South by Southwick

Lute Aparicio has played more baseball games at shortstop than any other human being extant or otherwise. The number of steps he has run on a major league diamond is beyond compilation, if not beyond belief. On Monday night in Detroit he took the step that will be remembered more than any of the other countless millions for after two decades of brilliant fielding, masterful base running and nearly 2,500 career hits. Lattle Luts, the Veaezuelan wonder, fell down.

Luis came to Boston after a distinguished career with the White Sox and Orioles, and his monopolization of the American League shortstop All-Star honors lasted through three decades. At thirty-eight years of age, he arrived in Boston with a broken leg after his finest season at the plate, a sparking .312 with Chicago.

He was, and is an old man, and his expertise in hitting to right field and capacity for handling the double-play were certain to be assets for the new defense-minded Bosox. And a magnificant asset he was, the key to the starcrossed pennant drive which took millions of hard-core Sox fans down to the replay of the Polk Country series, only this time for all the marbles. He had survived not only the broken leg, but a broken finger and an 0 for 47 batting slump last year, and as he took the field in Tiger Stadium on Monday night, the opportunity was there for the magnificent finale to his glorious carreer.

Early this season, without him, the Sox had foundered in the second division. With his return, Yas and Rico and Reggie started to hit and Baltimore was overtaken with two weeks left. It the flag was to be Boston"s it would be Luis's.

Al Kaline was the youngest man in history to win the American League batting championship and he has had more extra base hits than any other "Detrott Tiger except for the unapproachable Georgia Peach. Ty Cobb Kaline is a living classic, the perfect baseball playing machine, a skinny, eternally your superstar who brings the same talents to the plate as the youngster out of a Baltimore high school who rocketed to instant fame.

His lifetime batting average will never dip below...300, and the boulevards and streets that bear his name will never be renamed as long as the game still exists. His impeccable arm will never be matched in right field in Detroit, and no other back will ever bear that same number 6. Kaline got his chance in 1968, when at the age of thirty-four he played in his first World Series. He, like Roberto Clemente last year, was more than equal to the challenge, batting over 400 for the Series and making fielding gems unimaginable for all but the truly great. In 1972, once again, if the Tigers wee to emerge with the flag, it would belong to AI Kaline.

On Monday night, John Curtis had two strikes on AI Kaline and threw a pitch that only a handful of men in the game could have hit; a fastball, low and away. AI kaline is one of that handful, and Curtis turned to watch as his pitch found its final home in the arms of a Tiger fan, 420 feet from home plate 1-0, Tigers.

Mickey Lolich was in trouble. Tommy Harper and Little Luis danced off base as he threw a curve that hung over the dish for the reborn Carl Yastrzemski. Yaz placed the ball over the dish for the outstretched arm of Mickey Stanley in the cavernous Detroit center field. Harper crossed the plate with the tying run as Yaz steamed into third base. But the coordination of Aparicio had deserted him in this one crucial moment. Little Luis fell down, crawled back to third base with the go-ahead run, to greet the ecstatic, then horrified, yastrzemski. The pennant was AI Kaline's, as he would prove the next day.

It is this kind of play that makes baseball the game it is, love it or leave it. The fabulous "if only's which pepper baseball lore have seen another swell their ranks. Aparicio's trip will go down with Richardson's catch of McCovey's drive in 1962, with Ralph Terry's Meatball to Mazeroski in 1960, even with the Bobby Thompson shot heard round the world.

In the spring, reports will start to trickle back to Boston from Winter Haven; stories of Yaz, and Rico, and Reggie, and some rookie who won't make it. But until then, these who live this game again and again will wonder: "If only Aparicio hadn't fallen down.......""

In 1967 the man on the left won the American League triple crown, and the man on the right squeezed a pop fly of the bat of Rich Reese to end the greatest pennant race in modern history. On Tuesday night the man on the left hit a single and dropped a ground hall, and the man on the right struck out twice with men on base, and watched as AI Kaline squeezed Ren Ogilvie's pop fly to give the Tigers the flag. But hold your heads up. You're still Our Sox.