The Roger Angell Baseball Collection Part 18

All these heroes and Lee MacPhail, too. Mr. MacPhail is the president of the American League and, since late July, the author of the most discussed legal ruling in the land since Marbury v. Madison. This, of course, was his fair and sensible resolution of the monumentally entertaining pine-tar fuss, which came to pa.s.s during a July Sunday afternoon at Yankee Stadium when George Brett, of the Royals, rapped a two-run, two-out homer against Goose Gossage, thereby putting his team ahead by 54 in the top of the ninth-only to have the runs disallowed and the homer turned into an out on a ruling by the umpires, who accepted an ex-post-facto protest by Yankee manager Billy Martin that the pine-tar stick.u.m on the handle of Brett's bat extended beyond the eighteen inches above the bat k.n.o.b specified by the regulations. Brett, in demurral, attempted thuggee upon the arbiters and was excused for the rest of the day, but the Royals protested the game, and after a few days they were upheld by MacPhail, who, citing "the spirit of the rules," ordered the homer restored and the contest resumed at a later date. The remainder of the inning was played without incident a few weeks later (before an audience of 1,245 second-year torts students), with the Royals holding their 54 lead, and the teams swapped the won (and lost) game on their records. Mr. MacPhail's statement attempted to mollify his umpires by deploring the fuzziness of the frequently amended baseball rule book but pointed out that the intent of the rule was simply to remove an offending bat from the game, and that there was no evidence of any sort to suggest that Brett's homer had been aided or abetted by goo. (The rule, in fact, appears to have been written in order to keep pine tar from discoloring b.a.l.l.s in play, and thus is intended to deprive pitchers of an unfair advantage.) For me, the MacPhail decision is bathed in the clear suns.h.i.+ne of fairness and common sense, but the immoderate responses to it by the Yankees suggest the extent of the distemper and the almost frantic distractibility of so many people now connected with the sport. George Steinbrenner said that if the Yankees lost a pennant because of the ruling it would not be safe for Mr. MacPhail to continue living in New York. Billy Martin, who cannot exactly be faulted for trying the ploy in the first place, said later that in making the ruling Lee MacPhail had encouraged every kid in the country to "go ahead...and cheat, and they can get away with it," and then told his players during a team meeting that they had been bilked. If this was intended to inflame his troops for the remainder of the campaign, it did not succeed. At the end of the summer, Mr. Steinbrenner, looking back at the foolish crisis, said he thought that the game and its emotional offshoots might have cost his team a pennant, and there, for once, I agree with him.

Mr. MacPhail, who is retiring as league president but who will serve now as head of the owners' Player Relations Committee (a brilliant appointment, given his unflappable good sense and the approach of another negotiation of baseball's basic contract with the players, in 1984), was twice required to suspend Billy Martin during the summer because of the manager's intemperate disagreements with the umpires. In the Stadium pressroom one evening late in the season, I ran into d.i.c.k Butler, who is the chief of umpires for the American League, and made some reference to the hard times his minions had experienced in these and many other public disagreements, but Butler, who is as gentle and courtly in manner as his boss, dismissed the matter cheerfully. "It's always the same," he told me. "It's been this way ever since I can remember." He went on to say that only a day or two earlier he had happened upon some correspondence from the early nineteen-thirties in which Clark Griffith, the president of the Was.h.i.+ngton Senators, had complained angrily to A.L. president Will Harridge about the abilities and intelligence of the league's umps. "It was exactly like this year," Butler said. "Nothing was different-well, except for one thing, I guess. Nowadays, n.o.body calls my umpires Bolsheviks."

Dave Righetti, the Big Yankee left-hander, pitched a no-hit game against the Red Sox on July 4th,* and in September Bob Forsch, of the Cardinals, threw a 30 no-hitter against the Expos, and then Mike Warren, a twenty-two-year-old Oakland rookie, did the same thing to the White Sox. None of this is entirely surprising, nor should we be struck dumb with wonder by the news that there were no no-hit games at all during the 2,106 major-league encounters played in 1982, and that Bob Forsch's and Mike Warren's no-hitters came along within three days of each other. In baseball, Yogi Berra has told us, you don't know nothing. What we do know, perhaps, is that there is a splash of luck when any pitcher, no matter how imperious or crafty, gets by twenty-seven batters without seeing one harmless grounder bounced through the middle or a half-hit flare drop untouched in short right field. This late little scattering of no-hit games statistically illuminates the same essential attribute of the game. Luck does matter in baseball, as well as brilliant and resolute performance, and the proportions of the mixture-a recipe as subtle as the bearnaise at La Grenouille-are exquisitely pleasing. If the sport were easier-if it rewarded only the Carltons and Ryans (and Rices and Schmidts) of the game and never the Porsches or the Mike Warrens-we would almost know the outcome of every game in advance. If it were much easier-if there were a no-hitter every week and a grand-slam homer every evening-we would gossip or snooze or read in the stands until the ninth, for only the score would matter, and the constant surprises of baseball would seem only eccentric or else would elude us altogether. Baseball's placid exterior and smooth, scheduled flow of games conceal so many possibilities for astounding circ.u.mstances that we old fans, picking up the morning paper or tuning in to the late-night sports, wait almost smugly for word of the newest first-ever play or utterly unexpected series of events. Early this August, the California Angels, playing a home game against the Minnesota Twins, appeared to have matters comfortably in hand when, already leading by 21, they put their first two batters on base in the bottom of the fourth, only to crash headlong into Yogi Berra's dictum. The next California batter, Ron Jackson, hit a low line drive to third baseman Gary Gaetti, who flipped to second to double off the lead base runner, and in plenty of time for the relay over to first, which beat the other retreating Angel base runner to the bag. Triple play. The next pitch of the game-delivered by Tommy John to the Twins' Gaetti, the leadoff batter in the top of the fifth-was smashed over the fence, and the next pitch, to Tom Brunansky, also departed the premises, tying the score of the game, which the Twins eventually won by 42. Three successive pitches, good for three outs, two runs, one ruined game, and uncounted broken hearts. According to the records, this had never happened before in major-league baseball. And no one could quite remember an inning like the one that the Orioles came up with a couple of weeks later, in a game against the Blue Jays at Baltimore. The Orioles had rallied for two runs in the bottom of the ninth, tying the game at 33, but in the process had used up their last catcher, who had given way to a pinch-hitter-a spendthrift maneuver that now required Baltimore manager Joe Altobelli to send a reserve infielder, Lenn Sakata, out to catch in the tenth. The visitors led off the extra inning with a home run and a single, thus bringing on a new Baltimore pitcher, Tippy Martinez. The Torontos, one may a.s.sume, had noted the presence of Sakata behind the plate, and were understandably eager-a bit overeager, in fact-to test him with attempted thefts of second, but they never did find the answer. Martinez instantly picked the base runner off first. He walked the next man but also picked him off, then surrendered a single, and notched the third out with his third pickoff of the inning. Ah, baseball. No one, I think, was particularly surprised when Sakata won the game in the bottom of the same inning, with a three-run homer.

