Free Game Six by Mark Frost Page B

Earl Weaver’s Orioles, who had overtaken them in ’74, charged hard at the Sox again now, cutting the lead to four and a half games.
    Their running battle climaxed in the most exciting game Fenway had seen since 1967, a tense pitchers’ duel on September 16, between Oriole ace and future Hall of Famer Jim Palmer and Luis Tiant, who tossed a masterful 2–0 shutout in front of an ecstatic crowd, to extend Boston’s lead. Tiant had defended the ramparts. From that point on the Red Sox held firm; the Orioles couldn’t gain any more ground and, exhausted by the effort, faltered at the wire. Despite the loss of Rice, their offense never sputtered, and the Red Sox clinched the American League East in the final week of the season. Their subsequent sweep of the three-time defending World Series champion Oakland A’s in the League Championship confounded the national pundits, who never placed much stock in Boston’s chances, and worked their faithful into a frenzy. Much of their adoration settled on their number one starter, Luis Tiant, the foundation of their finishing kick and the player Tom Yawkey singled out as “the man who did it for us.” His numbers cinch the argument: In the last three weeks of the season, and thus far into the League Championship and World Series, while throwing five complete-game victories at Fenway Park in a row, Luis Tiant had allowed only one earned run to cross home plate.
    Out in right field, Luis finished his warm-ups in the bullpen, slipped on his jacket, strutted into the dugout, and sat by himself on the Red Sox bench—eyes hooded, brow furrowed, in a trance of concentration—until it was go time. When El Tiante stepped out on the field to take the mound for Game Six, the fans at Fenway rose as one, an extended standing ovation. No starting pitcher had won three games in a World Series since the Tigers’ Mickey Lolich in 1968, and only once had a team ever lost a Series when a pitcher pulled off that rare feat. The crowd urged Tiant to his task, and the chant they’d adopted as their battle cry that summer filled the air: “Loo-eee, Loo-eee, Loo-eee!”
    In the press box, the staccato clatter of keys from two hundred typewriters signaled the onset of hostilities. Young David Israel from the Washington Star had managed to secure a seat next to Red Smith, the seventy-year-old veteran baseball writer for the New York Times, poised over his blue portable Olympia. The chilly evening air in the open press box felt electric; Israel sensed a story was waiting out there on the field for him, the kind that could make careers. If half of catching a break was being in the right place at the right time, this might just be his night.
    In the trailer under the right field stands, at precisely 8:30 P.M. Eastern standard time, director Harry Coyle called the broadcast’s first shots, cued Joe Garagiola in the booth, and Game Six, the first World Series game ever played at night in Fenway Park, went out live to the nation and around the world on NBC. Garagiola made his opening remarks and then introduced the audience to Dick Stockton, who would handle play-by-play for the first half of the game, then turn it back over to Garagiola.
    Boston Celtics forward John “Hondo” Havlicek drew a big hand from the crowd as he and his wife, Beth, took their seats near the field. The thirty-five-year-old forward, a week away from starting his fourteenth season with the club, was one of the last remaining links to the remarkable 1960s Celtics dynasty that had captured eleven NBA championships in thirteen years. After most of that group, led by center and coach Bill Russell, retired, Havlicek had captained the Celtics to their first title in five years, in 1974, and his presence seemed to encourage the crowd to believe that tonight anything was possible for their Red Sox. With its smaller rosters, basketball had been the first of the major sports to start lavishing star players with contracts that made more