R.I.P. Luis Tiant

Two great losses from one great World Series

The first thing I said when I began writing this at the start of the year is that 1975 played a pivotal role in my life. And it was really just a tiny little sliver of that year, too.

From the time that my father took me to St. Louis to watch Tom Seaver pitch in the old Busch Stadium against the Cardinals at the end of July, to the time I discovered the joy of watching the Cubs play at Wrigley Field on TV in September, to the riveting drama of the Reds and the Red Sox in the World Series that October, I became hopelessly and forever hooked on baseball.

Or, at least I was until the ever-increasing player salaries, some truly stupid rule changes, and the general shift in priorities that probably takes place in every person’s life at one time or another came along. But for the better part of four decades or so, I really loved baseball. And the reason I do this on Substack is to remind myself of what those days were like.

The death of Pete Rose just over a week ago was a reminder that the players from those days are not long for this world. It also came hard on the heels of Don Gullett, Bill Plummer, and Pat Zachry, who were some of his Big Red Machine teammates. But the high point, at least in my mind, of that era was those riveting two weeks that unfolded on my parents television screen back in October of 1975. It’s said that you never for get your first time, and that’s surely the case for me and the World Series that year.

Luis Tiant and Pete Rose came from different backgrounds, and they played in different leagues. That doesn’t matter to today’s ballplayers because interleague play is an established fact of life, but back then the division between the two leagues meant that Rose, in his 13th season in the major leagues, and Tiant, in his 12th, had never faced each other competively before the 1975 World Series got underway, on a Saturday night in Fenway Park.

On a completely unrelated but eerily similar note, it was the same night that George Carlin took to the stage on an experimental new TV show in New York and delivered a monologue casting football as a man’s game and baseball as a wacked out, frilly affair. Fifty seasons later, Saturday Night Live is still going strong, too.

But the Red Sox’ marquee performer, at least on that night, was the veteran Cuban pitcher. And in Game one of the Series, he owned Rose and the rest of the Big Red Machine, as well. He pitched a five-hit complete game shutout, and the Red Sox took the lead in the Series.

Tiant came back in Game four and, while not quite as dominant, secured another win, holding Rose to a 1-for-3 performance, with two walks and a run scored. It was Rose who was standing on first base, representing the potential winning run, when Joe Morgan popped out to end the game. The Series was then tied at two games apiece and, after a Cincinnati win in Game five and three days of rain to put the action on hold, Tiant took the mound for Game six in Boston.

Yes, that Game six. The Carlton Fisk Game, mythologized in the movie Good Will Hunting and probably in lots of baseball writing that I’ve never read. New England writers have a way of rhapsodizing about the game that puts all others to shame, I must admit. Tiant had a chance to close out the Reds, and break the Curse of the Bambino, which I knew nothing about at age seven and may not have even been a thing in 1975. Maybe this was the Series that helped that story take wing, even. But a winner-take-all conclusion to a baseball season is something that I probably thought happened every year back then. Little did I know!

For the record, Rose went 2-for-5 in the game, with a single in the 3rd and another in the 5th. He scored a run in the fifth, but wasn’t a factor in driving Tiant from the game. A home run by Cesar Geronimo in the top of the 8th inning did that. Tiant just ran out of gas, most likely, and was on his way to taking the loss until Bernie Carbo pulled a rabbit out of his hat in the bottom of the inning and then, of course, what Fisk did.

Rose won the Series and the MVP award, but Tiant held him to a .250 batting average with no extra base hits and no RBIs. But it’s a team game and Rose clearly came out on top in their memorable encounter. If there truly is a Field-of-Dreams style ballpark in the sky, El Tiante and Charlie Hustle are now free to face off to their hearts’ content and I hope they will do exactly that.

Until next time…