Another extra-inning contretemps came along in a bitterly contested game at Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Stadium on September 9th, at a moment in the race when the Expos, the Phillies, the Cardinals, and the Pirates were clumped within a game and a half of each other in the upper stories of the National League East. Tied with the Pirates at 33 in the top of the thirteenth, the Phillies had base runners Willie Hernandez at second and Mike Schmidt at first; Pittsburgh hurler Jim Bibby, facing Joe Lefebvre, let go a wild pitch, but while Hernandez scampered to third, Schmidt, who had somehow considered this remote set of possibilities beforehand, oddly held his base. Not so oddly, when you think about it: with first base still occupied, Bibby, a right-hander, was deprived of the option of walking Lefebvre, a lefty swinger, in order to bring up the next man in the Philadelphia order, Garry Maddox, who bats right. Lefebvre singled, thereby winning the game (it turned out), moving the Phillies into first place for the moment, and certifying Schmidt as a genius-all in one stroke.

I said earlier that there were no late, great pennant races this summer, but that is not to suggest that there weren't some brisk and telling patches of action along the way. On that same second weekend of September (the focal point of the baseball summer, it turned out), the Phillies and the Pirates split their next pair of games in thrilling fas.h.i.+on, in contest where the lead or tie was repeatedly surrendered, bitterly rewon, then lost again. By taking the rubber game, the Phillies remained a bare half game out of first place, behind Montreal; later in the week they went home and swept the Expos in a doubleheader, knocking them out of the lead for good, and then embarked upon an eleven-game winning streak, which captured the flag.

Matters were less parlous in the American League on that same weekend (the White Sox, in the A.L. West, had already spread-eagled the field and were leading the nearest compet.i.tion by a full fifteen games), but there was a sudden little stir of speculation when the Yankees won the opening game of a four-game set at the Stadium against the league-lending Orioles, to climb into second place, just four games back. The Sat.u.r.day doubleheader, a twi-night affair, brought out fifty-five thousand fans and produced a horrific (for the Yankees) denouement, which started in the top of the ninth inning of the opening game, with the score tied at 22. Shortstop Roy Smalley threw wildly to first, putting the Orioles' Lenn Sakata on base; a sacrifice moved him along to second and brought on Goose Gossage, who walked Rick Dempsey and then faced the left-handed pinch-hitter Joe Nolan; Nolan took a breaking ball for a strike, fouled off five consecutive fastb.a.l.l.s, and then singled cleanly to center (against a sixth heater), to put the Orioles ahead. A double by Cal Ripken brought in another counter, and a bit later John Lowenstein, a left-side pinch-hitter, whacked Gossage's second pitch over the right-center wall for a grand slam-to an accompanying sudden silence that suggested an electric plug pulled out of the wall. When Gossage and the Yanks came in off the field at last, they were booed. The Orioles also won the second game, and the game on Sunday, wrapping up the Yankee season for good.

Hindsight is easy, but nothing about the Orioles-Yankees weekend surprised me (except for Gossage's throwing six fast-b.a.l.l.s in a row to a good left-handed hitter). Indeed, the games perfectly confirmed what we have all known for so long but have somehow failed to understand in its entirety. The Orioles, not the Yankees, are the dominant American League team of our time. They had come into the Yankee series on a roll: twenty victories in their past twenty-five games. This was an entirely typical sort of momentum for them in the late going; their September-October record this year (2112), under manager Joe Altobelli, sustained almost exactly the same killing late-season winning percentage (.638) that they had compiled during the previous fifteen years, under Earl Weaver, who retired last fall. Since their first pennant, in 1966, the Orioles have won three World Series and lost three, while the Yankees are 22 in that same span, but the Orioles have taken seven divisional t.i.tles since the split-league plan went into effect, fourteen years ago, as against five for the Yanks. The Orioles, in fact, have won more games than any other team in the majors in the past five years and in the past ten years and (someone went to great pains to dig this out) in the past twenty-seven years. Why this is so is something we can get to shortly, when talking about the playoffs and the World Series, but the heart of it, clearly, is that the Orioles always cling to and personify the idea of a team, while the Yankees, by declaration and policy, prefer the idea of winning. Stated this way, the rival propositions seem to tilt unfairly toward the selfless, semi-anonymous, all-for-one fellows.h.i.+p of the O's, if only because so many of us were taught to strive for such an ideal back when we were in school. But the celebrated and extremely successful Yankees, with their purchased stars, enormous salaries, and b.u.mptious, self-publicizing owners.h.i.+p and management, have given such a good account of themselves in compet.i.tion that they have taught us-or should have taught us by now-that sweetness and selflessness are not automatically better. The many strands that go into the fabric of a winning or losing franchise include the club's market area and audience potential, the financial resources of its owners, its scouting personnel and minor-league program, its luck (above all, its luck in avoiding injuries to significant players), and, in the end, its baseball philosophy. Fans incline toward the current personality and practices of their chosen team, as long as it shows sporadic faint signs of life, but I think we in the stands are capable of a little distance as well, and perhaps even a baseball philosophy of our own. The brusquely capable Baltimore style perfectly suits my own fancy, for the Orioles, by long observation, have proved both approachable and thoughtful, patient and combative. Their players instinctively avoid the att.i.tudes of moneyed sullenness that so many teams fall victim to once they experience good fortune, but they also remember what matters in the end. They win.

In the quick, flattish National League playoffs, the visiting East Coast champs presented the first-day Los Angeles audience with a gemlike miniature sample of Philadelphia-style basic baseball: a 10 shutout by Steve Carlton (with a bit of help from the bullpen), built upon-cantilevered upon, perhaps-a solo first-inning home run by Mike Schmidt. The unsatisfaction of such an opener was probably not entirely dispelled in the next night's game, which the Dodgers won by 41, since three of the Dodger tallies resulted directly or secondarily from Phillie errors. Fernando Valenzuela, never quite dominant, hung tough and got the win, as he so often does. Game Three, played on the chemical lawns of Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium, also lacked zing, since the Dodger starter, Bob Welch, was forced to depart the scene in the second inning, when he was laid low by a recurrence of a hip affliction-a terminal blow to the Dodgers' hopes in the series, I think. The Phillies got a good outing from their starter, the tall twenty-four-year-old curveballing rookie Charles Hudson (he had pitched in a postseason playoff game last year, too: between the Peninsula Pilots and the Durham Bulls, of the Cla.s.s A Carolina League), and won by 72. Gary Matthews, a veteran Philadelphia left fielder, who had been frequently benched during the regular season, had himself a day: two runs, a homer, two singles, a base on b.a.l.l.s, and four runs batted in. The next evening, he resumed at once, with a first-inning three-run homer bombed into the central sector of the left-field loge seats, which more or less settled the game and the National League pennant right there, since Carlton was back on hand and (with his compeers) cruised to win, again by 72. This is not, to be sure, a very extensive summary of these semifinals, but the truth of the matter is that the Dodgers never distinguished themselves or looked even vaguely like champions in this little stretch of games. This was a problem-marred, transitional year for the Dodgers, in which they had to make do with a slow, weak-armed outfield, an error-p.r.o.ne infield (with a converted outfielder, Pedro Guerrero, at third), and a catcher, Jack Fimple, who was hurried up from the minors because of injuries to his predecessors on the job. They will all do better in the coming seasons, and G.o.d or their other skipper, Tom Lasorda, deserves awe for bringing them so far in this one.

