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Don't Count the Dodgers Out! Flashback to 1977 Playoffs

10/17/2013

Collage of Los Angeles Dodgers who starred In the 1977 National League Championship Series

October 1977:

The Los Angeles Dodgers were down to their last out

On the road

In Philadelphia

The best of five series was tied one game each

The Phillies led 5-3

Relief ace Gene Garber was pitching

The Dodgers sent Vic Davalillo to pinch hit

As Garber threw the ball, Davalillo prepared to catch it with his bat

The ball bounced between first and second base

By the time a surprised Ted Sizemore got to it, Davalillo was already at first

Manny Mota went to bat as a pinch hitter

Garber had two strikes on him

Then Mota golfed a low pitch deep to left

Greg Luzinski went back and got a glove on the ball

But could not catch it

Then his throw to Sizemore went astray

By the time the play ended, Davalillo had scored and Mota was on third

Davey Lopes slammed a chopper to third base

The ball bounced off Schmidt’s glove to shortstop Larry Bowa

Who in one motion caught the ball and whirled it to first

The umpire called Lopes safe

Tie game!

Some Phillies fans are still upset about this call and call this game “Black Friday”

But after watching the game on DVD, I am not convinced it was a bad call.

Earlier in the game there were worse calls than this one against both teams.

Anyway, the game went on.

Garber tried to pick Lopes off, but he threw it away and Lopes got to second.

Bill Russell then lined a single up the middle to bring home Lopes.

The Dodgers got the Phillies out without any runs in the bottom of the ninth.

Final score: Dodgers 6, Phillies 5.

The Dodgers beat the Phillies again the next day and went on to the World Series.

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1978 World Series Game Three: Why We Watch Baseball

10/5/2013

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Graig Nettles played with a Golden Glove in the World Series!

1978 World Series Game 3.
The Los Angeles Dodgers are up two games to none over the New York Yankees.
Top of the fifth inning. Yankees lead 2-1. Dodgers at bat.
Two outs. Steve Yeager on second. Davey Lopes on first.
Reggie Smith smashes a ground ball down the third base line.
It looks like it is headed for the left field corner. Yeager should score and the speedy Lopes should score as well…
But wait.
Third baseman Graig Nettles gets his glove on the ball to stop it. It is too late to get a force out or to get Smith at first so the bases are loaded for Steve Garvey.
Garvey slams the ball down the third base line on a hop.
Nettles manages to back hand the ball and then whirls to fire it to Brian Doyle
to force Smith at second.
By this point, the game could easily be 4-2 for the Dodgers. In fact, in reviewing the statistics of this game, it is hard to believe the Yankees would go on to win by a score of 5-1.
Yankee pitcher Ron Guidry, who averaged a little more than two walks per nine innings that season, gave up seven in this one. He also gave up eight hits.
In the next inning, the Dodgers got two of those hits and one of those walks to load the bases with two outs.
Lopes smashes the ball down the third base line. It could have been good for as many as three runs…
But Nettles again makes a sensational play to stop the ball. Then he throws to Doyle for another force play to end the inning.
With these three plays, Nettles saved as many as six runs. The game doesn’t always end up the way it should or the way it could. That is why we watch.

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Flashback to 1977 World Series Game One Shows Baseball Worth Watching

10/3/2013

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Los Angeles Dodger Manager Tommy Lasorda watches the 1977 World Series against the New York Yankees

As an avid fan of Los Angeles Dodgers baseball in the 1970s, I enjoyed watching a DVD of the first game of the 1977 World Series. The Dodgers took on the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium.

The game resembled a boxing match between two evenly matched fighters.  The Dodgers punched, then the Yankees punched back.  They traded blows until they wore each other out.

There’s no tying in baseball. Or at least not that often.

The Yankees finally prevail in the bottom of the twelfth.  But it was not the end of the game that makes this contest memorable.

In the top of the first, Bill Russell hits a triple to deep left-center to drive in a run and comes home on a fly ball hit by Ron Cey.  In the Yankee half, Chris Chambliss drives home a run with a single.

Then the game turns into a pitcher’s duel between Don Gullett of the Yankees and Don Sutton of the Dodgers. Gullett was starting the first game of the World Series for the third year in a row! Neither he nor Sutton seems perturbed by the early runs.

