To the Dance

Some people will not change their minds, no matter what you tell them. So it’s satisfying when you prove that you have the right answer.

After the 1993 World Series, there was at least one person who thought Jim Fregosi was right when he sent Mitch Williams out to pitch in games four and six in the World Series against the Toronto Blue Jays. The Phillies lost both games, but a co-worker insisted Fregosi made the right call.

“You stay with the girl you took to the dance,” he said, or something to that effect.

I looked at him and said, “Two words: Gary Waslewski.”

My co-worker closed his eyes and nodded his head.

This man was a Boston fan, and like many Boston fans he knows every excruciating detail of important Red Sox losses, so he remembered the impressive performance of Waslewski in the 1967 World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals.

While Fregosi had brought Williams to the dance (he saved 43 games during the regular season), Boston manager Dick Williams’s dance card was pretty much empty for the series. Waslewski had pitched only 42 innings in the major leagues since he joined the team in June.

Boston won the American League pennant in one of the tightest races ever. They won 92 games, one more than the Detroit Tigers and Minnesota Twins, and three more than the Chicago White Sox. Boston won the title on the last day of the season, October 1, beating the Twins 5-3 in front of a sell-out crowd at Fenway Park.

The Cardinals and Red Sox split the first two games in Boston. For game three in St. Louis, Gary Bell started for Boston and gave up three runs as St. Louis led 3-0 after three innings. Williams replaced Bell with Waslewski. For three innings, Waslewski was perfect – nine up and nine down. The Cardinals won 5-2, and took game four. Back in Boston, the Sox won game five, but Williams surprised everyone by announcing Waslewski would start game six.

The Connecticut native hadn’t made a start since September 3 and had thrown three innings in game three. How long could he last?

In five and one-third innings, he limited the Cards to two runs on four hits. Boston was leading 4-2 when he came out for the next inning, but he gave up two walks to start the sixth.

“When I went out there for the sixth, I was just out of gas. I didn’t have anything left. My legs were weak and if I had stayed in I would have walked the ballpark,” said Waslewski. He told Williams he was tiring. The skipper replaced him with closer John Wyatt, who coughed up the lead when Lou Brock hit a two-run home run in the seventh. Boston answered with four in the bottom of the inning to win 8-4. Wyatt got the win, but Waslewski said he was fine with that as long as the team won.

“The surprising choice of picking Gary Waslewski to pitch Wednesday’s game by rookie manager Dick Williams looked like the move of a genius for 5 1/3 innings,” wrote Clif Keane for The Boston Globe.

“Waslewski had arrived at the park with a 2-2 big league record. He was feeling a little woozy. He almost lost his breakfast but held onto it but pitched well,” Keane wrote.

Waslewski told Will McDonough of The Globe after the game “I was nauseous and sick to my stomach thinking about the game. I just ate a candy bar and tried to think about something else.”

“The slim right hander who kicked around in the minors for eight years, had a 4-2 lead after five innings. He had his sinker ball working well except for the third inning when the Cardinals put together two runs on a double, two outs and three straight singles,” wrote Keane.

Red Sox hurler Dalton Jones told manager Williams he wanted to start game six, but the skipper replied, “I’m sticking with Gary. I got a hunch.”

After the game, Williams said, “I thought he was marvelous.”

“And to think, we were supposed to be in Puerto Rico on October 10,” said Waslewski’s wife, Nancy.

“That’s where Gary was going for his second season in winter ball until tapped last week-end in St. Louis by Manager Dick Williams to pitch yesterday,” wrote Keane.

“Now,” sighed Nancy Waslewski, “we’re going to settle down in Peabody (MA) for the winter, rest and enjoy the baby,” she told The Globe.

She was eight months pregnant and had flown to St. Louis earlier in the series against her doctor’s wishes. “He knew how much I wanted to go, so he didn’t put his foot down,” she said. (They had a son, who became an orthopedic surgeon and worked with the Arizona Diamondbacks and San Francisco Giants.)

In addition to his wife, Waslewski’s parents, brother and sister-in-law were at the ballgame.

While Boston fans and the media were surprised at Williams’ choice of game six’s starter, Waslewski thought he might get the assignment, as the pitching staff was depleted.

That was probably Waslewski’s biggest moment, keeping his team alive in the World Series.

He’s also the answer to a trivia question: who was the first pitcher to lose a major league game in a country other than the United States?

Waslewski says it’s him.

After the 1968 season, he was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals for Mudcat Grant.

Monday, April 14, 1969, was the home opener for the expansion Montreal Expos. They faced the Cardinals in the first major league game played outside the United States.

Nelson Briles started for St. Louis and Larry Jaster for Montreal. After three innings, the Expos led 6-0, but in the fourth the Cards scored seven runs to take a 7-6 lead. Briles started the fourth, but when Maury Wills singled and Rusty Staub doubled, manager brought in Waslewski. He allowed one run (charged to Briles).

“I got out of the inning and in (my) last inning, I gave up a run. It was a freezing cold day. The baseball felt like a frozen cue ball. You couldn’t feel a thread or tread on it or anything,” he said. “It was so freaking cold. I remember Lou Brock telling me the ground felt like (he) was walking on a mattress where you step here and it rises there. He says you couldn’t even run fast out there because the ground was like moving on you.

