Wait Until This Year

By Tom Callahan

An ivy harvest everywhere, not just Chicago

All four of the extraordinary baseball teams braced to play off this week qualify as flabbergasting. But while the Tigers and Royals have sampled defeat, and the Padres have done more than that, only the Cubs have stood for disillusionment, and their first success in 39 years has wrought a national catharsis. For Cub fans actually from Chicago, where this way of strife is passed down like a pickax from father to son, it must be gently annoying to find so many noble sufferers going public, besides George Will and the other political columnists breaking out in their regular rash.

As symbols of something or other, the Cubs have long been irresistible subjects for heavy thinkers. With the Cubs having nothing to look back on or forward to, it stood to reason, their games stayed a little stiller in time, though grassy and unlit Wrigley Field obviously had much to do with it. "Their ivy-covered burial ground," the late composer Steve Goodman called it, where Gabby Hartnett hit his Homer in the Gloamin' and Babe Ruth may have pointed to the sky. Bill Veeck, who planted the original outfield vines in 1938, sits out there every day now bleaching his peg leg. That style of ivy is called bittersweet.

The team's historic misfortunes have been reversed by an unromantic Philadelphia tough--6 ft. 5 in. tall--named Dallas Green, who managed the Phillies to a world championship in 1980 and became general manager of the Cubs the next year. Only three incumbent players have survived his first scowling look around.

Everywhere he glanced he saw defeat, "even in the eyes of the ushers," and found no charm in it. Green wanted lights and still does. He did not want Ernie Banks, the Cubs' living monument. They had been paying Ernie to be Ernie. (Who better for the job?) Seeing other uses for the money, Green asked waivers on tradition and began redoing his roster in ex-Dodgers and ex-White Sox and ex-Red Sox and ex-Phillies most of all. Notably Second Baseman Ryne Sandberg, Leftfielder Gary Matthews, Rightfielder

Keith Moreland, Center fielder Bobby Dernier and Shortstop Larry Bowa. "The problem was bringing them together," said Field Manager Jim Frey, "getting them to think of themselves not as ex-somethings-or-other but as Cubs, and proud to be Cubs." Frey, who came along this year when Chicago moved up from fifth, had managed Kansas City against Philadelphia in that '80 series, then was rather briskly fired. Evidently Green knew where a lot of winners were.

From Cleveland this June, he flimflammed red-bearded, righthanded Pitcher Rick Sutcliffe, 4-5 with the Indians to that point, 16-1 with the Cubs since then. "They've scored a lot of runs for me, and they were in first when I got here," Sutcliffe said humbly after clinching the half-pennant with his 14th straight victory. The new Cubs all seem appealing. Matthews, their topkick, acted unaware that his third game-winning hit in two days had moved him to the front of the league. Sandberg appeared surprised with himself and his most valuable season. "All I did was play hard," he said. "I didn't know."

Long ago and far away are Jose Cardenal, who never got enough sleep because one of his eyelids wouldn't close, and Larry Biittner, who once lost a ball under his hat, and Emil Matthew Verban, the patron saint of a certain quality of losing, now itself perhaps lost. Should the Cubs get past the Padres to the World Series, the costs will start with one home date, owing to the lack of lights, a concession to television programmers and other capitalists. Since more than 2 million regular folks have applied for the 7,000 tickets per game left over by the swells, odds are that the audience will be as representative of true Cub fandom as the superstation cable crowd, with its 48 states and five countries, whose singular heartthrob is Announcer Harry Caray. In victory, the Cubs may still stand for disillusionment.

In San Diego, the citizenry is well acquainted with losing but less sentimental about it. Until this year, fourth position in a six-team division was the Padres' high-water mark over 15 seasons of a generally last-place existence. For the first five years, they operated on a frayed shoestring. Paltry crowds were entertained by the misadventures of an outfielder named Gaston and a numbing parade of Al-phonses. Before the 1974 season, the team was literally packed up to move to Washington, D.C., when McDonald's Burger Baron Ray Kroc came to the rescue (a Cub fan from Chicago, incidentally) and brought money. On Kroc's first opening day, the Padres already in mid-season form, he impulsively grabbed the public address microphone and announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, I suffer along with you This is the stupidest ball-playing I've ever seen." A bond was formed.

He died in January at the age of 81, but bequeathed to the city two free agents, First Baseman Steve Garvey and Relief Pitcher "Goose" Gossage, plus a future that may be richer than either man. Even if the Cubs were not facing a spate of off-season contract negotiations, Chicago's prosperity would still figure to be shorter-lived than San Diego's. At the Padres' foundation are a pair of home-grown young outfielders, Kevin McReynolds and Tony Gwynn, the latter an ample former San Diego State basketball star who bats .350. He is good-natured about his pudgy shape. Happening upon Shortstop Garry Templeton thumping a pocket into a new glove, Gwynn offered, "Let me help you with that," and sat on it. Long before the New York Mets conceded to the Cubs, Gwynn's mock play-by-play broadcasts, delivered behind the batting cage in his best Dutch Reagan-of-Des Moines patter, concentrated on grounders eluding Bowa and liners fooling Dernier. "Who would you want to face twice in five games?" he whispered aside. "Dwight Gooden or Rick Sutcliffe? I'll take my chances with Sutcliffe."

