And one could have confidence in old Jerry Adair, journeyman third base-man, who chewed tobacco and hunched over the plate in arthritic concentration. One hesitates to say it, but the team was Andrews and Adair. In the mixture of their youth and age, the identity of their concentration, lay the secret of Red Sox success.

Big Carl

And Yastrzemski. What does one say? He is apart. He came to bat after Adair, and one took pleasure, even in his patient preparation. In the on-deck circle, two bats swirling around the shoulders, above the head in an ashwood ceremony of prayer and promise. Meticulous attention to every detail.

First the left foot, scraping the dirt near the back of the box, establishing this dominion. Then, settling the helmet with the right hand. Finally the foot, closer to the plate, more mobile than the anchoring left foot. One easy practice swing--just one and then the body tightened. Bat drawn up and back with terrifying geometrical precision, lines and angles of force created by arms, elbows and wood. No nervous practice swings, just a slow waving of the bat. The pitch--and the explosion of energy, cracking the ball down the right field line.

One was impressed with the Red Sox, but also with Kaat. So big and dumb and powerful. The atmosphere was ugly. It was partly our fault. We were committing heresies, electronic sins. The crowd had divided its psychic powers of support between the action and the insidious transistor radios held in weakness close to the mind.

We weren't fans, we were spectators plugged into a WHDH announcer whose voice sounded like breakfast, and worse yet, into distant, unimportant football games. Notre Dame vs. Purdue. How are the Boilermakers doing? Yanked back and forth in this echo chamber, one received a startling impression of America on a Saturday afternoon. A vast vacuum crossed only by baseballs, footballs, and flying hysterics.

Then fortune hurled another sign. Kaat was pitching to Santiago in the bottom of the third. Jose had little chance of getting a hit, but he fought Kaat as best he could, fouling pitch after pitch, making an easy out difficult.

Those fouled pitches--Santiago's show of resistance--exasperated Kaat. He bore down. And something popped in his left arm. The game would be ours. One's premonition was justified.

Kaat's reliever, Perry hung on for two innings, but in the fifth, after the Red Sox had scored one run, the pitcher failed to cover first on a sharp grounder by Yastrzemski and Boston went ahead.

Fortune Again

Minnesota tied the game, and then it happened again. With one man on, one out in the seventh, the crumpled Adair pushed a grounder to the mound, leveling the screams begging for a rally. Versalles moved easily towards second to make the double play--when confidence gave way to fragility. He dropped the ball, and runners were safe all around. Yazstrzemski whirled the bats about and hit a home run, a slow elegant home run which drew us after it in an orgasm of sound and motion.

One could understand Versalles error. But one couldn't cope with Yastrzemski. Here education came to an end, blunted, then smothered by religion. It was existential--the clutch. All the past hits established at best probability--more likely possibility, which is to say nothing. And that this man continued to overpower these situations, seven out of eight times--holding our religious feeling in hand, toying with it, and with another hit driving that feeling still higher--that was inhuman.

He had driven our feelings so high, so near certainty. The fall from those expectations could be so great. One feared for us. As a man he had no right to be so reckless.

One left Fenway Park quickly, satisfaction tempered by circumstances. The thought of another team in a simultaneous struggle halfway across the country and the lingering image of Killebrew's ninth inning home run.

Killebrew's squat body twisted around, shoulders back, chest facing the left field wall. A human mortar gun rocked back on its heels, the ball spinning up as if shot from his groin. So Harmon did have it in him. The ball went right over Yastrzemski, and Carl could do nothing to stop a home run that stood between him and an undisputed lead for the Triple Crown. Kaat vs. Santiago. Yastzemski vs. Killebrew. Minnesota vs. Boston. The duals lined up perfectly, and the mind boggled at coincidence. It was a bad sign, that home run, because it was a parting gesture of defiance. A retreating enemy had signaled that it was not beaten.