“But in the in the eighth inning, we managed to tie up the game 7 to 7, I think it was the (seventh) inning and Coco Laboy got on somehow (with a double). I think he blew the ball into left center field that dropped in, and he was one of the slowest guys on the team. Dan McGinn was a relief pitcher (for Montreal); he came up to hit and it turns out, and I didn’t know it, but he was a pretty good hitter, and he hits a ground ball single through the hole in the left field, and Laboy takes off for the plate and I think there were two outs at the time. Brock comes tippy toe to get the ball and make sure it doesn’t go by him, and Lou didn’t have a good arm to begin with, but he said it was so damn cold he had trouble getting his arm up to throw the ball and so he flips the ball towards home plate and it trickles into home – and Laboy just beats the throw to home plate to make it (8-7, Montreal). So, I end up being the losing pitcher,” Waslewski recalled.

The ’67 Red Sox was Boston’s first pennant in 21 years. In one of the most competitive pennant races ever, Boston won the American League with 92 victories, one more than the Detroit Tigers and Minnesota Twins and three more than the Chicago White Sox. It was led by Carl Yastrzemski – who won the MVP Award while achieving the triple crown — George “Boomer” Scott, Jim Lonborg, who won the Cy Young Award, and Rico Petrocelli. But Waslewski’s eight and two-thirds innings in the series made him something of a star.

“Gary Bell and I in the off season worked for the group sales department and the two of us went out with the head of the department. We went to all the major companies in the Boston area and we shook hands with thousands of people. I mean, thousands, every major bank, brokerage firm, the company making  razor blades, where you were at the meat packing places, all kinds of places. We shook hands with people all winter long and signed autographs and they even sent us down to Louisville where they’re making bats for some reason. I don’t even remember why we were down there, but (the company) put on a little display and talk with people. Bell’s a hell of a funny guy, always laughing, always joking. And between the two of us we had a heck of a time and kept people smiling, and the public loves it. In 1968, both of us were cheered quite often even if we didn’t have a good game. So there was the public relations. We were doing Little League banquets, all kinds of stuff.  And the Red Sox paid us, I think $250 bucks a week to go out and do it,” he said.

That was good money, because the starting pay in the big leagues that year was $7,000.

“They gave me a nice jump” — to $8,500 –” the second year because of the World Series.

Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey treated people well, he said.

“He was not the typical owner. I mean, he was like one of the guys, come in the club house, (put his) arm around you and all that,” said Waslewski.  “He loved to play pepper with the pitchers and you can’t even do that today.”

Waslewski was signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates before the 1960 season, and Boston selected him in the minor league draft in 1964. He won 18 games pitching for the Red Sox’s Triple A affiliate in Toronto in 1966. He had a really good spring training in 1967 and was told he’d make the club, but developed shoulder trouble shortly before the season began. After recovering, he made 15 starts for Toronto and was called up to the Red Sox in June. He made his major league debut on June 11 against the Washington Senators, giving up one run in three innings.

In 1968, he spent the entire season with the Red Sox, in which he alternated between starting and relieving. He appeared in 34 games and made 11 starts. He was 3-7 with a 3.67 ERA and had two saves. During the offseason, he was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals for Dick Schofield. On June 3, 1969, he was traded to Montreal.

“We were an expansion team, not very good and had a lot of young kids and old timers.  I enjoyed that team because I played with some former greats: Maury Wills and (Dick Radditz)  and Elroy Face and Ron Fairley and then the up and coming La Grand Orange (Rusty Staub) out there in right field,” he said.

Gene Mauch was the manager, and when Waslewski joined the team it was in the midst of a 20-game losing streak, and the skipper was not in a good mood.

The Expos had a good coaching staff, he said.  Unofficially one of them was Don Drysdale.

In 1970, Drysdale became a broadcaster for the Expos, but spent time with the team’s younger pitchers. “He was a great guy. He’d come out and give you some tips and stuff like that. He says, ‘look, if they crowd that plate, you hit the son of a bitch,’ and he said, ‘I’ll be the first guy out there to defend you.’ He believed in owning that part of that plate. The batter doesn’t get the whole plate.”

On May 15, 1970, he was traded to the New York Yankees.  After the Yankees released him two years later, he signed with the Oakland A’s. He spent the 1973 season with Oakland’s Triple A affiliate and the following year pitched for the Red Sox’s top farm team.

After his final season in 1974, he thought he’d go into banking, but wound up earning a stock market license. Then he had some inside information, the type that’s legal.

“A guy I ran into said, ‘hey, do you ever go to The Hartford?’ And I say no. He says I got a buddy who’s one of their estate planners there. The marketing rep of the big companies and stuff. He’s going to turn in a resignation Friday. He says, ‘why don’t you show up Monday and apply for a job?’ So I did, and the manager says we have an opening. We had one of our guys quit and so 25 years later I retired from The Hartford.”

Now 83, Waslewski divides his time between Connecticut and Arizona. I don’t know where my co-worker is who agreed with me that there are times when you dance with someone other than the person you brought to the dance, such as Gary Waslewski.