With two outs in the top of the sixth, Steve Garvey takes off from first as Glenn Burke hits a ground ball between first and second base.  The ball trickles so slowly to the outfield that when center fielder Mickey Rivers picks up the ball, he realizes the play will be not at third base, but home plate! His throw goes to Thurman Munson, who catches it and then reaches out to tag Garvey.

OUT!

Garvey jumps up and protests the call.  Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda joins the argument.   Replays appear to show Garvey’s foot touching the plate before Munson’s tag. Here is a picture of the play at the plate in the following day’s Telegraph.

But the call, right or wrong, prevails.

Yankee second baseman Willie Randolph opens the bottom of the sixth with a home run down the left field line to tie the score at two.  In the eighth, Randolph walks and scored on a double by Munson.

This gives the Dodgers one last inning to produce at least a run to keep the game going. Dusty Baker leads off with a single.

Then came the kind of play that makes the game unpredictable and worth watching.

Pinch hitter Manny Mota fakes a bunt and then swings and misses at the pitch from Gullett. Baker, apparently on a hit and run, is on his way to second when he finds himself staring at a Yankee with the ball in front of him. Baker doubles back as the ball is thrown to first baseman Chambliss.

Ordinarily, the first baseman then tags the runner out. But Baker dives away from Chambliss AND the base! A confused Chambliss hesitates for a split second while Baker lunges again, this time for the base.

SAFE!

Baker’s play helped the Dodgers to tie the game.  After Mota flies out, Steve Yeager walks. Then pinch hitter Lee Lacy singles to left to bring Baker home.

Watching this game again reminds me how much this rivalry and the three World Series that these two teams played in during my youth helped me to appreciate baseball.

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Game Six

8/12/2013

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The game of baseball reached its peak on October 21, 1975 when the Cincinnati Reds played the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park in Boston.

Both teams challenged each other until exhaustion. No one caved in, quit or wilted under the pressure and when it was over the spectators probably cared less about who won than how well they played.

The game starts with Luis Tiant, a man who came from Cuba to the United States before Castro but who could not return. He waited fourteen years, until the first game of the series in which he pitched a shutout, to see his parents (they came to Boston on a special visa).

He pitches from a corkscrew wind up and challenges the “Big Red Machine.” He gets them out without allowing a run for four innings even though the Reds do not have an easy out. Pete Rose, to be known later as the all time leader in base hits, pecks away at Tiant’s pitches. He faces Ken Griffey (Senior), Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench, Tony Perez, all of them stars and all of them headed for the Hall of Fame except for Griffey.

While the Reds were having trouble with Tiant, the Red Sox gain the upper hand in the bottom of the first when Fred Lynn, the Rookie of the Year and the Most Valuable Player, drives a Gary Nolan pitch down over the wall in right field with two on.

Red Sox 3, Reds 0.

The Reds get untracked in the fifth inning. With two Reds on base, Griffey drives the ball to dead center. Lynn goes back and makes a leap…but just barely misses it. The ball bounces back toward the field and the runners round the bases.

But forget about the score for a minute. Lynn does not get up. He would say later that he could not feel his legs and could not move.[1]

Lynn would get injured a number of times attempting (and frequently making) spectacular catches. It probably curtailed his career. But no one who refuses to take risks can stake claim to be the best.

Lynn gets on his feet and is ready to play again.
Griffey winds up on third with a triple. He comes home when Bench gets a hit.

Reds 3, Red Sox 3.

Then the “lower” part of the Machine put the Reds ahead. In the seventh, George Foster drives home two runs with a double and Geronimo tags Tiant for a home run in the eighth.

Bye bye, Tiant.

The home town crowd roars, to pay tribute for Tiant’s World Series performance. The Red Sox go to bat in the bottom of the eighth six outs away from elimination.

Lynn smashes a hit off the Reds’ pitcher, Pedro Borbon. Rico Petrocelli gets a walk.

But then new Red pitcher Rawly Eastwick comes in to get two outs.

Up comes Bernie Carbo. The great thing about the World Series is that not-so-well-known players have the chance to become part of folklore. This was Carbo’s chance.

Eastwick looked like he had him down for the count. Carbo barely made contact with the ball.

Then he swung the bat well. “Deep center field…way back…way back…we’re tied up,” yells announcer Joe Gariagiola.

This is Carbo’s claim to fame. His fifteen minutes.

But the game is not over yet.

