Becoming Mr. October (9780385533126) (38 page)

And then, when they started losing some games, they started to have some controversies in the clubhouse. Which affirms what Joe Torre always likes to say about how you don’t win
because
you have a happy locker room—when you’re winning, you
get
a happy locker room. They had guys starting to complain and second-guess Zimmer. Controversies in the media. Clutter. I recognized that!

Meanwhile, we were finally what we should’ve been all along: a great ball club that was playing well, with everybody now being supportive of everybody else. We enjoyed playing well. We enjoyed playing with no distractions, no clutter. There was no more negativity about me or anything like it.

We were so far behind—fourteen games—that we weren’t really concentrating on catching up to Boston. We were just trying to play well every game. It was connoisseur baseball again. But the funny thing was we weren’t even getting that much luck, and we were still closing the gap.

We lost that game where Guidry pitched so well against Baltimore but Bucky made a miscue at short. Lost another game out in Seattle when Ronnie had a 3–0 lead, but then we made a big error, and Goose came in and lost on some freaky hits. Figgy lost a game in Baltimore where he gave up just one earned run and we came back from 3–0 down, scored five runs in the top of the seventh. But it was raining, and Earl Weaver made sure it took the grounds crew just about forever to bring the tarp out. When they did, they dumped more water on the field than they kept off it. They stalled enough to get the game called, and the score reverted to the last full inning, making it a 3–0 win for them. They went and changed the rule after that, it was so audacious. But that was Earl for you. He’d always find a way to win.

We thought we might have a chance to pick up some ground on Boston when they came to town for a two-game set early in August. There were still a lot of games to go, and we were only six and a half
back now. We got up, 5–0, in the first game before a huge crowd of more than fifty thousand. But it was a rainy night and a sloppy game. Tidrow didn’t have his good stuff, and we left eleven guys on base. Wasted a great
seven innings
of relief by Goose, another two by Sparky.

Those guys pitched the equivalent of an entire game and allowed just three hits and one run, but it was all wasted. They still had the curfew back then, where you couldn’t start any inning after 1:00 a.m., and they finally had to postpone the game to the next day when it reached the fifteenth inning. We lost it in the seventeenth the next evening, then lost the regularly scheduled game, too, 8–1, to Mike Torrez. We just couldn’t get to him.

There was another factor that night, too: I stunk. I had a terrible couple of games, went a combined 0–10 with five strikeouts. Made a bad play in the field. In that first game, especially, I had four strikeouts, kept killing rally after rally. Afterward, we were still in fourth place, eight and a half games out, with just fifty-five left to play.

But you know what? It wasn’t a big thing. None of it was, at least not back in the clubhouse. Bob Lemon didn’t
make
it a big thing; nobody else made it a big thing, not in his clubhouse. Nobody got blamed for anything that went wrong in any of those games. Nobody made a bunch of comments to the press about my hitting or my fielding. Or about anyone else who didn’t play well. Nobody changed the lineup all around, or seethed, or threw things against the wall. Nobody acted like we’d just lost the seventh game of the World Series. We won games and lost games as a team.

We just shook it off, went out and played the next night. We lost that one, too—a tough, 2–1 game to the Orioles. But we won the night after that, and then Catfish pitched a complete-game shutout against Jim Palmer, and we were in third place. Milwaukee came to town next. They’d been pummeling us the whole season, beat us something like ten of twelve before that.

But now we kicked their butt. Tidrow pitched eight innings of shutout ball, beat Mike Caldwell, their best pitcher. Next night, we got down, 7–3, to them. Larry Hisle had another big night. But we got four good innings of relief out of Ken Clay, and this time we scored five runs in the bottom of the ninth off their two best relievers, Bob McClure and Bill Castro. Mickey Rivers hit a two-run homer, Chambliss
hit a double to score another one, and I tied the game … by getting hit with a pitch with the bases loaded. We scored the winner on an error. That’s all right, those things even out. Larry McCall, another one of our kid call-ups, got the win. Night after that, Guidry pitched another three-hit shutout, struck out nine. We won, 9–0. Now we were in second place.

