Larry Harlow may not have been a star player for the California Angels, but on October 5, 1979, he was responsible for what was arguably the greatest moment in Angels franchise history up until that point. Harlow, born in Colorado Springs, started that season with the Baltimore Orioles where he was teammates with another Colorado-born big leaguer, pitcher Tippy Martinez. In June, the Orioles traded Harlow to the Angels in exchange for a minor-leaguer and cash. As an Angel that year, he played all three outfield positions, hitting .232 and scoring 22 runs over 189 plate appearances in 62 games. Not exactly the statistics of a star, but by the end of the season, he would get his chance to shine.
Since becoming a major league franchise in 1961, Angels’ beloved owner Gene Autry never shied away from spending money to try to put a championship product on the field. Unfortunately for the Singing Cowboy and a plentitude of Angels fans, prior to 1979 they never got very close. On September 25, 1979, everything changed when the Angels clinched their first American League West Division Championship with a win over the two-time defending American League champion Kansas City Royals.
That night Harlow started in left field and went 1-for-4 with an RBI single in the 2nd inning. Angels starting pitcher Frank Tanana recorded the final out of the contest, covering the bag on a grounder to Hall-of-Fame first baseman Rod Carew, sending the California fans into pandemonium and the Angels to the American League Championship Series for the first time.
With Tanana’s complete game victory in the books, the Angels closed out the regular season by losing three of their final four games. When they followed that up by losing Game 1 and Game 2 of the ALCS in Baltimore to the AL East Division champion Orioles, it started to look like they might be eliminated from their first-ever postseason run without giving their fanbase even a single victory to revel in.
Though the first two games of the 1979 AL Championship Series resulted in California losses, the drama and heroics of those two games in Baltimore amplified the excitement and expectations of the series going into Game 3. Game 1 had been a match-up of future Hall-of-Fame pitchers, Nolan Ryan and Jim Palmer. It ended in the 10th inning when former University of California-Riverside Highlander, John Lowenstein, hit a two-out, three-run home run off John Montague, who had relieved Ryan to begin the 8th. In Game 2, the Angels fell behind 9-1 before battling back, scoring five runs over the final two frames to close the gap to 9-8. With the bases loaded and two out, Brian Downing hit a ground ball to 3rd baseman Doug DeCinces, who tagged out Dan Ford running to 3rd and gave the Orioles the victory, sending the series to California with Baltimore leading 2-0.
The next day, over 2600 miles from Baltimore, the Angels hosted Game 3 at Anaheim Stadium — their first post season home game in franchise history. Dennis Martinez started on the mound for Baltimore and Frank Tanana for California. Harlow started in left field in a game that saw the Halos take a 2-1 lead into the 6th inning. The Orioles responded by manufacturing single runs in the 6th and 7th innings, taking a 3-2 lead that they clung to going into the bottom of the 9th. As the bottom of the ninth began the intensity was high, but nothing like it would become by the end of the frame.
Overcoming a one-run deficit did not seem impossible to the 43,199 fans in attendance that night, especially with 1979 AL MVP Don Baylor leading off the inning against Orioles starter Martinez. When Baylor popped out to left, the mood dampened, but not for long as Carew doubled to left center on the first pitch he saw, which was the last pitch Martinez threw. Baltimore manager Earl Weaver pulled Martinez and called on Don “Stan the Man Unusual” Stanhouse out of the bullpen for the third straight game with Brian Downing, Bob Grich and, if it got down to it, Larry Harlow due up.
Facing Stanhouse with Carew on second, Downing fell behind in the count 0-2, but managed to take a one-out walk in an eight-pitch at-bat. Former Oriole Grich was up next. With Dick Nixon looking on from the owners box alongside Autry, the Angels second baseman hit a sinking line drive to center field that Al Bumbry got his glove on, but could not secure. The ball fell to Bumbry’s feet for an error, allowing Carew to score, Downing to advance to second and setting the stage for the heroics of Larry Harlow.
