Summer of '68: The Season That Changed Baseball--And America--Forever (36 page)

In 1980, Carlton leads the Phillies to their first-ever world championship. Two years later, Carlton wins his fourth and final Cy Young Award. Recognized as the best pitcher in Phillies’ history, he is elected into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, in 1994, his first year of eligibility.

The night before the induction ceremony, at a banquet in the Otesaga Hotel in Cooperstown, New York, Tim McCarver tells the crowd, “If Carl Hubbell will be known as having the best screwball in the history of the game and Sandy Koufax the best curveball, Steve Carlton will go down as having the best slider in the history of the game.”

Afterward Bob Gibson corners McCarver and says his long-time catcher made a mistake. He should have said that Carlton had the best
left-handed
slider in the game. Of course, Gibson, a right-hander, believes his slider was the best.

Tim McCarver

Every great team needs a Boswell, somebody to sing its praises to the heavens, and nobody has done a better job over the years than Tim McCarver. In addition, he is remembered as a confidant, even a soul mate to many of the pitchers he caught. After being the starting catcher on the Cardinals’ three World Series teams, he is part of the stunning blockbuster trade with Philadelphia. There he catches Rick Wise’s no-hitter in 1971. After that season, Wise is traded to St. Louis for Steve Carlton and there McCarver helps the left-hander to his best season in the majors (27–10). But in the 1972 season, McCarver is dealt to Montreal, where he catches the second of Bill Stoneman’s two career no-hitters. The next season McCarver returns to St. Louis for almost two seasons before being traded to Boston and he returns to Philadelphia, where he plays four more seasons and again is reunited with Carlton. In fact, Carlton is so comfortable pitching to McCarver, rather than Bob Boone, the Phillies’ regular catcher, the joke becomes that the Carlton and McCarver will be buried sixty feet, six inches apart. McCarver retires in 1980, one of the few players who can claim that he played in four different decades.

After hanging up the tools of ignorance, McCarver gains a following on television, where he will be a central player in the baseball telecasts for all four major U.S. television networks. His partners in the broadcast booth include Don Drysdale, Al Michaels, Jim Palmer, Jack Buck, and Buck’s son, Joe. In the offseason, McCarver turns his attention to the Olympics and cohosts the primetime coverage with Paula Zahn in 1992. In addition, he releases an album of jazz standards (
Tim McCarver Sings Songs from the Great American Songbook
) in 2009.

Through it all, nobody can doubt McCarver’s allegiance and love of those great Cardinals teams of the 1960s. When appearing with good friend and former batterymate Bob Gibson on a
Major League Baseball Network
special about the 1968 World Series, McCarver still plays the role of the good catcher, the trusted sidekick. When Gibson appears reluctant to field queries from host Bob Costas about Curt Flood misplaying Jim Northup’s line drive in Game Seven, and the heartbreak of losing a contest that would have ranked the Cardinals among the best teams of all time, McCarver steps in, effortlessly answering for his good friend.

Studio 42
host Bob Costas adds that McCarver once said, “Bob Gibson was the kind of player that teammates didn’t just respect, they revered.”

“I still feel that way,” McCarver replies, “I’m happy to say.”

Curt Flood

Some trades and transactions shake up teams. A rare few remake the game itself. At first the seven-player deal between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Philadelphia Phillies including outfielder Curt Flood appears a far cry from Babe Ruth coming to the Yankees or Jackie Robinson signing with the Dodgers. But Flood has no interest in playing in Philadelphia, a city experiencing strong racial tensions at the time. Flood calls Philadelphia “the nation’s northernmost southern city.” In addition, he objects to being treated like a piece of property. Flood asks new commissioner Bowie Kuhn, who has taken over for William Eckert, to make him a free agent. When that request is denied, Flood decides to take the matter to court.

In January 1970, he files a lawsuit stating that Major League Baseball has violated the nation’s antitrust laws. With the backing of the Players Association, Flood’s case rises from the district and circuit levels, reaching the Supreme Court in the summer of 1972. Although the highest court in the land eventually rules against Flood, the case sets the stage for the 1975 Andy Messersmith-Dave McNally rulings and ultimately opens the door to free agency in the national pastime.

