Ray Fosse remembered
Best known for a collision at home plate in the 1970 All-Star Game, Fosse became a fine broadcaster who made many a summer evening more pleasant.
Also in this edition:
Surprise! You’re fired!
Trivia
HEART OF THE ORDER
RAY FOSSE 1947-2021
A Crushing Blow
Ray Fosse was just coming into this own, to the surprise of my snickering friends and myself. Then Pete Rose crashed into him at home plate in the All-Star Game. The injury bothered Fosse for the rest of his life.
Though I struggled with the nouns-and-verbs-and-commas stuff, by age 12 I already displayed the essential qualities for becoming a sportswriter — misplaced confidence in my judgment and knowledge of sports, a snarky sense of humor, and a propensity for making predictions that would prove wrong.
That summer — 1970 — Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn gave the task of voting for the starting position players for the All-Star Game back to the fans.(Fans had lost the privilege after 1957 when Cincinnatti fans stuffed the ballot boxes and elected Reds to every starting position but first base.)
My friends and I amused ourselves by writing in the names of players who we felt were less-than-worthy candidates. (We also marked our favorite players, such as Willie Mays and Ernie Banks. And like many others, we wrote in Rico Carty, who made the National League team as a write-in.)
The Flyhawks
We had a kind of anti-All Star team, which we called the Flyhawks. My friend Tim and I even played a Flyhawk Series with two teams of these players in Strat-O-Matic baseball.
Why the name Flyhawk?
Well, the back of Topps baseball cards contained some of the player’s stats and a cartoon with a little factoid. If the player was a reserve outfielder, and Topps couldn’t find much interesting about him, the card would say something along the lines of “Joe has been a dependable flyhawk with three teams.”
We didn’t know that a flyhawk was just an old-timey sports writer synonym for an outfielder. We thought it was a polite way of saying, “This guy isn’t any good.”
Among the players that we designated as Flyhawks were two young players who to our great surprise— even though we were 12 and already knew everything — would soon show flashes of stardom, White Sox third baseman Bill Melton and Indians catcher Ray Fosse.
Melton became a Flyhawk, ironically, because of his failure to catch two fly balls. We read an item in The Sporting News about how he managed to misplay two foul pop-ups in the same inning. The first landed harmlessly; the second one hit him in the face.
That season Melton wound up hitting an impressive 33 home runs. The next season he hit 33 home runs again, this time leading the American League.
How did Fosse, a promising young catcher who had been a first-round pick of the Indians n 1965 and hit .300 several times in the minors, earn his Flyhawk status?
Tim served a batboy in spring training for the Pilots/Brewers. Something the players needled Fosse about led to the young catcher becoming an object of our derision.
But as we were snickering and writing Fosse in as a joke of an All-Star, Fosse was making a legitimate push for a spot on the American League team.
Fosse’s bat gets hot
He started the season sharing the catching duties with veteran Duke Sims. But in June, Fosse became the everyday catcher and had the month of his life.
In 27 games, he batted .382 with 6 homers and an OPS of 1.005. His batting average for the season rose from .254 to .314.
During that month an odd occurrence that sort of foreshadowed the misfortune that seemed to follow Fosse that season and the next.
In the second game of a doubleheader at Yankee Stadium, a spectator threw a cherry bomb out of the upper deck. It landed a few feet from Fosse, the explosion injured his in-step and toes. He kept playing and playing well.
Fosse had a good reputation as a defensive catcher and pitch-caller. With his newfound hitting prowess at the big-league level, Fosse was a natural for Earl Weaver to pick for his AL squad, setting the stage for the moment that defined Fosse’s career.
The AL entered the 1970 All-Star Game on a losing streak. Weaver vowed to break the streak, saying he would manage more to win than just making sure as many players as possible got into the game.
I thought -- and still think -- Weaver was one of the great managers in baseball. Storylines don’t win games, but as a future sportswriter, I naturally put way too much weight in them. Though I was a National League fan, I bet my friend Rick $1 that American League would prevail.