In the bottom of the ninth, the Red Sox load the bases with no one out. Lynn hits the ball down the foul line in left. Left fielder Foster makes the catch.

Nine times out of ten, the outfielder fails to make a good throw, or the catcher drops it.

Nine times out of ten, the base runner hears the third base coach telling him “Don’t go!”

The throw arrives to Bench on a hop. Doyle tries to maneuver around the tag. But Bench catches the ball and tags Doyle.

The Red Sox can’t score in the ninth. The game goes to extra innings.

In the top of the eleventh inning, with Griffey on first, Joe Morgan slams a ball that looks sure to go over the short wall in right field.

But Dwight Evans gets his fifteen minutes by leaping high to catch the ball. And then throwing to first to double up Griffey.

Evans claims to this day that he has no idea how he caught the ball.[2]

Baseball games rarely end in ties and World Series Games really can’t. The series had been delayed three days due to rain and November was getting close.

The only question left was who would be the hero.

In the bottom of the twelth, lead off hitter Carlton Fisk took one pitch. Then he hit a ball directly down the left field line.

All the questions of life can be stated so succinctly: yes or no, in or out, fair or foul. Fisk pleads with the ball to stay fair. The Reds are saying otherwise.

The ball smashes into the pole.

Thirty-eight years later and it never has gotten any better than this.

[1] http://mlbnetwork-origin.mlb.com/network/games_airdates/

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8XeTNH9P3A

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A Poke in Their Eye: the Last Game of the 1977 World Series

7/27/2013

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I ran across a video of the sixth game of the 1977 World Series. This game is better known as the game in which Reggie Jackson hit three home runs on three consecutive pitches to help the New York Yankees finish off the Los Angeles Dodgers 4 games to 2.

That the Dodgers were and are my favorite team probably accounts for why I have not seen this game in thirty-six years! But watching the last half-inning reminded me of how I felt watching the game live.

Yankee Stadium was near pandemonium. The team and their fans had waited fifteen years to win the World Series and all they needed were three more outs. The Yankees led the game handily, by a score of 8-3. Five of those runs had come in by way of Jackson’s long drives into the stands.

Some of those fans now sat on the outfield wall so as to be prepared to jump onto the field and celebrate upon the last out. Some of them threw things at Jackson, who went into the dugout to get a batting helmet! (Why the Yankees did not simply put another player in right field for this last inning is beyond me. They should have known Jackson would be mobbed later.)

The YouTube reminded me of some of the details I had forgotten. Ron Cey starts off the inning and takes a called third strike. Steve Garvey then bounces it to Bucky Dent at shortstop and beats the throw to first base. Dent had fielded the ball, but slipped trying to plant his foot to make a throw. The official scorer says “single.”

Dusty Baker follows by driving a ball into left field for a hit that sends Garvey to second base. Rick Monday, my favorite player, attempts but fails to bunt the ball. Then he sends a long drive to right field. For a second it looks like a home run, but the ball comes down in Jackson’s glove near the wall. Garvey tags second and goes to third base while Baker remains at first.

Two outs. Then the part I will never forget. The Dodgers send Victor Davalillo to the plate. At about five foot seven, he was one of the shortest players in the game and at forty-one he was one of the oldest.

On the first pitch, he releases his bat at just the right moment and lays down a bunt that catches the Yankees by surprise. Graig Nettles, the brilliant third baseman for the Yankees, finally gets to the ball and throws it to a surprised Thurman Munson, the catcher, at home plate.

For a moment, the Yankees look…ticked. After Jackson used a sledgehammer to knock out the Dodgers, Davalillo picks the Dodgers up and pokes the Yankees in the eye! I couldn’t help but laugh again as I saw the bunt single!

Those poor Yankee fans had their celebration delayed by about two minutes. The next batter, Lee Lacy, pops the ball up on a bunt of his own. The pitcher, Mike Torrez, catches the ball and the big celebration commences. The Yankees all hug each other, then they get out of the way of hundreds of fans who pour onto the field.

Inning over. Game over. Series over. But the memories never end!

See the game here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_QiPpMzclk

The top of the ninth begins at the 1:45:00 mark.

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Don't Count the Dodgers Out! Flashback to 1977 Playoffs

1978 World Series Game Three: Why We Watch Baseball

Flashback to 1977 World Series Game One Shows Baseball Worth Watching

Game Six

A Poke in Their Eye: the Last Game of the 1977 World Series

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