Next we got off on a six-game win streak. Beat the Angels in eleven, when Blair hit a walk-off single. The next night, Guidry didn’t have his best stuff against the Orioles, but he stuck it out, and we came back from down, 4–1, on a game-winning single by Cliff Johnson, who’d been having an ugly year. Then we took three of four against Detroit, and all of a sudden there we were: four games back with twenty-four to play—and the first four of them in Boston.

It was a second chance. We weren’t a team you wanted to give second chances.

F
ANS AND SPORTSWRITERS
like to throw around words like “choked.” “Oh, the Red Sox choked that year!” This guy choked, that team choked.

It’s never that simple. Teams have ups and downs in a long season. The Red Sox went 19–10 in August. Was that a choke? They actually finished the month with a bigger lead than they had at the start of it, seven games instead of five and a half. The difference was that we were the team in second now.

From the first day of September, they started to lose a few more games they probably should’ve won. They dropped two out of three against Oakland, at home. Lost two out of three against Earl Weaver’s guys, down in Baltimore. Was that a choke? Or those teams playing well?

By September 7, we had the lead down to four games, with a four-game series up in Fenway. All that August, guys kept saying, “If we can just gain a game a week on them, get the lead down to seven games, because we play them seven times in September.”

That’s how confident we were. Some of the guys on the Red Sox said it looked like we were looser, like we were having more fun than they were a few months earlier. I think that’s because we’d been through so much already, over the last two seasons. Playing every day, with the balance of the pennant race hanging on whether you win or lose—after the year we’d been having, with all the issues, just playing baseball became relaxing, now that it was only the game we had to concentrate on.

I remember when we went to Boston, and people were saying we’d
be doing all right if we could get a split. But Piniella was telling the writers straight out, “We’re up here to win four.” Thurman was saying, “We’re going to kick their ass.”

I’d had a virus that turned into back spasms. I’d missed the last three games, had spent two days in traction at Lenox Hill Hospital. But there was no way I was missing these games. We were ready to ride.

Those four games in Fenway, they never knew what hit ’em. “The Boston Massacre.”

First inning of the first game, Willie Randolph reached on a throwing error by Butch Hobson at third. Then Thurman singled, I singled, Chambliss hit a sacrifice fly—just like that, it was 2–0.

Mike Torrez started for them. We put him in the showers before he could get four outs. Single, single, single in the second, it’s 5–0. Third inning, three more singles, a double, a walk: 7–0. Fourth inning, another double, more singles, a throwing error by Hobson—it was 12–0.

Don Zimmer couldn’t even sit down in the dugout before he had to get up and go to the bullpen for another pitcher. In the end it was 15–3. Thurman had three hits before the Sox went through their whole lineup once. Roy White had three hits, too. Willie Randolph had three hits, drove in five runs.

They couldn’t stop us. We had twenty-one hits on the night—four doubles, seventeen singles, and not a single home run. That was the thing with us. We were great situational hitters. We hit .396 in the series. Outscored them, 42–9. Had sixty-seven hits to just twenty-one for them—and fifty-six of our hits were for singles. Just a couple home runs.

That to me is very indicative of what kind of team we were. We could adjust to anyone. We could beat you any number of ways, we came to play. It’s an old cliché, but it’s true. Like the great Yankees teams in the 1990s, and this past decade, we didn’t try to do too much, just keep the line moving. Freddie Lynn called us “the pros’ pros” when it came to hitting, and he was right.

Next night, they had another capacity crowd out in Fenway. We put it to sleep early. First inning, Mickey Rivers led off with a single, stole second, went to third on a bad throw by Carlton Fisk, scored
on an error by Burleson at short. Later Chambliss singled in another run. Next inning, we pretty much nailed down the win when I hit a three-run bomb. Just like that, it was 8–0. This time Mick the Quick had three hits before the Sox were able to get through their lineup once. Lou Piniella had a double, triple, and home run. Fenway went silent as a tomb.

We ended up winning that game, 13–2. The Red Sox made
seven errors
, which led to seven unearned runs. I don’t think I ever saw anything else like that in a major-league game. During the whole series they had twelve errors. Fisk’s ribs were killing him; he was throwing everything away when we tried to steal. Dwight Evans, one of the best outfielders in the league at the time, dropped a couple fly balls in right field because he was still dizzy after getting beaned. Hobson, while injured, still kept going out there. It was tough watching him throw so low and wild because of the pain in his elbow.

