Another Pearl For Earl

The third game was played in the once beautiful Anaheim Stadium, reduced now to a construction site as builders enlarge and reshape it in preparation for the tenancy of the NFL Rams next year. Inspired perhaps by the clamor of their counterparts in Baltimore, Angel fans seemed determined to outshout them. They did, in a game that was more than a match for the first two in terms of raw melodrama. The Orioles appeared to have the game and the pennant nailed down in the seventh inning when another of their reliable substitutes, Terry Crowley, pinch-hit a single that scored Al Bumbry, who had legged out a triple, with the run that gave them a 3-2 lead. Baltimore's starting pitcher, Dennis Martinez, had allowed only single runs in the first and fourth, the latter on a Don Baylor homer, and had retired 11 consecutive batters when, with one out in the ninth, Rod Carew wrist-hit one of his patented doubles to left-center. Weaver immediately summoned Stanhouse from the bullpen.

At this juncture the Angel crowd set up a deafening chant of "Yes—We Can," which is as inspiring a rallying cry in Anaheim as Wild Bill's O-R-I-O-L-E spell-yell is in Baltimore. Stanhouse took a full six minutes to walk Downing. What a pair of adversaries they made. Downing's exaggerated batting stance makes all other foot-in-the-bucket hitters look like plate-crowders. A righthanded batter, he aims his left foot at the box seats between the third-base coach's box and the dugout. It's as if he expects the ball to be delivered to him by one of the spectators, not the fellow staring at his profile. But as the pitcher goes into his windup, Downing rights himself and swings like a normal batter—and, it should be appended, with abnormal success. He hit .326 this year. Stanhouse, for his part in the charade, stared imploringly at the heavens, adjusted his uniform and interminably paced the mound.

The crowd was apoplectic by the time Bobby Grich stepped up with Carew on second and Downing on first. Grich had hoped, he later acknowledged, to "rip" one over the fence, but when the count reached 2-2, he lowered his expectations to a line drive. And that is what he hit to short center. Carew took off at the sound of the bat and had advanced to third when he saw, to his horror, that the speedy Bumbry had run in far enough to make the catch. "If he catches it," Carew said to himself, "I'm a dead duck." Double play. End of season. But the ball popped out of Bumbry's glove and fell at his feet. Reprieved, Carew sped home with the tying run and Downing barely beat Bumbry's throw to second. Larry Harlow, an unknown Angel and an ex-unknown Oriole, blooped a hit to left that scored Downing with the winning run. The Angels had broken the ice 4-3.

But in the fourth and final game, Oriole lefthander Scott McGregor shut out the Angels on six hits in an 8-0 win that was anticlimactic considering the preceding dramas. It was DeCinces at third who took the heart out of California when, with the bases loaded and one out in the fifth inning and the score still only 3-0, he leaped headlong over and, in fact, onto third base to take a two-RBI hit away from Jim Anderson and convert it into an inning-ending, third-to-first double play. It was a fielding gem that was reminiscent—even Brooks Robinson, now an Orioles broadcaster, agreed—of Brooks Robinson.

And it put the interdependent Birds in the World Series, which is where they belong.