The American League champions.h.i.+ps, although concluded in the same short span, were more like it, starting as they did with a successive pair of genuine pitching masterpieces-the rain-soaked opening 21 win by the White Sox ace, LaMarr Hoyt, and its riposte the next evening, when Baltimore's rookie righthander Mike Bodd.i.c.ker fanned fourteen Chicago batters in the course of a 40 shutout. Hoyt, tough and tubby, showed us his specialty, which is zipping the ball over the plate: he threw first-pitch strikes to twenty-six of the thirty-one batters he faced, never fell behind in the mid-counts, and walked no one. Bodd.i.c.ker, who is slim and dark-haired, dismissed batters by the handful without ever really overpowering anyone. A prime new graduate of the Baltimore School of Sensible Pitching, he relies upon a couple of curves, a modest fastball, a slider, and a changeup-sinker thing, and, above all, upon the perfectly controlled changing speeds with which he offers up his repertoire. The two games, in addition to these heroics, seemed to offer multiple hints and lessons. Right from the start, I felt certain that LaMarr Hoyt would win, as he did, but it was odd that his teammates could never quite break things open in that first game; leading against Scott McGregor by 20 at the mid-way point, they somehow contrived to put ten base runners aboard in the last three innings without scoring any of them. Baltimore, for its part, at last scored a run in the bottom of the ninth, on a double by Dan Ford and then a single by Cal Ripken, and thus had the typing run aboard when Eddie Murray grounded into a force for the last out. Insufficient rallies are rarely brought up or dwelt upon in losing clubhouses, and it was more than interesting that several of the Oriole players and coaches pointed out this ending after the game and spoke of it almost with satisfaction. The Orioles' dispa.s.sionate group perception of baseball is not something I have previously encountered; it's as if there are twenty-five academicians out there with birdies on their caps. They had lost this game, to be sure, but they had kept things close, even against a LaMarr Hoyt, and had had a chance to win it at the end, with their best man up at bat. A tying double or a winning homer cannot be counted upon in that situation, of course, but the chance for one had been made, which is the way Baltimore likes to do things.

The next evening, just after Bodd.i.c.ker's memorable outing, I talked with his pitching coach, Ray Miller (he was wearing a faded T-s.h.i.+rt that advertised his pitching precepts: "31 SAYS [Miller is No. 31] WORK FAST, THROW STRIKES, CHANGE SPEEDS, HOLD 'EM CLOSE"), who professed himself not quite ravished by Bodd.i.c.ker's fourteen strikeouts, since he so much prefers the more energy-efficient mode of dismissing batters on ground b.a.l.l.s and pop-ups. What he did like, however, was Bodd.i.c.ker's beautifully modulated tempos. "He's got a range of from sixty-four to eighty-six miles per hour, from low on his slider to high on his fastball, which is what you're after in this business," he said. "The whole concept is to know what the guy up at bat is looking for but to throw it at a different speed than he expects." Someone said that the Chicago batters, over in their clubhouse, were saying that they had been less than awed by Bodd.i.c.ker's heat, and Miller smiled contentedly and said, "That's just music to my ears. I love it when the other batters complain about our pitchers throwing nothing."

The third game (which I had to watch, to my dismay, from a distance, by television) brought out some mid-game rumbles when Chicago's rookie slugger Ron Kittle was accidentally plunked on the knee by Mike Flanagan and when Rich Dotson, the Chicago hurler, then hit Cal Ripken and brushed back Eddie Murray in response, but the deeper cries of pain came from the overflowing throngs of Chicago fans when the Orioles, profiting from long blows and an inordinate number of bases on b.a.l.l.s from the Chicago pitchers, blew away the Pale Hose, 111. The next game-the last of the year for the White Sox, it turned out-was distressing to watch and wait through, so edgy and exciting in its multiple crises and endlessly prolonged resolution that I was almost glad I was not on the scene to see and hear and taste such fierce and enveloping anxiety and hope and ultimate heartbreak. (Players have told me, by the way, that it is infinitely easier to be in such a game than to have to sit and watch it, since the concentration and physical movements of playing release one, a little, from the pain of waiting and speculation.) Inning after inning, the two teams put up zeros on the scoreboard, with the accidents and adventures of play seeming to sway first in one direction and then in the other, yet there was so little to choose between the two that after six full innings each team had come to precisely the same point in its batting order, with four hits and five stranded base runners apiece. Britt Burns, the big, heavy-bodied Chicago left-hander, pitched out of a frightful situation in the sixth and another one in the eighth, to baying cries of relief from the Comiskey Park faithful, while his Baltimore counterpart, Storm Davis, gave way to Tippy Martinez on the mound in the bottom of the seventh. This was when the White Sox blew their best chance of the day. I think in retrospect that the key to the game was not just some very bad base-running by the White Sox-which turned three hits and a successful hit-and-run play and an Oriole balk into no runs at all-but the icily executed Baltimore defensive play in the middle of this crisis: a cutoff peg and a waiting, watching-over-the-shoulder rundown between short and second that was suddenly redirected into a 75-42 out at the plate. That and the scarcely noticed fact that the Orioles had changed pitchers, while the Sox had not. When Chicago failed to score in the eighth (a fine running catch by John Shelby in deep center field took an extra-base hit away from Carlton Fisk) and again in the ninth (Martinez struck out Rudy Law, with two on), the feel of the game was wholly altered, for it was clear that Britt Burns must be close to exhaustion and that his manager, Tony LaRussa, did not have enough confidence in his bullpen to bring in a successor. In the end, it was one of those special but not wholly rare games that are settled by some players who never get into the lineup at all-in this case the left-handed Baltimore pinch-hitters Jim Dwyer and John Lowenstein, waiting in the dugout, whose presence and reputation persuaded LaRussa to try to stay with Burns for at least one or two batters more. (A light sometimes clicks on, I have found, if I can remind myself to think about the movable pieces, on the bench and in the clubhouse, that remain available to each manager in the latter stretches of a close game.) With one out in the top of the tenth, the Oriole right fielder, t.i.to Landrum, whacked a home run into the left-field upper deck, and then three successive singles and a sacrifice, all struck against Burns' successors, made it 30, and turned out the arcs in Comiskey Park until the spring. In spite of White Sox malfeasances on the bases and near-total collapse of their power hitters Kittle, Paciorek, Luzinski, Fisk, and Baines (who in four games batted a collective .183, with one run batted in), there was a n.o.bility to this last game that should bring pride to the White Sox players in time, and balm to their supporters. It was the game of the year.

