The Swinger from Binger

LONG before Rocky Marciano proved that under Marquess of Queensbury rules he could beat up anyone in the world, the late heavyweight champion earned a considerable reputation as a catcher. In fact, he claimed the Chicago Cubs offered him a handsome bonus to sign with their National League baseball club. As the Rock told it, he carefully weighed the choice of careers presented him, and finally selected the spaciousness of the prizefighting ring over the confines of home plate. When asked if she was dismayed by his decision, his mother reportedly replied: "I didn't raise my son to be a catcher."

Apocryphal or not, the story makes a solid point. Beyond working the swing shift down at the jute mill or flaying the catch on a tuna factory boat, there are few jobs around as demanding and punishing as that of major-league catcher. But the thought of their own flesh and blood earning a living in a metal-grille mask, sturdy chest protector and plated shin guards doesn't seem to bother Ted and Katie Bench--or even Grandma Pearl. Nearly every day the Cincinnati Reds are in town, at least one of the three treks out to Riverfront Stadium and cheers lustily as the pride of the family, Johnny Lee Bench, dons his armor and trots onto the field to command the game.

And command it he does, with an agility and aplomb that make him, at 24, the outstanding catcher in baseball today--at a time when the game boasts its finest group of receivers since the days of Roy Campanella and Yogi Berra. From the very outset, in his first full season with the Reds in 1968, the husky (6 ft., 209 Ibs.), handsome athlete took charge on the diamond, calling the defensive shots, cutting down base runners like so many cornstalks, and imposing his canny grasp of pitching tactics on temperamental hurlers. Said former Reds Pitcher Jim Maloney, eight years Bench's senior: "He'll come out to the mound and chew me out as if I were a two-year-old. And I like it." That was only the half of it. Squinting menacingly at rival pitchers over his high Choctaw cheekbones, the young Oklahoman made his biggest noise at the plate that first year, belting 15 homers and driving in 82 runs--almost precisely as he had predicted he would at the beginning of the season.

Never shy about his talents, Johnny had blithely announced that he would be the first catcher in history to win Rookie-of-the-Year honors, and that is just what he did. He won the Golden Glove award as the outstanding defensive receiver in the National League and set a major-league record for the greatest number of games (154) caught by a rookie. The praise rolled in like panegyrics by 19th century Romantic poets. Chicago Cub Manager Leo Durocher: "Bench is the greatest catcher since Gabby Hartnett." Montreal's Gene Mauch: "If I had my pick of any player in the league, Johnny Bench would be my first choice." Los Angeles' Walter Alston: "He'll be the All-Star catcher for the next ten years." Oakland's excitable owner Charlie Finley saw Bench hit a home run in an All-Star game and promptly wrote out a check to Cincinnati for $1,000,000--an offer that was instantly rebuffed. Even Ted Williams, the finest student of hitting in history and a man not given to paeanizing, presented Bench with an autographed ball during John's rookie year; it bore the inscription "A Hall of Famer for sure."

Bench calmly accepted all this as his due, and in 1969 went on to sock 26 home runs and drive in 90 runs. But his first two seasons of play were merely a loosening up for 1970. That was the coming of age for Bench and his I murderously powerful Redleg teammates. Bench walloped 45 home runs and collected a whopping total of 148 RBIS to lead the Reds to their first National League pennant since 1961. He became, in the bargain, the youngest catcher in either league ever to win the Most Valuable Player award.

Then came 1971, a black year for Bench and the Reds. Straining to keep pace with a reputation that was already greening into myth, Bench hit only 27 home runs, and his batting average tailed off to an asthenic .238. His teammates caught similar bugs and the dreaded Big Red Machine wound up in a disappointing third-place finish in the league's rugged Western Division, behind the San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers. For the first time in his career, Johnny Bench heard boos in thundering waves, and he did not like it. He heard them again at the start of this season as he opened with a single in 22 times at bat. By May 28 "the Little General," as his teammates had dubbed him, was batting a subaltern's average of .246, and the Reds were in third place in their division, 4 1/2 games behind the feisty Houston Astros.

Nightmares. Suddenly Bench, with hefty support from slugging First Baseman Tony Perez, Outfielders Pete Rose and Bobby Tolan and newly acquired Second Baseman Joe Morgan, put the Big Red Machine into overdrive. On the second night of an extended road trip, in Houston's discombobulating Astrodome, Johnny cracked a deep fly to left center. The ball caromed off the wall between two sprinting outfielders, and by the time the relay throws reached the infield, Bench, no whippet on the base paths, had crossed home plate standing up with the first inside-the-park home run of his major-league career. That heralded his return to fearsome normalcy at bat. Before the night ended Bench had rapped a bases-loaded single and cleared the wall in the ninth inning, a blow that gave the Reds a 9-5 victory. The next night Bench capped the Reds' second six-run outburst of the game with his ninth home run of the year. After the game Bench relaxed and said: "Man, I haven't felt so good in two years." Manager Sparky Anderson agreed: "Johnny's looking more like his old self and that sure makes me happy."

