Free Five Seasons: A Baseball Companion by Roger Angell

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 1–0. 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 balls 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