Those Comiskey Park fans had more fun than anyone this past summer. Their club, for a wonder, did not adhere to its ancient tradition of a second-half collapse but went quite the other way, surviving a very rocky start and then suddenly finding itself at midseason and thundering home with a 229 record in August, followed by a 226 September. The turnaround seemed to begin on June 15th, with LaRussa's decision to move Carlton Fisk up to the No. 2 slot in the order. Fisk batted .319 in the second half, and probably helped even more with his handling of the pitchers; three starters-Hoyt, Dotson, and Floyd Bannister-had a combined record of forty-two wins and five losses in the second half. The best things of the year seemed to happen at home, where Greg Luzinski three times bombed a home run up onto the left-field roof (no one had ever done it more than once in a season), and Kittle put two up there, too, and had thirty-three others for the season. And then there was the evening when Fisk and Luzinski and Paciorek hit back-to-back-to-back (well, I guess not, but something like that) home runs in the first inning. The noisy Chicago style became known as "winning ugly"-a numbingly publicized slogan picked up from an oxy-moronic slur about the club made by Ranger manager Doug Rader. Anyway, by the time the last home stand was over, 2,132,821 fans had come to the old white paG.o.da of Comiskey to see the Sox-the most in any summer since they began to play ball there, back in 1910.

I missed the whole scene, and I'm sorry I did. I'm not certain that I've ever appreciated the Chicago White Sox enough, since I did not grow up in that great baseball city and never joined the holy order of Sox believers. Loving the White Sox, it should be understood, means hating the Cubs; there can be no middle ground. I learned this years ago from a friend in college, who lived and (much more often) died for Ted Lyons and Luke Appling, and this year in September I talked with a White Sox fan in exile-a woman now living in New York (she is in television news) who grew up in Chicago in the nineteen-fifties and early sixties-who told me that matters still stood the same back home. "For me, the White Sox have the same image that Chicago does," she said. "That grittiness. There's nothing lovely about it. When most people I know think about Chicago, they sort of mean the Cubs and the North Side. I mean, they don't know the city at all. The Cubs are just one safe elevated ride away, but we Sox people were way off on the dangerous South Side. I hate it that the Cubs don't have lights. It's typical-they just don't think they have to do anything for their fans. Who can go to games in the daytime, anyway? Just rich people and kids. The Cubs are so d.a.m.ned boring. They don't have that street feeling. Did you know that Harry Caray, the broadcast guy, has gone over to the Cubs from the White Sox? Can you believe that? That's like changing sides in the middle of the war. It's like joining the n.a.z.is."

She had begun to glare at me. Then she said, "You know, I hate it that the White Sox finally won after I'd left town. It's just like them to do that. I'll bet they're not going to win the playoffs-or if they do they'll lose the World Series. You'll see. I can't stand it when they lose, but I'm ready for it. You have to hold back at times like this. You have to know about the Sox if you're going to care about them."

The World Series, so clear in form and outcome, will be revisited only briefly here. Its neighbor-city partic.i.p.ants had inspired a few writers to call it the Amtrak Series, and the first two games-a swift, neat opening 21 win by the Phillies, followed by a 41 Baltimore victory the next evening-went by so quickly that they suggested two Metroliners swoos.h.i.+ng past each other in opposite directions on some marshy Chesapeake-side straightaway. Three unenc.u.mbered home runs-by Joe Morgan and Garry Maddox, of the Phils, and Jim Dwyer, of the Orioles-produced all the scoring in Game One, in which the Phils' John Denny, their best pitcher this year, threw his curveball on the corners all evening, setting down the O's in neat little packages of three and getting the home crowd home (and out of a drizzly rain) in less than two and a half hours. The jammed-together, cheerful (under the circs) Baltimore fans were again conducted in their noise-making by their self-appointed leader, Bill Hagy, a local cabdriver, who has announced his retirement from the tummler post next season. (Unlike some of his counterparts and imitators in other cities, he is not paid by the team, and, indeed, has refused any emolument for his work.) He is the inventor of the unique Orioles letter-cheer, executed in body language, and I noticed that his handwriting has become minimal and blurry over the years, like the signatures of other famous men. Game Two brought back Mike Bodd.i.c.ker, who outpitched the other junior, Hudson, and won by 41-another impeccable outing for him, since the only Philadelphia run was unearned. The Baltimore staff at this juncture had surrendered four earned runs in fifty-four postseason innings. Bodd.i.c.ker did not look quite as awesome as he had against the White Sox, but when I thought about it I realized that this was probably only because he had stuck more closely to Ray Miller's ideal-striking out a mere six batters and, of course, walking none. After the game, Jim Palmer was in ecstasies of appreciation of his young teammate's stuff. "That change of speeds reminds you of Stu Miller, the old s...o...b..ll pitcher years ago," he said. "I remember batting against Stu in a spring-training game when I was nineteen years old, and he suddenly came in with a fastball up here, and I almost had a stroke. But it's Mike's curveball and his control of it that gets me. I charted pitches for five of the games he pitched this year, and I was amazed. Steve Stone had that one great year for us when he threw all curveb.a.l.l.s, but this was even better. I've never seen anything like it in all my years in baseball."

The Baltimore offense, which had not been getting much lift from its third and fourth batters, Cal Ripkin and Eddie Murray, was given a leg up by John Lowenstein, who had a single, a double, and a home run for his day's work. As everyone knows by now, he plays half of left field for the O's, giving way to Gary Roenicke on days when the other team has a left-hander on the mound. (Lowenstein is an original. When a young reporter asked him one day if anyone knew the origin of the one-handed catch now universally practiced by outfielders, Lowenstein said he was pretty sure it had begun with a player named Pete Gray-yes, the Pete Gray who played a season for the wartime St. Louis Browns in spite of having only one arm. When he is asked from time to time if he might be willing to talk about how it feels to be a Jewish major-league ballplayer, Lowenstein usually obliges with a thoughtful, in-depth probing of his feelings on the matter, with appreciative references to great baseball forebears like Moe Berg and Hank Greenberg and so forth, without ever quite explaining that he himself, as it happens, is not Jewish.) Here Brother Low, as he is called in the clubhouse, responded to the clamorous press with the low-key eloquence that has become an Orioles' trademark. "There's never any talk around here about a platoon system," he said. "That would be too glamorous. We don't have a Jim Rice on this ball club, so it works very well for us to have two or three men in left field. We just relish the accomplishment that different people can bring to the position." All right, but it should be added that Baltimore almost has a Jim Rice out there in left. Between them, Roenicke and Lowenstein accounted for thirty-four homers and a hundred and twenty-four RBIs during the regular season, which is nice work for a committee.