Within days Anderson was positively ecstatic. In the next game Bench cracked a single to touch off a four-run rally in the sixth inning as the Reds won their fourth straight from the flagging Astros, 10-3. In the series with Philadelphia, Bench left Phillie hurlers with nightmares that could last the entire season. With the Phils leading 1-0 at the end of six innings, big John stepped to the plate and slammed a long drive over the fence, tying the score and eventually forcing the game into extra innings. Eight extra, to be exact, until Bench came up again in the top of the 17th with two men on base, and blasted his second home run of the night to give the Reds their sixth straight win, 6-3. That also gave Johnny a total of seven homers in five games, tying a league record set in 1929 by Jim Bottomley of the St. Louis Cardinals.

Bench's streak did not stop there. Indeed, it became rather spooky. He beat the Phillies again with a double that drove in the only two runs of the game. He conspired with Battery Mate Gary Nolan to whip the Montreal Expos; Nolan won his eighth game in nine decisions as Bench went four-for-six at the plate, driving in three runs. By the time the Reds returned from that astonishing road trip, Bench had collected 21 hits in 51 times at bat to raise his batting average to .306, and had belted nine homers and driven in 24 RBls. More important to Johnny and his teammates, the Reds were where they felt they belonged--in first place. This time they came home to a cheering crowd of 2,000 at Cincinnati's airport. Several days later Bench received a standing ovation at Riverfront Stadium as he socked his 16th home run of the season. He tipped his cap rounding the bases, a gesture he had declined to make since the beginning of the season. Last week he blasted another four-bagger off San Francisco Pitcher Jim Barr to bring his totals to 20 home runs and 59 RBls. No other hitter in either league is even close.

Endemic Injuries. Despite that torrid pace, Cincinnati at week's end was still in a close battle with the Houston Astros for first place in the Western Division. Bench, too, had personal competition from baseball's sudden wealth of gifted catchers. His closest rival for pre-eminence is Pittsburgh's Manny Sanguillen, a favorite among fans for his antic enthusiasm. The scourge of opposing pitchers, Sanguillen stands out even among the Pirates' offensive dreadnaughts. Last week he ranked third in National League batting with a .332 average. Sanguillen, like Bench, belongs to that rare species of athlete that enjoys catching. Says Pirate Coach Don Leppert: "The most important asset a catcher can have is desire. Let's face it, catching is not for the timid. A lot of players have the tools, but they don't like being hit with foul tips or wild pitches and they don't like those collisions at the plate."

In fact, injuries are as endemic to catching as they are to pro-football line-backing. Take the Detroit Tigers' Bill Freehan, for example. Five times a winner of the Golden Glove award and eight times the American League's All-Star catcher, he labored for several years in serious pain until an operation fused his detached vertebrae. Just as he was getting back into form this year, he broke his thumb. Cleveland's Ray Fosse broke the index finger of his right hand three years in a row, and smashed his shoulder in a collision with Cincinnati's Rose during the 1970 All-Star game. Chicago Cub Veteran Randy Hundley, who perfected the one-handed catch that Bench has adopted, was nearly retired at 28 with knee injuries and is playing only part time this season. A few up-and-coming receivers are still healthy, including the St. Louis Cardinals' hard-hitting Ted Simmons and the New York Mets' Duffy Dyer, who was recently named National League Player of the Week--after replacing the injured Jerry Grote.

Durability has always been an absolute prerequisite for manning home plate. So much so, in fact, that a stereotype was created of the catcher as a slightly more alert version of Steinbeck's fabled Lennie, as a good-natured dolt who blocked pitches and flying spikes by day, then lumbers out of the clubhouse stroking a dead squirrel in his coat pocket. The catcher's cumbersome equipment was even dubbed the "tools of ignorance" by one of the trade's own, "Muddy" Ruel of the old Washington Senators, whose unenviable job it was to bring down Walter Johnson's smoking fastball. But ignorance is not strength in the complex world of the catcher, and it never has been. Pitching may well be 75% of baseball but a savvy signal caller behind the plate can be 50% of pitching. And unlike the pitcher, he is expected to come out of his leg-numbing squat, unbuckle his armor and pull his weight in the batter's box.