Before continuing to the at-bat we have all been waiting for, what really needs to be understood is that all that preceded Harlow’s moment in this series didn’t happen in a vacuum or in a box score or on a spreadsheet. It was all happening in a sold out stadium, in front of a raucous and rowdy crowd of fans who had been waiting two decades for something to cheer about on this level. With admission to the “Big A” that night, those 43,199 fans became the heartbeat of Southern California, measured in a rhythm congruent to their persistent chants of “YES WE CAN”.
Admittedly, many bigger moments than what was about to come that night have happened in the history of the game. Some, like when Roger Maris hit home run number 61 in 1961 to pass Babe Ruth for the single-season record, took place in half empty stadiums. That Harlow would deliver in the clutch, in such a madhouse, was a spectacle that, perhaps, the baseball world had never seen before.
To help further grasp the environment at the park that night, go no further than the commentary of the NBC broadcast team of Dick Enberg, Wes Parker and Hall of Fame manager, Sparky Anderson, spoken at amplified volume to compensate for the crowd noise. Dick Enberg described the stadium as ”literally rocking” when the Angels tied the score in the 9th, then later commented, “Al Bumbry will usually catch this one, you almost wonder if the crowd didn’t knock it out of his glove.” As Stanhouse faced Brian Downing, he stepped off the rubber surrounded by “unbelievable noise.” Wes Parker chimed in that he “didn’t think he had ever seen a pitcher step off the mound because of crowd noise. Boy that’s really something!”
Later on in Downing’s at-bat, Sparky Anderson said that the 1979 AL Championship Series was ”the greatest series, I know myself, that I have ever witnessed.” When Orioles catcher Dave Skaggs made a visit to the mound during Harlow’s at bat he reflected, “This crowd, I honestly believe, had something to do with Bumbry missing that ball.” In the pregame broadcast before Game 4, Sparky reiterated that he had “never, myself, ever been around professional sports where there has been this much enthusiasm.” He added that, “[This ‘79 series will] do more for baseball than that World Series in ‘75 did.”
When Harlow stepped in the batters box, center stage, in a madhouse of fans on their feet rooting for him to come through, would it be a stretch to say his opportunity to do more for the game of baseball was greater than that of Carlton Fisk four years prior in Boston?1 That is for the reader to decide. What we do know is that Larry Harlow stepped to the plate, calmly took ball one and stayed loose in the batters box while Skaggs and Stanhouse strategized during a mound visit. After that, it was elementary baseball.
Stanhouse delivered a pitch, low but over the plate. Harlow slapped the ball to left field with precision, over the head of third baseman DeCinces who was guarding the line. Downing rounded third and crossed the plate way ahead of the throw from Lowenstein in left. Fans took the madness to the next level. The stadium organ burst out into God Bless America. The Angels, finally, had won one for the Cowboy!
It almost goes without saying that the hometown fans stormed the field and Larry Harlow was mobbed by his teammates. The Angels had survived to make Game 4 necessary. They would go on to lose that game, 8-0, and the series to the Orioles, three games to one. Baltimore went on from there to the World Series, losing to the National League Champion Pittsburgh Pirates. In their loss, the Angels fell short in trying to become the first team to win a five-game postseason series after falling behind two games to zero. That comeback honor would go to the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers when they beat, well, the Angels. By that time, Larry Harlow was no longer an Angel, having played his last major league game in 1981.
Harlow spent the 1982 baseball season playing for the Yakult Swallows in the Central League of Japan. His professional career, which began in 1971, would wrap up with him playing in 1983 and ‘84, respectively, in the Padres and Orioles organizations. Over six big league seasons his statistics include playing in 449 games, a.248 batting average and hitting 12 home runs. While these numbers are not exactly the statistics of a superstar, Harlow’s career also included a moment so big, in an environment so crazy, that some might say it was a spectacle that, perhaps, the baseball world had never seen before. Not bad for a kid from Colorado.
1 Fisk famously hit his iconic 12th inning home run in the face of elimination against Sparky Anderson’s Cincinnati Reds in Boston to end Game 6 of the 1975 World Series. Cincinnati won Game 7 to win the World Series. Many consider it to be one of the greatest World Series ever.