It is the top of the first inning of game five, and you are the leadoff batter. What is the best thing to do?

A: Hit the first pitch into the stands for a home run.

The student who got an A on this quiz was Pete Rose, who had heretofore suffered an uncharacteristic eclipse in the Series. Rose is unmistakable on a ball field. He is ardent, entertaining, and unquenchable. He burns by day and by night. He sprints to first base on walks, dives on his belly on the base paths or chasing line drives in the outfield, and pulls in fly b.a.l.l.s in left field with a slicing, downward motion that says ”There!” At plate, he is the model leadoff man-a medium-sized switch-hitter who, choking the bat and hunching over the plate, can pull the ball with real power or punch it to the opposite field; he scrutinizes every pitch, not just up to the plate but right back into the catcher's glove, and then glares into the umpire's face for the call. He is a great hitter, and only the spring strike this year kept him from his annual quota of more than two hundred hits. (The fans in the left-field bleachers in Oakland, watching Rose in person for the first time, honored him on several occasions with salvos of eggs and vegetables. One of the eggs landed unbroken on the mushy turf, and Rose brought it in as a souvenir to the Cincinnati dugout, where it was eaten by coach Ted Kluszewski.) Tom Seaver says that Pete Rose entirely alters the game when he bats, making it into a deadly personal duel with the man on the mound.

Rose's first-pitch homer off Catfish Hunter announced that the alteration of this fifth game had begun, but it was some time before he got it completely under control. It was a crowded, disheveled sort of game, in which each team successfully employed its various specialties. There was another homer by Gene Tenace, good for three runs, in the second inning, and another pinch hit by Marquez-his twelfth in twenty-two such appearances this year. The partisans in Charlie Finley's private preserve, all green-and-yellow in the caps and banners he had provided them, sustained a continuous jubilee, like bullfrogs in a June shower. The A's led by 31 and 42, but Morgan was walked twice, and each time he whistled around the bases in dazzling style to score on a single by Tolan. It was all tied up in the ninth, then, when Geronimo singled, and was neatly sacrificed to second. An infield error now brought up Rose, this time batting left-handed against Rollie Fingers, the Oakland mound inc.u.mbent. Fingers (whose mustache aspires toward the Salvador Dali rococo ideal) had won the previous game in relief, but now he sighed disconsolately, fiddled uncharacteristically, and at last offered up the pitch, which Rose redirected smartly into right field to deliver the winning run. Score for the Top Three for the day: three runs, five hits, two walks, three stolen bases, four runs batted in. Oakland, undiscouraged as always, put on its leadoff man in the home half, and Dave Duncan (a catcher with an Oberammergau coiffure and beard) singled the pinch-runner, Odom, along to third. With one out, Campaneris fouled out to Morgan in very short right field, and after the catch Odom impulsively launched himself down the inviting ninety-foot homestretch. He negotiated eighty-nine feet and six inches of the distance before encountering Johnny Bench and the ball, and then most unhappily got up and prepared to join the rest of us on the somewhat longer journey back to Cincinnati.

The penultimate meeting was played the next afternoon, a Sat.u.r.day-also prime viewing time, which meant that the teams were not permitted the customary travel holiday. It was probably just as well, however, for in Riverfront Stadium a bone-chilling easterly suggested that this pastime had already overstayed its season. Vida Blue, given his first start of the Series because of the compressed pitching schedule, did not seem to have his hummer and kept falling behind the Red batters. Bench homered in the fourth, and the Reds sent four men to the plate in the fifth, and five men to the plate in the sixth, and (joyfully falling upon Oakland's second-line pitching) ten men to the plate in the seventh, to wrap up an 81 landslide. It was a sad end to Vida's sad year, but there was some satisfaction in watching the Reds' sluggers doing their thing at last. The Cincinnati fans were utterly transported, and with reason: this was the first World Series game to be won by the Reds at home since 1940.

