You Can't Make This Up: Miracles, Memories, and the Perfect Marriage of Sports and Television (12 page)

The Giants had some good players. The outfield consisted of Gary Matthews, Garry Maddox, and Bobby Bonds. Solid. Also, the team had been experimenting for a couple of seasons with Dave Kingman at third base. Kingman would go on to hit 442 home runs over the course of his career with several teams, though never quite living up to the incredibly high expectations that accompanied his perceived potential.

Anyway, by the middle of that April, the Giants were compelled to make a change at third—because it was becoming too dangerous for fans to sit behind first base. Night after night, Kingman would field a ground ball and wind up uncorking a throw into the fifth row behind first. He would be moved back to more comfortable roles at first base and the outfield by the end of April.

Very quickly, I could sense the difference between the Reds and the Giants in terms of chemistry and energy. The contrast was stark. Before the season was a week old, the Reds came to Candlestick Park—my old team against my new team. Before the game, when I walked into the Reds clubhouse, the players treated me like a long-lost brother, which felt great. In the second game of that series, Tony Perez came to the plate. Having watched his every at bat for three years, I obviously knew his strengths and weaknesses. The Giants didn’t. Scouting wasn’t what it is today. Cronyism prevailed. Some teams, like the Giants, would have a scout behind the plate with a notebook in one hand and a beer in the other.

So Perez comes up. In left field, Gary Matthews is playing him toward the line. In center, Garry Maddox is playing in the left center field gap. And Bobby Bonds is shading Perez toward the right field line. There was this enormous gap in right center. On the air, I said, “Well, the Giants are playing Perez exactly the opposite of the way they should. Perez’s primary power is to right center field.” As if on cue, he hits a home run over the right center-field fence.

Two months later, with the Giants at around .500, we ended a road trip in Philadelphia. The Giants led 3–0 going into the bottom of the eighth inning, when the Phillies scored four runs and won the game, 4–3. You can’t lose in much more dispiriting fashion.

When the Reds would suffer a loss like that (which was not often), the bus ride out of the stadium would be a quiet one. Winning was too important to the Reds. Now, following
this
game, I witnessed how much the approach to and importance of winning could vary. The Reds’ bus would have had a collective mute button on, but on this day, when the Giants filed onto the bus, an outsider would have had no idea whether they had won or lost. The guys just wanted to get out of Dodge and fly back to San Francisco. I was still upset about the way the game had unfolded. And I then came to the realization that I cared more about whether the team had won or lost than most of the players did.

I had received my baseball master’s and Ph.D. degrees at the knees of Chuck Tanner in Hawaii and Sparky Anderson in Cincinnati. I remember telling a friend it was like having Socrates and Aristotle tutoring you in philosophy. Now I’m in San Francisco, and the manager is Charlie Fox.

In mid-June, we started a road trip with a weekend series in Pittsburgh, and in the Friday night opener, Fox wanted to make a pitching change with one out and a Pirates runner on second in the bottom of the sixth. He also wanted to bring in a new left fielder who could bat third in the top of the Giants’ seventh since the 7-8-9 hitters would be due up and he could insert the new reliever in the six spot. In other words, your basic “double switch.” He signaled to the bullpen to bring in the new pitcher, Elias Sosa. I immediately sensed a problem. We went to commercial during the pitching change, and I then watched as Fox proceeded to get into an argument with the plate umpire, Nick Colosi. I knew exactly what was going on. Thank you, Chuck Tanner and Sparky. Charlie had forgotten to tell Colosi that he was inserting two players simultaneously—the double switch. When he had signaled for Sosa alone, Sosa was immediately placed in the nine slot. He had forgotten to tell Colosi he was also making the change in left. Moments later, when he went back to the umpire to tell him what he had meant to do, the ship had left the harbor. He’d blown the double switch. The argument that followed was pure histrionics. Back from commercial, I’m all over it. “Here’s what Charlie meant to do. Here’s what happened. Here are the rules.” I remember thinking I’d been spoiled. I’d been with Tanner and Sparky and now I’m with . . . ? Okay. Whatever.

I was off in the seventh inning and went over to the writers’ area in the press box to check in with our beat reporters. “Can you guys believe how he messed that up?” I said.

“Messed up what?” came the response. “What happened?”

“Charlie blew the double switch. He lost track of the rule.”