Layouts with artificial turf everywhere but around the bases, home plate, and the pitcher’s mound became the standard after Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium debuted in 1970.
The setting
The All-Star Game was played at Cincinnati Riverfront Stadium, the new home for the Reds and the NFL Bengals, which had opened two weeks earlier.
The stadium was supposed to open at beginning of the baseball season, but there were construction delays. It wasn’t until June 1 that MLB became confident enough to say the game definitely would be played in the Queen City as planned.
Riverfront looked different from any baseball field before. It had artificial turf with a new layout that became the norm at parks with plastic grass. Most of the traditional dirt proportions of the field were covered in AstroTurf. Only the areas around the base, home plate, and the pitchers’ mound were dirt.
It was fitting that was the site of the All-Star Game.
The Reds — who nicknamed themselves The Big Red Machine that season — were baseball’s big story of that season. They came into the All-Star break with a 62-26 record (.705 winning pct.).
A Mid-Summer Classic
Bill Freehan started behind the plate for the American League. Weaver put Fosse in the fifth inning. In the sixth, Fosse led off with a single, took second on a bunt by Sam McDowell, and eventually scored the game’s first run a single by Carl Yastrzemski.
In the seventh, Fosse hit a fly to deep center that scored Brook Robinson, giving the AL a 2-0 lead.
The National League made it 2-1 in the bottom of the seventh when Willie McCovey hit into a double play and Bud Harrelson stored from third.
Brooks Robinson hit a two-run triple in eighth to make it 4-1.
The fatal roster flaw
As we headed to the bottom of ninth, Weaver’s vow about managing to win looked like it was going to pay off — along with my $1 bet. Earl was a smart guy but maybe not as smart as he and I thought.
All the American League had to do was get three outs without giving up three runs. And Catfish Hunter, Fritz Peterson, and Mel Stottlemyre were unable to do that. All three were normally starting pitchers.
Although it was widely known that the bullpen was an important element in the modern game, Weaver had not named any relievers to his All-Star roster.
Hunter gave up a leadoff homer to Dick Dietz. Bud Harrelson followed with a single and you could see things start to unravel. Cito Gaston popped out, but Joe Morgan singled.
Weaver replaced Hunter with Peterson to face McCovey for a lefty-on-lefty matchup. McCovey singled to drive in Harrelson and move Morgan to third.
Stottlemyre came in to face Roberto Clemente, who hit a sacrifice fly that scored Morgan and tied the game. Stottlemyre managed to get out of the inning without further damage.
The moment
Neither team threatened until the bottom of the 12th. With two out, the Reds’ Pete Rose came to the plate.
The Cincinnati contingent hadn’t done much. Jim Merritt had pitched a couple of scoreless innings, and Johnny Bench had thrown out AL stolen-base king Tommy Harper.
But this team Reds team was about hitting. Bench, Tony Perez, and Rose were hitless and had struck out seven times.
If Earl Weaver wasn’t treating this merely as an exhibition, well certainly the NL had someone in Rose who never played any game like it was an exhibition.
Rose was a Cincinnati native known as “Charley Hustle,” a tag given to him by Mickey Mantle, who was making fun of Rose for his all-out effort in a spring training game. Rose took the intended insult as a compliment and adopted the nickname.
He sprinted first whenever he drew a walk, and in an era when players no longer slid headfirst into bases, Rose almost single-handedly kept the art alive.
Rose singled up the middle off Clyde Wright. Rose took second when Billy Grabarkewitz followed with a single on a ground ball just beyond the grasp of Luis Aparicio.
Then Jim Hickman hit single to center. Rose headed for home. Amos Otis’s throw was good enough to make the play close. The ball got to Fosse right when Rose got to Fosse. Rose didn’t so much slide as tackle the young catcher — perfectly legal then; wouldn’t be now — and Fosse never caught the ball. Rose was safe. The NL won 5-4.