The full seven, then, with a resolution that was still impossible to forecast or guess at. Strangely, no single player had emerged-in the manner of a Clemente, a Brooks Robinson, a Brock-to put his stamp and style on this Series. The closeness of the games and the continuous action on the field almost concealed the fact that the level of play had been less than distinguished. Most of the Cincinnati starting pitchers had been inadequate, both teams had suffered inordinate difficulties in executing the double play, the Oakland pitchers and catcher Gene Tenace had among them surrendered eleven stolen bases, and the teams together were hitting a desultory .203. Still, the original elements of the drama remained, now deepened to a wonderful expectancy-the Oakland pitching and woolly elan against the Reds' hitting, speed, and pride. Something would give way here today.

d.i.c.k Williams, in an attempt to bolster his. .h.i.tting and defense simultaneously, moved Tenace to first base, put Duncan behind the plate, and started Angel Mangual in center. (Tenace looked understandably edgy about his new responsibilities. ”Tomorrow,” he said during batting practice, ”I'll probably be playing goalie.”) Mangual made a difference in the very first half-inning, when he struck a long drive off Jack Billingham to straightaway center field. Bobby Tolan raced in, absolutely misjudging the play, and then made a leap for the sailing ball, which glanced off his glove and rolled to the fence, with Mangual winding up on third. (Extraordinarily, most of this game seemed to be played at the foot of that center-field fence, 404 feet away.) Gene Tenace, now batting cleanup, pulled a sharp grounder to left that struck the edge of the AstroTurf carpet at the back of the third-base dirt patch and suddenly bounded over Menke's head; and the Yellowlegs, not exactly on merit, had the first run.

Blue Moon Odom, the Oakland starter, has a splendid motion to first base (a gift he has evidently never tried to pa.s.s along to his co-workers), and he had stated the night before that no Cincinnati runners would steal on him. Now, in the fourth, Pete Rose led off with an enormous smash to center that Mangual one-handed just at the fence. A little startled, Odom walked the swift Morgan, and the crowd began a breathless nonstop shouting: ”Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go!” Odom would have none of it. Fixing Morgan with a sidewise, over-the-shoulder stare (friends who saw the game on television told me later that the closeups of Odom's face were remarkable), pausing, waiting almost interminably, he whirled and threw to his first baseman five times in succession, twice nearly erasing Morgan. He delivered a ball to Tolan, then made two more pick-off throws, then threw another pitch-a ball-as Morgan flew away to second, where he was cut down, narrowly but plainly, by Duncan's peg. The game, I was suddenly certain, had been won right there.

The Reds were far from done. Tony Perez led off the fifth with a double to the left-field corner, and two successive walks then loaded the bases with only one out. Hal McRae, pinch-hitting, struck the first delivery to him all the way (need it be added?) to the center-field wall, where Mangual made the catch. The score: 11. Rose, who had singled in the first, unloaded another rocket to precisely the same spot, and again to no avail. He had now struck two successive clouts, good for a total of more than eight hundred feet, producing two outs. Some baseball games do not yield themselves, even to a Rose.

Billingham had been given up for the pinch-hitter, and Campaneris greeted his successor, Pedro Borbon, with a single. He was sacrificed to second, and Tenace scored him with a double to deep left-and was taken out of the game, to his surprise, for a pinch-runner. (He had won the sports car, clearly, as the top player of the Series, and also became the recipient of a hug and a retroactive raise from the All-father, Charlie Finley.) The next batter, Sal Bando, hit another enormous shot to the battered center-field salient, and this ball landed untouched when Tolan fell at the warning track. The score was 31, and Cincinnati's luck had run out.

Pete Rose, leading off for the Reds perhaps for the last time this season, began the eighth with a single off Catfish Hunter, and the despairing Reds rooters hoa.r.s.ely roused themselves once again. Holtzman, a lefty, came in to pitch to Joe Morgan, a lefty, and the last touch of baseball misfortune now descended on the Reds. Morgan cracked the ball on a low line to right-pulling it so violently, in fact, that Rose had to dodge back to avoid being struck, and then was forced to leap over Mike Hegan, the Oakland first baseman, sprawled in the dirt after his dive for the ball. The ball was in the right-field corner-a sure triple, a certain run, except for that infinitesimal accident at first; Rose came churning around third, with Morgan not far behind, but the ball was on the way in now, and third-base coach Alex Grammas threw up his hands at the last instant, stopping Rose so abruptly that his helmet came flying off. The runners retreated. (Second-guessing, I thought Grammas had made a mistake, but we would never know.) Fingers came in to pitch, and Rose eventually scored on Perez' fly, to bring it to 32, but that was all, and a few minutes later the exhausting, searching season was over.

