busch nostalgia: 7 runs in 9th
with busch stadium closing this year, a heavy dose of base sentimentality is inevitable from old fools like me; might as well get on with it.
leaving the list of all-time greatest games/moments to better minds, i’m going to write instead this season about games / moments that history has forgotten . . . . but that i remember. they took place not in the playoffs or during a pennant chase, but on some unremarkable saturday afternoon or wednesday evening in some may or july way back when. . . . .
it’s august 22, 1977; i am 14, and the cardinals are in fourth place. an atypically robust fourth place — thirteen games above .500 — but still 9 games behind philadelphia in the nl east. they are 5-4 on a long homestand that still has four games to run, and the dodgers are in town on a monday night for the first of two. la leads the nl west by 9.5 games over the twice-champion reds, and they look for all the world like champs themselves. these dodgers have ev’ything the cards of the mid-1970s lack. they have power — a league-leading 191 hrs in 1977, including four 30-hr men (one of them, reggie smith, a cardinal as recently as 1976); the cards will finish 23rd among the 24 mlb teams with 96 hr. the dodgers have steady defense — a.981 fielding percentage, 2d best in the league — while the cards commit nearly an error a game. above all the dodgers have outstanding pitching — an mlb-low 3.22 team era. in those innocent pre-sabr years, not even the best-informed baseball fan attributes the la pitchers’ excellent stat lines to dodger stadium; la’s pitchers are simply good, that’s all anyone knows. and the cardinals’ pitchers, as ever, are just good enough to drive you crazy; they yield half a run more per game than the dodgers’ moundsmen and will rate 7th in the league at year’s end.
nine years removed from their last postseason appearance, the cardinals have finally generated a new crop of stars-in-waiting. only one player, lou brock, remains from the championship teams of the ’60s; even manager red schoendienst is gone, replaced just this season by stern vern rapp. other than brock (who is 38), the entire starting lineup is 27 or younger. it’s led by ted simmons — an eight-year veteran but still only 27 years old — and two extremely talented homegrown players, 21-year-old garry templeton and 23-year-old keith hernandez. great expectations hover. the pitching staff, just as young and nearly as promising, features 27-year-old bob forsch (en route to 20 wins in 1977); reigning nl era champ (and future cy young winner) john denny, aged 24; and pete falcone, a hard-throwing 23-year-old lefty who already has two 12-win seasons under his belt.
denny is on the mound on this particular night, paired against the dodgers’ burt hooten (who enters the game 9-7, 2.64). denny opened his era-title defense in spectacular fashion, racing out to a 7-0 start, but since then he has suffered five straight losses and spent six weeks on the disabled list; his era now stands at a disheartening 4.05. and denny’s off again tonight: three singles plate a run with nobody out in the third; a hit batsman jams the sacks with two outs, and then steve yeager parks one — a grand slam and a 5-1 dodger lead. try to recall (those of you who’re gray-stubbled enough) what a 5-1 deficit meant in those days, when runs didn’t just fall from the sky and 414 feet of heavy air stood between home plate and the centerfield wall at busch stadium. you weren’t going to jump right back into the game with a couple of quick-strike homers. 5-1 was imposing — roughly akin to a 20-point gap in the nba.
and the cards don’t cut into it against hooten; he sails through the lineup, letting only one man advance into scoring position. the seats start to empty in the 7th inning, and after the redbirds go meekly in the bottom of the 8th departing fans choke the exits; garbage time has arrived, and not even a 9th-inning appearance by the mad hungarian can redeem it. hrabosky’s ineffectiveness (a run on 2 hits) wipes out the last vestige of hope, along with nearly all of the remaining spectators; the few souls who remain from the paid crowd of 28,222 are all ones who, in today’s parlance, need to get a life.
jerry mumphrey’s leadoff single in the 9th doesn’t make their loyalty appear any less foolish; nor does templeton’s ensuing triple to make it 6-2. and the fans know it; nobody thinks this “rally” will lead anywhere, and the crowd does not roar. nor is lasorda particularly concerned; he lifts hooten for a mop-up guy named lance rautzhan, a rookie lhp appearing in only his 10th big league game. simmons chases temp’ton home with a single to make it 6-3, but still . . . . c’mon. hernandez though doubles simmons home and takes third on an error, and now it’s 6-4 with nobody out, the tying run is at the plate, and those few diehards who remain in their seats look up from their beers and finally start to pay attention again.
charlie hough relieves rautzhan and promptly knuckles one past yeager; hernandez trots home to make it 6-5, and hopeful cheers echo off empty seats. but mike anderson strikes out, and with ken reitz and mike tyson now due to hit it seems that fantasy will yield, as it inevitably must, to reality. reitz though musters a single, and tyson singles the pinch-runner (rick bosetti) into scoring position, setting up a confrontation for the ages: charlie hough against roger freed.