Pure Velocity. Few athletes have the protean talent to do that, which is why there have been only a handful of authentic superstar catchers in the chronicle of baseball. Roger Bresnahan, who teamed with Christy Mathewson on the old New York Giants, was probably the earliest, and Bill Dickey of the 1930s New York Yankees was possibly the greatest. Others in the pantheon are Gabby Hartnett, Detroit's Mickey Cochrane, and an earlier Redleg, Ernie Lombardi, whose style and skills closely parallel Bench's own. It may well be that Josh Gibson of the Homestead Grays in the old Negro League was better than any of them. Then add the Brooklyn Dodger Blockbuster Roy Campanella (TIME Cover, Aug. 8, 1955) and the Yankees' impish Yogi Berra and the list of supercatchers is completed. As for the mental-retardation image, four of the modern seven--Dickey, Hartnett, Cochrane and Berra--became big league managers. There are tragic reasons why the others did not. Gibson's color was--in his era--enough to keep him out of the big leagues. Lombardi, a gregarious but incomprehensible figure, slit his throat. And Campanella, who might well have become the first black manager in major-league baseball, was paralyzed from the waist down in a 1958 automobile accident (last week he was rushed to the hospital with a serious lung congestion stemming from his paralysis).

Bench matches any of the greats. His physical assets are spectacular. He is broad (making him a good target for the pitcher), strong and agile. He can hold seven baseballs in one simian paw. But, most impressive, he throws a single baseball harder than the limits of human ability would seem to allow. "I wish," says one wistful Redleg pitcher, "that I could throw the way he does." Bench once proudly announced: "I can throw out any base runner alive." His challenge was quickly met by the best alive, the Cardinals' Lou Brock, who at the time had 21 straight stolen bases to his credit. Brock did not make it 22. Against the Dodgers, Bench picked a runner off second base, cut down another at third, and then, after vacuuming a perfectly executed bunt, rocketed a throw to first to end the inning.

To augment the pure velocity of his arm, Bench has trained himself to do two things: catch the ball with one hand, and cock and fire from a crouch. Originally Bench was a traditionalist; he caught the ball with his left and covered it with his right. Taking the cue from the older Hundley, Bench switched to a hinged catcher's mitt that enabled him to snare a pitch with one hand and thus keep his right hand free --from harm, as well as to throw more quickly. Then he practiced for hour upon hour transferring the ball swiftly from glove to throwing hand while still in the crouch, always making sure that he grasped the ball exactly across the seams so that his pegs to second and third never curved or faded. "I don't even think about it now," he says. "No matter what way the ball comes in, I've got it across the seams by the time I get it back, ready to throw."

Bench is thinking every minute, however--about every batter in the box, every runner on base, every pitch in his battery mate's repertoire. It is his brains and his calm, confident manner that elevate him to a special plateau above the merely superior receivers. He knows better than any of them how to keep his hurlers mixing their pitches, and will not hesitate to cajole or even bully a reluctant hurler into following his commands. Once Maloney shook Bench off repeatedly on Johnny's call for a curve; he wanted to throw his patented fastball. Bench persisted, and Maloney finally came in with a roundhouse curve that left the astonished batter gaping at a called third strike. Another time, when Bench felt a pitcher was not putting enough steam on the ball, he shocked everyone in the park by arrogantly catching a listless pitch with his bare hand. Thus chastened, the pitcher bore down hard.

Because Bench is a brash, smooth-talking top-drawer athlete with a lavish bachelor pad in a Cincinnati singles complex, he naturally invites comparison with Joe Namath. The comparison is invidious. He is warm, friendly and never overweening. Bench's confidence is the deeply ingrained type peculiar to young men who have always known exactly what they wanted to do in life. As he recalls: "In the second grade they asked us what we wanted to be. Some said they wanted to be a farmer. Some said rancher or cowboy. I said I wanted to be a ballplayer, and they laughed. In the eighth grade they asked the same question, and I said ballplayer and they laughed a little more. By the eleventh grade no one was laughing."

Small Potatoes. Johnny was born in Oklahoma City on the sixth anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day, but raised in the town of Binger (pop. 730), which he describes as lying "two miles beyond Resume Speed." Binger is also near the heart of Last Picture Show country (Johnny guffawed appreciatively at the movie's realism). The third son of Ted and Katie Bench (there is also a daughter Marilyn), Johnny prospered in the kind of aggressively athletic household that can send a young man to the big leagues or the psychiatrist's couch. His father, a onetime truckdriver and furniture salesman, had been a semipro catcher. It was his idea for Johnny to become a catcher; he reasoned that there was a dearth of good ones in the majors and that catching would be the quickest path to success. Ted even created a Little League team in Binger just for Johnny and his brothers. When that did not work out, he drove them 17 miles to Anardarko to play. Meanwhile Johnny glued himself to major-league games on TV, assiduously copying down ballplayers' bland interviews.

