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197 8 Finished Bob Gibson is the luckiest pitcher in baseball. He is always pitching when the other team doesn’t score any runs. —Tim McCarver, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 16, 1972 The winterlike conditions would make Jarry Park unplayable on Wednesday, October 2, 1974, the final day of the regular season . With club executives not wishing to pay for an extra night in the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal if unnecessary, the team was forced to sit around to wait for word about the last CubsPirates game before their next move was made. It was a night game in Pittsburgh, so in addition to there being no radio or television coverage of the game, the Cardinals had to entertain themselves all day beforehand. Forsch and Dwyer were roommates (and had been in the minors as well) and quickly became bored, so they went out and bought a dartboard, cleared the pictures off their hotel room wall, and played darts for six hours until the Cubs-Pirates game began. As members of the team gathered in a corner of the lobby, one of the St. Louis television commentators, Jay Randolph, gave them play-by-play that was sent to him via telephone in St. Louis from KSD-TV reporter Ron Jacober, who was able to pick up the game on Chicago’s WGN station. Faces brightened as Randolph told them Chicago had built a 4–0 firstinning lead in Three Rivers Stadium. If the Cubs could hold on and the Cards won their makeup game with the Expos the next day, a playoff game would ensue between Pittsburgh and St. Louis for the division title; if the Cubs blew their lead and lost, the final Expos-Cardinals game would not have to be played, as the Pirates would have a game-and-a-half advantage over the Cards. It was 198 Gibson’s Last Stand the exact same situation as 1973, with the Cubs being able to give the Cards a tie for the lead if they won in the season’s final hours. It seemed as if now was the time. Gradually, the Pirates got back in the game. They plated a run in the third, a run in the fifth, and yet another as their starter, Jim Rooker, found a groove in quieting the Chicago bats. With two out in the ninth and the Cubs still holding the 4–3 lead, Rick Reuschel apparently had struck out the previous night’s hero for Pittsburgh, Robertson, to end the game—but the pitch squirted away from rookie catcher Steve Swisher for a passed ball, allowing Sanguillen to score the tying run as joyous Pittsburgh fans for four minutes littered the field with bottles (the fans, in protest of an umpire’s call, had conversely thrown bottles in anger the previous inning as well). Swisher, not paying attention in his selfdisgust , allowed Robertson to get all the way to second, although he would be stranded (a week earlier in St. Louis, Swisher had a grand slam that was part of a Chicago onslaught that beat the Cards 19–4, as the St. Louis team at that time appeared measured for the grave, and Swisher, in his giddy excitement for a rare big hit, wanted to retrieve the ball from the stands). The final Pirates assault would resume in the tenth. Sanguillen lined a single off Oscar Zamora into the outfield to score Al Oliver, who had tripled with one out, to win the game and the National League Eastern Division for Pittsburgh. The Pirates had risen to the top once again after having posted baseball’s worst record in the first two months of the season. As the Cardinals got the incredible news in the lobby of the Queen Elizabeth back in Montreal, it was the third time in the past four years that they would finish in second place. It was one too many near misses for their owner to take. According to Broeg, Gussie Busch was watching the Cubs-Pirates game at the Bevo Mill on Gravois Avenue, a St. Louis landmark that would close its doors permanently in 2009. When Sanguillen’s game-winning hit occurred, a sad Busch turned at the restaurant table to his friend Ben Kerner, the owner of the old St. Louis Hawks basketball team. He said, “Drive me home, Hawk,” as he called his buddy, and he did not utter another word. Many close to Busch marked it as the...

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