freed is in the midst of one of the most improbable seasons in baseball history. he came into the 1977 season with 511 career at-bats, 13 homers, a .221 average and 133 strikeouts. he might generously be described as a poor man’s dave kingman; ungenerously we might say he’s a poor man’s joe lis. but in 1977, freed inexplicably becomes jimmie foxx. in his first 9 at-bats (liberally dispersed across the first seven weeks of the season) he gets 5 hits. as of july 4 he’s hitting .333 (albeit in highly limited playing time); a week later he starts four games in a row and goes 7 for 12, lifting his average to .405. at which point it becomes quite clear that roger freed has been touched by supernatural forces. no one knows what spirit(s) he has invoked nor what price his soul will ultimately pay, but there’s no question about it: freed is charmed. his every at-bat seems potently fraught. he is the perfect batter for this moment: a man in the midst of a miracle season trying to cap off a miracle comeback. a cone of celestial light bathes him as he stands just outside the batter’s box, waiting out a conference at the mound — ron perranoski counseling hough on how to pitch to a shaman or some such. the conference ends, and freed digs in; hough delivers, and pow! there she goes, into the left-centerfield bleachers.
a walkoff homerun — that rarest of feats for the 1970s cardinals. a seven-run ninth-inning rally — rare even by today’s hyperoffensive standards. the cards mob roger freed at the plate, cheered on by the handful of don quixotes who still people the seats. across the city, meanwhile, about 24,000 early-departing fans listen with mixed emotions as buck and shannon call the bottom of the 9th; with every base hit their sense of shame and self-reproach grows, and they root that much harder for the rally to fall short and redeem their judgment.
the "roger freed game" (as posterity knows it) represents a pinnacle for that particular crop of cardinals. for that one night they fulfilled their promise, rose up and defeated a champion. two nights later they would reach their high-water mark, 16 games over .500; though they played together three more years, this particular group of players would never again achieve such loft. the great herzog purge of 1980-81 scattered that talented young st louis roster to the four winds. only hernandez and forsch would remain; only they would ultimately fulfill the promise of the 1977 team.
see the box score at retrosheet — and thanks to them, as always, for the invaluable work they do.
leaving the list of all-time greatest games/moments to better minds, i’m going to write instead this season about games / moments that history has forgotten . . . . but that i remember. they took place not in the playoffs or during a pennant chase, but on some unremarkable saturday afternoon or wednesday evening in some may or july way back when. . . . .
it’s august 22, 1977; i am 14, and the cardinals are in fourth place. an atypically robust fourth place — thirteen games above .500 — but still 9 games behind philadelphia in the nl east. they are 5-4 on a long homestand that still has four games to run, and the dodgers are in town on a monday night for the first of two. la leads the nl west by 9.5 games over the twice-champion reds, and they look for all the world like champs themselves. these dodgers have ev’ything the cards of the mid-1970s lack. they have power — a league-leading 191 hrs in 1977, including four 30-hr men (one of them, reggie smith, a cardinal as recently as 1976); the cards will finish 23rd among the 24 mlb teams with 96 hr. the dodgers have steady defense — a.981 fielding percentage, 2d best in the league — while the cards commit nearly an error a game. above all the dodgers have outstanding pitching — an mlb-low 3.22 team era. in those innocent pre-sabr years, not even the best-informed baseball fan attributes the la pitchers’ excellent stat lines to dodger stadium; la’s pitchers are simply good, that’s all anyone knows. and the cardinals’ pitchers, as ever, are just good enough to drive you crazy; they yield half a run more per game than the dodgers’ moundsmen and will rate 7th in the league at year’s end.
nine years removed from their last postseason appearance, the cardinals have finally generated a new crop of stars-in-waiting. only one player, lou brock, remains from the championship teams of the ’60s; even manager red schoendienst is gone, replaced just this season by stern vern rapp. other than brock (who is 38), the entire starting lineup is 27 or younger. it’s led by ted simmons — an eight-year veteran but still only 27 years old — and two extremely talented homegrown players, 21-year-old garry templeton and 23-year-old keith hernandez. great expectations hover. the pitching staff, just as young and nearly as promising, features 27-year-old bob forsch (en route to 20 wins in 1977); reigning nl era champ (and future cy young winner) john denny, aged 24; and pete falcone, a hard-throwing 23-year-old lefty who already has two 12-win seasons under his belt.