While professional ballplayers coming after those court decisions reap the rewards, the battle comes at a huge cost to Flood. He returns to the field in 1971, signing for $110,000 with the Washington Senators, but the game has passed him by. Flood plays only thirteen games and then retires. He spends a year in the Oakland Athletics’ broadcast booth and then moves to Europe, where he spends much of his time painting and writing.

Marvin Miller, the Players Association’s former executive director, points out that when Flood decided to fight baseball’s reserve clause, “he was perhaps the sport’s premier center fielder. And yet he chose to fight an injustice, knowing that even if by some miracle he won, his career as a professional player would be over. At no time did he waver in his commitment and determination. He had experienced something that was inherently unfair and was determined to right the wrong, not so much for himself, but for those who would come after him. Few praised him for this, then or now. There is no Hall of Fame for people like Curt.”

Bob Gibson, Flood’s best friend in the game, adds, “The modern player has gotten fat from the efforts of Curt Flood and has returned him no gratitude or any other form of appreciation. I’ve often thought of what an appropriate and decent thing it would be if every player in the major leagues turned over one percent of his paycheck just one time to Curt Flood.”

Flood dies in 1997 of throat cancer at the age of 59.

OTHERS

Catfish Hunter

In 1974, Oakland Athletics owner Charlie Finley fails to pay an annuity clause in Catfish Hunter’s contract. Eventually that makes the right-hander a free agent—and among the first to take advantage of the sea change Curt Flood’s case has ushered in. Hunter signs a five-year contract worth $3.75 million—a princely sum at the time—with the New York Yankees. With Hunter as their staff ace, the Yankees reach the World Series three consecutive years, winning twice. Upon his retirement, Hunter can look back on having started nine games in the Fall Classic, tying him with Bob Gibson.

In 1999, Hunter dies of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Lou Gehrig’s disease, only a year after being diagnosed. Elected to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, his plaque reads, “The bigger the game, the better he pitched.”

Luis Tiant

The right-hander’s fears about what will happen to his pitching arm without an offseason of winterball prove to be astute. In 1969, Luis Tiant loses a league-worst twenty games, issues a league-worst 129 walks, and is traded from Cleveland to Minnesota before the next season. He gets off to good start with the Twins, winning six games, but then breaks his right scapula. Tiant is released in 1971 and many believe his baseball career is over. But the Cuban right-hander signs a minor-league contract with the Boston Red Sox and goes 15–6 in 1972. He averages more than seventeen victories a season between 1973 and 1978, and stars in the 1975 World Series, when Boston loses in seven games to Cincinnati.

“You can talk about anybody else on that team (1975 Boston Red Sox) you want to, but when the chips are on the line, Luis Tiant is the greatest competitor I’ve ever seen,” says Baltimore Orioles pitcher Jim Palmer.

Tiant finishes his nineteen-year career with the Yankees, Pirates, and Angels.

Frank Howard

“The Capital Punisher” follows up his forty-four home runs in 1968 with forty-eight the following season and forty-four again in 1970. But when the Washington Senators move to Texas, becoming the Rangers, Howard’s best days at the plate prove to be behind him. Near the end of the 1972 season, he is traded to Detroit, where he finishes his major-league career, retiring in 1973.

Larry Dierker

After winning a dozen games in 1968, Larry Dierker reaches the twenty-victory plateau for the first and only time in his fourteen-year career the following year. He plays all but one of those seasons with the Houston Astros, firing a no-hitter in 1976 against the Montreal Expos. After retiring in 1977, he works for eighteen years as a radio and television analyst. He then manages the Astros for five seasons, winning four Central Division titles.

Nolan Ryan

After finishing the ’68 season, his first full year in the majors, with a record of 6–9, Nolan Ryan nearly quits the game. That’s how frustrated he is with his inability to throw strikes and win consistently. In the end, Ryan decides to tough it out with the New York Mets, winning a key game in relief during the team’s amazing 1969 World Series run. Before the 1972 season, Ryan is traded along with pitcher Don Rose, outfielder Leroy Stanton, and catching prospect Francisco Estrada to the California Angels for infielder Jim Fregosi. “That deal was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Ryan says. “In Anaheim, I got a chance to pitch on a regular basis and to develop my game.”

