Number 8 made Reds number 1
Michael Landon may have retired the nickname Little Joe, but in a world far removed from television’s Ponderosa, Little Joe wore No. 8 and played second base for the Cincinnati Reds.
Under Joe Morgan’s watch, they became the Big Red Machine, the first National League team in a half-century to win the World Series in consecutive years. With his left elbow flapping in the batter’s box, Morgan supplied a spirit to the Reds that had been missing even with Pete Rose, Johnny Beach and Tony Perez in the lineup. As much as anyone, Morgan taught manager Sparky Anderson’s club how to win.
“Joe fit in with the rest of us like the missing link in the puzzle,” Rose has said.
Morgan’s tiebreaking single in the ninth inning of Game 7 lifted the Reds to a 4-3 victory over the Boston Red Sox in the
1975 World Series, as gripping as any Fall Classic ever played. The ‘76 Reds wiped out the New York Yankees, in the Series spotlight after a 12-year absence, in four games.
Morgan was the NL’s Most Valuable Player both years, and with statistics that defy imagination. He hit .327 with 17 homers,
94 RBI and 67 stolen bases in
1975, then batted .320 with 27 homers, 111 RBI and 60 steals the next year. Throw in five Gold Gloves, and one can see that Morgan combined the batting skill of Rogers Hornsby with the flair and leadership of Jackie Robinson and became the most feared player on a team of stars.
“Packed unusual power into his extraordinarily quick
150-pound fireplug frame,” reads his Hall of Fame plaque.
Morgan’s passing comes on the 47th anniversary of the storied NL Championship Series between the Reds and the Mets.
Tom Seaver pitched perhaps the game of his life in the opener at Cincinnati, 13 strikeouts and no walks, but lost 2-1 on late- inning homers by Rose and Bench. Game 3 went to the Reds, 9-2, but everyone talked afterward of the scuffle at second base between Rose, trying to break up a double play, and Mets shortstop Bud Harrelson. Fans showered Rose with debris when he took his position in left field in the bottom half of the inning, prompting a Mets delegation led by manager Yogi Berra and Willie Mays, playing his last season, to restore order lest New York incur a forfeit.
In a transcendent moment, Rose hit a 12th- inning homer the next day for another 2-1 Reds victory. Lest anyone forget the incident with Harrelson, Rose raised a pumped fist as he rounded the bases.
Seaver and Tug McGraw pitched the Mets to a clinching 9-2 victory in a tense series no matter that New York outscored Cincinnati 23- 8. It was Oct. 10, 1973, and the game was overshadowed by events. In Washington, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart was handed a note during a hearing: “Kranepool flies to right, Agnew resigns.”
A duel of sorts was shaping up in the nation’s capital, where major league baseball had skipped town two years earlier: Judge John Sirica, whom Time would name Man of the Year, vs. Richard Nixon, twice elected president of the United States. Spiro Agnew’s brush with the law and subsequent resignation compelled Nixon to select a vice president to fill Agnew’s term. Nelson Rockefeller thus got closer to the White House as a sitting governor of New York than as a presidential candidate.
That was anything but a slow news cycle. What came to be known as the Yom Kippur War between the Arabs and the Israelis dominated what headlines Agnew and Nixon didn’t grab. The third Saturday in October, the 20th, served up the constitutional crisis that was the Saturday Night Massacre with Nixon and Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox front and center. With two U.S. attorneys general leaving office on the next night, John Chancellor told viewers on
an NBC special report, “In all my time as a reporter, I never thought that I would be announcing these things.”
As a freshman at then-Harding College, an enclave of conservative thinking then and now, I watched with interest. A couple of nights earlier, some of us gathered around a TV set to watch Billie Jean King defeat Bobby Riggs in tennis’ battle of the sexes, Howard Cosell reporting for ABC. We were shocked to hear of the plane crash that took the life of singer Jim Croce, the man who months earlier topped the charts with “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.”
Elsewhere, O.J. Simpson was running for 2,000 yards and the Miami Dolphins, a year after their perfect season, perhaps were even better in repeating as Super Bowl champion despite two losses. Alabama and Notre Dame, meanwhile, were on collision course for a Sugar Bowl showdown on New Year’s Eve in New Orleans. Irish 24, Crimson Tide 23 in the first meeting between the teams and coaches Ara Parseghian and Bear Bryant.
Wilt Chamberlain, his basketball career over, became the 7-foot, 1-inch chairman of something called the International Volleyball Association. That is, when those duties didn’t conflict with outside pursuits, about 20,000 by Chamberlain’s rough estimate.
With Reggie Jackson and the Oakland Athletics beating the Mets in seven games for their second of three straight World Series titles, baseball took a breather after its first year with a designated hitter. Henry Aaron, needing one homer to tie Babe Ruth’s career record of 714, received death threats during the offseason, proving that people were stumbling over racial equations long before 2020.
The Cincinnati Reds, meanwhile, went through an offseason like the Yankees are having now. With nothing to show for those great regular seasons, they were developing a reputation as postseason chokers, a tag that would follow the Atlanta Braves of the 1990s. In two years, the Reds would prove those jokers wrong with Little Joe Morgan playing a big role in teaching them to win.
“He was just a good major-league player when it didn’t mean anything,” said Anderson, his manager. “But when it meant something, he was a Hall of Famer.”
Morgan’s passing follows that of fellow Cooperstown inductees Al Kaline, Tom Seaver, Lou Brock, Bob Gibson and Whitey Ford in 2020. Say this much for the Grim Reaper, he plucks only the choicest fruit.