They were still clueless. Our three reporters had been their beats for a long, long time and riveting their attention on any game’s nuances was not necessarily a priority. Sometimes an in-game nap would be in order.

After the game, on my way to the bus I stopped by the press box again and saw one of the writers. “Did you ask him about it? What did he say?”

“He said that he really didn’t want to make the double switch,” the writer responded.

Charlie probably figured the writers really didn’t know what was going on, and that answer could help him avoid being pressed any further. Of course, I knew it was total bull. Then I got on the bus. Fox was already in the front seat where the manager typically sits. I said to him, “What happened in the sixth inning?”

I had felt that Charlie was always a little uncomfortable with me, knowing that I had spent three years with Sparky Anderson, and that I understood a lot of things that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. That night, though, Charlie acknowledged to me that he had blown it. At least he owned up to his mistake.

Still, the team was slogging along and he’d be fired about two weeks later.

FOX’S SUCCESSOR, WES WESTRUM,
was another player I watched as a kid in Brooklyn—he played for the New York Giants. In fact, he was on the cover of the inaugural issue of
Sports Illustrated
in 1954, crouched behind the plate with Eddie Matthews batting in Milwaukee. Now in 1974, he had reappeared, another baseball card from my childhood come to life. He was an okay manager and a very decent man with some idiosyncrasies. Then again, who doesn’t have some? Years before kids would text “OMG” to each other on iPhones, he always used the phrase “Omigod.” Omigod, we have to go the bullpen early. Omigod, I hope he gets out of his slump. It was his favorite expression, so much so that among several of the players, it became his nickname.

Westrum also had to deal with Dave Kingman. That was not necessarily easy. Kingman could be very off-putting, even with teammates and the coaches, and almost always with the media. But for whatever reason, he liked me and we got along very well.

By August, the seeds had been sown—the Giants were destined to finish well down in the National League West standings. In the middle of a twelve-game road trip, we flew from Philadelphia to St. Louis on an off day. A three-game series with the Cardinals would start the next night. It was one of those stretches of oppressive summer days in the Midwest—a thousand degrees by noon with 99 percent humidity. In those years, I was playing a lot of tennis. On the bus from the airport to the hotel, I casually mentioned to no one in particular that I was looking for a tennis game. As it turned out, Kingman would always bring a tennis racket on the road. Dave overhears me and says, let’s go. I’ll meet you on the court at one thirty. We were staying at Stouffer’s Hotel downtown, next to the Mississippi River, with an outdoor court on the property.

Playing in intense heat had never bothered me. We played three sets. The next day, I run into Kingman at breakfast, and he says, you want to play again this afternoon? I say sure. We meet at the court at one. Our game with the Cardinals that night would start at around seven thirty. Westrum had recently chosen to platoon Kingman with the left-hand-hitting first baseman Ed Goodson. For several days, Kingman had been limited to a couple of pinch-hitting appearances, and knew he wouldn’t be in the lineup that night against Bob Gibson.

So, on that sweltering afternoon before the game, we played for two hours, and at about three o’clock, we stood in the hotel lobby waiting for an elevator, holding our drenched shirts and our rackets and looking as if we’d just escaped a car wash. And when the elevator door opened, who would come out along with a couple of his coaches? You got it—Wes Westrum. Busch Stadium was a couple of blocks away, and they were walking over to the ballpark. Westrum looked at Kingman and—seeing his now part-time first baseman covered in sweat, without a shirt, holding a racket—did a double take. Eyes wide open, he exclaimed, “
Omigod. Playing tennis?
”

As Westrum was getting off the elevator, Kingman and I were getting in. Dave waited a beat and responded with perfect timing as the elevator doors were closing in front of him.

Looking straight at Westrum, he said, “Hey, got to get my exercise somehow.”

I WAS NEVER SHY
about criticizing the Giants on the air when I thought it was deserved. One night, after
another
dispiriting loss, I actually said, “Folks, you should come on out to Candlestick to see for yourselves how badly the Giants are playing. It’s just too hard for me to describe.”

From time to time, my broadcast partner Art Eckman and I had to have some fun. One night late in the season, with the Giants well out of contention, and with again tens of thousands of empty seats at Candlestick Park, I was handed an attendance figure that once more was embarrassingly low. The number was around three thousand. And then I thought—
why not?
So I said something to the effect of “Tonight’s attendance—well, why don’t I just tell you
who’s
here: Jim McAlpine has driven in from Atherton. Steven and Sue Waxman and their three kids have come up from San Jose. Harvey Faloukian and his cousin have driven down from Mill Valley . . . .”