Don Zimmer, I think, stuck with guys even when they were injured out of loyalty. That says something about him. It also says that guys wouldn’t take themselves out of a game. It’s a fine line and tough to do at that time of year. It becomes “Do you or don’t you? Play hurt, or not?” Sometimes you’re better not playing hurt. But sometimes 70 percent of you is better than 100 percent of your backup. Zimmer loved the effort Butch gave him, how he never complained, so he kept sending him out there to third. Same thing with Dewey Evans, same thing with Fisk. He stood by his players, told the press how hard they were playing despite their injuries.

But putting them out there when they can’t perform isn’t really doing them any favors. You just end up embarrassing them—and they’re too tough to ask out. It isn’t fair to the other players, too, who want to win. I know Zim couldn’t have rested everybody, but … Well, who knows, I wasn’t in his shoes. Fisk started 154 games as catcher that year, which I think is still the league record.

It was like we’d switched personalities as teams, from earlier in the year. Now
they
were the ones trying to plug holes and scrambling around for pitchers.

Third game of the series, it was a big, bright Saturday afternoon in early fall. They sent out Dennis Eckersley, who was killing us that year, against Guidry. Fourth inning, I hit a ball off Eck that I thought
was gone, even with that big green wall they have in left. But the wind knocked it back down enough that Yaz could rob me with a spectacular, twisting catch in midair. Bounced off the scoreboard, then got the ball back to the infield in time to get Thurman going back to first for a double play.

Yastrzemski could still make plays like that at thirty-nine. It was just the sort of play that could turn a team around when it’s in a bad slide. But there’s an element of luck in baseball, too. Next batter, Chris Chambliss, hit a double, and they walked Nettles intentionally. Then Lou Piniella hit a little pop fly just back of second that should’ve been the third out. Instead, the wind blew it all around the outfield, it fell in, and before they get another out, it’s 7–0. That was the final score. Guidry completely dominated them, only let up two chippy singles in the first inning.

I think it was Joe Gergen in
Newsday
who wrote after that, “The Yankees are a game behind and drawing away.”

I think by then Boston
had
let the pressure get to them—the whole organization. After Munson got his three hits in the first game, Dick Drago hit him in the head with a pitch. Bob Lemon asked him if he could go the next day. Thurman told him, “Not for more than nine.”

It was serious, though. I think Thurman was dizzy for pretty much the rest of the season. He played every game in Boston, got five more hits. But the next week he had to ask out of a game against the Tigers. He told us it wasn’t a headache—it was just “tremendous pain” all through his head. He sat for two games, then got back in there—because he was Thurman. They weren’t going to stop him by hitting him in the head with a baseball. Tough guy!

Last game of the Sox series on Sunday, Boston was so desperate they started a kid just up from Triple-A for them. Bobby Sprowl. He’d never won a game in the majors—and he never would. A lot of people were saying Zimmer should’ve forgiven Bill Lee, who he was feuding with, and started him. But it was too late. Zim was locked in. He’d just had Lee pitch seven innings of mop-up relief two days earlier.

Instead, we got to see Sprowl, who walked four guys in the first inning, gave up a single to me that scored Mickey Rivers, and left with just two outs and the score already 3–0. The final was 7–4, but it wasn’t that close.

After 142 games, we were tied for first place with identical records with the Red Sox, 86–56. We’d come from fourteen games down, something only those 1914 Boston “Miracle Braves” exceeded, when they came from fifteen games down—though earlier in their season.

We almost couldn’t believe it ourselves. It was like the dog catching the car. I remember sitting next to Lou Piniella in the locker room in Boston, after it was all over, and I looked at him and said, “Hey, Lou. Wait a minute. What do we do now?”

What we did was keep playing great ball. That week we went on to Detroit and took two out of three. Jim Beattie beat Jack Billingham in the second game, and we took over first place all by ourselves. First time all year, going right back to Opening Day.