This day in baseball history: Mets push Big Red Machine to brink, as Rose and Harrelson brawl

The 1973 NL Championship Series pitted the Cincinnati Reds, with a record of 99-63, against the New York Mets, with a record of 82-79. But as anyone who is following this year’s MLB playoffs knows, regular season records mean only so much when it’s baseball playoff time.

The same is true of pedigree. The Reds came into the ‘73 playoffs as winners of two of the three most recent NL pennants. The Mets had won the World Series in 1969, but hadn’t done much since.

The Mets were hot, however. As I recounted in this post, they closed out the 1973 regular season by winning 20 of their last 28 games.

In addition, the Mets had an asset that can be magic in a best-of-five playoff series — three outstanding starting pitchers. Two of them — Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman — had been the keys to the Mets’ stunning World Series victory over the Orioles. The third — 23-year-old Jon Matlack — had a career ERA of under 3.00 in his 72 starts heading into the playoffs.

Moreover, the Reds, as good as their lineup was, were not as fearsome as some other versions of the Red Machine. The 1975 team would score 117 runs more than this squad.

The problem was that the 1973 lineup contained too many “outs.” At second base the Reds platooned a pair of sub-.200 hitters — Denis Menke and Darrel Chaney. The regular center fielder — Cesar Geronimo — was a .210 hitter in 1973

In the playoffs, these three would combine to go 3-33.

But the Mets lineup contained no one nearly as formidable as Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, or Tony Perez. Thus, as hot as the Mets were and as outstanding as were their starting pitchers, the Reds entered the Series as strong favorites.

They lived up to that status in Game One, played in Cincinnati on October 6. Tom Seaver was terrific for the Mets. For 7 innings, he shut out the Reds and took a 1-0 lead into the eighth. But in that frame, Pete Rose tied the game with a solo home run. (Rose had hit only 5 homers during the regular season, but one of them was off of Seaver). And Johnny Bench won the game with a solo home run with one out in the bottom of the ninth.

Seaver allowed only 2 runs and 6 hits in 8.1 innings, while striking out 13, including every Reds starter at least once. He also had New York’s only RBI on a double. But the Reds trio of Jack Bellingham, Tom Hall, and Pedro Borbon outpitched him, allowing just 3 hits.

In Game Two, the Mets handed the ball to young Jon Matlack. The Reds countered with an even younger pitcher, 22-year-old Don Gullett who had been their ace in 1971 and would be again, but was coming off of a mediocre season.

Like Game One, this affair was a pitcher’s dual decided late. Going one better than Seaver, Matlack took a two-hit shut-out into the ninth inning. Gullett and reliever Clay Carroll limited the Mets to just one run through eight innings — the run coming in fourth on a Rusty Staub home run off of Gullett.

But the Mets bats came alive in the top of the ninth. Hall was now on the mound, having replaced the pinch hitter Sparky Anderson sent up for Carroll in the bottom of the eighth. With one out, Felix Millan singled, Cleon Jones walked, and Rusty Staub singled, driving in Millan. Jones and Staub advanced to third and second on Geronimo’s throw home.

That was it for Hall. Sparky replaced him with Borbon. He walked dangerous John Milner intentionally to load the bases, and then gave up consecutive singles to Jerry Grote, Don Hahn, and Bud Harrelson.

Suddenly, the Mets led 5-0.

Matlack set the Reds — Morgan, Perez, and Bench — down in order in the ninth to seal the win.

After the game, Harrelson, noting Cincinnati’s futility at the plate, quipped that “the Big Red Machine looked like me at the plate.” Harrelson would soon find out that this comment did not sit well with some of the Reds.

Game Three, played on this day in baseball history, felt like the pivotal game of the Series. If the Mets won, the Reds would have to defeat the Mets twice in a row in New York with Seaver pitching one of the games. If Cincinnati prevailed, it seemed unlikely that the Mets would beat them back-to-back.

The pitching matchup featured two lefties — Jerry Koosman and Ross Grimsley. Koosman, one the heroes of the ‘69 Series, had pitched to a 2.84 ERA in 1973. Grimsley, another 23-year-old, had posted a 3.23 ERA and had pitched respectably in the 1972 NLCS and World Series.

This game was no contest, though. The Mets jumped on Grimsley to the tune of 5 runs in the first 2 innings, with Hall allowing another run in the second. The Mets added three more in the next two innings, off of Dave Tomlin, and never looked back.

The final score was 9-2.

Despite being the least memorable game of the Series in purely baseball terms, Game Three is probably the game that’s best remembered. It’s remembered because of the fight between Bud Harrelson and Pete Rose.

During batting practice, Joe Morgan confronted Harrelson about his comment that the Red Machine looked like him at the plate in Game Two. But Morgan and Harrelson reportedly made peace before the game started. According to this account Morgan warned the shortstop that Rose might come looking for him at second base.

Rose did. In the top of the fifth, he singled. Morgan hit a grounder to Milner at first. Milner threw the ball to Harrelson at second, hoping to start a double play.

Rose barreled into Harrelson, which was the standard play at the time. However, he went into Harrelson with his elbows flying and one of them struck the shortstop.

Harrelson managed to complete the double play, anyway, but took exception to Rose’s slide, telling him it was a “cheap f****** shot.” Rose took exception to that characterization, daring him to repeat it.

When Harrelson obliged, Rose attacked the diminutive shortstop, pinning him to the ground. (Harrelson was 5-11, 160 pounds. Rose was (5-11, 190).

Both benches cleared and, according to this account, it took 10 minutes to end the fracas. Harrelson came away from the bout with a bruise over his eye. He said it was the result of having his sunglasses broken.

Remarkably, no one ejected. But when Rose took the field, Mets fans pelted him with food. After a whiskey bottle nearly hit Rose, Anderson ordered the Reds off the field. The fans calmed down only after Mets manager Yogi Berra and a few of his players (including Willie Mays) went to left field to explain that the Mets would have to forfeit the game if the behavior continued.

After the game, Harrelson was as self-deprecating as ever. When reporters came to his locker after the game they saw an “X” taped over the Superman T-shirt that Harrelson (whose nickname was “Mighty Mouse”) liked to wear. He explained: ‘It looks like Pete had a load of kryptonite today.”

What to make of the fight? Harrelson’s comment about the Red Machine looking look him doesn’t seem like fighting words to me. Morgan apparently told Harrelson that Rose was using it for fire up his team. When the team, lacking fire, fell way behind, Rose resorted to other means.

Still, in the context of an NLCS, a hard-nose, somewhat over-the-top slide doesn’t seem like a big deal. The slide is a smaller deal, in any case, than Rose barreling into a catcher (Jim Hibbs) in his own organization during an exhibition game. (In my view, Rose barreling into Ray Fosse while scoring the winning run in the 1970 all-star game was a proper baseball play.)

More problematic than Rose’s slide was his assault on Harrelson for stating his objection to the slide. But that’s how the game was played in its early years, and Pete Rose was a throwback to that era.

Rose would put his anger to better use in Game Four. He won that contest with a home run in the twelfth inning that gave the Reds (still not looking like a Machine) a 2-1 victory.

But the Mets and Seaver would have the last laugh, defeating Cincinnati 7-2. Seaver allowed only one earned run, before Tug McGraw got the final two outs

In the five games of the 1973 ALCS, the Reds scored only 8 runs. Their team batting average was only .186, even with Rose batting .381. The Reds’ team average was only 19 points higher than that of Bud Harrelson, and the little shortstop drove one-fourth as many runs as the entire Red Machine scored.

So I guess there was merit to his remark, whether Rose and his mates liked it or not.