“Fosse was knocked flat and appeared to be injured.’’ Ryan Fitzgerald wrote the Boston Globe. “He was helped off and appeared to be in pain.”
“Fosse was taken to Christ Hospital for x-rays on this left shoulder.”
The injury
When Fosse died of cancer Oct. 13, all the obituaries mentioned the play of course — and the injury.
The physical after-effects would stay with him for the rest of his life. "I still feel it," Fosse told Ron Kroichick of the San Francisco Chronicle in 1999. "From time to time, I wake up and it's killing me."
Because of swelling, the X-rays didn’t show that there was a fracture in the shoulder, probably some other damage as well. There were no MRIs. The first-ever experimental MRI was still seven years away. The first commercial version wouldn’t be available for a decade.
The All-Star Game was on Tuesday. Wednesday was a day off for everyone. Fosse was back behind the plate on Thursday.
His power tailed off, but he still hit well. He had 16 homers before the All-Star break, only two afterward.
He made the cover of the so-called Bible of Baseball, The Sporting News in mid-August. Though I had initially thought of him as a joke, I now took delight in his success.
His season ended Sept. 2 when he broke his right index finger.
“Why now?” Fosse told reporters. “Just when everything was going do good. I thought it was just another torn nail and if hadn’t bled so much I wouldn’t have come out of the game.”
He got the news that his season was over on the day he went to court to testify against the man who threw the cherry bomb that nearly cost him several toes.
The year after and beyond
The injuries continued for Fosse the next season. Fans voted him onto the All-Star team again, and he hit .276 with 12 homers and 62 RBIs.
He injured both his hands that season. He hurt his right in a fight where Tiger pitcher Bill Denehy kicked Fosse’s and pitcher’s cleats cut gashed him, his left when he tore a ligament swinging at a pitch.
His hitting fell off in 1972, but Fosse’s ability to handle pitchers drew praise from teammate Gaylord Perry, who won the Cy Young Award.
“I’ve got to split it up and give part — a big part — to my catcher, Ray Fosse,” Perry said when he won the award. “He kept pushing me in games when I didn’t have good stuff. He’d come out and show me that big fist of his when I wasn’t bearing down the way he thought I should.”
Perry was unhappy when Fosee was traded to Oakland A’s in spring training the next season. “Why would we want to trade our quarterback?” Perry said.
Fosse played on two World Series champions in Oakland. He went back to Cleveland for a second tour of duty and caught Dennis Eckersly’’s no-hitter.
What might have been
He was done as a player by the end of the decade.
As the years rolled on, Fosse said he wondered what kind of player he might have become if not for the shoulder injure.
"If the play had not occurred, who knows what direction my life would have taken?" Fosse told Kroichick of the Chronicle. "I had 16 homers at the break. Could I have hit 25 to 30 consistently every year?"
In 2001, he was selected as one of the catchers for the Indians’ 100th-anniversary team.
After he retired as a player, Fosse went to work for the A’s, eventually getting into the broadcast booth, first for radio and then for TV.
Years in the booth
For the past 15 or so season, I have frequently finished my evenings of baseball watching by taking in the end of an A’s game.
A few years ago The Sporting News decided to review the local broadcast teams for all the MLB teams. They described the A’s team of Glen Kuiper and Fosse as a good example of a solid meat-and-potatoes broadcast.
That is a good way to describe their approach, particularly for Fosse.
He wasn’t laugh-out-loud funny. He did not describe things poetically. His catchphrase — if you call it that — was “Wow!” He didn’t demonstrate an over-the-top passion for the home team. And he didn’t come up with ridiculous “hot takes” to draw attention to himself.
He knew the game and could explain it in a pleasant, measured manner.
There was one thing The Sporting News got dead wrong.
“If you listen to them long enough, there probably will be things that get on your nerves, because that is the case just about universally,” Jesse Spector wrote.
