Free Five Seasons: A Baseball Companion by Roger Angell Page A

banners he had provided them, sustained a continuous jubilee, like bullfrogs in a June shower. The A’s led by 3–1 and 4–2, but Morgan was walked twice, and each time he whistled around the bases in dazzling style to score on a single by Tolan. It was all tied up in the ninth, then, when Geronimo singled, and was neatly sacrificed to second. An infield error now brought up Rose, this time batting left-handed against Rollie Fingers, the Oakland mound incumbent. Fingers (whose mustache aspires toward the Salvador Dali rococo ideal) had won the previous game in relief, but now he sighed disconsolately, fiddled uncharacteristically, and at last offered up the pitch, which Rose redirected smartly into right field to deliver the winning run. Score for the Top Three for the day: three runs, five hits, two walks, three stolen bases, four runs batted in. Oakland, undiscouraged as always, put on its leadoff man in the home half, and Dave Duncan (a catcher with an Oberammergau coiffure and beard) singled the pinch-runner, Odom, along to third. With one out, Campaneris fouled out to Morgan in very short right field, and after the catch Odom impulsively launched himself down the inviting ninety-foot homestretch. He negotiated eighty-nine feet and six inches of the distance before encountering Johnny Bench and the ball, and then most unhappily got up and prepared to join the rest of us on the somewhat longer journey back to Cincinnati.
    The penultimate meeting was played the next afternoon, a Saturday—also prime viewing time, which meant that the teams were not permitted the customary travel holiday. It was probably just as well, however, for in Riverfront Stadium a bone-chilling easterly suggested that this pastime had already overstayed its season. Vida Blue, given his first start of the Series because of the compressed pitching schedule, did not seem to have his hummer and kept falling behind the Red batters. Bench homered in the fourth, and the Reds sent four men to the plate in the fifth, and five men to the plate in the sixth, and (joyfully falling upon Oakland’s second-line pitching) ten men to the plate in the seventh, to wrap up an 8–1 landslide. It was a sad end to Vida’s sad year, but there was some satisfaction in watching the Reds’ sluggers doing their thing at last. The Cincinnati fans were utterly transported, and with reason: this was the first World Series game to be won by the Reds at home since 1940.
    The full seven, then, with a resolution that was still impossible to forecast or guess at. Strangely, no single player had emerged—in the manner of a Clemente, a Brooks Robinson, a Brock—to put his stamp and style on this Series. The closeness of the games and the continuous action on the field almost concealed the fact that the level of play had been less than distinguished. Most of the Cincinnati starting pitchers had been inadequate, both teams had suffered inordinate difficulties in executing the double play, the Oakland pitchers and catcher Gene Tenace had among them surrendered eleven stolen bases, and the teams together were hitting a desultory .203. Still, the original elements of the drama remained, now deepened to a wonderful expectancy—the Oakland pitching and woolly élan against the Reds’ hitting, speed, and pride. Something would give way here today.
    Dick Williams, in an attempt to bolster his hitting and defense simultaneously, moved Tenace to first base, put Duncan behind the plate, and started Angel Mangual in center. (Tenace looked understandably edgy about his new responsibilities. “Tomorrow,” he said during batting practice, “I’ll probably be playing goalie.”) Mangual made a difference in the very first half-inning, when he struck a long drive off Jack Billingham to straightaway center field. Bobby Tolan raced in, absolutely misjudging the play, and then made a leap for the sailing ball, which glanced off his glove and rolled to the fence, with Mangual winding up on