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Show by Jim illurray Mnniripay nim pirtt UIIIMPI.IU.IU..J IJu..UJiiUJJiiiim llli. uu.iii. Ll ,,L l)iini,,l.jlMlui.l,lllllut,.lJ. Ill . I l.lljl. II... . I.J.I.. I I M Johnny, we hardly knew you When Johnny Lee Bench came strolling in from an Oklahoma sandlot in 1965, baseball drooled. This was a ballplayer who was not born, he was invented. He was walking right out of the pages of dime-novel heroics. A mail-order player. Everything you always wanted in an athlete and more. American? He was part Indian, and you couldn't get more American than that. Good-looking? Good-looking? Hollywood was on the phone before he got a time at bat. He was articulate, sunny, sun-ny, gregarious. They didn't know whether to send him to Cincinnati or Mt. Rushmore. It seemed a shame to make him play for 20 years. Why didn't he just go straight to Cooperstown? Everything was magic. He busted up every league he was ever in. They retired his number num-ber at Peninsula even though he only played 98 games there. He could throw out an ocelot at second base. He could catch a bullet. He introduced the one-handed catcher's style to the grand old game at a great saving of knuckles. He was Rookie of the Year his first year and MVP his third. He hit 22 home runs in 98 games in one minor league and 23 in 98 games in another three classifications higher. He hit 45 home runs in the majors and led the league in that and runs batted in. He was the youngest MVP ever chosen. He was one of the Beaufiful People. He played golf with ex-presidents when he was barely old enough to vote. He dated Miss World. He was on the cover of Sports Illustrated before he was a regular. He went on Bob Hope's troop tours, did cameos in TV shows, sang duets with the country-and-western greats. It was heady stuff for a kid from Binger, Okla. What was next governor? King? i Saint? The world looked easy from up there. Made out of rock candy. There were World Series. Bench hit the ! home runs that put the Reds in there. The Big ! Red Machine, that was Johnny Bench. The i" others were supporting players, i His wedding made Princess Di's look like L an elopement. The guest list was in the thousands. The party lasted almost as long as the marriage. The cake looked like a ski slope. When he hit two home runs in the final game and batted .533 in the 1976 World Series, his manager, Sparky Anderson, said of the Yankees' catcher, Thurman Munson, "Don't embarrass anybody by comparing 'em to Johnny Bench" and Munson never spoke to him again, but that was the kind of testimonial Bench inspired. When Bench came through Los Angeles recently on his farewell tour, a kind of Bernhardt Bern-hardt swing through the provinces people could hardly believe it. It seemed too soon. Why, it was only yesterday he was the kid out of Binger with the world in his mitt. What was he doing quitting still 326 home runs short of Babe Ruth, even more behind Henry Aaron? Why, he was barely 35. The great ones don't quit at 35. They go on to 42 like Henry Aaron, 43 like Stan Musial. Pete Rose is still playing and he was a veteran when Bench came along. The truth of the matter is, the music began to stop 10 years ago. It was at the end of the '72 Series, the second of four Bench would lead the Reds into. John played knowing there was a spot on his lungs that could be malignant. It wasn't. It was a fungus. But Johnny Bench was Johnny Bench only in flashes, if you're talking of the incandescent Bench of 1970, the 45-homer hitter, the 148-RBI 148-RBI man. Bench hit 154 home runs the first five years of his career, most of them with the game, or the flag, on the line. He now has 388. Johnny Bench drove in 745 of his 1,371 runs in his first five years. He has never hit .300, but the year after his fungus operation he hit .253. In 1976, he hit .234. He had a scar that ran like a railroad from the front of his chest down and around to the back. Bench had so much talent he could be an extraordinary ballplayer even underweight and under-strength as a recuperating patient. But, it seemed to observers, the great promise remained unfulfilled after that one misfortune. Bench would always be a dangerous hitter, but he had been a catastrophic one. Pitchers might have walked him to get at Ted Williams. Catching is one of the lunatic occupations, like kickoff returner, oil-well fire putter-outer. putter-outer. It is especially contraindicated for anybody who can bat .293 with 45 home runs, 35 doubles and the league lead in RBIs. But Bench may have been the best there ever was at all phases of this difficult profession. Sparky Anderson may well have been right when he said you embarrassed other receivers comparing them to Bench. But Bench finally chafed under the restraints of his trade. He wanted to put on the tools of intelligence instead a first baseman's, a third baseman's, an outfielder's glove. It was too late. All that stooping, bending, all those foul balls on the chest area, the one with the stitches in it, all the foul tips off the knuckles, had made Bench a liability at any other station. The Big Red Machine came apart bolt by bolt. Johnny found himself not hitting behind Morgan, Rose, Perez, Foster anymore. The pitchers were not pitching with their tongues hanging out when they got to him. They didn't dare send Bench out in trade, but the Big Red Machine was without its transmission. trans-mission. So Bench is calling it a career, ringing the curtain down at the end of the second act "I find I can't face the thought of one more hotel room," he says. Or one more curveball on the outside corner? "I can still get excited by a challenge, but I'm just not able to swing things the way I once did. I'm not able to play a position as well as I'd like." Bench will still make the Hall of Fame, but he might have needed his own room if he'd been able to put together fifteen 1970s. Did the 1972 lung infection stall the career, motivate the early retirement? "It hurt. They cut nerve, they cut muscle. They cut strength. They cut confidence. I thought I shook it off. I had some great years afterward." But not supernatural. If the Johnny Bench of 1970 wanted to retire at 35, baseball would have gone to court. As it is, it acts as if it needs the mitt. (c) 1983, Los Angeles Times Dist. by Los Angeles Times Syndicate |