Johnny remained a catcher until his sophomore year in high school, when the coach thought that his formidable arm could be put to better use. As a pitcher, Bench compiled a fancy 16-1 record over two years, "with a bunch of no-hitters." He was also named all-state as a basketball guard as well as class valedictorian. Why did he give up the glamour of pitching to return to the rigors of catching? "Maybe," he said, "it was because I hit .675 in high school." But Binger was still mighty small potatoes so far as pro scouts were concerned, and Bench was not picked by the Reds until the second round of choices in 1965. He was sent to Tampa in the Florida State League, where he performed indifferently. Still, a coach named Yogi Berra watched his moves and exclaimed: "He can do it all now."

He did it all for Peninsula in the Carolina League in 1966, driving in 68 runs in 98 games before being called to Buffalo. (In a gesture almost unheard of in the minor leagues, Peninsula permanently retired his number.) His beginning in Buffalo was even more negative than his start in Tampa. He broke his right thumb on a foul tip in his first game. Later a drunken driver forced him off the road. Johnny wound up, as he remembers, "with 18 stitches in my head and my left arm laid open." When he returned in 1967, however, the hand was apparently healed; one of every four Bench hits was a home run, and he was called up to the parent club toward the end of the season, just before he was named Minor League Player of the Year.

Since that time, Johnny's career has been even more astronomical. But even astronauts run into trouble now and again. One problem was the size of Johnny's head, which was literally 7 1/2 but figuratively swollen far beyond that size. Johnny defended his jaunty ways. "If you aren't cocky as a catcher," he said, "you aren't doing your job." Fan and media adulation mounted. Bench was called on to do a two-minute role in a Mission: Impossible episode; he muffed it slightly by stepping off on the wrong foot in a parade sequence. He jokingly told a sportswriter banquet: "I know what it means to be a success. I can read it in your eyes." Dave Bristol, then the Reds' manager, voiced a sentiment that Bench's teammates had left unspoken. "Every day, everywhere I go, it's Johnny Bench, Johnny Bench, Johnny Bench, Johnny Bench. He's not super yet. A superplayer can do everything." Acknowledging Johnny's outstanding play, Bristol complained nonetheless that Bench "doesn't like to be told anything, and he doesn't like to make a mistake--any mistake. He is so intelligent and conscientious that it hurts him to have to be told about a shortcoming."

Player Rep. There were also contract disputes with the Cincinnati front office. Among Johnny's goals is to become the first catcher to make $100,000, and he decided his time had come after he was named Most Valuable Player in 1970. General Manager Bob Howsam grumbled: "Pete Rose is the only $100,000 ballplayer on this club right now, and that's the way it's going to stay." Johnny finally settled for somewhere in the neighborhood of $85,000. Another sore spot with the front office was Johnny's extracurricular activities. Bench the athlete is fitfully possessed by the singer manque, and debuted Las Vegas after the 1970 season. He also toured Viet Nam with Bob Hope and devoted a good deal of time to his financial enterprises: an auto dealership, a bowling alley (which failed to work out) and a Cincinnati outfit called Professionals Inc., which handles athlete endorsements.

Sobered by the relative disaster of the 1971 season, Bench has toned down a bit in the past year. Furthermore, many of his problems were the inevitable byproducts of instant celebrity; however he may have occasionally abraded their sensibilities, he has always been a popular figure in the clubhouse. This year, in fact, he was elected the Reds' player representative in recognition of the great effort he put into the players' strike.

But Johnny's parents remain his most ardent fans (a pulse beat ahead of the pretty girls he squires around). To keep his family within easy range of the ballpark, he has moved them to the comfortable Cincinnati suburb of Evendale, where they manage a motel. If anyone is more laudatory than the Benches about Johnny, however, it is the Reds' Pitcher Wayne Granger. Says he: "I think Johnny is more valuable to the Cincinnati team than anyone was to any other team in the history of baseball--and that includes Babe Ruth." Johnny, though he may have mellowed a bit, probably agrees. He remains Bench the Confident, Bench the Imperturbable, the supreme believer in his own worth. As he once put it: "There are too many false things in the world, and I don't want to be part of them. If you say what you think, you're called cocky or conceited. But if you have an object in life, you shouldn't be afraid to stand up and say it. I want to be the greatest catcher ever to play the game."

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