Page 278 - 1975 BoSox

’75—THE RED SOX TEAM THAT SAVED BASEBALL 271
Each bullpen “had been the busiest place all day,” said Possum. On cue, Jim Coates, his team nickname Crazy, replaced Bobby Shantz. Bob Skinner’s bunt advanced the runners: “ e tying run now in scoring position.” Nelson popped to right. With two out, “It all rides now with Roberto Clemente,” who topped “a high bounding ball to the right of Skowron! Over, and got it. Nobody to throw to! Coates did not come to cover! ... Maybe that’s why they call him Crazy!”—Yanks, 7-6. Ex-pinstripe Hal Smith then worked a 2-2 count: “Long drive — deep left eld!” Poss said. “Back goes Berra! It’s gone, baby, and the Pirates lead, 9 to 7! I don’t believe it!” e radio seemed to quiver.
Bobby Richardson and Long reached to start the ninth: the ballgame “riotous,” said Prince, again voicing. Mantle singled: 9-8. Next, Berra smacked “a hot smash down to rst, backhanded by Rocky Nelson. Steps on rst. And Mantle slides back into rst base, and the Yankees score the tying run! Holy Toledo! What a mishmash of a play!” At 3:36, Bill Mazeroski swung atRalphTerry’slast-of-the-inningslider.“ eregoes a long drive hit deep to left eld!” said Gunner. “Going back is Yogi Berra! Going back! You can kiss it good- bye!” No smooch was ever lovelier.
“How did we do it, Possum? How did we do it?” Prince said nally, din all around. Woods didn’t know — only that “I’m looking at the wildest thing since I was on Hollywood Boulevard the night World War II ended.” How to top the topper? e Bucs spent the next decade trying.
“Controversial on purpose,” Prince had de ned his style. In 1966 Pirates Danny Whelan held a wiener painted green. “ ere,” jibed Bob, “is a [TV ] picture of a grown man pointing a green weenie at Lee May.” May popped up. Trucks soon put the Weenie on their aerial. In Calcutta an Indian fakir played a pipe. e Weenie rose from his wicker basket. At Forbes, Prince once day said on-air,“Let’s put the Green Weenie on [Don] Drysdale!” A roar commenced. Big D stood, sneering, umpire Ed Vargo nally ordering him to throw. Big D: “How can I pitch with these nuts going crazy and that skinny bastard up in the booth?”Vargo: “I don’t know, but pitch.” e batter tripled. Leaving,
Don shook his st. e Pirates then ew to San Francisco via Dallas, where Bob inadvertently men- tioned the word “bomb” to a ight attendant, who told the captain, who called the FBI. Apprehended, Gunner was released after the Bucs plane had left, “ nally getting to ’Frisco” after 30 hours without sleep, he said. Impressed, the Black Maxers — a small group of Pirates xated by World War I ying gear — named Bob “o cial bombardier.”
Would Prince ever settle down? “I am, or at least my wife thinks it’s time I did.”
Sports Illustrated described him as “shaped so distinctly in his mold that every listener feels he knows him”— like Woods. In 1968, a KDKA Westinghouse Company lawyer told them to sign “contracts so I can take them back to the o ce.”
Bob: “Ready?”
Jim: “Whenever you are.”
Each tore the paper.“ ere,”Gunner said.“Take those back to your boss.”
In the late 1960s, buying radio rights from Atlantic- Rich eld Co., Westinghouse increasingly accused Poss and Prince of putting show-biz above seminar. In 1969 it spurned Woods’s pay raise—“a pissing contest with the station,” said Prince. “ ey and Poss were about $1,200 apart.” For a decade, Jim had felt shortchanged. “So when an o er for more came from St. Louis, I jumped.” In one sense, he regretted it. In another, he left in the nick of time.
Westinghouse began giving Gunner less promotion, less pre/post-game time, and more clients in the booth. “Some were bombed,” Prince said. “You could hear ’em in Cleveland.” He turned o a microphone, said, “Shut up,” was called a “m_____-f_____,” opened the mike,and said,“Westinghouse is making it impossible to do my job.” At the same time, Woods said that St. Louis was making it impossible to do his.
“Great baseball city, my ass,” Poss recalled. “ e front o ce, [No. 1 Voice] Buck’s ego, how you were afraid to smile.” He left for Oakland, where the A’s won the