Page 264 - 1975 BoSox

IT IS RARE FOR A SINGLE MOMENT to pivot a career. Dick Stockton is an excep- tion, not rule. Before 1975, Stockton moved
from Syracuse University via KDKA Pittsburgh’s revolutionary news to pro basketball’s Boston Celtics. After 1975 he aired a Klondike of more national sports, including the Red Sox, A’s, and network baseball postseason and weekend Game of the Week. e pivot was a magical baseball year — and game.
To be precise, the hinge was perhaps baseball’s greatest match — Red Sox-Reds World Series Game Six — cli- maxed by its greatest moment: Carlton Fisk’s 12:34 A.M. October 22, 1975, blast o Fenway Park’s left- eld foul pole. “Its Midas Touch enriched me, the Red Sox, and above all, baseball,” said Stockton of the Sox’ 12-inning 7-6 wonderwork that tied the Series at three games each. Its quality of disbelief still exists, especially Dick calling Fisk’s showstopper on NBC Television despite barely airing baseball before 1975. It is a time worth recalling — and life worth retelling.
Stockton’s life began on October 12, 1942, as Richard Edward Stokvis, in Philadelphia. Moving to New York, his father, an advertising executive, bought season tickets to the Giants, whom Dick followed in his youth with metronomic regularity. e team’s home was the twin-tiered Polo Grounds, in a hollow 115 feet below Coogan’s Blu . Polo was never played there: After 1890, baseball was. e park was even more asymmetrical than Fenway Park, Stockton’s future beau. Foul turf formed a vast semicircle
behind the plate to each line. Roofed bullpen shacks anchored left-center and right-center eld. Pee-wee foul lines earned the snarl “Polo Grounds home run.” Right eld was 257 feet from the plate. A 21-foot upper deck overhang made left’s 279 feet seem closer. By con- trast, center eld’s 483 feet seemed rooted in another time zone. Its rear wall read 505.
As a boy, Stockton attended Forest Hills High School in Queens. By then, Dad had also bought his son’s rst Bowman baseball cards: ve in a pack. Junior’s favorite player, Red Schoendienst, was shown hori- zontally close-up, bat over shoulder, wearing a blue cap with red peak and intertwined STL. Stockton recalled spying “team pennants oating in the breeze, walking from the Speedway on Coogan’s Blu ,” and light towers atop the upper deck, like corn stalks in a eld. rough the runway Dick eyed roofed bullpen shacks, a Chester eld cigarettes sign, and batting practice, the visiting Cardinals in the cage. ey wore a road uniform of gray with red numbers trimmed in blue, red stockings with blue and white stripes, and familiar St. Louis cap.
Two Redbirds had “one foot on a tire supporting the cage,” Dick said later, bright with memory: Number 6, Stan Musial, bats and throws left, born Donora, Pennsylvania, and especially his hero, Number 2, Schoendienst, bats switch, throws right, born Germantown, Illinois. “My card came alive,” Stockton said, especially on the road, studying his Giants year- book’s aerial shot of each National League (NL) park as Giants announcer Russ Hodges noted Braves Field’s right- eld “Jury Box” or Crosley Field’s “laundry” behind the left- eld wall. Forbes Field denoted Schenley Park; Ebbets Field, the high wall in right. As a teen, Dick pined to be a sportswriter after being mesmerized by the sound of reporters ling from
midcourt at Madison Square Garden. Yet it was “radio that was my friend,” said Stockton, “and creativity that was radio’s.”
Reality preceded the Syracuse Class of ’64 political-science major’s rst baseball telecast. In 1965, the speech and dramatic arts specialist began at TV and radio outlets in Philadelphia. Two years later KDKA TV made Stockton sports direc- tor on its thrice-nightly Eyewitness News,
Dick Stockton
By Curt Smith
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