World Series: Superfreaks v. Superstars

IT would be difficult to find two teams more different in mode, mood and deed than the Oakland Athletics and the Cincinnati Reds. Oakland, champion of the weak-sister American League, had come to be thought of as Finley's Freak Show, after Owner Charles O. Finley. They adorned themselves with flowing manes, mustaches and green-and-gold uniforms reminiscent of the Gay Nineties. The players feuded among themselves sporadically and with Manager Dick Williams constantly. They just barely won the pennant in the American League, struggling through five tough games to defeat the Detroit Tigers, who have grown considerably long in the tooth. At the top of this gallimaufry was the biggest flake of them all, Owner Finley, who carried his team round the country for years looking for a nice home before settling in Oakland. Finley personally leads the cheers in the stands like some mad Roman emperor.

Favorites. The rival Cincinnati Reds were something else again. One of the classiest teams in the classier league, they had defeated the World Champion Pittsburgh Pirates for the National League pennant. They had the bulk of the superstars on their side, names like Catcher Johnny Bench, Second Baseman Joe Morgan, Outfielder Pete Rose. Their uniforms were modest, their locks a model of tonsorial tidiness. Ironically, they played a wild, freewheeling brand of baseball, while the A's tended to play a more conservative game. Cincinnati speed and power made the Reds solid favorites at the start of the World Series. Yet the A's startled everyone by jumping off to a 3-1 lead in games, and only a magnificent rally by the Reds forced the most exciting series in years to a full seven games.

The A's started the series with a major handicap. They had lost Slugger Reggie Jackson (25 home runs in 1972) in the final play-off game against the Tigers when he severely ruptured a hamstring muscle while sliding into home plate. Enter Catcher Gene Tenace (five home runs in 1972), who began the season on the bench and only won his job from Dave Duncan in the past couple of months. Tenace quickly silenced the sanguinary Reds fans in the opener, lashing home runs in his first two trips to the plate to set a new World Series record. Oakland managed only two more hits all day off three Cincinnati pitchers, but they were enough. Ken Holtzman and Relievers Rollie Fingers and Vida Blue checked the Big Red batters with seven hits (only one for extra bases) as the A's took the first game 3-2.

The following day Tenace stepped aside for more likely heroes: Leftfielder Joe Rudi and Pitcher Jim ("Catfish") Hunter. Rudi, the most consistent hitter on the A's and a contender for the American League batting crown, belted a long drive into Riverfront Stadium's left-field stands for what proved to be the deciding run. Rudi made sure of that in the ninth by climbing high up the left-field wall to rob Denis Menke of a run-scoring double. The remarkable catch earned Rudi a place in World Series history next to Al Gionfriddo, who robbed Joe DiMaggio in 1947, and Willie Mays, who did the same thing to Vic Wertz in 1954. Hunter, a 21-game winner last season, threw a six-hitter to give Oakland a 2-1 victory.

The teams sped to the West Coast, Oakland loose and laughing, Cincinnati tight and brooding. "I've said all along it would take us six or seven games to win," insisted Reds Manager George ("Sparky") Anderson. But that sounded like whistling past his own graveyard; no team in World Series history had lost the first two games on its home field and gone on to win the series.

Meanwhile, the A's mound staff had thrown mittfuls of sand into the Big Red Machine. The Cincinnati offensive relied on the ability of its first three hitters--Rose, Morgan and Centerfielder Bobby Tolan--to get on base before Johnny Bench brought his booming bat to the plate. Over the 1972 season the trio had scored a total of 317 runs, while Bench had smacked 40 homers and driven in 125 runs (tops in either league). But in the first two games the threesome had reached base only five times in 25 at-bats, and Bench was cast in the unusual role of leading off an inning six different times. Said Rose, glumly: "We don't make money when Bench is hitting with no one on."

Oakland fans, high on their first flush of pennant fever since Finley & Co. arrived there five years ago, packed Oakland-Alameda County Stadium (something they have rarely done) and screamed wildly for a series sweep by the Athletics. But Cincinnati proved too tough for that. After a day of near monsoon rains that turned the field into a marshland and caused the postponement of the third game, Cincinnati's Jack Billingham squared off against Oakland's John ("Blue Moon") Odom in what was to be the tightest pitchers' duel in essentially a pitchers' series. While Billingham and Reliever Clay Carroll blanked the A's with three hits, the Reds got clutch hitting and base running from Tony Perez and Cesar Geronimo in the seventh inning and emerged with a precarious 1-0 triumph.

Chess Match. There were reasons other than pure pitching prowess for the power failure of two hard-hitting ball clubs. Television, as usual, had made the team owners offers they could not refuse, and the games were scheduled to be played during prime TV time in the populous East. That meant that they had to begin at dusk in Oakland, which the players, squinting in the gloom, bitterly blamed for the fact that 21 batters struck out that evening. With the hitters not hitting and the pitchers beginning to show signs of strain, the series turned into something of a chess match between Managers Anderson and Williams. Williams, whose locks are as leonine as any of his players', kept written tabs on Anderson's strategic line-up changes. He made a number of substitutions himself, notably at second base, where he has alternated as many as four men a game.

In general the managers jockeyed wisely, with Williams seeming to get the better of the duel. His finest moment came in the last inning of the fourth game, when he sent three pinch hitters to the plate. Each promptly produced a single. Those hits, added to a single by the terror Tenace (who eventually tied a record by hitting four World Series home runs), brought Oakland a last-minute 3-2 victory and an all but unbeatable edge.

All but. The next afternoon, in the makeup game, it was the Reds who provided the ninth-inning histrionics. With the score tied 4-4, Rose singled Geronimo home from second to keep the Reds' series hopes alive. At week's end, back on their home ground, the Reds ended their drought. Led by Bench, who hit his first home run (and thus notched his first RBI) of the series, Cincinnati batters peppered four Oakland pitchers for ten hits in an 8-1 win, tying the Series at three games apiece and setting up Sunday's dramatic showdown.

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