Seeing Red(S)

In a couple of years this fall's World Series will be remembered as the Popsicle Classic, as the cold Walrus-type weather and the even colder businesslike style of the Cincinnati Reds characterized the first four game sweep of the fall classic since the Baltimore Orioles Sandy Koufax into a Jewish joke in 1996.

Joe Garagiola, baseball's answer to Myron Cohen, described the Reds most aptly when he said, "They tie a string to every gift. You go after it and they pull it away from you." The boys from Cincinnati were no different last night, playing Santa Claus in double-knits for the first five innings.

Base-hit bleeders, bad hops in the infield, and rare errors by Joe Morgan and Dave Conception paved a yellow brick basepath early for the Yankees. However, the best the Bronx Bombers could manage were two scattered runs in the first and fifth innings on clutch hits by Chris Chambliss and Thurman Munson.

But with two outs in the top half of the fifth the Reds slapped and ran to a 3-1 lead, with the first of Johnny Bench's two bleacher meteors putting them ahead to stay.

The game ambled on through the middle and late innings until the ninth when Cincinnati fired their parting extra-base shots that insured them the championship and a 7-2 win. Bench's second homer, a three-run rip, finally spelled R.I.P. for New York.

The most unfortunate aspect of this series, however, was not the fact that Curt Gowdy wasn't broadcasting it, but rather that the Reds' sweep did not do justice to a solid and deep Yankee ball club which had won 94 games during the season with a balanced, consistent attack.

The Yankees have nothing to be ashamed of, though. Thurman Munson showed his MVP fiber and capped a brillant series with four hits last night. Ken Griffey, a .330 hitter during the National League season, was laminated by Yankee breaking balls and finished up with but one safety in 16 trips. Fred Stanley proved himself a major league shortstop in front of one hundred million critics.

But oh those Reds! First they took the American League's designated hitter rule, which is about as foreign to National League playing fields as cows grazing on astroturf, and felt right at home with it. Dan Driessen's single-handed derailment of New York in Game Two is example enough.

Most impressive and simultaneously shocking though was the Reds pitching staff. As highly regarded as the Mondale-Dole debates before the series began, Cincinnati hurlers stifled the Yankee offense to two runs in every game.

They were just too much. As for the Yankees, don't cry in your sanitary hose fellas. Any team that makes George Foster catch with two hands has got to be doing a lot of things right.