No. And that is what will stick with me most.
In all the years I watched those games, I can’t think of one time Ray Fosse said something that annoyed me or made me groan or want to mute the volume. That is a high compliment.
Fosse was an amiable companion for watching the sport we love on a summer evening. And I will miss him greatly.
Add 1: Former Red Sox second baseman and TV announcer Jerry Remy passed away. Here is an excellent appreciation piece from The Athletic (available without a subscription, I believe).
BONUS FRAMES
Organization dumps organization man
The Cardinals fire manager Mike Shildt over philosophical differences.
Mike Shildt was expecting a pat on the back and maybe a contract extension after his third full season managing the Cardinals.
His .559 winning percentage was the second-best among Cardinals managers (behind Johnny Keane’s .560) and the Cardinals made the postseason every season except in 2018 when he took over in midseason. He was named NL Manager f the Year in 2019.
A longtime minor league scout and coach who finally made it big with the Cardinals organization, he was credited with tightening up the team’s fundamentals.
But management had a surprise for Shildt. He was fired for a difference “in philosophy.” Management wasn’t eager to hash out what that meant for the public.
Shildt, though obviously blind-sided and wounded, was tight-lipped about the reason he was given for his dismissal, too. He’s 53 and if he wants to continue working in baseball, he can’t afford to alienate the franchise for which he’s worked all these years.
“I invested my heart, soul, and most of my professional career into helping maintain and be a part of an organization that I cared more about than I cared about my own career,” Shildt told reporters on a Zoom call. “I was taught not to talk out of school and while clearly there were differences that led to this parting of ways, out of respect for this organization and the people that run it, I can only express my gratitude in all those philosophies that were shared over the many years together that allowed us to part ways as professional friends. What differences there were will be left to remain unsaid.”
Anytime you want to know what is really going on in St, Louis sports, you should check out what Bernie Miklasz is writing.
He was the main sports columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from 1999-2015, Since 2018 he has written for a site called Scoops with Danny Mac.
I don’t think there is anyone who is as plugged in with their local sports scene as Miklasz is in St. Louis.
“I can’t emphasize this enough: if you aren’t fully on board with an analytics train that’s moving forward — there’s no ticket to ride,’ Miklasz wrote. “If you ask me to choose the No. 1 reason for Shildt’s dismissal, this would be it. Other reasons, yes. But this would be at the top of the list from a pure baseball standpoint.”
Only one opinion allowed
So it sounds like the baseball ops people don’t want to waste time going back and forth with some guy whose knowledge of the game doesn’t come from a spreadsheet. Even if he eventually comes around, his lack of enthusiasm for the received wisdom of analytics is troublesome.
It seems clear to me, that Cardinals are like a lot of other places in our society now
One of the few things I took from Psychology 101 -- besides the professor’s general contempt for the students at Arizona State University (he was visiting faculty member from somewhere back East and going to UCLA the next semester) -- was how people don’t like people who disagree with them on strongly held beliefs.
Humans are wired that way. We all find dealing with people who are not on the same page with us at best a pain in the neck.
But in this country, we at least gave lip service to allowing and even appreciating opposing viewpoints, patted ourselves on the back for being open-minded.
That was then. Now?
Look at how two senators from my state, Republican Jeff Flake and Democrat Krysten Sinema, were treated when they dared deviate from the party line.
It’s political, yes, but it leaks into other areas of life.
The more we demand universal agreement the more disagreeable our society becomes.
Trivia time
While Fosse and Rose provided the most memorable moment of the 1970 All-Star Game, neither was named the game’s MVP. Who won the award?
Answer next week
Love the Flyhawks! I remember those little cartoons on the backs of baseball cards ... once had Jim Lemon being either traded or released, and him sitting on a suitcase, crying. Maybe he was released. Wonderful story about Ray Fosse, I always admired him as a player and broadcaster. If I remember, he bore no ill will at Pete Rose. And he won two World Series rings. Take care.