The Reds jumped ahead in Game 2, scoring three unearned runs in the first. After Tolan homered in the third to make it 4–0 and Bench walked, Weaver pulled Cuellar and brought in Tom Phoebus, who immediately benefited from another brilliant defensive play by Brooks Robinson. May hit a hard smash into the hole, but Robinson sank to his knees and caught the ball, then whirled and threw to second to start a double play.

The Orioles got one run back in the fourth on Powell’s second homer in two days, then scored five runs in the fifth, with Brooks Robinson providing the game-tying single and Hendricks doubling to left to score two runs and put the Orioles ahead for good. Reliever Dick Hall, pitching with a one-run lead, recorded the last seven outs to lock up the 6–5 win, with last-out help from Blair, who raced to the fence and caught a drive with his back to the plate.

Elrod Hendricks: “It just seemed like all the bad things that happened in the ’69 Series went in our favor in ’70. In the second game I hit a ball right down the third-base line for a double, and Brooks scored from first base. That shows you how far around [to the right] they were playing me. [Third baseman] Tony Perez was playing me at shortstop. I remember getting to second, and Lee May turned and said, ‘You never hit the ball that way.’”

After two one-run wins, the Orioles had a much easier time in Game 3 at Memorial Stadium, as McNally pitched a complete game and became the first pitcher to hit a grand slam in the World Series. Frank Robinson and Buford also hit homers, and Brooks Robinson made yet another memorable stop—a diving grab to his left that robbed Bench of a hit. Final: Orioles, 9–3.

Dave McNally: “I hit the homer off Wayne Granger. The first pitch he threw me actually bounced before Bench caught it, and I swung at it. Then he did it again, and I swung at it and went, ‘Holy cow.’ Then he threw a ball, and I fouled one off, and then he threw another ball. I’m sure his philosophy was, ‘I can’t go to three and two and possibly walk this guy,’ so he threw a fastball in about the only place I could hit it—waist-high inside. And I hit it. My lifetime average was under .150, but I had two World Series homers and nine overall. Basically, if you threw it waist-high and inside, I could hit it.”

Riding a 17-game winning streak going back to the last weeks of the regular season, the Orioles went for the sweep the next day at Memorial Stadium and had a 5–3 lead in the top of the eighth when Palmer suddenly tired, walking Perez and giving up a single off the wall to Bench. Weaver put in Eddie Watt, but May hit Watt’s first pitch for a three-run homer, and the Reds won 6–5. Watt was booed for the rest of his Orioles career, the fans seemingly unable to forget the sweep that almost was.

The Reds then scored three runs in the top of the first of Game 5, but those were the only runs they scored on a wet, gloomy afternoon. The Orioles pounded out 15 hits and won easily, 9–3, clinching their second Series title in five years.

After Brooks Robinson took a called third strike in the bottom of the eighth, the fans gave him an ovation as he returned to the dugout, paying tribute to the defensive brilliance he had shown throughout the Series. He then made another stop in the top of the ninth, lunging to his right to grab Bench’s sharp liner in foul ground. Fittingly, he also recorded the last out of the Series, throwing out pinch hitter Pat Corrales on a routine grounder. That he would be named the Series MVP was a given. Aside from his defense, he batted .429 with two doubles, two homers, and six RBI.

Paul Blair: “I was so proud of the way we came back in ’70 and won 108 ball games and became the world champions. Everybody just figured the Big Red Machine was going to roll all over us. We made ’em a little toy wagon. And I led everybody in hitting. Don’t nobody know that but me because Brooks had such a fantastic World Series, but I hit .474. Out-hit everybody in there.”

Elrod Hendricks: “There was a weight on us all year. All year. There was one goal, to win it all. After we beat the Reds in Game 5, I looked around the [clubhouse] and people were so tired. I couldn’t even celebrate. I was asleep that night by nine o’clock—just totally exhausted and mentally drained from having pushed all year.”

Frank Robinson: “The Reds weren’t ‘on the way up’ or anything. They were there. A great team. But Brooks really deflated them. It got to the point where they didn’t think they could get a ball by him. Bench was talking to himself, muttering, because Brooks made a couple of plays on him. It demoralized their whole team. That was a tough team to demoralize, but he did.”

Earl Weaver: “The most amazing thing was to have all of those chances in a five-game series to be able to display your talents at third base. Brooks was the best third baseman that ever played, defensively, and he averaged a little less than three-and-a-half chances per game. So the opportunities aren’t there really at third, but the Reds just kept whacking the ball to him, and he kept catching it. One was better than the other. He did that all year, but you might go two or three days and Brooks had two chances, a couple of high bouncers. But we had two left-handers [pitching], and the ball came to him.”

Brooks Robinson: “I made an error on the first ball hit to me in the Series, threw a ball high, and I’m standing there thinking, ‘Can you believe this? How in the hell can you make a bad throw?’ I’m saying, ‘Here we go again, ’69 Mets.’ But things got better after that. And I got a lot of chances. That was the thing. Belanger and I went into that Series knowing we were going to get a lot of chances because of [lefties] Cuellar and McNally and [righties] Bench and Perez and May. I knew we were going to be busy.

“A lot goes into making a play, like who is pitching and hitting and those things. I was always kind of thinking. Like the play I made to catch a semi–line drive Bench hit in foul territory. People say, ‘How in the hell do you catch that?’ Well, Cuellar was pitching, and Bench doesn’t hold back. And Belanger said, ‘Be alive, Brooks, a curve is coming.’ A big, slow curve. And you could kind of see Bench slow his bat down and still get out in front of it. I just changed my thinking, and I was kind of leaning [right], and I just leaned right into it. That’s when Sparky made the comment about me coming down from a higher league or whatever, which was funny.”

Elrod Hendricks: “Lee May and I went out after Game 4, and all he could talk about was Brooks. He said, ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. No matter where you hit that ball, he’s there. And you have that little skinny guy over there at shortstop that nothing gets by. And you have Blair out there playing that shallow, and you can’t hit it over his head, and you can’t hit a line drive, so everybody’s trying to uppercut it and hit it out of the ballpark.’ He shook his head and said, ‘I see why you don’t have many .300 hitters [in the AL].’

“[Reds] at the plate would be talking to themselves, and I didn’t quite understand because I’m concentrating, but it was like ‘Don’t hit to the left side; get a good pitch to hit; hit the ball up; got to get it in there.’ They couldn’t get it by Brooks and Belanger, and they were fouled up. Tolan tried to bunt one, and he fouled it off, and I said, ‘That’s not a good idea. Don’t test him.’ Tolan looked at me like, ‘Who are you to be telling me that? I’ll bunt it at anybody over in the National League.’ But they got the message.

“The thing I tried to tell Lee and some of the writers from the National League who hadn’t seen Brooks, I said, ‘These are things he does on a daily basis. This didn’t just happen; he does this all the time.’ And they said, ‘Yeah, right.’ And I said, ‘I’m serious. The world is seeing this now, but I watch him day in and day out, and he’s amazing. You have to watch him day in and day out. He does this all the time. That’s the way he plays. Seventy million people are watching now, but that’s the way he plays all the time.’”

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