Game Six by Mark Frost Page B

for tells on when best to break for second, and how to use the threat of stealing to disrupt his concentration. But oddly, for most of the season, with Griffey batting ahead of him, Morgan had forbidden the fleet young outfielder to attempt to steal or even feint toward second while he was at the plate, claiming it distracted him while he was trying to hit, a large part of why, despite Morgan’s tutelage, a man with Griffey’s extraordinary motor had stolen only sixteen bases that season. Although Joe had supposedly “given Sparky the green light” to send runners ahead of him during the Series—more on their unusual relationship to come—Griffey never made a move toward second during Morgan’s first at bat, which ended when he popped ahigh foul up above the screen that drifted on the wind blowing steadily toward center and died quietly in Fisk’s mitt.
    Reds catcher Johnny Bench stepped in. Although more circumspect in his public comments about it than Pete Rose, Bench had been similarly frustrated by the steady diet of off-speed stuff he’d seen from Tiant during the Series. One of the greatest fastball hitters the game had ever known, he felt he was seeing Tiant’s ball well but just couldn’t get his bat on it; he’d had no more success against him to date than Pete Rose, going 1–8 with only one RBI. Still bothered by his cold, his injured left shoulder aching in the cool New England air, Bench took a fastball for a strike, fouled the next one off, and then missed a low slider that broke out of the zone for Tiant’s first strikeout.
    The crowd rose to their feet again, Tiant trotted to the dugout, and the Red Sox came in for their first turn at bat.

FIVE
    Luis doesn’t want to impress them.
He only wants to beat them.
    R ED S OX PITCHING COACH S TAN W ILLIAMS
    It’s just a stay of execution for Boston.
    J OE M ORGAN
    F OR ALL THEIR SUCCESS IN 1975, WINNING ONE HUNDRED games to this point, the Red Sox had reached Game Six of the World Series without the presence or benefit all season of a single “traditional leadoff” man. Since the advent of the personal computer in the 1980s, a new breed of baseball statisticians has revolutionized the way players are viewed and evaluated. Although these analysts were initially amateurs working outside the professional structure of the game, most teams have embraced their findings and many now employ at least one full-time “sabermatrician,” after the Society for American Baseball Research, or SABR, founded by Bill James, who is currently a consultant for the Red Sox. Baseball is a game exquisitely suited to measurement by numbers, with a vast trove of available—and, before these passionate wonks came along, previously underutilized—historical records. As they sifted through this remarkable database, breaking down every aspect of the game into new arcane definitions of value—like True Defensive Range, or the number of actual Runs Created—their formulas for the first time provided a solid scientific understanding for many of the game’s traditions, and called into question most of its conventional wisdoms.
    One of the most stubbornly enduring ideas in baseball had been that you stick your speediest player at the top of the lineup, turn him loose, and hope that a lot of stolen bases translate into runs, a notion that for a number of reasons the game’s new statistics had largely discredited. (The last man to fit that profile for the Red Sox, outfielder Tommy Harper—who’d set a team record for steals with fifty-four in 1973—had been traded after the ’74 season to make way for promising rookies Jim Rice and Fred Lynn.) A more refined philosophy had begun to emerge that you should send the man with the best on base percentage (hits plus walks plus hit-by-pitches, divided by at bats plus walks plus HBP plus sacrifices) to the plate first in the hopes of then bringing him around, as Sparky Anderson was able to consistently do with Pete Rose, who stole