In a World Series studded with gems, some brilliant, some flawed, the Minnesota Twins pulled one of the oldest fakes in baseball to beat the Atlanta Braves. A phony relay throw by a fielder without the ball fooled Atlanta’s most experienced World Series player and wrecked the Braves’ best chance of winning Game 7. Lonnie Smith, who set a record playing in his fourth World Series with four different teams, looked like a bush-leaguer in the eighth inning when he fell for the trickery of Minnesota Twins second baseman Chuck Knoblauch. Smith led off the inning with a checkswing bloop single to right against Minnesota’s Jack Morris. The tension in the Metrodome rose immediately as two Minnesota relievers got up to work in the bullpen, and the mustachioed Morris bore down to pitch to National League batting champion Terry Pendleton. Morris got two strikes on Pendleton, then appeared to strike him out. But Pendleton grazed the third strike for a foul ball, and umpire Don Denkinger ruled that catcher Brian Harper caught the ball off the dirt. Given new life, Pendleton doubled on a bounce to the wall in leftcenter.
Smith, with a chance of scoring on the ball, suddenly looked confused and stopped running after rounding second as he fell for a fake throw by Knoblauch to shortstop Greg Gagne at second.
Smith then realized his mistake, and turned toward third, but now had no chance of scoring. Morris got Ron Gant to ground out to first, then intentionally walked David Justice to load the bases. Sid Bream ended the threat by bouncing into a double play, first to second and back to first. The fake throw may have been a cheap trick, but it provided another rare and precious jewel for those who cherish baseball. Strung together over seven games by young and old masters of their craft, and set in two ballparks as dissimilar as possible, it was the ultimate fans’ World Series.
In other news – Two separate explosions killed an American serviceman and seriously wounded an Egyptian diplomat. An anonymous caller claimed the blasts in the name of Islamic Jihad, or Islamic Holy War, but it appeared unlikely that he was referring to the Lebanese group of that name that is holding Western hostages. “We will not allow imperialist powers to share the Middle East during the peace conference,” the caller told two Turkish newspapers, referring to the peace talks opening in Madrid, Spain, on Wednesday. It was the fourth attack on a U.S.
citizen in the past year. Three Americans have been killed. A leftist underground organization, Dev Sol, claimed responsibility for the previous three attacks. Islamic Jihad of Beirut, Lebanon, has claimed responsibility for attacks on Arab diplomats in Turkey in the past. There are, however, several groups that call themselves Islamic Jihad or variants – two are Shiite Muslim groups based in Beirut: Islamic Jihad and Islamic Jihad for Liberation of Palestine.
Another is a Palestinian group in the occupied Arab territories that calls itself Islamic Jihad and another in Jordan is a Sunni group that calls itself Islamic Jihad-Beit al Maqdis.
And Boris Yeltsin today asked Russian lawmakers to give him greater powers and to lift government price controls so he can pull the Soviet Union’s most powerful republic out of its economic crisis. In an hourlong speech at the opening of the Congress of Russian People’s Deputies, the Russian federation president proposed that he be given the additional title of prime minister an office that is now vacant. “I am prepared to take over the leadership of the government personally,” he said in a speech designed to counter criticism that his government has been adrift since the failed August coup. He said the failure of the hard-line coup against Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev signaled the collapse of the totalitarian system based on Communist Party rule and central control of the economy.
“A repressive system of management devastated the country,” Yeltsin said. “It ruined its economy and disintegrated itself. It’s time for decisive tough measures without wavering.’ Action was needed, he said, because “we are having difficulties with food, with other vital goods, and the financial system is on the brink of disaster.’
And that’s a little of what happened, October 28, 1991 as reported by The CBS World News Roundup.
