My Len Barker-autographed scorebook of his perfect game recently celebrated its 39th birthday. (TLOD.com)
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Editor's note: Tony Grossi is a Cleveland Browns analyst for TheLandOnDemand.com and 850 ESPN Cleveland.
(One in a series.)
The Great Sports Pause of 2020 has created an obvious void in our daily sports conversations. It’s being filled by lists. Gobs and gobs of lists.
Instead of debating LeBron James’ chances of claiming an NBA Championship with a third team or calculating Frankie Lindor’s trade value after his latest three-hit game, we’re left with ranking the greatest games we’ve witnessed or most under-rated players named Joe.
With more than 40 years in the business of covering Cleveland sports, I feel qualified to compile some personal lists from my own archives. This is one of them.
Times I’ve Been In The Right Place At The Right Time
1. Lenny’s Perfecto
On May 15, 1981, Plain Dealer baseball beat writer Terry Pluto asked for the night off to attend a Cleveland journalism banquet to accept one of the many awards he earned in his career. I was assigned to cover for him.
It was a dreary Friday night. Cavernous Cleveland Municipal Stadium was at 9.3 percent capacity at first pitch to see the lowly Toronto Blue Jays, who were 10-21.
It was the second Indians game I ever covered as the “game story” writer. I was 24.
And then Len Barker pitched a perfect game.
Not just a no-hitter. A perfect game. Twenty-seven batters up. Twenty-seven batters down. No baserunners. At that point, only nine pitchers in Major League Baseball history had pitched a perfect game.
And I was there to chronicle it.
The Indians beat writer had so much to do back then. Newspapers published three editions at the time. The “bulldog” edition had a deadline of 8:30 p.m. So the Indians beat writer had to provide a story essentially before the game began. That meaningless story consumed me for the first three innings of the game.
I remember filing the story and asking the person next to me – who happened to be my boss, the sports editor, who stopped by for what was going to be a few innings – to fill me in to keep my scorecard up to date.
Barker had retired the Blue Jays three up, three down through three innings. But he hadn’t struck out a batter.
Over the next six innings, he struck out 11 Blue Jays, including third baseman Danny Ainge two times. Yes, the future NBA guard and Boston Celtics executive. Every one of the 11 strikeouts came on swings-and-misses.
The 2-hour, 9-minute game was a blur. Tension increased with every out. It was my second MLB game story! By the end of the game, Pluto was summoned from his awards banquet and returned to the Stadium to write a sidebar. My game story ran on The Plain Dealer’s front page, right next to a story about the assassination attempt of Pope John Paul II.
At some point, The Plain Dealer phone rang. The Boston Globe wanted my game story reprinted in its newspaper. The Boston Globe! I had to dictate my story to somebody on their phone.
A few days later, I received a piece of mail from Sam Crowl, one of my English professors at Ohio University. He attended the game. He asked me to have Barker sign his ticket to the game.
2. Brian Sipe’s call to Donald Trump
In 1983, the Indians’ precarious financial situation made them ripe for purchase. One suitor was brash New York developer Donald Trump. It was feared that Trump would buy the Indians and move them to Brooklyn, NY. So Plain Dealer sports editor Hal Lebovitz dispatched me to New York to write a profile of this suspicious character named Trump.
Trump pulled out all the stops to make a favorable impression. I was met at the airport by a chauffeur and driven to a boutique hotel. To bide time before an afternoon interview session in Trump’s office, I was given a private tour of the newly opened Trump Tower in Manhattan.
During the interview, Trump was the sweetest guy, promising to never move the Indians out of Cleveland and pledging to bankroll them to winning seasons.
A half-hour into the interview in Trump’s office, his secretary buzzed him and informed him, “Brian Sipe is on the line.”
Sipe, the Browns’ matinee-idol quarterback, had been negotiating with Trump to jump from the Browns to the New Jersey Generals of the fledgling United States Football League. The Browns were turning the page from Sipe after drafting USC quarterback Paul McDonald.
I motioned to Trump with a gesture saying, “You want me to leave?” His response was, “No. Stay put.” I couldn’t hear Sipe, but Trump was saying, “Yes, Brian, we’d love to have you. Of course. We’ll work it out.”
After Sipe hung up, I concluded my interview with Trump about the Indians and returned to my hotel. I phoned an editor and informed him what happened. He notified Browns beat writer Russell Schneider, who confirmed it was a big story. The editor told me I had to call Trump and get the story on the record.
I called Trump and said, “I know what happened was ‘off the record,’ but I have to write about Sipe’s call.” Trump said, “That’s fine. You were there. You heard it. Report it.”
It was a huge story – Sipe calling Trump during his lunch hour in the middle of a Browns work week – and it embarrassed the quarterback.
The profile on Trump turned out unflattering. He called to say, “I’m not surprised.”
3. Tiger Woods’ visit to Manakiki Golf Course
On a chilly May day in 1994, Tiger Woods and his dad held a clinic for junior golfers prior to the National Minority Championship at Manakiki Golf Course in Willoughby Hills. I was there to chronicle it for The Plain Dealer and Golfweek magazine.
Tiger was 18 and had won three straight U.S. Junior Amateur Championships. On the Manakiki driving range, Tiger began loosening up with golf shots as his father, Earl, unfurled a microphone with two speakers.
During the one-hour exhibition, Tiger never spoke. His father narrated as Tiger demonstrated a variety of shots – left to right, right to left, and knockdown straight ahead – with his irons.
After the exhibition, Earl Woods stayed outside for a smoke as I interviewed Tiger for about 15 minutes. He had been playing the game of golf for 15 of his 18 years already, and I asked him if he worried about burning out, like tennis prodigies had done at the time.
“I love this game to death,” Tiger responded. “It’s like a drug I have to have. I take time off sometimes because of the mental strain it puts on you, but when I’m competing, the will to win overcomes the physical and mental breakdowns.”
Three years after Tiger’s visit to Manakiki, he won his first Masters by 12 strokes.