As I write this MLB-TV is broadcasting Game One of the 1974 World Series, which I am much enjoying watching.
1) The pace of the game is unmistakably better. The pitchers just get the ball, take the sign and fire. Nobody steps out to break the pitcher’s rhythm. . . .not clear whether the umpires would allow it or not. I don’t believe the catcher goes to the mound to talk to the pitcher once, on either team. I could have missed it or it could have been edited out of the tape, I guess.
2) The umpiring is bad, and the announcers don’t say anything about it. I would speculate that instant replay, along with training programs implemented by MLB in the late 1990s, have sharpened the umpiring more than we realize.
3) Second inning, Joe Rudi on first, Ray Fosse hits a ground ball to third. The play goes 5-4—but it is way late. Rudi slides into second far ahead of the throw, is called out. …nobody says anything about it. Rudi just runs off the field.
4) But that’s nothing compared to a double play in the bottom of the inning. Runners on first and second, Cey grounds to shortstop for a 6-4-3 Double Play.
But neither runner is anywhere NEAR being out. On the play at second Dick Green is 3 to 4 feet off of second base, and hasn’t BEEN on second base anytime recently. I would have thought the “in the neighborhood” call at second was getting worse, rather than better, but. . .I haven’t seen anything like that in years. There is NO question that if you did that now, the umpire would not give you the call.
And then Cey beats the throw to first, and they call him out as well.
5) You may remember in an article I did earlier about the great Dodger infield of the 1970s, I noticed that Bill Russell had defensive won-lost records that read, beginning in 1972, 5-1, 8-1, 4-4, 3-1, 7-2, 8-0, 8-1. The 4-4 record, which is out of place, is 1974, so I speculated that Russell must have had an injury that season. Sure enough, Vince Scully (broadcasting the series for NBC) talks repeatedly about Russell having an elbow injury that has interfered with his performance in the field.
6) Pre-game interview with Steve Garvey. . the “con man” aspect of Garvey’s personality seems really evident, and I wonder how I could have missed this at the time. Perhaps we should call it the “salesman” element of Garvey’s personality, just to be polite. Garvey, for those of you not old enough to remember, projected a strong, conservative, values-driven personality, and talked from early in his career about running for political office after his playing career. This was undermined when it was revealed that he was involved in sexual adventures with a fair percentage of the population of southern California.
But just watching the pre-game interview. . .or am I reading what I know now into it?. . ..there is something in Garvey’s voice that tips you off immediately to the problem. The cadence, the timbre of his voice is so obviously calculated to ooze sincerity that it comes off as perversely phony. He smiles on cue and refers to Tony Kubek as “Tony” in almost every sentence.
My memory of this at the time is that some people I knew picked up on this element of Garvey and distrusted him from the start—but I didn’t; I liked Garvey, and defended him as a person until the early 1980s. But just watching that interview, I wonder how I could possibly have missed it? Watch it if you get a chance, let me know what you think.
7) Joe Ferguson in 1974 hit .256 with 16 homers and 75 walks with just 349 at bats—an excellent power rate, a phenomenal walk rate—about which Vin Scully observes early in the game “the experts say he takes too many pitches.” And re-iterates this throughout the game.
Scully is congenitally nice but a genius at making his points, and, boiling off the good manners, he has nothing good to say about Ferguson. “He is a gentle big man. They say he is too nice, too passive.” Quote is from memory. . .can’t re-wind this to check the words. Anyway, Ferguson’s career unravels from that point, posing the question: Is Scully observing real failings in Ferguson? Or is it that the criticism of Ferguson forces him away from what he does best, and undermines his career?
Ferguson makes an absolutely magnificent throw from the outfield in the 8th inning. Jimmie Wynn is set up to make the catch in right center; Ferguson cuts him off and guns a strike to home plate to nail the runner. There aren’t three players in the majors today who could make that throw.
8) Rollie Fingers, A’s closer, enters the game in the fifth inning, with the starting pitcher exiting having given up only one un-earned run.
9) Camera angles for the game often show the pitch from behind home plate, behind the umpire. They’ll use the center field camera for a few pitches, then switch to behind the plate. You can’t see where the pitch is. You lose the pitch as it leaves the pitcher’s hand, pick it up on contact, and then only if the pitch is outside. I think the center field camera angle, which we now take for granted, didn’t become dominant until the late 1970s.
10) Casey Stengel is at the game, and Cary Grant. I wouldn’t have guessed either of them was still alive at that time, but they both look good.
11) Tony Kubek repeatedly kisses up to Vin Scully by praising his scouting insights into the Dodger players, but the scouting reports are really not good. The Dodger starter, Andy Messersmith, was second in the National League in strikeouts with 221, but Scully says “Forget that. He hasn’t been a strikeout pitcher for some time”, and talks about Messersmith having trouble throwing his curve, and cites several late-season games in which Messersmith has had low strikeout totals.
But Messersmith struck out 36 batters in 49 innings in September, 1974—not really much different than his full-season strikeout rate. I think he’s one strikeout off his season rate for September. He strikes out 8 batters in the game.
It’s a three-man team—Curt Gowdy, Tony Kubek and Scully. Curt Gowdy interjects a quote from a conversation with Messersmith, in which Messersmith mentions “perfecting” his changeup. But Scully barely seems to realize that Messersmith throws a change, and talks constantly about his curve ball, about his curve ball not being as sharp as it was earlier in the season, etc.—totally missing the fact that Messersmith has switched from the curve ball to the changeup as his strikeout pitch.
12) Scully says early in the game that Ron Cey has the most accurate arm he’s ever seen at third base. Ron Cey then makes a throwing error later in the game.
13) Scully says that, in all his years broadcasting, he has never seen any player make as many dramatic and spectacular plays at any position as Bill Buckner has made that year in left field. Quite a comment. . .and we don’t usually think of Buckner that way. Not suggesting he is wrong.
14) The A’s are wearing green hats, but Alvin Dark is wearing a white hat, while the Dodgers (of course) are wearing blue hats, but Walter Alston is wearing a red hat. Huh?.
15) The A’s stole 164 bases in 1974, the Dodgers 154, but Scully observes that apart from Bill North and Bert Campaneris, the Dodgers appear “to have much more speed up and down the lineup.” It’s a real head-scratching comment. Yes, the A’s have Ray Fosse, Gene Tenace, Sal Bando, Dick Green and Joe Rudi in the lineup, but then, the Dodgers have Steve Yeager, Steve Garvey, Ron Cey, Bill Russell and Joe Ferguson.
16) Scully refers to Rollie Fingers as “Roland” Fingers, throughout the game. I don’t believe he ever says “Rollie”.
17) Mike Marshall throws a lot of screwballs, and Scully quotes a comment from early in the season, when the famously impolitic Marshall was asked to compare his screwball to Jim Brewer’s and Tug McGraw’s. “Their fastballs,” Marshall replies, “are in the infantile stage.”
Marshall’s screwball is not what we think of as a screwball in the Mike Cuellar/Tug McGraw/Scottie McGregor/Fernando Valenzuela tradition. Kubek says that it is “not like anybody else’s screwball”, and it really isn’t; it’s much closer to what we would think of as a knuckle curve. He throws it different speeds, so that sometimes it almost looks like a slider, other times like a knuckleball. It often starts out high, above the strike zone, and almost always breaks AWAY from a right-handed hitter, like a normal breaking pitch. The slow one comes in high and darts down and away from a right-handed hitter at a very late moment. One can see that it’s a tough pitch, but it’s hard to see how it’s a screwball.