If you're a New Englander, the footage of Boston Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk's home run to win Game 6 of the 1975 World Series is as familiar as clam chowder.
Not so well known, perhaps, is how Red Sox pitcher Luis Tiant, the Game 6 starter, reacted after seeing Fisk's iconic 12th-inning blast on TV in the Sox clubhouse. Submerged in a whirlpool icing his arm and smoking a Cuban after seven innings of work that night, Tiant sprung from the tub and raced toward the dugout. Only after reaching it did he realize he was sporting nothing but a jockstrap.
Tiant's celebratory streak is among the rich details author Mark Frost recounts in his recently released book "Game Six." While diehard fans of the Red Sox and their '75 World Series opponents, the Cincinnati Reds, will take particular interest in the book, any fan of sports history will delight in Frost's exploration of this memorable contest, its protagonists and its aftermath.
In "Game Six," Frost applies to baseball the formula that earned him success with previous books on golf, most notably "The Greatest Game Ever Played" and "The Match," in which he breathes life into historical events. While recounting every pitch of Game 6, Frost intersperses the stories of the game's main characters, such as Fisk, Tiant and the stars of Cincinnati's Big Red Machine. He also explores the tales of those who played bit parts in the drama, from obscure Sox reliever Roger Moret to broadcaster Dick Stockton.
Although virtually every reader who picks up this book knows what happened, Frost does a nice job recounting the details that set the stage for Fisk's climactic swat and, ultimately, Cincinnati's come-from-behind victory in Game 7. I particularly enjoyed the book's portrayal of Reds manager Sparky Anderson's mental gymnastics in the eighth inning, when the Red Sox sent lefty Bernie Carbo to pinch hit with two men on base. Although Anderson's gut was telling him to yank his pitcher, righthanded fireballer Rawly Eastwick, and insert southpaw Will McEnaney, Anderson stuck with Eastwick, who served up Carbo's three-run homer to tie the game.
Although the play-by-play provides logical structure, the human tales carry this narrative. Perhaps most compelling is the story of Tiant, the Cuban hurler who rose to stardom after the Red Sox rescued him from baseball's scrap heap. While claiming victories on the field, Tiant experiences personal triumph in the summer of '75 when, before a media throng at Boston's Logan Airport, he reunites with his parents, Luis Sr. and Isabel, who had been trapped in their native land by Fidel Castro's regime. Further from the spotlight, Frost recounts the kinship between Anderson and Carbo, a talented but troubled former Reds outfielder who grew up with an alcoholic father and battled substance abuse himself.
After describing the timely Cincinnati hits - and questionable moves by Red Sox manager Darrell Johnson - that produced the Reds' 4-3 victory in Game 7, Frost explores subsequent events, in particular the demise of baseball's reserve clause and the dawn of free agency, that eventually toppled the Reds and Red Sox from the elite perch they occupied in October 1975. The book also tracks the divergent paths of the Game 6 protagonists into the present day.
As with "The Greatest Game Ever Played" and "The Match," two books I thoroughly enjoyed, my quibbles with "Game Six" are minor. Frost reveals he's not a New Englander when he refers to Boston's North End, the city's well-known Italian quarter, as the "North Side" and places Pawtucket, home of the Red Sox' longtime minor-league affiliate, in Massachusetts rather than Rhode Island. Similarly, he calls the Reds' former playing field "Riverfront Park" instead of Riverfront Stadium. But these foul balls do little to subtract from an enjoyable read.
