There are two aspects of catching in which Bench has changed-and improved-perceptibly in the last few years. (Noting the oblong configuration of his skull that suggests the look of something having newly emerged from a wine bottle, his teammates call him Corkhead.) His head is so big (he says size 7½) that the helmet, which could drown some players, fits snugly. (“Some guys will come up and tell you to be careful of their backswing,” he says.) Because of this menace, he is one of the few players who takes the precaution of wearing a hard‐shelled batting helmet-back wards, of course-while he's at work in the field. He is also very aware of the dan gers of a wild and treacherous swing of the bat. For one thing, he doesn't have to his arm is so strong that he could concede half the distance to the nearest beer parlor and still throw a runner out.
Both have been sidelined for much of the current sea son with injuries.) But Bench, unlike many catchers, does not move up tight behind the batter in an effort to squeeze a few more milliseconds out of the time needed to throw out a runner at second base. (Hundley, who pioneered in one‐handed catching, and Tim Mc Carver of the Philadelphia Phillies are perhaps the best catchers in the league after Bench. (“When a catcher's wide like that,” says one pitcher, “he looks a lot closer.”) He squats down low by this season, he was getting his glove 4 to 6 inches lower than most other catchers in the league-lower even than Randy Hundley of the Chi cago Cubs. Or, as they like to say in the big leagues, “receiver.” He is big‐6‐foot‐1 and just under 200 pounds-and he gives the pitcher a wide target. Yet it is a tru ism in baseball that a catcher who can hit, throw and think-however alien that is to the traditions of the game-will not make the Hall of Fame if he cannot catch.Īs it happens, Bench is a magnifi cent catcher. The specific skills with which Bench hopes to accomplish this are varied, furious and abundant.
Time out bench code#
“Johnny doesn't abuse people,” says one student of baseball affairs, “but he doesn't let an awful lot of good ones get by him.” As a rule, Bench does not subscribe to baseball's un written code of modesty, but he is nicely measured about it: He is given to understatement (“I've got a little ability”) when he thinks you know better, and to fervid overstatement when he thinks you do not (“I can throw out any runner alive”). Bench has mastered, in stinctively, a subtle skill in establish ing a “command personality”: He is outgoing but not overwhelming. “But so help me, I like it,” Ma loney says. “He'll come out to the mound and chew me out as if I were a 2‐year‐old,” says Jim Maloney, at 30 the senior‐in‐service among the Cincinnati starting pitch ers. The subject of all this adulation is a young man of subdued but purpose ful chic who has high cheekbones, a low‐key humor, and an air of sedate but absolute authority. “Right now,” says pitcher Wayne Granger of the Reds, “I think John is more valuable to this team than anyone was to any other team in the history of baseball-and that in cludes Babe Ruth.” (“To Johnny, a Hall of Famer for sure,” wrote Ted Williams, a man of astrin gent baseball judgment, on an auto graphed baseball last spring.) Yet Bench excites even more extravagant hyperbole. At the same time, Johnny has already been selected-at the vernal age of 22-as‐an almost certain member‐to be of Baseball's Hall of Fame. Since then, Bench has been blasting homers at Babe Ruth's record‐setting pace.
Time out bench series#
During most of the last five weeks, Bench led the National League in home runs and runs batted in, while his team, a very possible World Series contend er, led the Western Division of the National League (the toughest in the major leagues) by 12½ games at the 100 ‐game mark. He has a large head (“On him, a helmet looks like a beanie,” says teammate Pete Rose), large hands (“Biggest mauleys I've ever seen,” says Leo Durocher), and exquisite self‐control (“The last thing I'll ever do,” he says, “is panic”).Īll these have helped to bring him -in this desperate zenith of another baseball season-a celebrity that not only is contemporary but also has historic overtones.
JOHNNY BENCH, the catcher for the Cincinnati Reds, is a preter naturally calm young man who quite possibly is the most gifted-and most coveted-player in baseball today.
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