denny is on the mound on this particular night, paired against the dodgers’ burt hooten (who enters the game 9-7, 2.64). denny opened his era-title defense in spectacular fashion, racing out to a 7-0 start, but since then he has suffered five straight losses and spent six weeks on the disabled list; his era now stands at a disheartening 4.05. and denny’s off again tonight: three singles plate a run with nobody out in the third; a hit batsman jams the sacks with two outs, and then steve yeager parks one — a grand slam and a 5-1 dodger lead. try to recall (those of you who’re gray-stubbled enough) what a 5-1 deficit meant in those days, when runs didn’t just fall from the sky and 414 feet of heavy air stood between home plate and the centerfield wall at busch stadium. you weren’t going to jump right back into the game with a couple of quick-strike homers. 5-1 was imposing — roughly akin to a 20-point gap in the nba.
and the cards don’t cut into it against hooten; he sails through the lineup, letting only one man advance into scoring position. the seats start to empty in the 7th inning, and after the redbirds go meekly in the bottom of the 8th departing fans choke the exits; garbage time has arrived, and not even a 9th-inning appearance by the mad hungarian can redeem it. hrabosky’s ineffectiveness (a run on 2 hits) wipes out the last vestige of hope, along with nearly all of the remaining spectators; the few souls who remain from the paid crowd of 28,222 are all ones who, in today’s parlance, need to get a life.
jerry mumphrey’s leadoff single in the 9th doesn’t make their loyalty appear any less foolish; nor does templeton’s ensuing triple to make it 6-2. and the fans know it; nobody thinks this “rally” will lead anywhere, and the crowd does not roar. nor is lasorda particularly concerned; he lifts hooten for a mop-up guy named lance rautzhan, a rookie lhp appearing in only his 10th big league game. simmons chases temp’ton home with a single to make it 6-3, but still . . . . c’mon. hernandez though doubles simmons home and takes third on an error, and now it’s 6-4 with nobody out, the tying run is at the plate, and those few diehards who remain in their seats look up from their beers and finally start to pay attention again.
charlie hough relieves rautzhan and promptly knuckles one past yeager; hernandez trots home to make it 6-5, and hopeful cheers echo off empty seats. but mike anderson strikes out, and with ken reitz and mike tyson now due to hit it seems that fantasy will yield, as it inevitably must, to reality. reitz though musters a single, and tyson singles the pinch-runner (rick bosetti) into scoring position, setting up a confrontation for the ages: charlie hough against roger freed.
freed is in the midst of one of the most improbable seasons in baseball history. he came into the 1977 season with 511 career at-bats, 13 homers, a .221 average and 133 strikeouts. he might generously be described as a poor man’s dave kingman; ungenerously we might say he’s a poor man’s joe lis. but in 1977, freed inexplicably becomes jimmie foxx. in his first 9 at-bats (liberally dispersed across the first seven weeks of the season) he gets 5 hits. as of july 4 he’s hitting .333 (albeit in highly limited playing time); a week later he starts four games in a row and goes 7 for 12, lifting his average to .405. at which point it becomes quite clear that roger freed has been touched by supernatural forces. no one knows what spirit(s) he has invoked nor what price his soul will ultimately pay, but there’s no question about it: freed is charmed. his every at-bat seems potently fraught. he is the perfect batter for this moment: a man in the midst of a miracle season trying to cap off a miracle comeback. a cone of celestial light bathes him as he stands just outside the batter’s box, waiting out a conference at the mound — ron perranoski counseling hough on how to pitch to a shaman or some such. the conference ends, and freed digs in; hough delivers, and pow! there she goes, into the left-centerfield bleachers.
a walkoff homerun — that rarest of feats for the 1970s cardinals. a seven-run ninth-inning rally — rare even by today’s hyperoffensive standards. the cards mob roger freed at the plate, cheered on by the handful of don quixotes who still people the seats. across the city, meanwhile, about 24,000 early-departing fans listen with mixed emotions as buck and shannon call the bottom of the 9th; with every base hit their sense of shame and self-reproach grows, and they root that much harder for the rally to fall short and redeem their judgment.
the "roger freed game" (as posterity knows it) represents a pinnacle for that particular crop of cardinals. for that one night they fulfilled their promise, rose up and defeated a champion. two nights later they would reach their high-water mark, 16 games over .500; though they played together three more years, this particular group of players would never again achieve such loft. the great herzog purge of 1980-81 scattered that talented young st louis roster to the four winds. only hernandez and forsch would remain; only they would ultimately fulfill the promise of the 1977 team.
see the box score at retrosheet — and thanks to them, as always, for the invaluable work they do.
posted by L Boros at 10:30 AM
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