Wire to Wire by George Cantor

Author:George Cantor [Cantor, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Triumph Books LLC
Published: 2012-11-21T06:00:00+00:00

Dave Bergman, here stealing a base against Kansas City in the ALCS, all but knocked the Blue Jays out of the pennant race with his dramatic game-winning homer in early June.

17. Rusty and Ruppert

If this season had a subtext it was the wizardry of Sparky. The white-haired manager spent an entire year drawing to inside straights, lining up the slots on the payoff line, never crapping out.

Every move he made seemed to catch a winner. No matter how some of the Tigers resented his rules (ties and jackets on the road, no beer on the team flights), they learned not to question his decisions. Because for that year, at least, they all turned out right.

The primary exhibits were Rusty Kuntz and Ruppert Jones, two guys who figured in no one’s plans when the season began, yet became cogs in the machine.

“As long as we were winning, I made up my mind to play everyone on my roster,” says Sparky. “They all were going to feel that they were part of what was going on.”

He had cut Rick Leach in spring training, a move that was not especially popular in the state and left the former University of Michigan football star embittered. But in three seasons he had not developed into the player the Tigers had hoped for. The trade for Bergman was made specifically to get a left- handed reserve with a bit more power and defensive skill at first base.

That, as we have seen, worked well.

But the Tigers had also traded Glenn Wilson in that deal, which left a vacancy for a right-handed hitting outfielder.

Enter Russell J. Kuntz.

He was acquired in a winter deal at the minor league level and had been spending an uneventful spring on the roster of Evansville, Detroit’s Triple A affiliate. With the departure of Wilson, he was suddenly called over from Tigertown, still wearing a generic minor league uniform, without even his name on the back.

“Just before the team went north, Bill Lajoie called me into his office,” he says. “I knew this was either good news or bad news, and I had been on the bad news side of these meetings enough times in my career.

“He started off by saying, ‘We have to make some changes, Rusty,’ and I figured, ‘Oh, well, here we go again.’”

Kuntz was 29 and had been a journeyman with the White Sox and Twins. He was within reach of some incentives in 1983 that would have paid him $20,000 (big money for a utility player at that time) when the Twins benched him. He asked for his release and ended up being traded to Detroit for a minor league pitcher.

So the gamble hadn’t paid off.

But wait a minute. Instead of swinging the ax, Lajoie was smiling.

“Therefore, we’re keeping you on the 25-man roster.”

Lajoie later described the whoop that Kuntz emitted as “the happiest sound I had ever heard come out of a ballplayer.”

Kuntz responded by hitting .400 for the first month of the season in spot assignments and getting a hit in every game he started.

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