One of the wearers of the green-and-gold in the happy Oakland clubhouse was Rick Williams, the fifteen-year-old son of the victorious manager, whom I had last seen five years ago, when his father piloted the Red Sox to their remarkable pennant. Rick looked only a little younger than most of the whooping and grinning new champions, whose hair and mustaches-now streaming with champagne-had somehow always made them look more boyish than any other big-league team I could remember. Reggie Jackson, in civvies, also had a bottle of champagne. He exchanged hugs and hand-slaps with his teammates, but he had not played in this, the only World Series of his life. In time, he limped unnoticed into another room and sat down to watch a football game on television.

The Reds' clubhouse was utterly quiet. I heard no complaining about the breaks. (Baseball luck is inescapable, and professionals know that in order to win you must dominate the game to the point where it is no longer a factor.) Bobby Tolan, ignoring the reporters, toured the locker room and apologized to every one of his teammates. ”I'm sorry I let you mothers down,” he murmured. The silence was so profound that three-year-old Pete Rose, Jr., who was carrying a little baseball bat and wearing a miniature version of his father's uniform, kept staring up at the men's faces all around him, trying to understand it. In time, he wandered into the deserted equipment room, where he examined a large bin filled with fresh, untouched ice cubes. Then he a.s.sumed a left-handed batting stance and swung his small bat again and again and then again, swinging at an invisible ball-perhaps the only person anywhere at that instant who was ready for more baseball.

Stories for a Rainy Afternoon

- Summer 1976 THE TARPAULIN IS DOWN, and a midafternoon rain is falling steadily. Play has been halted. The lights are on, and the wet, pale green tarp throws off wiggly, reptilian gleams. The scoreboard is lit up, too, bringing us fair-weather scores from other cities, and showing us where this game stood a few minutes ago, when the home-plate umpire threw up his hands to call time and everybody on the field ran for cover. Now the players are back in their locker rooms, and both dugouts are empty. A few fans have stayed in their seats, huddling under big, brightly colored golf umbrellas, but almost everybody else has moved back under the shelter of the upper decks, standing there quietly, behind the seats, watching the rain. The press box is deserted except for a couple of writers knocking out sidebars or an early column; a teletype operator is sitting next to his machine and reading a newspaper. The huge park, the countless rows of s.h.i.+ny-blue wet seats, the long emerald outfield lawns, the rain-spattered tarps-all stand silent and waiting. By the look of it, this shower may hold things up for a good half-hour or more. Time for a few baseball stories.

One story concerns another rain delay, a deluge that interrupted a night game in Baltimore, way back in the nineteen fifties. This happened only a year after the Orioles came to town, in 1954, when the American League franchise in St. Louis was s.h.i.+fted east and the worn-out Browns suddenly became the brand-new Orioles. For a while, everybody in Baltimore was happy about the team, but it became clear within a few weeks that the new uniforms could not alter the abilities of the players who had done so horribly in their previous incarnation. The team finished seventh in its first eastern season, losing one hundred games. A new manager, Paul Richards, came aboard the next year, and he s.h.i.+fted the lineup around a little and tinkered with his pitchers, while the front office put out hopeful reports about better times ahead, but the team went right on losing, and by this time it had also begun to lose its following. On this particular damp midsummer night, the Orioles were behind again (the name of the other team has been forgotten), in a game that had been held up two or three times by brief showers. By the bottom of the ninth, only a few hundred silent, pessimistic fans were still in attendance at Memorial Stadium. A light rain had started again. Unexpectedly, the Orioles rallied. A couple of runs scored, and another base hit drove out the enemy pitcher; suddenly the Orioles had the bases loaded, with the tying run at third base and the winning run at second. The reporters paused over their typewriters, where they had begun their customary irritable or apologetic lead paragraphs for further bad-news stories; a few hoa.r.s.e cries of hope came out of the stands. The next batter was Clint Courtney, probably the most reliable player on the club. Richards came out of the dugout and whispered in Courtney's ear and whacked him encouragingly on the rump. Clint stepped into the box and scowled at the pitcher through the deepening damp. The count went to two and two. Courtney fouled off a couple of pitches, then there was another ball. Three and two, and the bases loaded! There was some real yelling from the stands. Now, however, the rain suddenly became a downpour, almost hiding the outfielders from view. The umpire unwillingly called time, the players came in, and the tarps went back on the field.

