We get to start the World Series at home, and then of course we lose the first two games to the Cardinals.
I had been hitting No. 2 in the lineup behind Lonnie Smith since I missed that time in August, and to be truthful it was kind of nice to bat second and be able to see how a guy was pitching instead of being the first guy to face him in the game. Lonnie was a great leadoff hitter, and Lonnie was a better clutch hitter than me. That year everybody had been playing me to the left side so I was trying to pull, pull, pull. That was probably another reason my batting average was a little lower because I was trying to pull.
We get in the first game, and I’m thinking positive. I was out the first two times I was up. Then, I got a single. At least in this World Series I haven’t struck out yet (laughter). So, we get to the seventh and we’re down 2-1 and the bases are loaded with me coming to bat. I fly out to left. A hit would have tied the game or put us in the lead. We only get one runner on base in the final two innings and lose 3-1.
In the second game, Charlie Liebrandt was pitching a great game. He took a two-hitter into the ninth, and we were leading 2-0. The Cardinals score four in the ninth, and now we’re behind 2-0 in the Series. This time we’re heading to their place not ours.
The next thing that happens is just like Toronto. It was the exact same scenario as it was with George Bell. Something fired us up, only it wasn’t a headline. What they had was on the top of the control tower of the airport.
You know teams don’t go through the terminal. We’d get off the plane out on the tarmac and get on a bus and drive out of the airport. As we’re walking down the steps to get to the tarmac, you looked off to the right and there was a sign that said, “Welcome Home 1985 World Series Champions.”
We’re all going, “I can’t believe this. They ain’t played but two games.” And they are saying we are going to lose four straight. It was like collectively, again, it just irked everybody.
In the third game Sabes pitched great. He was hit by batted balls in his two starts in the ALCS, but this time he comes out and throws a complete game. He gives up six hits, but nobody is on base after the sixth inning.
In the fourth game John Tudor throws a shutout at us, and we fall behind 3-1 in the Series.
Again, it’s something that really irritates me before the fifth game. I can remember coming into the stadium, and all the TV people are there and setting everything up for a team to win the Series. They’re doing it in our locker room, too, for reaction from the losing team. I just said, “Y’all can take that away and get that out of here because we ain’t losing today. Not here. Not today.” I was dead serious.
It’s little things like that. People don’t think that something as little as TV cameras getting set up is going to motivate you, but it does. We’re not even playing the game yet, and I know you gotta set your stuff up, but at least wait until we get out of the locker room. So, I’m thinking, “Y’all better take that down because they ain’t going to win today. They’re going to have to come to us.”
In my brain, I’m thinking, “If we ever get back home, they ain’t winning there, either.” That’s how I felt.
I talked a lot of crap in the locker room. I said it out loud and I hoped that everyone in that locker room heard me. “We ain’t losing today!” That’s how I felt, and it turned out that we didn’t lose.
I didn’t want to feel the way I felt in 1980 all over again. That’s the worst, worst, worst feeling you could ever have ... besides going to jail. What I’m saying is that in sports it’s the worst feeling you can have. When you have dreams about what you can accomplish, your dreams aren’t losing. You’re putting your heart and soul into this. When you do that and lose, it’s like your whole body aches. For that instant, everything is not right in the world. I didn’t want to feel that way again.
It’s DJ (Danny Jackson) again in the fifth game. He gives up a run in the first on two hits, and he only gives up three hits the rest of the game. They don’t even come close.
Back home in Game 6, we have runners on base almost every inning, and we just can’t get a timely hit for, like, the first time all season. The Cardinals score one in the eighth, and we can’t answer. I get on base after Lonnie Smith struck out, but George strikes out behind me and Frank hits a fly ball to center field.
We’re down to our last three outs to get something done. Jorge Orta pinch hits for Darryl Motley to lead off the inning. Orta hits a grounder to first, and Todd Worrell is coming over to cover the base. I was sitting down at the end of the bench by first base, where I always sit. When umpire Don Denkinger called him safe, I jumped up and starting pacing up and down the bench. I knew he missed the call. We all knew he missed the call. We were standing right there. We couldn’t believe he missed it, but we were glad that he did.