And so we went to Philadelphia and to Game Three-the hard game of the Series for both sides, I think-and when it was over, with Baltimore the winner by 32, there was a sudden sense in me and many other onlookers about how the rest of the week might go. The immediate problem for Baltimore in the game was Steve Carlton, who had been resting from his winning appearance in the Phillies' final playoff game. On this day, I noticed, he seemed to be missing one part of his repertoire, which is a three-quarter-speed rainbow slider that suddenly drops out of the strike zone like a mouse behind the sink, and he gave up some uncharacteristic hard-hit blows, pulled to the left side (mostly for outs), in the early innings. Carlton, like most great pitchers, is an indomitable closer-very hard to beat in the late innings no matter what stuff he may have-and it seemed forehanded and lucky that the O's got him out of there in the seventh, with a double by Rick Dempsey and a pulled hard single by pinch-hitter Benny Ayala, which tied the game at 22. (Ayala's stated batting philosophy, by the way, is a bit simpler than Yaz's multipart cogitations: "I look for something white moving through.") Ayala then became the winning run, scoring a moment or two later when Dan Ford's hard grounder skidded on a wet patch of the infield carpet and ricocheted off shortstop Ivan DeJesus' glove: a no-fault error. One prime recipient of this gift was Jim Palmer, who was in the game in relief of Mike Flanagan and thus gained the win. He had endured a difficult season, suffering back problems and tendinitis, and at one point had been sent down to the Orioles' Cla.s.s A Hagerstown team to recover his form. He took this all in good part, becoming a stand-by bullpen operative in the postseason, and his work in this game, by his own admission, looked more like throwing-careful throwing-than pitching, but he was delighted with the win. When he and Carlton were in the game against each other for a few minutes there, we were looking at five hundred and sixty-eight lifetime victories.

The particular problem for the Phillies-or a symbol of the problem, at least-was Pete Rose, who got into the game as a pinch-hitter in the ninth after spending most of it sombrely watching the proceedings from the top step of the dugout, with his white-gloved fists tensely clenching and unclenching. He had been benched by Philadelphia manager Paul Owens, who put Tony Perez on first in hopes of getting a little sock into the lineup-not an inconceivable turn of events, since Pete had had one single to his credit so far-but Rose was at no great pains to conceal his distress and irritation over the demotion. The press hordes made much of the little scandal, of course, and Joe Morgan uncharacteristically lost his temper in the postgame clubhouse when the reporters, after Rose's swift departure, turned their questions toward the gentle Perez. Morgan's sense of propriety was offended; he felt that professionals (including Rose, although he did not say so) should have handled all this more calmly. Rose, in fact, had previously embarra.s.sed the club by not admitting a fielding lapse in Game Two, when he left first base uncovered in a bunt situation that specifically called for him to stay in place: no play was made, the bunt helped win the game, and the fans mistakenly blamed Morgan for the uncovered base.

These trifling contretemps are set forth here because they tell us about a much deeper problem that afflicted the Phillies all year. Paul Owens became the Philadelphia manager in the middle of July, replacing Pat Corrales at a moment when the club was in first place in the flaccid N.L. East but sc.r.a.ping along just one game above the .500 level. Owens, the inc.u.mbent general manager, took on the field directors.h.i.+p because the Philadelphia front office foresaw that only a man with his authority and reputation would be able to enforce some difficult alterations in the Phillie lineup of famous and very well-paid older stars, who by now had made it plain that they weren't good enough to win. Owens installed a platoon system of his own, resting Pete Rose and veteran outfielders Gary Matthews and Garry Maddox whenever it seemed advantageous to do so, and reshuffling his batting order. Everyone in the lineup but catcher Bo Diaz, third baseman Mike Schmidt, and shortstop Ivan DeJesus became a replaceable part, in fact, and Owens made frequent use of the lesser-known outfielder Joe Lefebvre and, later on, of a rookie first baseman, Len Matuszek, and outfielder Sixto Lezcano. None of this was easy (Rose's first benching ended a seven-hundred-and-forty-five-consecutive-game streak for him), and no one on the club took it with particular grace. In September, Mike Schmidt indulged himself in a public outburst of criticism of Owens' managing (it came at the moment when the club was embarking on its eleven-game winning streak), and even during the Series, after it had become plain to everyone that the changes had worked and that the team had outdone itself at the end, there were mumbles and grousings from some of the famous princ.i.p.als. Owens himself-he is a tall, stooped, gentle-spoken man, with odd white eyelashes, who carries a packet of Gelusil in his uniform pocket-summed up his club during the playoffs with a musing little aside: "We have an old team and a middle-aged team and a young team." Three teams from which to make one-to make a Baltimore, say.

Pete Rose and Joe Morgan were given their release by the Phillies in the week after the Series ended, and it is expected that Joe Morgan will soon decide whether to retire or to join the Oakland A's for a final season as a designated hitter. It is painful for us to see old players go, and infinitely harder when they prolong the inevitable process. Morgan went into September at the bottom of the National League batting averages, but then took fire, at one point running off thirteen hits in eighteen at-bats, and on his fortieth birthday enjoying a four-for-five game with two homers-a beautiful goodbye, if he can but see it that way. Pete Rose, who has slowed down perceptibly in the field, batted .245 this year-sixty-three points below his lifetime average. He will be forty-three next spring, by which time he will have signed on with some club or other, for he is in obdurate pursuit of Ty Cobb's 4,191 lifetime hits. He needs eleven more hits to pa.s.s the four-thousand mark, where only Cobb has gone before him, and two hundred and two more to set the new mark. I hope he can do it in one great last rush-an eleventh two-hundred-hit season, with great festivals at its close-but I suspect it may be a much longer journey for him, and for the rest of us as well.