It rained and rained. The perpetually gloomy Baltimore fans stared up at the sky and nodded their heads disconsolately. The thing would be called, of course, and the score would revert to the bottom of their eighth-another game gone. n.o.body went home, though; this one had to be waited out. Midnight struck, and still the rain went on. Then, wonder of wonders, it began to ease up. It lightened to a drizzle, then to a mist, and then stopped. The ground crew appeared and rolled back the tarp. The field had been flooded, and another fifteen or twenty minutes went by while the men worked with rakes and shovels, and scattered sawdust on the mound and in the batters' boxes. The umps came back on the field, and the pitcher returned to the mound and warmed up for a considerable time, as was his privilege. The teams took the field at last, more than an hour after they had left it, and the few dozen surviving fans came down to the front rows and took up a hopeful caterwauling.

The home-plate umpire checked his indicator and looked out at the scorecard. Still three and two. He pointed to the pitcher. Play ball! Courtney stood in, chomped down on his wad of tobacco, waggled his bat, and glared out at the pitcher. The fans screamed. The pitcher got his sign. He went into his stretch, paused, rocked back, and threw. The three base runners were off with his motion, running like jackrabbits. The pitch crossed the heart of the plate. Courtney looked at it, motionless. The ump threw up his hand. Strike three. Everybody went home.

That may not be a story to please every palate. I am fond of it, but I can see that as drama it wants work. Baseball-haters will complain about it for their old, dumb reason: nothing happens. But never mind. The best baseball stories are probably appreciated only by true fans, who know the possibilities for unlikelihood, letdown, and wild mischance in their game, which can swing in an instant from morality play to variety show to farce.

Anything can happen in baseball, but it may almost be taken as a rule that the most appalling accidents happen to the worst teams. It was the Mets-the early Mets, of course-who were involved in a play one day at Wrigley Field in which an errant heave from one of their outfielders wound up in the Cubs' ball bag. And it was the Cubs themselves-a similarly gentle and innocuous club-who once were caught up in a calamity undreamed of even in the Metsungsaga. On an afternoon in 1959, the Cardinals were the visitors at Wrigley Field, and the batter was Stan Musial. n.o.body on base. With the count at three and one, Musial almost offered at the next pitch but checked his swing, and the ball somehow skipped by the Chicago catcher, Sammy Taylor, and went all the way back to the screen. The umpire, Vic Delmore, called ball four, and Musial, unaware of the misplay, trotted toward first. Taylor whirled on Delmore and shouted that the ball had been foul-tipped, and Cub manager Bob Scheffing ran out to back him up. The ball, meantime, was picked up by a ball boy and handed to the Cubs' field announcer, who in those days sat in a chair near the home dugout. Two other Cubs-pitcher Bob Anderson and third baseman Alvin Dark-now made their entrances in the plot, each sprinting in to retrieve the ball. Musial, becoming aware at last of these disturbances, rounded first at full speed and set sail for second. The announcer, horrified to observe that he was somehow an active partic.i.p.ant in the National League pennant race, hastily dropped the ball on the ground, where it was seized simultaneously by Anderson and Dark, with Alvin finally winning possession.

Meantime, in another part of the forest-back at home plate-Ump Delmore, frazzled by the importunings of Taylor and Scheffing, suddenly and inexplicably extracted a fresh ball-hereinafter to be known as Ball No. 2-and plopped it into Taylor's glove. Taylor, spotting Musial on the base path, threw the new pill down to second, a bare instant after Alvin Dark had made the same peg, from well behind him, with Ball No. 1. Musial, sliding into second, saw an unmistakable baseball (it was No. 2) sail untouched past his ear and on into center field. He scrambled up and turned happily toward third, only to be tagged after two or three steps by Ernie Banks, the shortstop, with Ball No. 1. Ball No. 2 was chased down in the outfield by the Cubs' Bobby Thomson, who now threw it wildly past third base. But here, at last, both baseb.a.l.l.s may be allowed to make their exit, for at this juncture the chief umpire, Al Barlick, who had been working at second base, mercifully threw up his hands, calling time. The ensuing confabulations and plea-bargainings need not be explicated. Barlick's next ruling, which caused the game to be played under official protest by the Cardinals, was that Musial was out at second, because he, Barlick, had seen the tag made there with the ball-or with a ball. The game went back a step, then resumed, eventually being won by the Cards, and the sport, once again, survived.

