Summer of '68: The Season That Changed Baseball--And America--Forever Read Online Free PDF

where the team’s rings, watches and wallets, were locked away and stored during games. From his perch, he would lead the group in a round of cheers.
    “All right, El Birdos,” Cepeda began. It was Cepeda who made sure the mangled Spanish nickname, originally authored by coach Joe Schultz, stuck with the team. “Who made the great play out there tonight? Was it Heinie Manush?”
    (For those scoring at home, Hall of Famer Henry Emmett Manush was a left fielder for a half-dozen teams in the majors.)
    “No,” the team would chant.
    “Was it Toulouse-Lautrec?”
    “ Was it Curt Flood?”
    “Yes!”
    And so it would go, with Cepeda playing cheerleader, highlighting the efforts of as many of his teammates as he could until the entire clubhouse was chanting, “El Birdos, El Birdos.”
    “That team was a group of guys who knew how to get along,” Cardinals pitcher Nellie Briles said. “Orlando had no problem fitting in with us. He brought a real passion to the game.”
    In ’67, the Cardinals won the pennant by ten and a half games over the second-place Giants, Cepeda’s old team. Then they defeated the Boston Red Sox in that season’s Fall Classic. “The whole thing was as satisfying a season as I’ve ever had as a player,” said Cepeda, who hit twenty-five home runs and a league-leading 111 RBI (runs batted in) that year.
    As the Sports Illustrated cover showcased, this was one confident, aggressive bunch, more than willing to stick up for each other. And no incident better illustrated that than the famed brawl against the Cincinnati Reds.
    On a hot day in July of 1967, the Cardinals got off to a quick start against Milt Pappas and the Reds. They batted around in the first inning, opening up a 7–0 lead. When Lou Brock reached base after his second bat in the inning, he tried to steal second. Even though he was thrown out, the Reds were infuriated by the attempt. Some in baseball consider stealing bases when your team is already staked to a big lead to be rubbing it in. The gambit would later upset the Tigers’ Mickey Lolich in Game Two of the ’68 World Series, ending with Lolich yelling a few choice words at Brock. In the game against the Reds, things escalated into a far more serious situation.
    “Much of my reputation as a badass pitcher resulted from the fact that Lou Brock was on my side,” Bob Gibson explained in his candid memoir with Lonnie Wheeler, Stranger to the Game . “There was no other player who irritated the other team as Brock did, and consequently no other who was knocked down quite as often. When somebody on the other team threw at Brock, I considered it my duty to throw at somebody on the other team. That’s simply how the game was played—at least in my book.”
    In the fourth inning against Cincinnati, Brock was hit by Don Notte-bart, the Reds’ new pitcher. That resulted in Gibson buzzing Reds slugger Tony Perez, high and tight.
    After flying out, Perez shouted at Gibson as he trotted past the pitcher’s mound. Gibson stared him down as Cepeda moved in from first base to get between the two. In quick order, the benches emptied. Things further escalated when Reds reliever Bob “Man Mountain” Lee raced in from bull pen, wanting a piece of Cepeda. Instead of waiting for the mountain to come to him, the Cardinals’ first baseman decided to go to the mountain. As the players jostled and yelled at each other, Cepeda tapped Lee on the shoulder. When Man Mountain turned around, Cepeda decked him with a single punch and the fight was on in earnest.
    Eventually, twenty policemen came on to the field, but they couldn’t immediately stop the wide-ranging brawl, which soon spread to both dugouts. Gibson ended up in the Cincinnati bench, wrestling Perez, Tommy Helms, and Pete Rose. “I’ll never forget the sight,” Cardinals announcer Jack Buck said. “There was Gibson in the Reds’ dugout, visibly manhandling about three Reds and tossing them bodily out of the dugout and onto the