What it did for me is it made me know we could win. It might be just the break we needed because I had seen us come back so many times that year. Everybody felt like it was new life for us. That first out is the most important out of the inning. If you get that first out, things start looking like they are going to go down from there. But when you get a break on the first out – who knows why you get that first break – you start thinking, “Is it our time now? You got a break, let’s take advantage of it.”
Of course the Cardinals are hot. That’s all the Cardinals and their fans want to talk about. But it wasn’t the only thing that happened in that inning. They had some screw-ups that nobody talks about. Bones (Steve Balboni) was up next, and he hit a popup foul down the first base line. Jack Clark comes over to make the play. The dugouts at Royals Stadium didn’t have railings, and during the season we would stand there and hold the guy up in case he fell into the dugout. This time we were all sitting down and just looking at the ball.
You could see Clark look at the ball ... look at the dugout ... look at the ball ... look at the dugout knowing no one was going to be there to grab him. He took his eye off the ball, then boom, he dropped it. Bones hit a single on the next pitch.
Then, with one out and runners on first and second Jim Sundberg tries to bunt them over. Orta was forced out at third base. Then Hal McRae gets called to pinch hit. Darrel Porter, who was playing for the Cardinals by then, supposedly called a fastball, and Worrell threw a slider. The pitch went (past the catcher) to the wall. That’s how each runner moved up to second and third. Then he walked McRae.
That right there is another reason the Cardinals thought they were going to win because the DH (designated hitter) was null and void, and Hal was the best DH in baseball. You could use the DH in the ALCS, and later on you would be able to use the DH in the American League ballpark in the World Series. But this year you couldn’t use the DH. So that took Hal out of our lineup as a regular batter – he only went to bat three times the whole World Series.
By this time I don’t know what the Cardinals were thinking. I imagine they were panicking a little bit after that first call because they had been in a spot where all they had to do was win one game out of three when they were up 3-1 and in their brains it’s probably feeling like things are going a little bit worse, a little bit worse, a little bit worse. They don’t want to play a Game 7 in the other team’s ballpark. They wanted to get it over right now because they got the champagne in their locker room, they got this all set up. All of a sudden now the bases are loaded in the bottom of the ninth with one out.
It’s funny how guys get a sense of what is happening. There is a bad luck feeling for them and a good luck feeling for us. We have been down this road before. After not getting any breaks and being down 3-1 (in the Series), now we’re getting them. You can feel the momentum change. They weren’t getting the timely hits. They’d get hits, but we would back ours up with a second or third hit. That’s how we were starting to beat them. Our pitching staff just started pounding the ball in, pounding them every at bat. DJ was working the slider. Sabes was working the fastball, just running it in there. Gooby (Mark Gubicza) would come in with the slide ball and Charlie would make sure they would be off pace because he would change-up them to death.
After McRae walks, Dane Iorg comes up. He pinch hits for Quiz. We had gotten both Dane and Lonnie Smith from the Cardinals. Dane came in 1984.
His liner to right scored Onix Concepcion and Jim Sundberg.
I ran straight toward Dane when he made the hit. He was between second and third. I hit him like a football player, I just smoked him with my shoulder. I was sprinting at about 9.2, I went past everybody else who was running out there and just, BOOM! I was hugging him, and then I noticed his nose was bleeding. I went “oooooooh” like that. And everybody stopped and looked at him, and he just went “Yaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” and we were all screaming and jumping on him again.
Then we went inside and just started chanting “Tudor! Tudor! Tudor!” We knew who was pitching the next game. Throughout the whole locker room “Tudor! Tudor!” He had beat us twice, but we just ... we knew we could beat him in Game 7. I mean momentum is a mother, man. It does something to your psyche. You feel invincible, like you can’t lose. That’s how we felt. We didn’t want to go home. We would have played Game 7 right then, right there. That’s how jacked up we were. We felt like we had fought all the way back in two frickin’ series. There ain’t no way we are losing this thing now.
The next day seemed like it lasted forever before the game would get started. You know you have all this stuff going on. Big corporate people, movie stars, business people, TV people, armies. I’m just sitting there, “Wow ... now get this out of the way and let’s go.” You could see guys just tapping their feet like, “C’mon let’s play.”