Rose, in any case, was back in the lineup for Game Four, and had two hits and scored a run and batted in another-not quite enough to win it. You could say that the Orioles' pitching (Storm Davis, plus Sammy Stewart and Tippy Martinez) won again, or else that it was Orioles second baseman Rich Dauer who did it, with his three hits and three runs batted in and a neatly turned double play to stop a big Philadelphia inning. It was a taut, hard game, in any case, with the Orioles pulling it out by 54, and if I believed that managers ever actually win ballgames I would say that Baltimore manager Joe Altobelli won this one, because of what he and his accomplished bench (the "role-players," as they like to call themselves) pulled off in the sixth inning. Trailing John Denny (a right-hander, remember) by 32, with Oriole base runners at second and third, he unexpectedly wheeled in the left-side-swinger Joe Nolan as a pinch-hitter; when Nolan was intentionally walked, Altobelli produced Ken Singleton, who switch-hits and was thus proof against any Philadelphia countermove to a lefty pitcher. Singleton walked, driving in a run and tying the game (Sakata came in to run for him), and when Hernandez, a left-hander, did at last come in to pitch, the batter awaiting him was John Shelby, who also switches, and who now, batting right-handed, hit a sacrifice fly that drove in the lead run. Baltimore's fourth successive pinch-hitter, Dan Ford, fanned for the last out, but the marionette show was not quite done, since Altobelli, by moving one inc.u.mbent fielder, Dauer, from second base to third base, found room in his defensive deployment for two of the pinch-hitters and for Sakata, too (but none at the same position as the man he had replaced), in the bottom half of the inning. I apologize for this digression, which perhaps needs an accompanying flow chart, but for those of us who were keeping score Altobelli's moves suddenly looked like the moment onstage when the s.h.i.+ning red b.a.l.l.s vanish from the cup and reappear-count them!-in the magician's fingers, and there was a further glow of pleasure when we suddenly realized that Altobelli somehow still had his three best right-handed backup hitters-Roenicke, Ayala, and Landrum-available on the bench for later use, if needed. Managers try this sort of stuff all the time, but rarely does it work out as elegantly and inexorably as it did here. To be sure, there is always some luck involved in such maneuvers (think of Altobelli's embarra.s.sment in that August game against the Blue Jays, when he ran out of catchers and had to play Sakata behind the plate), but when things come out right you see behind them a kind of nerve and a games intelligence that freshen our appreciation of the sport. Chess is harder, but anyone who thinks these managerial moves are a snap should think back to 1981-another year when the American League had to make do without a designated hitter in the Series-and how Yankee manager Bob Lemon and his staff, in losing to the Dodgers, repeatedly found themselves fl.u.s.tered and outmaneuvered in these old games of pinch and switch.

Joe Altobelli, who put in fourteen years as a minor-league player, coach, and manager in the Baltimore system (he later managed the Giants for three years and then coached at third base for the Yanks, before taking up his post last winter), has a strong instinct for the Baltimore outlook on baseball. "My moves weren't that hard to make," he said mildly. "It wasn't the result of meditation, or anything. I had the players available, and that's the big thing. And how hard is it to send Singleton up to pinch-hit, when he's had five hundred at-bats, or Shelby, who's been in there all year for us?"

Most of the Orioles regulars are long-termers with the club (which in recent years has lost to free-agency only one player it hoped to keep, pitcher Don Stanhouse), and most of them talk about Baltimore style with the same tempered earnestness, but in each case, I felt, their views seemed to represent a private set of convictions or discoveries, with none of the numbing, faked-up "positive values" that the boyish Los Angeles varsity exudes when it expounds upon Dodger Blue. Ken Singleton, now in his ninth year with the club, who was converted from designated hitter to a pinch-hitter for this series, talked to the reporters about how much more difficult it was to get up on short notice and make a single crucial appearance at the plate, and expressed his awe of people like Dwyer and Ayala, who do it all the time. "There's a certain atmosphere here that's conducive to winning," he said. "On other teams, guys get upset with their roles if they're not playing all the time. Not here." Dauer, who batted .235 this summer but maintained that he'd had a good year, said, "If we're here, we must all be playing well. When you come up in an organization that's had a Brooks Robinson and a Mark Belanger, the defensive part is instilled in you. You know that's part of why you win." And Jim Palmer: "We don't have any ups and downs. We come out here and hope we'll win. It's a calm feeling. Earl Weaver had a lot to do with it. He never overreacted early in the season, so by September we'd be in business again. Joe is the same. We had two seven-game losing streaks this year, but, as he said, n.o.body pointed the finger at anyone else. Stable organizations don't overreact. You do your best, send out good pitchers, and hope you can go on doing what you've done all year."

Stable organizations run deep, and the calm Baltimore way of winning that Palmer was talking about seems to have grown out of a pattern of sound management that began with its first general manager, Paul Richards, who was steering things when the club came to Baltimore, in 1954. (It had been the hapless St. Louis Browns franchise.) He was succeeded by a near-Plantagenet line of brilliant executives: Lee MacPhail, Harry Dalton, Frank Cashen, and the inc.u.mbent (since 1975) G.M., Hank Peters. (Dalton is now the general manager of the Milwaukee Brewers, who won the A.L. pennant last year, and Cashen holds the same post with the up-and-coming Mets.) Above them, in the owner's office, were Jerold C. Hoffberger and then (since 1979) Edward Bennett Williams-each an exception to the twin mold of drearily conservative or flamboyantly egocentric owners-and around them, so to speak, in various farm and coaching and scouting posts, was a pa.s.sel of sound, much-admired field men: Jim McLaughlin, Lou Gorman, George Bamberger, Ray Poitevint, Ray Scarborough, and the present-day super-scout, Jim Russo. Some of these worthies have retired or moved along to higher posts with other clubs (Ray Scarborough died last year), but each of them, I think, must have felt a proprietary glow over the Orioles' home-grown grand success this autumn.

In the Series, Eddie Murray and Mike Schmidt each ran into oppressive difficulties in trying to do what he had been doing all year, which was to hit the ball to distant parts and win ballgames. Schmidt talked at length with the writers about his failures (he was batting .063 after four games), and said that the Orioles pitchers were making him chase a lot of pitches that were up and out of the strike zone, and that he was making adjustments in his swing; Murray, for his part, said nothing and made no adjustments (he had had two singles so far, for .125), as is his custom, but it seemed certain that he was unhappily thinking back to the World Series of 1979, when he failed repeatedly at the plate while the O's dropped the last three games in a row and lost to the Pirates. Now he came up in the second inning of the fifth game and whacked a monstrous homer into the upper tiers in right field-"It would have been a homer in Grand Canyon," Pete Rose said later-and followed up in the fourth with an even longer, two-run job that bounced off the center-field scoreboard, where the ball just missed hitting the "M" of his own name up there at a moment when the message screen was listing the American League RBI leaders. Rick Dempsey hit a home run and also a double, and scored the last run, and the O's, behind McGregor's 50 shutout, were World Champions. Dempsey was voted the Most Valuable Player-a lovely choice. He is a first-rate catcher, durable and energetic, with a powerful arm and great agility behind the plate, but with few of the offensive abilities that usually go with the job. This summer, he batted .231, with four home runs-about average for him. Dempsey's att.i.tude toward the game has always been summed up for me by the way he wears his cap in the field-turned backward, because of the mask, but with the brim bent up in a c.o.c.ky little flourish. Like most of his teammates, he seems to have an unquenchably high regard for himself. "I've got a lot of good hits for this club down the years," he remarked early in the Series. "I get pinch-hit for a lot late in the game, so I've gone plenty of weeks when I was oh-for-two and then came out of the game. I figure if I'm hitting .250 here it's the same as .280 someplace else. We just have a different way of doing things here."

*Righetti was moved to the bullpen the following year, where, as expected, he became the Yanks' prime late-innings stopper.

