I became a Cincinnati Reds fan for one reason and one reason only: Johnny Bench. By all rights I should have bled Dodger blue ... this was a term Tommy Lasorda used all the time. "If you cut me, I'll bleed Dodger blue," he used to say, meaning he was totally loyal to the Dodgers.
I grew up in Bakersfield, California. The Dodgers were the closest team to the area and we even had a Dodger farm club. Almost everybody bled Dodger blue. As far as baseball fans in the area were concerned the worst team you could root for were those Reds from Cincinnati. This was the 1970's and the Reds and Dodgers were the biggest rivalry in baseball. They battled it out for first place in the West almost every year. Between the two teams they won 9 of 10 Western division titles in the 70's.
I played my first year of Little League in 1971 and decided I needed a favorite team. I didn't want to do the obvious thing and pick the team I lived closest to ... this was going to take some thought. I happened to see some highlights of 1970 World Series between the Orioles and the Reds. At one point they began talking about this great young catcher with a unique last name, Bench, then they showed him in action. His name wasn't the only thing that was unique.
The clip that made me a Johnny Bench fan from that show was when Johnny scrambled up the backstop for a pop-up behind the plate. In an instant he determined that this pop-up's trajectory was taking it into the screen so he promptly climbed the screen about a quarter of the way up and with a quickness that was unreal then stuck a glove out and made the catch. I couldn't believe what I had just seen.
I came to find out later this was typical Johnny ... always one step ahead both in intelligence and athletic ability. He revolutionized the postion of catching. Nobody had ever thought to keep their throwing hand behind their backs so a foul tip wouldn't bang it up -- all catchers used two hands to catch the ball at that point in baseball history. Nobody had ever had the ability to pick a runner off first from a crouch with a snap throw ... maybe they had the ability but followed the conventional way of doing things. Johnny knew they wouldn't be expecting him to throw from a crouch so he had a better chance to catch them off guard.
Bench just did little things that no one had ever thought of ... he dared to be different. Also,to top this off no catcher had ever put up offensive numbers like he did; a catcher was pretty much just a defensive player up to this point in the game. He changed the way the postion was played and percieved. I don't believe anyone in the history of baseball can say that. There just wasn't anyone like Johnny in the game -- he was a truly revolutionary player.
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Posted August 17, 2001.
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