The Rascal was back.

Joey Amalfitano—the Giants’ third base coach at the time, and a very funny guy—had my favorite line about the team’s dismal attendance. In early 1974, Patty Hearst had been kidnapped—as, it later was discovered, by the Symbionese Liberation Army. For a number of months, no one had any idea where she was or if she was dead or alive. It was front-page news every day. So, one night in early July, I’m standing by the cage during batting practice, and Amalfitano looks toward the upper deck and says, “You know, I wonder if anyone’s checked there for Patty Hearst. Nobody’s been up there for at least five years.”

Obviously, I wanted the Giants to do well and I wanted the team to sell tickets. But an announcer who’s too much of a homer and overlooks obvious mistakes can lose credibility. The hitch is that, even today, some owners and team executives see negativity as an act of disloyalty and are reluctant to give their broadcasters much latitude. In Cincinnati, I understood how far I could and couldn’t go, but the team was generally so good that the positives vastly outweighed the negatives. The Giants and KSFO, to their credit, rarely interfered or tried to censor me. I was fortunate in that regard because across San Francisco Bay were the Oakland Athletics, owned at that time by one Charles O. Finley. He had a different philosophy. He would have cut the microphone cord as I was talking.

One everlasting memory from that season: Linda was pregnant and due to deliver our second child in late July. Four years prior, our son Steven had been born about three weeks early, so I felt comfortable about being home from July 11 through July 24, when the Giants had a long home stand leading into the All-Star break. But July 24 comes along, and the baby still hasn’t been born, and now my dilemma was that the Giants were going on an eight-game, seven-day road trip. Linda still didn’t appear ready to go into labor, and I figured if I was on the road, and she sensed that she would be ready to go to the hospital, I could get back quickly enough.

So we get to our first stop—Cincinnati—and I’m on the phone with her every couple of hours, glad to keep hearing that everything is copacetic. I figure if we can get through the weekend series in Houston, I can miss the following two games in Atlanta and make sure I’ll be home by Monday night the twenty-ninth. Everything was good through the twenty-seventh, and I was counting down the forty-eight hours until I was scheduled to fly home.

But sure enough, as I get into bed after that Saturday night game in Houston, the phone rings at about 2
A
.
M
. Linda is already at Stanford Hospital with her sister Diana, and delivery is imminent. Our daughter, Jennifer Elaine Michaels, arrived in the wee hours of Sunday morning, July 28. And there I was—for crying out loud—at a Marriott hotel about a mile from the Astrodome.

Today, the vast majority of professional athletes wouldn’t think twice about missing a game to be present for the birth of a child. At that time, though, expectations were different. Most professional athletes who would have been in my circumstance would still have been on the road—in uniform—playing the game as scheduled.

Forty years later, it’s so different. Conventional thinking has changed. Either way, I’ll never stop wishing I could have that one day back for a do-over.

THE GIANTS FINISHED 72-90
in 1974. It was time for a shakeup. So, shortly after the season ended, the Giants and Yankees effected a blockbuster trade. Bobby Bonds would be shipped to New York, and Bobby Murcer—who had become a regular in 1969 and was heralded to become the next Mickey Mantle—would come to San Francisco. The Giants didn’t get much better, but the trade brought me a great buddy.

I used to call Bobby Murcer “the Pig Farmer.” Bobby knew how to play the cornpone role, but he was smart as a whip. He was not unlike Don Meredith in that regard. Candlestick was a terrible place to play. Where else could you have a number of frigid nights in
July
? So Murcer would often try to keep his bat warm by placing it in the sauna in the Giants’ clubhouse. Then just before he’d come out to the on-deck circle, Murcer would send the batboy back to fetch it. Though he later became an anti-tobacco activist, Bobby always had a chaw of tobacco in his cheek. Bobby and Kay Murcer and their kids came over to our house in Menlo Park for a barbecue on one off night, and my son Steven, then five years old, was mesmerized by Bobby and the cup he carried around to collect the tobacco juice that he’d spit into it. When the Murcers left, I remember saying to Steven, “I know you like Bobby, but don’t
ever
do that.”