Defensive Ability Helped Yaz, Bench Into Hall of Fame

One grew up on a potato farm, but close to the big-city atmosphere in Long Island, N.Y., and later walked in the footsteps of a legend. The other was a city boy with country surroundings from the nation’s midsection of Oklahoma and a rather obscure second-round pick when baseball held an amateur draft for the first time in 1965.

As a 21-year-old, Carl Yastrzemski stepped into the left-field shadow of Ted Williams and the Green Monster of Boston’s Fenway Park, and he survived for 23 years. At the age of 20, Johnny Bench came to Cincinnati almost before his time, and began a 17-year stretch that revolutionized the art of catching.

Their teams were competitors only once--in that memorable 1975 World Series, so they were only occasionally on the same field together. But Sunday, Yastrzemski and Bench will reach baseball’s pinnacle at the same time. That’s when this quaint, sleepy village will welcome the largest crowd ever to the 50th anniversary celebration of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

A crowd expected to surpass the estimated 15,000 who showed up in 1983, when Brooks Robinson was enshrined, will witness the induction of Yastrzemski, Bench, infielder Red Schoendienst and umpire Al Barlick. Yastrzemski and Bench were elected by the Baseball Writers Association of America, while Schoendienst and Barlick were nominees of the special Veterans Committee.

If there is one similarity between Yastrzemski and Bench, one thread that binds them together, it is the degree of defensive excellence they brought to their profession. Both have Hall of Fame offensive numbers, but it was their play in the field that set them apart from many others who have played the same positions.

And it was that season of 1975 that perhaps best demonstrates the kind of athletic ability this pair brought to the game. Bench, who would have only one more explosive offensive season after that, hit 28 home runs and drove in 110 runs --and went the entire year without committing a passed ball.

For Yaz, 1975 was a year of offensive mediocrity, 14 home runs, 60 RBI. He would have two more big number years immediately thereafter, but it was his postseason performance that remains embedded in the mind. He hit .350 combined in the playoffs, against the defending three-time world champion Oakland A’s, and in the World Series against the Reds.

“But what I remember most,” he said recently about that year, “was that I went out to left field and made all of the defensive plays after not playing (the position) all year. I threw out Bert Campaneris and Sal Bando at third in the second game, and Reggie Jackson twice at second in the clincher.”

That year, Yastrzemski played 140 games as the Red Sox first baseman--yet his defense in left field was a staple for the Red Sox throughout postseason play. After getting beyond his 3,308 hits and 1,844 RBIs, one comes to the fact that Yaz played his position like a master violinist. He won the Triple Crown once, was the league batting and slugging champion three times --but he also won seven Gold Gloves and seven times led the league in assists.

And Bench was the same way.

“He was so good, it actually worked against him,” said Hall of Famer Lou Brock, who made a career of stealing bases for the St. Louis Cardinals. “The pitching staff just left it up to him. They didn’t even throw to first base, so you could get a big lead. A normal lead wasn’t good enough against Bench --he would throw you out 99% of the time.”

Brock remembered a game when Bench threw him out three times trying to steal--”and every throw was in the same place.”

Sparky Anderson, now managing the Detroit Tigers, was Bench’s manager from 1970 to ‘78, and to this day has regrets that he may have leaned on his warhorse too often. “I think I might have helped shorten Johnny’s career by catching him so often,” admitted Anderson.

Only once in that period did Bench play less than 135 games (120 in 1978) and, though Bench played until he was 36, Anderson still feels he could have coaxed a few more years out of Bench’s body had he not played so often early in his career.

If there was one game that totally reflected Bench’s career it took place against the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1972--and everything happened in one inning. He picked Willie Davis off second base, threw out Bill Russell trying to steal third, threw out the batter trying to bunt for a base hit--then hit a home run in the bottom half of the inning.

He was a 10-time Gold Glove winner, a two-time MVP, and a .370 hitter in 13 All-Star games. But, if Bench has a trademark, it was the way he caught the game.

“He ruined many a catcher,” said Anderson, “because he was the first great one-handed catcher. He could do everything with one hand (one reason he was such a great thrower) and nobody else could do it that way. A lot of catchers ruined themselves trying it.”

It has only been in the last few years that players with great defensive credentials, like Robinson and Luis Aparicio, have given the Hall of Fame good balance in the eyes of many critics. However, that might also be because the truly great players simply had offensive numbers that were overpowering.

Yastrzemski and Bench fall into that category. They are only the 18th and 19th players elected in their first year of eligibility, and anybody who questioned their worthiness for such an honor obviously wasn’t considering the overall impact they had on the game. As great as they were offensively, they were even better defensively.

There are others who played left field and who caught who are in the Hall of Fame. It’s doubtful if any combined all of the skills of the game better than Yastrzemski and Bench.

They built different paths to reach the steps of the Hall of Fame. But they used similar tools.