Baseball: The Day the Old Pros Won

Sports fans, like 19th century novelists and Avis executives, believe in handicap justice. And when No. 2 man ages heroics despite hardship, the cheering section becomes legion. Of the 200 million or so people tuned in to the Se ries around the world last week, the folks in St. Louis and unreconstructed admirers of expert, well-rounded baseball teams were rooting for the Cardinals. Just about everybody else was discovering why the Red Sox—a 200-to-1 shot for the American League pennant and a 2-to-3 underdog in the Series—had cost Boston its Brahmin cool all summer long. As the Sox, down one game to three, incredibly fought to tie it all up at 3-3, the carillon of Boston’s Park Street Church pealed out The Impossible Dream, the city’s No. 1 ecclesiastical fan—Richard Cardinal Gushing—bestowed a blessing on the team, and the Boston fire department announced that it would sound every siren it owned the minute the Red Sox won the seventh and final game.

Sweet Revenge. Impossible dreams have a way of ending. In that seventh game, Manager Red Schoendienst’s cool, precisely professional Cardinals picked up and flew away with the Series, giving Boston only three hits and two runs, while clobbering five pitchers for ten hits and seven runs themselves.

Red Sox Triple Crown Slugger Carl Yastrzemski, with nine hits and three homers in the first six games, managed only a single in four trips to the plate. Righthander Jim Lonborg, trying for a third Series victory on two days rest, came out wild and weary. Manager Dick Williams kept praying until the sixth inning, then mercifully took him out. By then, St. Louis had a six-run lead and the game was long gone.

For the Cards, it was sweet revenge against the youngster who had handled them like Little Leaguers in his two previous starts. Every Redbird but Orlando Cepeda got on base. There was Shortstop Dal Maxvill, only .227 for the season, booming out a tremendous triple to start everything off in the third inning. And Castoff Yankee Roger Maris, driving in still another run, his seventh of the Series, to prove that he’s the money player everybody said he wasn’t. And Second Baseman Julian Javier, batting cleanup by default during Cepeda’s slump and pounding out a three-run, sixth-inning homer. Then there was Lou Brock. In six games, he had collected ten hits, stolen four bases and scored seven runs. So in the seventh he rapped out two more hits—and proceeded to steal three more bases, thus breaking a Series record set way back in 1909 by Honus Wagner. “My boy Lou,” said Red, “stole everything but the lobster from Boston Harbor.”

Not Even at Ticktacktoe. If ever a player earned the “most valuable” honor in a Series it was Pitcher Bob Gibson, winner of the first, fourth and now the seventh games. “I don’t even let my ten-year-old daughter beat me at ticktacktoe,” said Gibson. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s to lose.” Ten Boston batters struck out trying to get hold of his searing fastball, then Gibson frosted his own cake by smashing a fifth-inning home run into the center-field stands. When the statisticians added up, his Series record came to 27 innings of brilliant pitching, with 14 hits and a thin total of three runs for Bos ton. That was enough to put Bob in the books, tied with another oldtime idol, Christy Mathewson, for winning the most games in a single Series. And it was more than enough to earn Gibson the outstanding-player award, plus the sports car that goes with it.

Not that “El Birdos,” as Cepeda calls them, can’t afford four wheels of their own. The victory meant a fat paycheck of $8,900 per man, v. $5,600 for the Red Sox. Something else too. Just before their homeward-bound jet took off from Boston—and as the first of 8,000 welcomers arrived at St. Louis’ Lam bert Airport—a surprise message was telegraphed from the White House inviting the Cardinals to stop over in Washington for a presidential reception. Owner August A. Busch Jr., an old L.B.J. pal, regretfully declined. Wired Gussie: “Our fans are waiting.”