For continuous baseball melodrama, there probably never was a better theater than the Phillies' shabby little park, Baker Bowl, which was finally abandoned in 1938. The field was better suited for a smaller, narrower game-croquet, perhaps-and its very short right-field wall, a bare 270 feet from home, was detested by every pitcher and outfielder in the league. One afternoon in 1934, the starting hurler for the visiting Brooklyn Dodgers was Walter (Boom-Boom) Beck-the nickname was onomatopoetic-and the dangerous starboard garden was being defended by Hack Wilson. Always a robust slugger, Wilson unfortunately got to spend far less time at the plate than he had to put in afield, where he was, to put the matter kindly, less than adequate. Hack was also known to spend an occasional evening at his local tavern, pondering this injustice. On this day, he had experienced a particularly trying afternoon in pursuit of a.s.sorted line drives and scorching grounders rifled in his direction off Boom-Boom's deliveries-often getting extra practice as he spun around and tried to field the caroms and ricochets, off that extremely adjacent wall, of the same hits he had missed outward-bound.

The Dodger manager, Casey Stengel, even then accustomed to severe adversity, watched several innings of this before he called time and made his familiar journey to the mound, where he suggested to Beck that he take the rest of the afternoon off. Beck's performance had been perfectly within his genre, but for some reason he was enraged at this derricking, and instead of handing the ball over to Stengel he suddenly turned and heaved it away in a pa.s.sion. Fate, of course, sent the ball arching out into right field, where Hack Wilson, with his head down and his hands on his knees, was quietly reflecting on last night's excesses and this day's indignities. Boom-Boom's throw struck the turf a few feet away from Wilson, who, although badly startled, whirled and chased manfully after the ball, fielded the carom off the wall, and got off a terrific, knee-high peg to second base-his best fielding play, Casey always said, of the entire summer.

A more recent epochal disorder came in a game played in the Florida Instructional League last year. This time, things began with an outfielder's peg to a rookie catcher (all the players in the Instructional League are rookies), who grabbed the ball and made a swipe at an inrus.h.i.+ng, sliding base runner at the plate. As sometimes happens, the catcher missed the tag and the base runner missed the plate. The runner jumped up, dusted himself off, and trotted to his dugout, convinced that he had scored. The umpire made no call either way, which is the prescribed response, and after a moment or two the pitcher and the infielders, a.n.a.lyzing the situation, hurried in and implored the catcher to make the tag.

”What?” said the catcher. ”Tag who?”

”The runner, the runner!” they cried, severally. ”You missed him. He didn't score. Go tag him!”

”Ah,” said the young receiver, the light bulb over his head at last clicking on. Still holding the ball, he ran eagerly toward the enemy dugout, with the umpire close behind. When the catcher got there, however, he gazed up and down the line of seated fresh-faced rookies without recognizing anyone who looked like a recent pa.s.serby. He frowned, then went to one end of the bench and tagged the first two or three men sitting in line. He looked around at the umpire, who was watching with folded arms. The umpire made no sign. The catcher tagged four more players. The ump shook his head almost imperceptibly: nothing doing. Now the erstwhile base runner, seeing the catcher inexorably working up the line toward him, suddenly leaped onto the field and made a dash for the plate. The pitcher, who had been standing bemused near home, screamed for the ball, and he and catcher executed a rundown, more or less in the style of stadium attendants collecting a loose dog on the field, and tagged the man out in the on-deck circle.

I have dismissed the Mets too quickly-the progenitors of so many legendary baseball disasters. Some of the legends were true. During the early stages of their terrible first summer, in 1962, their center fielder, Richie Ashburn, suffered a series of frightful surprises while going after short fly b.a.l.l.s, because he was repeatedly run over by the shortstop, the enthusiastic but modestly talented Elio Chacon. After several of these encounters, Ashburn took Chacon aside and carefully explained that, by ancient custom, center fielders were allowed full freedom to catch all flies they could get to and signal for. The collisions and near-collisions and dropped fly b.a.l.l.s continued exactly as before, and Ashburn eventually concluded that Chacon, who spoke very little English, simply didn't understand what it meant when he saw his center fielder waving his arms and yelling ”Mine! Mine! I got it!” Richie thought this over and then went to Joe Christopher, a bilingual teammate on the Mets, and asked for help.

”All you have to do is say it in Spanish,” Christopher said. ”Yell out 'Yo la tengo!' and Elio will pull up. I'll explain it to him, too-OK? You won't have any more trouble out there.”

”Yo la tengo?” Ashburn said.