It was always a monster blast with Radatz

It was Dick Radatz's 50th birthday, and his old pal, Gary Bell, flew up from San Antonio as a surprise. A bunch of the guys were there, Darrell Brandon and Russ Gibson and Jim Lonborg, at the party Jerry Moses was throwing at the Bayside Expo, and Radatz kept looking over, wondering who the guy was in the gorilla suit, serving drinks behind the bar.

Radatz would get his answer, right after the gorilla sneaked up behind him and stuck a pie in his mug, then took off the head of his costume to reveal Bell's grinning face.

Moses has a video of the moment, and another one from a couple of years ago, when he was the one who planted another pie in the face of his friend, who might be revered in Red Sox lore as "The Monster" but clearly had a giant tolerance for a joke at his expense. Chances are, Moses said, he'll bring at least one of those videos when he goes to Detroit for the funeral to bury his buddy.

"Dick Radatz lived about as full a life as you could," Moses said yesterday, the day after Radatz fell down the stairs of his Easton home, struck his head on a carpet-covered concrete floor, and died at age 67 of severe head trauma, according to Easton police. "There was nothing small about that guy."

Radatz was a full 6 feet 5 inches and 240 pounds when he was baseball's most dominating reliever, his size accentuated by his signature gesture, a triumphant march off the mound with his fists thrust overhead after subduing another overmatched opponent.

One summer's night in 1963 in Fenway Park cemented his place in Sox annals. "It was the top of the ninth inning, a warm night in Boston, a full house, and Earl Wilson was pitching a helluva game," Johnny Pesky, who was the Sox manager, recalled yesterday morning. "I had Radatz up in the seventh, loosening up, just in case. We were ahead by a run, and Earl loads the bases in the ninth, nobody out, and Mantle, Maris, and Elston Howard coming up. He's sweating, and he's thrown maybe 130 pitches. He wants to stay in, but I look at [catcher Bob] Tillman, and he shakes his head. So I tell Earl, `The big guy is ready in the pen.'

"Radatz comes in, and says to Earl, `Big boy, crack a couple of cold ones and I'll be up there in 10 minutes.' He told me to get my little ass in the dugout, which is something he told me a lot of times. He strikes out the three of 'em, Mantle, Maris, and Howard, on 10 pitches."

Down went the Bombers, up went the fists, and a persona was born, its name springing from some audible grumbling by Mantle about "that monster." For three seasons, from 1962 to 1964, there may never have been a reliever quite like him. Pitching for pitiful Sox teams, Radatz either won or saved 118 of the Sox 224 wins in that span.

Gabriel Schechter, an author-researcher at the Baseball Hall of Fame, recently recounted a 33-inning scoreless streak by Radatz in '63, which culminated with what Schechter rightfully describes as the two most scintillating outings of Radatz's career. Entering the ninth inning of a 2-2 tie in Baltimore, Radatz struck out the side to send the game into extra innings, then allowed just two hits as the Sox won in 14 innings. Of the 18 outs Radatz recorded in six innings, Schechter marvels, 10 were strikeouts, five foul pops, two sacrifices, and a caught stealing. Of the 20 batters he faced, only four hit the ball in play.

Two nights later in Detroit, Radatz entered in the seventh, gave up a tying single, then stayed in the game for 8 2/3 innings before the Sox won in the 15th. He set down the last dozen he faced, and struck out six of the last eight. The tally for two games: 14 2/3 scoreless innings, five hits, two walks, and 21 strikeouts.

"Eric Gagne puts up the same numbers," Schechter noted, referring to the Dodgers' elite closer, "in a month."

Moses was an 18-year-old catcher with no business being in the big leagues, he said, when he first met Radatz, in 1965. Neither man could have known that The Monster's reign was nearing an abrupt end. "I only caught Dick in the bullpen," he said. "I spent most of my life in the bullpen -- I have my PhD in bullpen -- but even just warming up, you could see there was nobody better than him.

"Maybe Nolan [Ryan] threw it harder, and his ball didn't have time to have a lot of movement, but he was such a big old guy, and he was kind of a sidewinder, he looked 12 feet tall out there on the mound."

But a year later, Radatz was gone, traded to Cleveland after he'd lost his pinpoint control and no longer was throwing the ball by hitters. Teammate Bill Monbouquette suggested Radatz made the mistake of trying to develop a sinker, and got away from what he did best. "He lost his confidence," Moses said. "That happens to more people than you'll ever know."

But it was just the beginning of a friendship. Moses hooked up with Radatz again in the early '80s, at a baseball fantasy camp. Bell was there, too, and they were a hoot. By then, Radatz was pushing 300 pounds. "We greased the door of the bathroom bus with Vaseline for him," Moses said. "In another 10 years, he was around 375, and we told him we'd help him lose weight. We'd cut off his ears, and he'd drop 40 pounds."

Radatz had scuffled after he'd gotten out of baseball. His mother died, he lost his business partner, and he suffered debilitating headaches. "He really had a tough time for several years," Moses said. "Sometimes he'd just go off somewhere and put his head down. The big guy also had the gout -- can you imagine how painful that was?

"But then he'd jump back in there with a Captain Morgan, his favorite drink."

Radatz, a baseball and basketball star at Michigan State, had moved back to his native Michigan, but told Moses he'd be interested in coming back to Boston. Moses, who had a food services business here, helped him land a sales job with a corrugated package company. Radatz did well, and he dabbled in radio and TV work, too. "I think deep down inside he would have loved to have gotten one of the Red Sox color jobs on radio or TV," Moses said. "That was the dream, but he never quite got there."

For the last two years, Radatz was the pitching coach for the North Shore Spirit, an independent minor league league team in Lynn, even though his weight was pushing 400 pounds and he had severe circulatory problems in his legs. "We had a golf cart take him back and forth to the clubhouse," Spirit owner Nick Lopardo said yesterday. "But what a trooper. He took every single bus trip. I'd offer to take him on my plane, and he'd say, no, he had to be with the guys.

"I mean, here's a guy who was an All-Star, and he's sitting outside a high school locker room in a beach chair in Bangor, and never bitched about it."

Radatz was supposed to hook up in Sox fantasy camp again this winter with Moses and Bell, but didn't make it. "He went into the hospital and didn't tell anyone," Moses said. "It took me a few days to figure it out."

The legs had gotten bad, real bad. From above his ankles to the top of his calves, his legs were bruised a deep purple. "One leg," Moses said, "had turned black." Doctors, fearful that he might lose a leg, rushed him into surgery. "He told me," Moses said, "he'd never been more scared in his life."

But after weeks of having to stay off his feet, Radatz was looking forward to returning to the Spirit for a third season. Nurses had to come to his apartment daily to change the bandages on his legs -- there were open sores -- but he was walking again, he'd lost 30 pounds, and his spirits were high. "I talked to him the day before yesterday," Moses said. "We had a great conversation."

Wednesday, one of Radatz's daughters, Leigh, was at his apartment, awaiting the arrival of a new recliner, a gift from his children. She was downstairs, Moses said, when Radatz made his way down the steep, narrow stairway and fell to his death. Another family member, Moses said, told him afterward that it didn't appear as if Radatz had stumbled or tripped.

"Maybe it was his heart," Moses said. "I guess we'll never know."

Yesterday, Moses said, Radatz's children -- Dick Jr., Leigh, and daughter Chris -- were making arrangements to have their father, who would have been 68 April 2, brought back to Michigan.

"He thought Michigan was heaven," Moses said.

Jerry Moses will be there, and Gary Bell, too, to say goodbye to The Monster. Grinning through the pie cream.