The following is the first part of a series that Jay Jaffe and I are writing about a terrific new box set of the 1977 World Series. Jay kicked things off earlier in the week, as we address the first disk, Game 5 of the ALCS between the Yankees and the Royals. Here is my response:
Yo Jay,
Dude, one of the main reasons why I loved football so much as an early teenager is because that was also the time I first really started getting into movies, and NFL Films had an enormous impact on me. The way they visually presented the game, the melding of movies and sport, defined the sport for me. It had a reverence for the sport and mocking sense of humor too. We didn’t have to just read about Jim Brown or Gayle Sayers, we could see. But we can’t see Sandy Koufax or Willie Mays in the same way because Major League Baseball has never had anything close to NFL Films. Part of this is understandable because baseball has such a long season with so many games. You’d go broke if you filmed all of it waiting for a great moment to go down. I understand why it hasn’t happened, but that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t of have, to some extent. The other part is that baseball has simply never been blessed with a creative partner like the Sabols.
And that’s a real shame because you’d think baseball games from the ’70s at least should still be around somewhere. I want to see the 1977 NLCS and I want to see the 1980 NLCS. That’s why I’m lovin’ this box set series that A&E is putting out. At first, I thought they were just putting out old MLB Films half-hour/hour-long wrap-up shows. They do have those, but on top of that, they are also have team sets—the Yankee Dynasty Years set, 96-01, a Cubs set, a big Red Sox set from 2004, the Cards from last year. But the best thing they’ve got are box sets of entire series—they’ve got the complete World Series from 1975, 1979, 1986, 1987, and now, of course, ’77.
The beauty part is that they play the games, uncut. (The games are taken from archival footage, which isn’t always complete, but most of a classic game, is better than nothing.) Remember how hot all the movie-heads got when Ted Turner broke colorization out in the ’80s? I get uptight like that when I watch Yankee Classics and they cut entire innings or even portions of at-bats down in order to fill the two, two-and-a-half hour time slot. I realize it’s what they are going to do to sell the shows, but it’s a bastardization of the original. Even in the age of TiVo, there is still something to be said about watching a game untouched, exactly as it was. Especially because baseball is all about what happens inbetween the plays.
I knew they were planning to do something with one of the Bronx Zoo teams, so you can imagine how stoaked I was when I saw the ’77 set on the coffee table of your living room a couple of weeks ago. They chose ’77! Hot dog. I mean talk about serendipity, especially with you being a Dodger-turned Dodger/Yankee fan, and me being a Yankee nut. Hey, I didn’t know your old man dug Reggie too. That’s so cool.
You are a year older than me and were just that much ahead of me in terms of being focused into the game—I don’t really recall an entire season as a whole until ’79. Before that, it’s just random memories.
As you mentioned, the set is handsomely designed. I agree, the individual disks with the box scores on the back are slick. And I love that they throw a cherry-on-the-top disk, Game 5 of the ALCS, the Nettles/Brett Brawl Game. Oh, man I had a ton of fun watching that, especially because I’m really too young to remember much from seeing it back then, when I was six. I remember later, when Brett killed the Yankees, again and again.
The disk also includes the post-game World Series celebration in the Yankee locker room, which is priceless, and then a series of interviews with Yankee players from that team in later years. The interviews are the same as you see in the Yankeeography series, and are not especially interesting. I’ll hold off on talking about the post-game celebration until we get to Game Six.
I dipped into the Bronx Zoo section of my books and refreshed my memory on what happened in the first four games. There are a lot of books about the 1977 Yankees, many of them co-written by Peter Golenbock. As Jonathan Mahler cites in the end notes to his entertaining book about New York City in ’77, The Bronx is Burning, Steve Jacobson’s The Best Team Money Could Buy, and Ed Linn’s Inside the Yankees: The Championship Year, are the two most sturdy narratives of the season (Jacobson was a longtime writer for Newsday, Linn the workhorse writer of Sport magazine fame).
The Yankees had reached the World Series for the first time in twelve seasons the year before when they beat the Royals in five games. As we well know, the ’77 team was an off-the-field soap opera, the likes of which had rarely been seen before. The Royals had the best record in baseball in ’77, just two games better than the Yanks, and just one better than the Los Angeles Dodgers. They won 16 straight in September and were the popular favorites to beat the big money Yankees.
White Herzog had no love for Steinbrenner’s New Age Yankees. “The scoreboard flashing when we’re hitting,” said Herzog. “Ethics. You got have have some ethics in this game. The Yankees used to be a first-class organization. But not now. Win, win, win. They don’t give a damn about the other teams in the leauge.”
