Page 144 - 1975 BoSox

’75—THE RED SOX TEAM THAT SAVED BASEBALL 137
walked to lead o the New York seventh. Second up was Graig Nettles, who grounded into a force play, second to short (Andrew to Burleson).
Andrew’s rst at-bat in the major leagues came in the bottom of the inning. With one out, Burleson walked, but Andrew grounded to third, where Nettles elded the play and returned the favor, forcing Burleson at second. Andrew stood on Fenway’s rst base on the elder’s choice but didn’t advance, as Heise hit into an inning-ending grounder to the pitcher.
Elliott Maddox lined out to Andrew in the top of the eighth, and Andrew had his rst major-league putout. He was involved in no other elding plays, but in the bottom of the ninth made his mark at the plate. e Sox were down 12-0 and at risk of being shut out beforetheholidayhomecrowd.TimBlackwell,who’d come in to the game to spell Bob Montgomery, led o the top of the ninth with a double to right. Rick Burleson grounded out to Nettles, but then Andrew singled to deep short. Blackwell held at second. Bob Heise followed with a single to left, scoring Blackwell, and moving Andrew to second base. Bernie Carbo hit into a double play to end the game. e Sox lost, 12-1, but Kim Andrew was batting .500 — and that remains his lifetime average. With one putout and one assist, his lifetime elding average was an unim- peachable 1.000.
Andrew never saw action in another major-league game, though at the time he wouldn’t have known it was his last game. Darrell Johnson told him, “You’re not a bench player” and sent him down to Triple-A Pawtucket so he could ne-tune his skills and play every day. After a couple of weeks in Pawtucket, playing under manager Joe Morgan, Andrew sprained his ankle pretty badly. He was sent down to Double-A Bristol for a while, but returned to Pawtucket. “You feel like you’re on a yo-yo string. It’s a hard life, face it.”
Andrew was uncertain about his future. e big league club liked Denny Doyle a lot and he’d made his mark in the 1975 World Series. Andrew was more of a self- described “spray hitter, not a lot of power. Singles and doubles in the gap.” In line with the times, team
management wasn’t very informative about the role they saw for him. Andrew confessed to some uncer- tainty: “At that point, I really didn’t know what was going on. I’m not sure what they were thinking about me. ... I talked to a couple of people, but at that stage and once you get up into Triple-A, it’s a business. You’re on your own. And they didn’t have agents in those days. You didn’t have an attorney.”
Players had to look out for themselves, even if the uncertainty might undermine a player’s determination in training. Andrew, who’d begun his career with a bit of ambivalence, was a bit adrift. He remembers his nal stretch in professional ball: “If you’re in the minor leagues and you’re not progressing ... I told myself early in my career that if I’m not progressing, it’s going to be a di cult road to hoe for me. It’s easy to lie to a young 21-year-old kid, you know, which direction should I go, if this organization is not particularly keen on me at this time. What are my options? My last year that I was with the Red Sox, I started at Triple-A and then they wanted to send me down, and I said, ‘No.’ I told them, I said, ‘ ere’s no way.’ I wasn’t going to [go lower in the system].”
He knew it was the end of the road. “ ere was no way I was going to play for the Boston Red Sox. at was my last year. I ended up getting picked up by the Orioles. en they let me go after three or four weeks, and at that point, I was disillusioned. I went back in the mountains in North Carolina and did some y- shing. And during that period of time, believe it or not, Bill Veeck of the White Sox called and left me a message. He wanted me to play ball for him; he was really keen on me. He left this long message for me. I was sitting there with my y- shing pole and I had this beard, just back in mountains. I said to myself I had no idea anybody would be interested in me, but I also had [heard from] the Pirates and I had one other organization that had called and left a message. I thought for sure I was going to get pretty much blackballed because I had pretty much told one or- ganization ‘take a hike,’ and then the Orioles dumped me, and I said to myself, that’s probably it.