Once Again into the Breach

The Boston Red Sox resume the chase of the Yankees

Don Zimmer stakes out the morning sun and sweeps his eyes across the deserted ballpark. October has given way to spring, the quirky confines of Fenway Park to the symmetry of a Florida practice field ringed with orange trees. "All winter long, I kept seeing Bucky Dent," the Boston Red Sox manager says. He squints once, hard, and the memory rolls in again: Dent, the ninth man in the New York Yankee lineup lofting a fly ball over the towering left field wall in Fenway, crushing Boston's pennant hopes in a one-game, winner-take-all playoff. "I'm watching TV, and I see Bucky Dent. I'm lying in bed trying to go to sleep, and I see Bucky Dent. I wake up in the middle of the night, and I see Bucky Dent." Another squint, a squirt of tobacco juice and Zimmer returns to spring. "But that was last year. I'm not a guy who makes predictions, but we've got a good ball club. We'll be in a pennant race again."

Such are the forever greening hopes of a new baseball season, and the warming sun can even stir confidence in the team that always seems to be chasing the New York Yankees, and always just falling short. Last year's collapse, blowing a 14-game lead, was of such epic proportions that it already is part of the game's lore, but the Sox insist, perhaps too strongly, that the past is dead. In his 19th major league spring, Carl Yastrzemski looks back on the year that got away and declares: "I forgot about it a couple of hours after we got beat. Optimism is what spring training is for." And First Baseman George Scott, slimmed down and eager, adds a springtime aphorism of his own: "New years bring new things."

Unfortunately, the off-season may not have brought enough new things to push the Red Sox past New York. Boston's winter trades disposed of Bill Lee, resident flake and longtime starting pitcher (94 wins, 68 losses), and picked up four minor players who can, at best, be counted on as utility men. Meanwhile, the Yankees, true to then-big-spending ways, obtained two more front-line pitchers: the Dodgers' Tommy John and, unkindest cut of all, Boston's Luis Tiant. Ageless and irrepressible, Tiant was a favorite of Boston fans and a stopper for crucial games; typically, it was Tiant who threw the shut-out that tied the Yanks on the last day of the season. More important, he was the heart of the Red Sox clubhouse, the only man who could make his teammates laugh while their world crumbled about them. The Red Sox were mystified and angry when their front office let the old magician go.

Ironically, the player Boston kept stirred as much or more trouble on the team than the one that got away. The Sox awarded American League M.V.P. Jim Rice a new seven-year contract reportedly worth $5.4 million, and all this despite a policy against renegotiating standing deals. Yastrzemski (estimated salary: $300,000) was so angered by the special treatment given the slugger that he threatened to sit out the season. He relented at the last moment, then last week worked out a deal that reportedly will pay him $600,000 a year in 1980 and 1981. There were other rumblings: All-Star Shortstop Rick Burleson openly challenged management's shortsighted and penny-pinching policies. Said he: "The Yankees have more talent than we do now. That's because our owners let us down."

The Red Sox already have problems. Third Baseman Butch Hobson is recovering from elbow surgery. All-Star Catcher Carleton Fisk also has elbow trouble and can neither swing nor throw without pain. During one brief stint in the batting cage, he repeatedly nestled his arm against his side between pitches, while Ted Williams talked softly to him: "Take it easy. You don't have to rip the ball yet, just swing easy."

The presence of Williams at the training camp in Winter Haven is in itself an ironic symbol of Boston's frustrations. Even his splendid bat could not offset the perennial Red Sox weaknesses of a lean bench and thin pitching. Nothing has changed; Boston still has the bats but not the arms. Top Reliever Bill Campbell has yet to shake the shoulder problem that crippled him last year, and his absence from the bullpen could once again keep Bob Stanley from starting. Boston must find at least two new first-line pitchers, but eight of the nine minor leaguers battling for a place have a total of just 15 innings of major-league experience.

Millionaire Jim Rice sums up Boston's plight: "Our starting nine is the best in baseball, but we need some guys who can come off the bench and take over. If we leave spring training with a couple of injuries to key guys, we could be dead already."

But like the morning fog, gloomy assessments burn off under the clear Florida sun. Yastrzemski will be 40 before the season ends, yet he still frolics after fungoes with the glee of a small boy. On the final swing for Boston last year, Yaz popped up to end the play-off game with the Yankees. This year, recalls Zimmer, "he broke his bat the first day in batting practice--the first swing of the spring." The Boston manager considers the moment. "Fortunately, I don't believe in omens."

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