Perez homer 1st sign of victory

Reds reliever Will McEnaney toed the rubber at Fenway Park and peered in for the sign.

It was Game 7 of the 1975 World Series, bottom of the ninth for the Boston Red Sox, the Reds three outs from their first World Championship since 1940.

Every fan in Fenway was on his or her feet. Just moments ago, Joe Morgan had singled home the Reds' go-ahead run, to make the score 4-3.

Less than an hour earlier, McEnaney had been sitting in the bullpen when the Reds were trailing, 3-0, in the sixth inning.

"I'm not going to get a ring," McEnaney thought. "I'm not going to get a World Series share."

Just then, Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee tried to slip his infamous blooper pitch by Tony Perez. Perez had looked bad earlier in the Series on Lee's blooper pitch. But in the second inning, he had taken ‹ and "timed" ‹ it. "Throw me that again," Perez prayed.

The Reds couldn't get anything going against Lee. Before the sixth inning began, Perez walked to the bat rack to get ready to hit. He looked around the corner and there was his manager, Sparky Anderson, pacing nervously, scratching his head of white hair.

"What's wrong with you, Sparky?" asked Perez, in the high-pitched squeal he uses when he wants to loosen somebody up. Perez's normal voice is a deep, thick, bass.

"Damn, Doggie!" said Sparky. "We're down three to nothing!"

"Don't worry about it," said Perez. "Get somebody on base. I'm going to 'heet' one. I'm going 'heet' a bomb."

Lee began by throwing Perez sinkers away.

Then, Perez watched intently as Lee came to a slight "stop" in his windup on the next pitch.

"I knew right then it was coming," said Perez. "I stayed back and said 'Here it comes.' "

He waited and waited, keeping his weight back and counting one-two-three to himself. Then, he swung with a slight uppercut to meet the ball on its downward arc just out in front of the plate.

His bat hit the ball right on the sweet spot.

"As soon as I hit it, I said to myself, 'We're back in the game,' " said Perez. "I felt right then like we were going to win the game."

The ball shot off his bat, high and deep toward the blackness beyond the left-center field wall. The Boston outfielders didn't even move.

The two-run blast brought the Reds to within one run, at 3-2.

"I knew then, at that very moment, we were going to come back and win," said McEnaney. "As soon as the bat left his bat, I thought to myself, 'My god, what's our ring going to look like?' "

An inning later, the seventh, Pete Rose tied the game with a two-out single, and then Morgan put the Reds ahead in the top of the ninth.

Now, with three outs between the Reds and the World Championship, Reds catcher Johnny Bench wasn't about to let McEnaney get goofy. In Game Six, McEnaney had come in to pitch the ninth with two men on and nobody out with the score tied at 6. He intentionally walked Carlton Fisk to load the bases. That brought up the young slugger, Freddie Lynn.

Bench had called for a slider low and away, to get a double-play ball. But McEnaney unloaded a fastball that Lynn hit on a fly to left field. George Foster caught it at the foul line and threw out Denny Doyle at the plate for the double play.

Bench couldn't believe McEnaney had ignored his sign.

"Will, what the hell?" said Bench, approaching the mound. "You crossed me up!"

"Yeah, I guess I did," McEnaney admitted. "But heck, John. These things work out, don't they?"

Now, here it was the bottom of the ninth in Game 7. Bench was on his toes. But every bit of flakiness had been squeezed out of McEnaney. The World Championship was on the line. There was a one run lead to protect. Carl Yastrzemski was due up third.

Pinch-hitter Juan Beninquez stepped into the batter's box.

Bench signalled for a fastball.

"We were going against the scouting report, but it wasn't intentional," recalled McEnaney. "We had gone over the Red Sox hitters with Ray Shore, but it hadn't registered with us in this situation. Ray had told us not to throw Beninquez a first-pitch fastball."

Beninquez flew out to right.

"We were lucky," remembered McEnaney.

Next up was pinch-hitter Bob Montgomery. He grounded out to Davey Concepcion. In stepped Yaz.

McEnaney couldn't have raised enough saliva to spit.

"I was scared to death," he admitted."John gave me a sign for a slider on the first pitch. I missed it low. He called for another slider. Low, ball two. You couldn't give Yaz a good fastball to hit. You had to pitch around his strike zone. We tried to throw him breaking balls hoping he would swing.

"I always had confidence in my slider, but I missed on both of them. The next pitch was a fastball up and he took it for a strike. I figured he would take it. The next pitch was another fastball, and it was middle-in. Yaz took a kind of a lazy swing, a batting practice swing."

The ball drifted on a high arc to center. Cesar Geronimo thought the ball would never come down. But when it did, his two hands would be waiting. He'd been anticipating this moment for four years since coming to the Reds from Houston with Joe Morgan.

"I saw Geronimo camping under it in center field," remembered McEnaney. "I looked back at John. I threw my arms in the air and everybody was going crazy. I jumped into John's arms and screamed at the top of my lungs."

"Yessssssssssss!"