On the West Coast, “The Express” smoothes out his delivery and goes on to win 324 games in the majors, including seven no-hitters. He is elected to the Hall of Fame in 1999, with 98.79 percent of the vote, second-highest all-time to Tom Seaver (98.84 percent in 1992).

Milt Pappas

The right-hander goes 10–8 for Atlanta after his trade from Cincinnati, which many believe was initiated due to his protest regarding the Reds’ decision to play while other teams mourned Robert Kennedy’s assassination. Pappas retires after the 1973 season, with a career record of 209–164, including a no-hitter, in seventeen seasons.

But many in the game remember Pappas more for the curious disappearance of his wife, Carole, than any achievement on the mound. On a summer day in September 1982, she takes the car to do some errands and disappears without a trace. Pappas makes a national appeal for any information about her whereabouts and the family even consults a psychic, but to no avail. Five years later, Carole Pappas and her 1980 Buick are found in the deepest part of a small pond blocks away from the family home in the Chicago suburbs.

“How she got there,” Pappas writes in his memoir,
Out at Home
, “nobody knows for sure because nobody saw her go in. It was a mystery in 1982, a mystery in 1987, and it’s still a mystery.”

Bill Russell

The 1968–69 season marks Russell’s third year as player-coach for the Boston Celtics. After limping into the playoffs, the Celtics once again catch fire, defeating the Los Angeles Lakers and newly acquired Wilt Chamberlain in seven games. Afterward Russell retires, having guided Boston to eleven championships in thirteen years. Decades later, Russell is considered one of the best centers ever to have played the game.

Roone Arledge

After putting the Olympics on the TV map, Arledge transforms professional football into primetime viewing with ABC’s
Monday Night Football.
In 1994,
Sports Illustrated
magazine ranks Arledge third, behind Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan, in its list of forty individuals who have had the greatest impact on the world of sports in the last four decades.

Jim Ryun

Before the 1968 Summer Games in Mexico City, Jim Ryun and Dr. Jack Daniels believed a time of 3:39 or so would be good enough to win 1,500 meters. But Ryun’s 3:37.8 at altitude proves to be well behind Kip Keino’s 3:34.9. In 1981, Ryun tells
The Runner
magazine, “We had thought that 3:39 would win and I ran under that. I considered it like winning a gold medal; I had done my very best and I still believe I would have won at sea level.” Ryun will compete again four years later in the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany. But he is tripped and falls during a 1,500-meter qualifying heat. Despite protests by the U.S. team, the International Olympic Committee refuses to reinstate him for the event final. His best Olympic showing will remain the silver medal in 1968.

Joe Namath

The AFL Player of the Year caps off the 1968 season with MVP honors in Super Bowl III. Namath backs up his pregame “guarantee” of victory with a 206-yard passing production in New York’s 16–7 victory over Baltimore, assuring the competitive viability of the AFL-NFL Super Bowl series. Despite knee injuries, Namath plays thirteen years at the professional level.

Tom Hayden

The political activist remembers having little time for baseball or his hometown team in 1968. “Sure, I was aware of the irony that it was the Tigers’ year, and that my high school friend (Bill) Freehan was having his greatest year,” he says, “ but it was like being on two different planets.”

Hayden goes on to become “the single greatest figure of the 1960s student movement,” according a
New York Times
book review. He serves eighteen years in the California legislature, writes nineteen books, and teaches at Harvard. In addition, he marries actress-activist Jane Fonda. He’s often considered to be the basis for the Kris Kristofferson song line “partly truth and partly fiction, a walking contradiction.” Through it all, Hayden never forgets his love of baseball.

In the 1980s, he begins playing again and attends the Dodgers’ fantasy camp in Vero Beach, Florida. Despite being out of shape, he sticks with it and is MVP and batting champion the next spring. He still plays and coaches in the Los Angeles area.

“All at once the desire grabbed me,” Hayden says. “I wasn’t finished with baseball.... Right now, I am seventy-one and play first base in a dirt league, hitting .300 and slipping. With good weather, I play all year.”