Page 169 - 1975 BoSox

162 ’75—THE RED SOX TEAM THAT SAVED BASEBALL
both in 1968 and 1969. In 1968 he was a regular for Jacksonville in the International League, as he was in 1969 for Tidewater. Both seasons were solid, if not spectacular. He got into four games (hitting 3-for-10), for the historic 1969 Mets, although he was not on the postseason roster.
In 1970 Heise made the big-league club out of spring training—but it was for the San Francisco Giants. e Mets had traded him and Jim Gosger to the Giants for Ray Sadecki and Dave Marshall on December 12, 1969. With San Francisco, Heise more or less split his time between backup roles at shortstop and second base, getting into 67 games, but batting only .234. Before his time in the majors was up, Heise accumulated 1,144 at-bats but he hit his one and only major-league home run on June 30, 1970, o Danny Coombs. e Giants were hosting the San Diego Padres at Candlestick Park.
Did Heise remember it? “Yeah! ey made a [pho- nograph] record of it, and I played it for my grandson just recently. He found it in a drawer. So we played it for him.” It’s not the sort of thing one forgets. He had some good people around him in the lineup that day — Bobby Bonds was leading o , Heise was batting second, Willie Mays was in the three hole, and Willie McCovey was batting cleanup. In the third inning, Coombs made a mistake and Heise hit one out. e Padres won the game nevertheless, 3-2.
Heise had ashes of real success. He was traded to the Brewers on the rst day of June in 1971 and during one stretch of 10 games for Milwaukee, there were three separate games in which Heise went 3-for-4. ey were the exceptions, though. Heise batted .234 in 1970, and hadn’t had a hit his rst 11 at-bats for San Francisco in 1971 prior to the trade to Milwaukee. He hit .254 for the Brewers that year, improving to .266 in 1972, when he had a career-high 271 at-bats. In 1973 he hit just .204 and was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals for Tom Murphy in December. In mid-1974 St. Louis traded him to the California Angels on July 31 for a player to be named later. After the season was over, the Cardinals got Doug Howard. “I loved the
Angels,” Heise said. “ ey gave me the opportunity to play. I was having a great year with Tulsa, hitting .340 or something like that, playing for Kenny Boyer.” Heise improved while playing more regularly for California, hitting .267 in the second half of the 1974 season.
In one of the rst trades of the o season, Boston sent Tommy Harper to the Angels in December 1974 and Heise became a member of the Red Sox, just in time to be on the pennant-winning 1975 Red Sox team. Heise batted just .214, but knocked in 21 runs, making key contributions. His best day was during a July 6 doubleheader in Cleveland, when he went 4-for-7 with ve RBIs. He pretty much won the rst game, driving in three runs in a 5-3 Red Sox win. Heise’s RBIs were sometimes vital ones; he recalled having ve game-winning hits in 1975. Come the playo s and the World Series, though, all the in elders were healthy. “I was there, and my whole family was there. All the regulars played. e regulars played and hit .300. You got to realize the position that you’re in, and what your job is. And you don’t bitch about it. I did not bitch about it. e Red Sox treated me great.Tom Yawkey treated me really well. I really didn’t expect to be treated that well. I had always been treated like Frank Lane would treat you in Milwaukee: ‘If you’re not under contract...’ or ‘I’ll bury your ass in the minor leagues.’ at’s how I got treated in my time.”
Heise was with Boston for the full 1976 season, but saw much more limited action: just 56 at-bats (though he hit .268). After the season, the Sox sold him to the Kansas City Royals in early December. He put in a full year playing under Whitey Herzog with the Royals, typically a late-inning sub in 54 games and accumulating only 62 at-bats. Kansas City made it into the playo s, losing in ve games to the New York Yankees. Once again, Bob hugged the bench as the regulars saw all the action. Again, there is no dissent. “I think the baseball person I had the most respect for of this whole game while I was playing, was Whitey Herzog. ... ey let me go, then I knew it was over. Maybe I’d been losing a step here, a step there. If it was Whitey Herzog who let me go, I knew it was