The Yankees dropped the first game. Game 2 featured a nasty block slide by Hal McRae against Willie Randolph.
“That was a no-no, a cheap shot,” said Yankee manager Billy Martin. “When that happened to me as a player I put the ball in the man’s face. Randolph didn’t do that because he’s a gentleman.”
Instead, Willie fired the ball into the Kansas City dugout. McRae, who came up with the Reds and brought a National League style of hard-ass play to the Royals, said, “I’ll do whatever is conducive to winning…Martin is mad because it coset him a run, and his guys don’t get many by making plays like that.”
The play served to wake the Yankees up and they took the second game. But the Royals breezed past New York in Game three. Former Yankee, Larry Gura was given the start for Game Four, and Martin–who made sure that Gura was shipped out of town a year earlier–relished the move. “If I had my way,” said Martin the day before the fourth game, “I’d put a bodyguard around his house tonight and get him a chauffeur so he didn’t get in an accident on his way to the ball park…The more he wants to beat us, the more fine he’ll try to make his pitches. And when he gets too fine, that’s when he can’t get anything over.”
The Yanks scored four quick runs off Gura, but the Royals charged back and likely would have won the pennent if not for a herioc relief performance from Sparky Lyle. All of which set up another Game Five. Neither team had won two consecutive games against each other yet in the ’76 or ’77 post-season. The Yanks started Ron Guidry, their best pitcher in the second half of the season, while the Royals went with veteran lefty Paul Splittorff. Martin, who seemed doomed to be fired at the end of the season one way or the other, benched his star slugger, Reggie Jackson, who had just one hit in the series (his other two lefty power hitters, Chris Chambliss and Graig Nettles were not hitting at all either).
Martin’s logic was that since he was likely going to get canned regardless, he was going down his way. The move–not entirely crazy since Jackson struggled against Splittorff, and had botched two fly balls on the artificial turf in Game 4–took nerve, and certainly Martin had that to spare. The manager didn’t break the news to Jackson himself. Depending on what you read, either Fran Healy, the back-up catcher and virtually Jackson’s only friend on the team, or Elston Howard, the Yankee coach, informed Jackson of the move.
“How do you tell a guy he’s been butching the outfield and not hitting worth a damn? How do you do that diplomatically?” Martin told reporters.
For his part, Jackson said all the right things before the game. “People do things in different ways. I can’t expect them always to do things the way I would want. Right now it’s an emotional time for me. It’s hard to come out with a solid, well-thought-out statement in twenty minutes. I just hope the ball club wins tonight and we’ve got the best nine–make that ten–men out there.”
The Royals scored first, and as you already mentioned, the Brett-Nettles scuffle in the first is a classic. What is notable is that there were no ejections. The umps let the incident play out. It didn’t escalate, it wa a contained incident. Both benches cleared, and Brett got the worst of it.
“The only guy who didn’t hit me was Thurman,” Brett said after the game. “At least it seemed that way. I was at the bottom of the pile and it seemed guys were lining up to hit me in the face. Not Thurman…He put his hands over my face so I wouldn’t get hit. It didn’t do much good. But I really appreciate what he did for me.”
Guidry, working on two-days rest, didn’t have much, while Splitorff was outstanding. He left the game in the eighth inning with a 3-1 lead. Wouldn’t you know it, but Jackson came up later in the inning and blooped an RBI single to center to cut the lead to 3-2 (Amos Otis, playing deep, got a poor jump a ball that could, not should, have been caught.) The Yanks scored three more runs in the ninth–lead by Paul Blair, Jackson’s replacement in right. Lyle got the save and the Yanks won the pennant.
Patek remained in the Royals dugout for a long time and cried his eyes out.
The thing that struck me the most about watching the game is how quickly it moved. There was no mincing around. Plus, most of the players were super competitive, a bunch of red-asses. And for Yankee fans, the icing on the gravy is the fact that Bill White, Scooter Rizzuto and Frank Messer called the game.
The champagne flowed in the Yankee’s locker room. “All season I had to hold it in here,” said Jackson, clutching his chest. “I had to eat it in here. Thank God. I can’t explain it because I don’t understand the magnitude of Reggie Jackson and the magnitude of the event. I am the situation.”
Martin found Steinbrenner and poured champagne over the owner’s head.
“That’s for trying to fire me,” screamed Martin.
“What do you mean, ‘try’?” said Steinbrenner. “If I want to, I’ll fire you.”
Then the two men hugged and the Yankees were on their way to the World Serious.