Here’s another thing that was cool about that team. We all shared stuff with each other. I don’t know if they do that in the big leagues anymore. I was batting second, and so Lonnie (Smith) would tell me stuff about his at bat, and I would say something to the guys after me. We had played Tudor twice in the Series, and he always goes fastball, change, change. This time he went fastball, fastball. I hit it hard, but straight to the second baseman. I came back to the dugout and said, “Hey, he’s doubling up fastballs.”
I don’t know if they listen or not, but in the second inning Balboni walked. Darryl Motley comes up and hits a home run foul. Usually Tudor would do something, take something off it, move it around, but he changed his pattern. Next pitch, fastball, “Mot” kept it fair.
Most people remember Joaquin Andujar losing it in the fifth inning, but Tudor lost it first. He went over and hit his hand up against a fan at the end of the dugout when he came out of the game in the third. Then when Andujar gave up a walk to Sundberg ... he lost it after a walk, started pointing at the umpire and telling him it was a strike. It wasn’t even about the pitch. It was just about him having a breakdown.
We all understood what was happening, but it was hard to watch it. He was feeling the same way about it that we would have. You put your heart and soul into it and ... I don’t know any good losers. I don’t know anybody who plays this game or any sport who’s a good loser. A good loser is just a loser. If you don’t fight, you’re just a loser, man. I wouldn’t expect anything different from him because of how much he put into it.
We win and it’s just the greatest feeling ever. We are in the locker room, excited, throwing champagne around. I was so elated. I felt like I had redeemed myself, and I felt like I had paid the people back for going to jail. I know that’s stupid, but that’s how I felt. Being there and having that experience, that’s something that lives with you forever. It was so exciting.
For me it was also a little disappointing because ... I was going through a divorce. So we won, but it was like I don’t have anybody to celebrate it with. So, me and a couple of my buddies, we drove down to the Plaza – at least as close as we could get to it that night. We had some beer, and we just sat on the front of the car, just sat there and watched all the people pouring into the Plaza that night. Nobody recognized me. There were soooooo many people. I remember lying back on my windshield, looking up and just watching everything.
After that, there was the parade. It was a great parade. We were in these old classic cars coming down Grand Boulevard and then to that park across the street from Crown Center. Well, like always, I was near the back of the parade because I’m a “W.” My wife had decided to come to the parade and celebrate for this part. So, we’re driving down the street, and there is all this confetti coming down.
Right by the newspaper building my car caught on fire, not just mine but a couple of them. There was so much confetti. The confetti was piled up. These old cars are getting hot, and all of a sudden I start smelling smoke. We were sitting up on the back of a convertible, and I look over and the fire is coming up the back. So we jump out, the guy shuts his car off. I got my daughter out of the car, my wife has my son. She had a fur coat, and I can remember her going “My coat! My coat!” So I gotta go back, hop through the fire and get the coat. Then, we decided she was going to take the baby home.
My daughter and I walked from that point all the way up the street to the park. We didn’t know what else to do because everybody else had taken off. When we got there we could see the stage they had set up, but we couldn’t get around all the people there to get to in. So, we walked around the back and we climbed up the back of the stage. I can remember that we got on the stage at almost the exact time they go, “Willie Wilson.”
I go up and say, “We shocked the world!” That whole day was pretty funny. We got a ride back to where I had parked my car, and I took my daughter back to the house.
Then we got to fly out and see the president – then it was (Ronald) Reagan and (George HW) Bush. We had a plane come get us, flew to DC, got off and had a police escort to the Senate and the House. Then, we went to the White House and had to go through all the metal detectors and everything.
We were out on the lawn. I think the President took George and somebody else into his office. Then, we all got to talk to them. It was really cool to hear the President talk about the game, you know in his voice (imitating Reagan) “George Brett, Willie Wilson ... ” He’s mentioning your name, I mean, wow, the President is mentioning your name. We give him a jacket.
I got this picture somewhere of me waving at Reagan and Bush to turn around. I’m standing there and I’m going “Hey, what’s up?” The camera has me just waving to them. That was pretty cool. I got the Prez over there waving at me. It was a really good day.
Then reality sets in.
The season is over and I gotta go through a divorce.