Easy Lessons

- Spring 1984 THERE'S NOTHING LIKE AN all-expense-paid late-winter vacation under the palms and within sight and sound of batted baseb.a.l.l.s to give a sensitive man a deeper appreciation of the nature of guilt. Each year in March, I journey to Arizona and then to Florida, or vice versa, to watch a sampling of the current and future major-league ballplayers do their morning stretching exercises on dew-dappled outfield lawns (lately these workouts are being done to bouncy aerobic-rock sounds and are led by a young woman in shorts and leg-warmers who is clearly in better shape than anyone else on the field) and then test and disport themselves in batting cages and on practice mounds-engaging in B.P. and Infield and s.h.a.gging and Flip-and eventually play a few innings of morning B-Squad ball or an afternoon exhibition game, and each year this excursion brings me such freshets of pleasure that I must find new excuses within myself to justify such dulcet bystanding. Duty, for instance. I am there at the camps as a reporter, to be sure, having been dispatched sunward to search out the news and the special sense of the coming season, and there is no sterner or more a.s.siduous newshawk to be found on the demanding Scottsdale-to-Sarasota beat than yours truly. Even the most casual morning invitation to take a dip in my motel pool or to make a fourth at middle-aged doubles finds me puritanically glum. "Not a chance!" I cry. "I'm working today." And work I do, carefully noting in my notebook the uniform number and the unremarkable batting mannerisms of some hulking young stranger now taking his hacks in the cage, and checking his thin line of stats (.266 and eight home runs in Danville in 1981) in my team press guide, and then eliciting clubhouse quotes from a grizzled bullpen millionaire about the current state of his damaged wing ("Hurts like a b.a.s.t.a.r.d...."), and, later in the day, raising my mid-game gaze from the diamond to observe the gauzy look of departing rain clouds lifting from the jagged rim of some distant desert peak, and then entering that in my notebook (with the pen slipping a little in my fingers, because of the dab of Sea & Ski I have just rubbed on my nose, now that the sun is out again and cooking us gently in the steep little grandstand behind third base). I watch and listen and write, filling up almost as much s.p.a.ce in my copybooks as I do in October at the World Series, and entering on my score-card the names of third-string non-roster subst.i.tutes who filter into the game so late in the day that even the geezer fans and their geezerettes have begun to gather up their backrests and seat cus.h.i.+ons and head off home for beer and naps. Guilt, as I have said, is the spur, for it is my secret Calvinist fear that baseball will run out on me someday and I will find nothing fresh at the morning camps, despite my notes and numberings, or go news-less on some sun-filled afternoon, and so at last lose this sweet franchise. Baseball saves me every time-not the news of it, perhaps, so much as its elegant and arduous complexity, its layered substrata of nuance and lesson and acc.u.mulated experience, which are the true substance of these sleepy, overfamiliar practice rituals, and which, if we know how and where to look for them, can later be seen to tip the scales of the closest, most wanted games of the summer. Almost everything in baseball looks easy and evident, but really learning the game, it turns out, can take a lifetime, even if you keep notes.

Let's face it: spring training is a misnomer. Thanks to aerobics, racquetball, high-tech physical-fitness centers, California-chic wives, and a sensible wish to extend their very high salaries through as many years as possible, most major-league ballplayers stay in terrific shape all year round now. Back in the straw-suitcase days, it took a month to six weeks to work off winter beer bellies and firm up poolroom-pale bodies, but contemporary players have told me that a single week of batting practice and rundown drills would make them absolutely ready for Opening Day. What with performance records, autumn visits to the Instructional Leagues, and almost daily reports from the winter-ball leagues in Latin America, most managers have a pretty good notion of the capabilities of the rising minor leaguers in their organizations, and are not likely to be badly startled (or much convinced) by a .485 spring average put together by some anonymous rookie outfielder during the exhibitions. The pitchers, to be sure, do require all of March and a little bit more in order to get their arms in shape, and the process-early stretching and tossing, the first three-innings stints, then harder stuff and longer outings-cannot be hurried or shortened, since there must be days of recuperation after each game or batting-practice workout. Spring training is really for the pitchers, then-and for the writers, who need this slow, sleepy time in which to sweeten their characters and enlarge their perceptions of what truly matters in our old game. I offer as example an apothegm uttered by a friend from the Chronicle, a budding Solomon whose views have already been heard in these pages. It was in a week of dazzling weather in Arizona, and this time we were sitting side by side in the narrow press box of Scottsdale Stadium, watching the Giants vs. (I think) the Brewers. Late in the sixth inning, he looked irritably at his watch and said, "d.a.m.n. Yesterday's game was already over by this time."

"Right," said I, arising and gathering up my notebook, media guides, pencils, and scorecard. (My deadline was weeks away.) "And thanks, Dave. See you at the pool."

In Winter Haven, on the very first day of this spring jaunt, I found Ted Williams out in right-field foul ground teaching batting to Von Hayes-a curious business, since the Splendid Splinter, of course, is a spring batting instructor for the Red Sox, and Hayes is the inc.u.mbent center fielder of the Phillies. Hayes was accompanied by Deron Johnson, the Philadelphia batting coach, and the visit, I decided, was in the nature of medical referral-a courtesy second opinion extended by a great specialist to a colleague from a different hospital (or league). Von Hayes is a stringbean-six feet five, with elongated arms and legs-and his work at the plate this year will be the focus of anxious attention from the defending National League Champion Phillies, who are in the process of turning themselves from an old club into a young one in the shortest possible time. Since last fall, they have parted with (among others) Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez, and veteran reliever Ron Reed, and later this spring they traded away Gary Matthews, their established left fielder (Matthews, in fact, was intently listening in on Ted Williams' talk to his teammate Hayes), to the Cubs. Two years ago, in his first full year in the majors, Von Hayes. .h.i.t fourteen homers and batted in eighty-two runs for the Cleveland Indians-sufficient promise to encourage the Phillies to give up five of their own players (including the wonderful old Manny Trillo and the wonderful young Julio Franco) for him. Last year, Hayes, troubled with injuries (and perhaps unsettled by the nickname Five-for-One, bestowed on him by Pete Rose), batted a middling-poor .265, with six homers-reason enough for a call to Dr. Ted.

"Lemme see that," Ted Williams was saying, and he took Hayes' bat and then hefted it lightly, like a man testing a new tennis racquet. "Well, all right, if you're really strong enough," he said, giving it back. "But you don't need a great big bat, you know. Stan Musial always used a little bitty drugstore model. So what do you want? You know what Rogers Hornsby told me forty-five years ago? It was the best batting advice I ever got. 'Get a good ball to hit!' What does that mean? It means a ball that does not fool you, a ball that is not in a tough spot for you. So then when you are in a tough spot, concede a little to that pitcher when he's got two strikes on you. Think of trying to hit it back up the middle. Try not to pull it every time. Harry Heilmann told me that he never became a great hitter until he learned to hit inside out. I used to have a lot of trouble in here"-he showed us an awkward inside dip at the ball with his own bat-"until I moved back in the box and got a little more time for myself. Try to get the bat reasonably inside as you swing, because it's a h.e.l.l of a lot harder to go from the outside in than it is to go the other way around."

