Page 277 - 1975 BoSox

270 ’75—THE RED SOX TEAM THAT SAVED BASEBALL
Stunned — “It’s a funny business. Things happen”— Woods joined the Giants and NBC’s Major League Baseball. In 1957 he did NBC’s rst weekly baseball: a Brooklyn-Milwaukee exhibition. When the Giants moved to San Francisco, “I hoped to go, but they wanted someone local” to help Hodges. Instead, Poss joined Pittsburgh — his third team in as many years — “I needed a home, and here it was.” Straightway he and Gunner seared sameness the way a laser cuts dead cells. “Everybody told me, ‘Prince is out of control, you’ll never get along,’ but I decided to try him on for size.”
From the start baseball’s Ringling Brothers gilded 50,000-watt agship KDKA with a pencil and score- card. “ at was it,” said Bob. “We’d do play-by- play — or tap dance if the game stunk.” On the last out Jim turned o his mike. “Enough of that! Booze!” e Bucs number two’s joie de vivre also applied to number one.
By 1958 the Pirates led the major leagues in percentage of area radio/TV sets in use. It was easy to grasp why. Once what Woods called “the ugliest woman I ever saw” crashed the press box, barking “I want to see f___ing [Cubs Voice Jack] Brickhouse!”
A writer ngered Bob: “ ere, that’s Brickhouse.”
“Are you f___ing Brickhouse?” she bellowed. e network carried every word.
Convulsed, Woods watched her leave. “Gunner, if you think that one was ugly, look at the broad she’s sitting with!” Bucs’ G.M. Joe L. Brown phoned: “You can’t call women broads on the air.” Jim countered: “Broad is the only thing you could.”
Another game Prince spied “a broad” roaming an aisle. “Poss, check that one out in black!” he howled. You’re on the air, Woods cautioned. “Geez,” Bob replied, “when I think what I coulda’ said!”
One rainy Friday NBC’s Ken Coleman, in Pittsburgh for a Saturday game, heard Prince confess, “ ‘Poss, I wish they’d call the game so I could get home and watch that John Wayne Western.’ So di erent than
what I knew.” Once Bob ribbed some Bucs about baseball being sedentary, making Gene Freese say, “Here’s $20 you can’t dive into this [hotel] pool.” Later Woods recalled Prince clearing 12 feet of concrete from his third- oor room, asking “How’d your act check out now?” Gunner: “One way to nd out,” diving from the ledge.
Poss’s play-by-play boasted similar sangfroid. “Clemente is on the move and runs it down, one- handed! A typical Roberto catch!” he bayed. “Mr. Mays is out on a tremendous play! Usually he makes a tre- mendous play.” Eddie Mathews, Woods noted, had said, “I hate your forkball pitcher”— Elroy Face. Don Hoak’s “battle cry was, ‘Boys, you’ve gotta keep driving’ “ — the 1960 Bucs driving to their rst world title since 1925. “ e Pirates clinch [the pennant]!” Poss growled on September 25 as Chicago beat second-place St. Louis. Prince and Allen telecast the World Series on NBC, though baseball banned local radio and TV — thus, Woods. Undeterred, he and Gunner later re-created Game Seven.
“ e biggest ballgame ever played in the history of this city” packed 36,683 “into this old ball orchard,” Poss began. e Yankees’ lineup listed “glue-gloved” Clete Boyer; the Bucs’, “the great Roberto,” shortstop “Richard Morrow Groat,” and “in a mild surprise, at rst, Rocky Nelson,” who stunned with a rst-inning homer. Behind 4-0, Bill Skowron homered, Woods “never guring out”why the pinstriped righty slugger was a left-footed kicker at Purdue. A sixth-inning four-spot gave the Bombers a 5-4 edge.“Yankee power has asserted itself, and you can feel the gloom.”
In the top of the eighth, New York swelled its lead to 7-4. Leading o the bottom, Gino Cimoli singled. Bill Virdon then lanced a “high chopping ball down to [shortstop] Tony — hits him! e ball is down, and so is Kubek!”—the ball striking him in the larynx, said Woods. “Bob, your description of the Forbes Field in eld [“alabaster plaster”] again comes into play!” As Kubek traveled to the hospital, Groat “hit a line drive, left eld, base hit,” Cimoli scoring: 7-5.