Bucs and Birds in a Breeze

The divisional playoffs for the two major league pennants were designed to be titillating curtain raisers for the World Series. Except for the triumph of the Miracle Mets in 1969, the expected has usually happened, and this year was no exception. Both playoffs were won in a breeze by the odds-on favorite Baltimore Orioles and Pittsburgh Pirates.

After dropping the opener, a 5-4 squeaker, to the San Francisco Giants, the Pirates unloaded one more-or-less secret weapon after another. Weapon No. 1 was First Baseman Bob Robertson. He had not hit a home run in the last six weeks of the regular season, but he belted three of them in the second game to power the Pirates to a 9-4 victory. The surprise in the third game was Pitcher Bob Johnson, a self-proclaimed "dud" during the season (nine wins, ten losses). Tapped as a last-minute replacement for ailing Nelson Briles, he held the Giants to four hits during the first seven innings. Then in the eighth, with two outs, two men on and the score tied 1-1, Pirate Pitching Coach Don Osborn strolled to the mound to give Johnson some sage advice: "Get this guy out." "Get your butt back on the bench, and I will," came the reply.

Johnson did, setting the stage for some more unexpected heroics by Pirate Third Baseman Richie Hebner, who had gone the last seven weeks of the season without a home run. He drilled one over the rightfield wall to cinch a 2-1 Pittsburgh victory. Lest it seem like luck, Hebner then helped the Pirates mop up the Giants 9-5 in the final game with a three-run homer. He also provided a vital ninth-inning out by leaping into the stands to snatch a foul ball away from a covey of overeager hometown fans. San Francisco left with the dubious distinction of being the first losing team in three years of playoffs to win so much as a single game.

F for Strategy. After a deceptively sluggish start, Baltimore had yawned its way to the American League's Eastern Division championship. In the playoff opener against the Oakland A's, the Orioles faced their sternest test: Vida Blue, the fireballing lefty who led the A's to the championship of the American League's Western Division with a record of 24 wins and eight losses (including two victories over Baltimore). Blue was brilliant through the first six innings, but tired noticeably in the seventh. Exploding for four runs, Baltimore went on to win 5-3. After taking the second game 5-1 on the strength of First Baseman Boog Powell's two home runs, the Orioles were given the third when the A's scored an F for strategy.

In the fifth inning, with two outs, runners on second and third and the score tied 1-1, Oakland Manager Dick Williams made the questionable decision to give an intentional walk to Baltimore Catcher Elrod Hendricks. Hendricks, who had batted all of .125 against the A's during the season, was followed by Third Baseman Brooks Robinson, one of the most celebrated clutch hitters in baseball. Robinson promptly drove in two runs with a single up the middle. Final score: Baltimore 5, Oakland 3.

Fearsome Foursome. If the Orioles' victory celebration seemed a bit forced last week, it was only because the popping of champagne corks has become something of an October rite in Baltimore. While the bubbly flowed, Manager Earl Weaver proclaimed his Orioles "the best team ever assembled. We're only the third team to win more than 100 games three straight years, and we've won four pennants in six years--and only the Yankees have done that."

Weaver might be exaggerating a bit, but the Orioles do have strong fielding, plenty of power hitting--and the best crew of starting pitchers in either league: Righthanders Jim Palmer and Pat Dobson, Lefthanders Dave McNally and Mike Cuellar, all of whom won at least 20 games this season. In equaling a record set more than half a century ago,* the Orioles big four started all but 16 of Baltimore's 158 games. Palmer, McNally and Cuellar, in fact, each won 20 or more games last season. Acquired in a trade with the San Diego Padres this winter, Dobson found it fairly easy to catch the spirit of the program. Improving on his 14-15 record with the last-place Padres, he ended the season with a 20-8 record. Even so, the other three pitchers were so effective in their sweep of Oakland that Dobson sat out the playoffs in the bullpen.

The first game of the World Series was cut from the same cloth. Baltimore's McNally was near the top of his form, striking out nine, allowing the Pirates only three hits and no earned runs, and at one point retiring 19 batters in a row. The Pirates scored first and early, stealing three runs on one hit in the second inning after a walk, a wild pitch and two errors by the usually impeccable Baltimore defense. But in the Baltimore half of the same inning, Frank Robinson opened with a home run off Pittsburgh Starter Dock Ellis; in the third, Merv Rettenmund unloaded another, this time with two men on. A final Oriole home run by Don Buford in the fifth made it 5-3, ending the scoring--and the Pirates' hopes--for the day.

* In 1920, four pitchers for the Chicago White Sox--Claude Williams, Edward Cicotte, Urban Faber and Richard Kerr--won 20 or more games apiece. Williams and Cicotte were later implicated in what came to be known as the 1919 Black Sox scandal, which was not uncovered until after the 1920 Series.

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