Game Six Read Free Page A

restless mind leapt to the morning’s systematic checklist as he popped his first stick of gum and headed for the shower. Let’s get it on.
    Two floors below, the Reds’ All-Star catcher Johnny Lee Bench, still in the grip of a lingering, miserable virus, registered the sky outside, his weather eye delivering an instant calculation— ball game today —then rolled over and went back to sleep.
     
    IN A SUITE at the Parker House, David Israel, a twenty-four-year-old sports reporter for the afternoon Washington Star, had stayed up long after midnight, dictating his game-day column to an inexperiencedreceptionist at the newspaper’s switchboard. Only one year out of Northwestern’s prestigious journalism school, Israel had brashly conned his way into his deluxe digs for the whole weekend when the rains washed out Saturday’s Game Six. As the deluge lingered, his suite had become a crash pad for a number of other reporters, who had either checked out of their own rooms by the time the game was called or missed the day’s last shuttle back to New York. When he woke up that morning, two of Israel’s journalistic idols were sacked out in his living room: NBC’s Dick Schaap and the New York Times baseball scholar George Vecsey. Schaap cracked open an eye as Israel called down for coffee; ever solicitous of his elders, Israel apologized profusely for waking Schaap up the night before during his lengthy, frustrating phone call to the newspaper. His regular dictationist—a sharp young cookie named Maureen Dowd—had been unavailable, and it seemed the woman he ended up with had never seen a baseball game before.
    “I knew you were in trouble when you had to spell ‘World Series,’” said Schaap.
     
    IN SUBURBAN MILTON, ten miles to the south, Luis Tiant was the first one out of bed in his full and bustling household, padding to the kitchen before the kids woke up for school. Still trying to shake off his own nasty cold, he drank his first coffee and looked out at bleak autumn sunlight brushing the lush green wood in his backyard, just off the eleventh fairway of Wollaston Golf Club. His back and shoulder still felt tender from his last outing, a prodigious 163-pitch complete-game victory in Game Four at Cincinnati the previous Wednesday.
    Okay. So we play. Doc says my back’s okay, but this is late October in Boston and it’s going to be fucking cold tonight.
    He downed one of Doc Shapiro’s miracle anti-inflammatories. Morning prayers to follow.
     
    AT HIS FURNISHED APARTMENT a few miles to the east of Milton, in Quincy, Red Sox center fielder Fred Michael Lynn had stayed up well past midnight with his wife and some of his young teammates, watching O. J. Simpson’s Buffalo Bills lose their first game of the year to the New York Giants on Monday Night Football. Like the Juice, Fred had been recruited to play football at USC, returning punts and backing up future Hall of Fame wide receiver Lynn Swann, before deciding to focus exclusively during his last two years on baseball for Rod Dedeaux. Hearing this unwelcome news, USC’s imperious football coach John McKay had told Lynn he was making the biggest mistake of his life, and didn’t speak to him again for twenty years. After starring on three consecutive NCAA championship teams for Coach Dedeaux and now, less than a year later, putting together what was beyond dispute the most sensational rookie season of any player in the history of pro baseball, no one else ever second-guessed Fred Lynn’s decision again. Bigger postseason awards were in the offing, but Lynn was about to learn that morning he’d been the leading vote getter on the Associated Press Major-League All-Star team for 1975.
    They hadn’t played ball now in five days, since flying back to Boston from Cincinnati early Friday morning, the Red Sox’s longest break between games since spring training began back in March. From the weather reports on the radio Lynn figured they’d finally get in Game Six