Hayes, who looked pale with concentration, essayed a couple of left-handed swings, and Willams said, "Keep a little movement going. Keep your a.s.s loose. Try to keep in a quick position to swing. When your hands get out like that, you're just making a bigger arc."

Hayes swung again-harder this time-and Williams said, "That looks down to me. You're swingin' down on the ball."

Hayes looked startled. "I thought it was straight up," he said. He swung again, and then again.

"Well, it's still down," Ted said quietly. "And see where you're looking when you swing. You're looking at the ground about out here." He touched the turf off to Hayes's left with the tip of his bat. "Look out at that pitcher-don't take your eyes off him. That and-" Williams c.o.c.ked his hips and his right knee and swung at a couple of imaginary pitches, with his long, heavy body unc.o.c.king suddenly and thrillingly and then rotating with the smooth release of his hips. His hands, I saw now, were inside, close to his body, while Hayes' hands had started much higher and could not come back for a low, inside pitch with anything like Ted's ease and elegance. Nothing to it. Hayes, who has a long face, looked sepulchral now, and no wonder, for no major leaguer wants to retinker his swing-not in the springtime, not ever-and Williams, sensing something, changed his tone. "Just keep going," he said gently to the young man. "Everybody gets better if they keep at it."

Hayes kept at it, standing in and looking out at an imaginary pitcher, and then c.o.c.king and striding, while Williams stood and watched with Deron Johnson, now and then murmuring something to the other coach and touching his own hip or lifting his chin or c.o.c.king his fists by way of ill.u.s.tration-a sixty-five-year-old encyclopedia of hitting, in mint condition: the book.

When I left, he was in deep converse with Gary Matthews, who had asked about the best response to a pitcher's backup slider after two fastb.a.l.l.s up and in. "Why, take that pitch, then!" led cried. "Just let it go by. Don't be so critical of yourself. Don't try to be a .600 hitter all the time. Don't you know how hard this all is?"

I accompanied the Red Sox down to Sarasota to watch Tom Seaver work against them the following afternoon-his first American League innings ever. Seaver, as most of the Northern Hemisphere must know by now, was s.n.a.t.c.hed away from the Mets over the winter when that club carelessly failed to place him on its protected twenty-six-man roster prior to a "compensation draft"-a process that permits a team (in this case, the White Sox) that has lost a so-called Type A player to a free agency to select as recompense a player from a pool of players with other teams that have signed up for the plan. This misshapen schema is a monster child sp.a.w.ned by the owners as a part of the settlement of the player strike of 1981, and there is considerable evidence that its headstrong fathers may now wish to disinherit it. Shortly after the Mets' humiliation, the Yankees experienced a similar shock (the circ.u.mstances were a little different) when they lost a freshly signed top pitching prospect, Tim Belcher, to the Oakland A's in another compensation kidnapping. The Mets, in any case, suffered a horrendous double embarra.s.sment: first, for the forfeit of their old hero figure-an Odin brought back to the fold last year, amid many trumpetings, to finish his days in Shea-Valhalla as the steadfast elder leader of a corps of s.h.i.+ning young Baldurflingers-and, second, for the clear evidence that it somehow did not occur to them that the pennant-hungry and publicity-hungry White Sox might find some use for a highly motivated and splendidly conditioned veteran star pitcher (Seaver is thirty-nine) with a lifetime earned-run average of 2.73. The Mets people, to their credit, have rent asunder their blazers and strewn dust upon their razor-cut pates in public penance for their gaffe, and no further criticism of them will be put forward here.

The first glimpse of Tom in Chisox motley-neon pants-stripes, the famous No. 41 adorning his left groin-was a shock, though, and so was the sight of him in pre-game conversation with his new batterymate, Carlton Fisk. I took a mental snapshot of the two famous Handsome Harrys and affixed to it the caption "Q: What's wrong with this picture?" (A: Both men are out of uniform.) Then the game started, and Seaver's pitching put an end to all such distractions. It was a prime early-spring outing-three swift, harm-free innings that included a couple of bases on b.a.l.l.s and four strikeouts. There was a good pop to his fastb.a.l.l.s, and he wheeled in some thoughtfully located sliders and curveb.a.l.l.s as well, and once it was clear that he was going to be all right out there I sat back and took pleasure in all the old looks and ways of him-the thick, strong legs and droopy shoulders, the grave gaze catcherward for the sign, the audible "Hunk!" that sometimes accompanied the in-driving thrust of his big body in mid-delivery (Ted Williams had said that he doesn't hear enough grunts from the mound nowadays), and then the mitt flipped up vertically to take the catcher's return peg.

In the clubhouse after his stint, Seaver declared himself satisfied with his work-perhaps more than satisfied. There had been some small technical problems-his release point was a little flat at times-but that wasn't surprising, because he'd been nervous about this outing. "I wanted to prove to the guys that I can help this ball club," he said. "They don't care who you are. They want to know if you can still pitch-especially at the age of thirty-nine. This is a team that wants to win. They've had a taste of it, and they want more. What our game is all about is proving things to your own team."

He went over the three innings almost pitch by pitch, making sure that the writers had their stories, and they thanked him and went off. A couple of us stayed on while Tom unwrapped the big icepack from his shoulder and started to take off his uniform. I think we wanted reminiscence or philosophy from him now-something about motivation or the shocks of unexpected trades or the wearing down of an athlete's will with the years-but what we got was much better: mechanics. He talked about tempos of early throwing in the first few days of spring-a murmured "one, two, three-four...one, two, three-four" beat with the windup as his body relearned rhythm and timing. He went on to the proper breaking point of the hands-where the pitching hand comes out of the glove-which for him is just above and opposite his face. Half undressed, he was on his feet again and pitching for us in slow motion, in front of his locker.

"What you don't want is a lateral movement that will bring your elbow down and make your arm drop out, because what happens then is that your hand either goes underneath the ball or out to the side of the ball," he said. "To throw an effective pitch of any kind, your fingers have to stay on top of the ball. So you go back and make sure that this stays closed and this stays closed"-he touched his left shoulder and his left hip-"and this hand comes up here." The pitching hand was back and above his head. "It's so easy to get to here, in the middle of the windup, and then slide off horizontally with your left side. What you're trying to do instead-what's right-is to drive this lead shoulder down during the delivery of the ball. That way, the pitching shoulder comes up-it has to go up. You've increased the arc, and your fingers are on top of the ball, where they belong."

I said I'd heard pitching coaches urging their pupils to drive the lead shoulder toward the catcher during the delivery.

"Sure, but that's earlier," Tom said. He was all concentration, caught up in his craft. "That's staying closed on your forward motion, before you drive down. No-with almost every pitcher, the fundamentals are the same. Look at