Cooper comes through in ’82
His clutch hit helps send Brewers to World Series
With the sports world on hold, we present a countdown of the 50 greatest moments in Wisconsin sports history over the past 50 years. This is No. 3.
Cecil Cooper played first base for the Boston Red Sox in 1975 when his teammate, Carlton Fisk, hit one of the most memorable home runs in baseball history.
The 12th-inning blast in Game 6 of the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds forced a seventh game and is best remembered for Fisk waving his arms furiously, willing the ball to stay fair as it rocketed toward the left-field corner at Fenway Park.
Cooper was evidently taking notes. The first baseman was seven years away from his own unforgettable hit, and when it came, he offered his own gestures, this time willing the ball to get down instead of stay fair as he ran to first base.
“For a minute, I thought it would be caught, because when you hit line drives, they have a tendency to hang, especially with the wind blowing in like it was,” Cooper said after Game 5 of the American League Championship Series on Oct. 10, 1982. “I was motioning for it to go down. It got down.”
The ball found the turf at County Stadium with two outs in the seventh, just ahead of California Angels outfielder Brian Downing. Charlie Moore scored from third, and Jim Gantner hustled around with a head-first slide to score from second. The Brewers, who had trailed in the series, 2-0, and in the game, 3-2, now had a 4-3 lead.
Despite some tense moments, Milwaukee held on and clinched its only pennant and a trip to the World Series
when Pete Ladd induced a game-ending grounder from Rod Carew.
“I was really kind of down,” Cooper said. “I wasn't hitting. I'd struck out five, six times. That wasn't me. I was really pressing. I do know that I would have traded all 205 hits I got this year for that one. That was, without a doubt, the greatest hit of all.”
A chance for atonement
The 1975 World Series wasn't Cooper's best showcase. He finished the series 1 for 19, and he'd been subbed out by the time Fisk won Game 6. Cooper only made one unsuccessful pinch-hit appearance in Game 7, when the Reds won, 4-3.
His averages dipped a little in 1976, and the Red Sox traded Cooper to the Brewers in the offseason for George Scott and Bernie Carbo. Scott was one of the franchise's standout players in the 1970s, but Cooper became one of the best Brewers players of all-time, a fivetime all-star who finished in the top five in the MVP voting three times.
And yet, when he had a chance to get back into the postseason, he hadn't clicked. He went 4 for 18 – all singles – in a five-game loss to the Yankees in the 1981 divisional series (a format necessitated by a midseason players' strike). In 1982, he was scuffling again. Heading into the seventh inning against California in Game 5, he'd gone just 2 for 19.
Not only that, Cooper had endured a rough Game 5. He struck out with two runners on base to end the fifth inning, one of two punchouts he had in the game. He also made a mental mistake in the fourth, when he fielded Bobby Grich's bunt up the first base line and tagged him with an empty glove while the ball rested in Cooper's hand. Grich was safe, and Bob Boone gave California a 3-1 lead later in the inning with an RBI bunt single.
“It was a bonehead play,” Cooper said. “I just panicked in the situation. I would have been the goat today, I know that. This takes me away from being the goat.”
“This” was an opposite-field single against Luis Sanchez that lives in Brewers history.
“After he struck out with men on first and third in the fifth, I mentioned to him, ‘Cecil, your last bat is going to be the most important one,'” third baseman Paul Molitor said. “I told him, ‘You're gong to get one more chance. Whether it's leading off an inning or with men on base, you're going to get one more chance.' He said, ‘Yeah, you're right.' He made the most of it.'”
Moore and Gantner score
With one out, Moore sent a jam-shot squibber toward the middle of the infield. Shortstop Tim Foli, first baseman
Carew and second baseman Grich all converged to try and make the play, and it was Grich who dived at the last second and held up the ball for the umpires to see.
Two umpires signaled out, but the other two ruled that Grich trapped it.
Gantner followed with a screamer over Sanchez's head into center for a base hit, but Molitor fouled out for the second out. That brought up Robin Yount, who walked on a 3-2 pitch, and chants of “Cooooop” filled the stadium as Cooper strolled to the plate.
“When I was kneeling in the on-deck circle, I was praying for Robin to get a hit or a walk or something,” Cooper said. “On three balls, two strikes, I kept saying, ‘base hit, base hit, give me a chance to drive in the lead run. Or ball four, walk him.'”
Cooper fouled off the first pitch from Sanchez, took a ball outside, then rifled a ball to left field.Moore scored to tie the game and then from his knees signaled for Gantner to slide ahead of the throw from Downing. He made it easily. The crowd of 55,000 went berserk.
“I've never heard anything like that before,” Gantner said. “Never.
“But when we went back to the dugout, I said, ‘We've got six more outs to go. We haven't won thus until we get six more outs. Let's get them, then go crazy.”
Edwards makes the play
Cooper's miscue wasn't the only error by the Brewers in the game; Molitor's overthrow trying to double off a runner was one of two first-inning errors, and the Brewers were lucky to give up only one run. Milwaukee committed four errors in the game. But its defense also delivered some memorable plays.
In the fifth, Moore threw out Reggie Jackson trying to move from first to third on a blooper to right field.
“The ball bounced waist high so I got a good break,” said Moore, who had 13 outfield assists during the season. “I figured he'd be going. Everyone's playing aggressively in a series like this. But I knew I had a good throw when I let it go.”
Don Baylor followed with a single that would have scored the run. Instead, the Angels were scoreless in the inning. Starter Pete Vuckovich ended the inning with a strikeout of Doug DeCinces.
In the top of the seventh, Jackson was again retired on a double-play ball induced by Bob McClure, who entered the game and threw one pitch to get two outs and end the inning.
McClure, the winning pitcher, stayed on in the eighth, and it looked like trouble when Baylor launched a ball toward the left center wall with one out. But 5-9 outfielder Marshall Edwards, into the game with Gorman Thomas nursing a twisted knee, made a leaping catch at the wall.
“I knew I had to jump,” Edwards said. “You know how tall I am.” Milwaukee had a 4-3 lead. McClure surrendered a leadoff single to Ron Jackson in the ninth, and manager Harvey Kuenn summoned the 6-4, 230-pound rookie Ladd to fill the shoes of injured Rollie Fingers as closer.
Ladd retired all 10 Angels he faced in the series. After Boone sacrificed pinch runner Rob Wilfong to second, Ladd got ground outs from Downing and Carew. Fans charged the field and Ladd leaped into the air; the Brewers were going to the World Series.
“To think a couple months ago I was just worried about making the playoff roster, if we even made the playoffs,” Ladd said.
“I've faced Carew three times now and I've gotten him out three times. I'm sure in the future that he'll get his hits off me, and that's fine – as long as he didn't get a hit in that situation.”
How the moment lives on
The Brewers fell in seven games to the Cardinals in the World Series, a depressing final note to an otherwise glorious season for Harvey's Wallbangers.
It was still a massive success for the Brewers. Bud Selig had worked tirelessly to bring a team back to Milwaukee after the Braves left for Atlanta in the mid'60s.
“All this from a little dream 18 years ago,” Selig said.
Cooper played with the Brewers until 1987, spending his final year in baseball with Team Streak. Over 11 years in Milwaukee, he hit .302 with an .809 OPS, 201 homers and 944 RBI.