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 Joe Rudi, the Oakland A’s, and the 1972 World Series Photo Gallery
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Today, contributor Michael Keedy continues his series featuring great catches from the Fall Classic. No doubt Joe Rudi’s spectacular Game Two grab in the 1972 WS was a game-saver (or even World Series-saver) and belongs in this select category. Be sure to check out the video below of the catch. It’s even more amazing when you see the replay in slow motion and on full screen! -GL

Michael Keedy’s Top-Ten Greatest World Series Catches!

No. Nine:

Joe Rudi, 1972 World Series!

Looking Back On It…

My essay last week featured Bobby Richardson’s great catch to end the 1962 World Series. The page featuring Richardson’s saving stop wasn’t exactly torn from a circus performer’s scrapbook, but his crucial grab literally did save the World Series for New York, thereby justifying its place among the top-ten Fall Classic catches of all time.  Whatever his play on a line shot hit right at him lacked in acrobatic spectacle, it easily made up for in high-tension drama and historical significance, coming as it did with the tying and winning runs racing to the plate in Game Seven, bottom of the ninth, and no tomorrow for either team.

Fiftieth Anniversary of Joe Rudi’s Great Catch

In sharp contrast, the 1972 World Series featured a top-ten finalist whose catch belongs at the other end of this analytical spectrum.  It happened early on, in Game Two, played on October 14, and whether it “saved” the first of Oakland’s three consecutive world championships is open to debate among baseball scholars, even with fifty years’ worth of hindsight.  But there’s no doubt it helped the A’s seize a 2-0 lead over the Redlegs as these clubs headed to California for the next three games of a series that would go the full seven, a record six to be decided by a single run.

So it’s equally clear in retrospect that Owner Charlie Finley’s motley crew of

underdogs absolutely had to have both opening games at Riverfront Stadium.  After shockingly winning the first on two deep balls from Gene Tenace, an unlikely hero and ultimate MVP of the series, they got the second thanks primarily to Catfish Hunter’s own surprisingly timely hitting and dominant, shutout pitching through eight-plus innings, along with a key homer from Joe Rudi in the top of the third, and – the whole point of this essay – his astonishing, run-saving catch in the bottom of the ninth. 

Without Rudi’s play, the Big Red Machine would have pulled within a flimsy run of these upstarts from the west coast with a man in scoring position, nobody down, and the magic of momentum shifting sharply in their favor.  Nobody knew it for sure when the inning started, but Hunter, whose great stuff was clearly gone by now, was about to get the hook from Manager Dick Williams.  (Two of the first four Reds batters hit safely off him, and the other two hammered the ball even harder for outs, knocking Hunter out of the box and bringing in Rollie Fingers to try to save the day.)

The Fateful Ninth Inning

Tony Perez opened the Reds’ ninth with a base hit.  Light-hitting Denis Menke

then belted Hunter’s very next offering to deep left.  If not a tying home run, which it appeared to be, his blast was a sure double, on which Perez could score without a throw.  Rudi, flipping his shades down to help fight off the treacherous glare of a late-afternoon sun, turned his back to the plate and sprinted to the wall.  With a sense of timing that had to be perfect, he soared a good two feet into the air, stretched to his full height, and just did backhand Menke’s cannon shot near the top of the fence, leaving enough white showing in the webbing of his glove to create doubt for an instant whether he would be able to hold on for the out [see video].

As it was, Rudi’s stunning grab sent Perez on a desperate dash and headfirst dive back to the bag, where he was safe by an eyelash.  Still two-nothing A’s, a man on and one down.  If not for a breath-taking stab and stop by Mike Hegan at first base on the next hitter, the Reds could well have evened the series despite Rudi’s heroics.  When they just missed, as everyone now knows, they were faced with the daunting challenge of becoming the first team in history to win the World Series after dropping Games One and Two at home.  (The Reds gave it their best shot:  By taking three of the next four and forcing a seventh game, back in Cincinnati, they helped to make every one of the A’s wins – and Rudi’s iconic catch – a critical linch-pin to Oakland’s first world championship.)

Well, sixty years have gone by since Bobby Richardson bailed out Ralph Terry and the ’62 Yankees, series champions for a second straight year.  No matter the drama connected with that magical moment, it hasn’t improved with age.  How could it?  It was a game-and-series winner on the spot, and will always be celebrated for that, but even the benefit of many years of hindsight cannot possibly move it any higher up in the pantheon of all-time great plays.

By contrast, Joe Rudi’s acrobatic marvel fifty years ago, robbing a banjo-hitter of extra bases and the Reds of a likely comeback win early in the series, actually grew in significance after the fact.  A snapshot of the moment shows Rudi, barely reaching the ball at the very top of his go-for-broke leap [see featured photo].  He seems permanently plastered to the wall:  a graffiti artist’s rendering on a motionless mural, frozen in time. 

The Beginning of the A’s Dynasty

As soon as Tony Perez skidded safely back to first, fans could begin to gauge the meaning of Rudi’s accomplishment against all other seemingly impossible catches in the clutch.  But they couldn’t know then that Menke’s homer off Catfish in Game Five would bring the Reds back from a 3-1 deficit in games; that the series would return to Cincinnati for a deciding finale; or that the Athletics’ eventual, one-run win there would give them their first world title in forty-two years, and the first in a dynastic three-year run of World Series winners for Oakland.

Fans didn’t know that the Big Red Machine, winners of only one home game in the World Series since 1940, would build its own dynasty later on, with back-to-back championships in the mid-1970s that helped to make the A’s win in ’72 all the more historic.  But by looking back, as Rudi had to do when a gotta-have-it game was on the line, we can clearly see the magnitude of his gravity-defying catch.

Thanks to Joe Rudi, an excellent ballplayer who finished second in the league’s MVP balloting in 1972 (Dick Allen) and ’74 (Jeff Burroughs), when pinch-hitter Julian Javier popped the ball foul to Mike Hegan for the last out of a turning-point game, with baseball’s all-time hits leader waiting on deck, the Oakland Athletics’ triumphant run through history had just begun.

Michael Keedy

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