Prevailing by some ten games in the National League's West Division, the Padres were denied the sensation of a pennant race. This helps explain the town's relative calm so far, though it is a relatively calm town, "more Midwestern in principle than Los Angeles," according to Garvey. Three players, including Pitching Ace Eric Show, have publicly embraced the John Birch Society without encountering much local disapproval. Also it was a summer of mean news in San Diego: 21 people massacred at the San Ysidro McDonald's, two police officers killed in a quiet park, and the mayor is under indictment for perjury. More than the baseball standings seem akilter.

As a rookie skipper in 1967, Padres Manager Dick Williams directed the Boston Red Sox from ninth to first, and in the '70s the Oakland A's fought and flourished under him. Williams provoked a particularly ugly brawl this year in Atlanta. Like Chicago, San Diego employs a ruthless trader, General Manager Jack McKeon, whose name should be listed highest in the credits. Not all of the Padres' names are recognizable, though some deserve recognition, for instance Reserve Catcher Doug Gwosdz (pronounced Goosh), whose perfect nickname, Eye Chart, revives that poetic baseball art. McKeon has a sense of poetry too. It pleases him to think that no matter what happens now, one of Ray Kroc's favorite teams is going to the World Series.

The Detroit Tigers are the property of an Ann Arbor pizza man named Tom Monaghan, an orphan who adopted the Tigers when he was seven, in 1945, the year they beat the Cubs in seven games. Borrowing $500 some time later, he ran it into at least $53 million, which is what he bought the team for last October, aware that it was a good team but not suspecting just how good. Winning 35 of its first 40, playing 17 games on the road before losing any, Detroit dismissed the American League's East Division early and sent the Baltimore Orioles all the way to fifth place. When the Tigers reached 100 victories with a week to spare, Sparky Anderson became the first centennial manager in service to both leagues and maybe finally let go of Cincinnati.

He knew last season, when Detroit's record was the third best in the major leagues, that in his four years he had about cultivated a crop to contend with his mid-'70s Reds. The city and the organization had been waiting somewhat longer, having held on so stubbornly to the World Champion Tigers of 1968--Al Kaline, Norm Cash, Bill Freehan, Jim Northrup et al.--until that whole class expired practically in unison. A tendency to sentiment was understandable, though. In July of 1967, Detroit had hosted one of the biggest and bloodiest of the race riots: 43 people were killed. And the forecast in 1968 was for another heated summer. But the Tigers interceded, and they were cherished especially for that.

A delayed legacy of the old team that went out together was this young team that grew up together, and grew up in the major leagues. Strength through the middle is baseball's eternal ideal, and the model today is the Tigers' Catcher Lance Parrish, Shortstop Alan Trammell, Second Baseman Lou Whitaker and Centerfielder Chet Lemon. Probably it has to do with the nature of runaway races, but none of them seems quite as considerable now as he did in the spring or even last year. Trammell hit over .300 but missed more than 20 games without being missed tremendously. Whitaker slipped slightly both in the field and at bat. Lemon actually got conked on the head by a fly ball. Though he had 30 home runs, Parrish's average was under .240. For Most Valuable Player, Anderson has nominated Reliever Willie Hernandez, who had 32 chances to save games, and saved 32.

If it is not worth an award, it is at least worth an honorable mention that the everyday player who stood his post best was Rightfielder Kirk Gibson, of all people, and so if he is not "the new Mickey Mantle," maybe he is the new Kirk Gibson. By dimension and disposition, Gibson continues to be the football player he was at Michigan State, a 6-ft. 3-in., 215-lb. flanker. "A very natural game for me," he said, "football came easy." It only appears that baseball should be simple for a muscleman fast and strong enough to take his homers inside the park or over the roof. After exaggerating his promise by batting .328 in the strike-shortened season of 1981, he slumped last year to .227.

"The fans practically booed me out of town. It got so bad, I went to the plate thinking, 'I'll show these people,' hardly even noticing who was pitching. I was a disaster." Lacking Mantle's arm, he was obliged to learn how to release the ball more quickly. Kaline showed him how, and while he was at it, reintroduced him properly to Al's old friend, right field. "I'm never going to be Mickey Mantle," said Gibson. "But I'm learning." Crowding 30 homers and 100 RBIS, he batted over .280.

The American League's West Division, the most admirable or deplorable in baseball, turned on small events. Loath to blame each other, California's affluent Angels considered themselves scuttled on fan appreciation day by an unappreciative fan who stayed with a foul pop-up even though Third Baseman Doug DeCinces had clearly called for it. This precipitated an extra-inning loss to Texas and so unnerved the Angels that they dropped the first three games of the climactic four-game series in Kansas City. Meanwhile, players of lesser means and greater resilience, the Minnesota Twins, were undone by a quirk. Former Royal Jamie Quirk, who began the season as a bullpen coach in St. Louis, was vacationing in the Ozarks the week before last when Cleveland called for an emergency catcher. On the way there, he paused in Kansas City to roast retired Pitcher Paul Splittorff and informed Third Baseman George Brett, "You may have to give me a part of your playoff share because I'm going to beat Minnesota." A few nights later, with two outs in the ninth inning of a tie game, Quirk came to bat for the first time and hit a home run that crushed the Twins.

Improbabilities are losing their news value in Kansas City, where the baseball team so well-to-do for a decade, and so depressed last season, was advertised to be "in transition," and emphatically is. As Brett said, "When you hear transition, you think of rebuilding; when you think of rebuilding, you think of finishing sixth. The Cubs have been rebuilding for 39 years." On July 18, the Royals in fact were in sixth place (40-51), but to the easy encouragement of Manager Dick Howser they won 43 of the next 67 with a crowd of boy pitchers and six different shortstops.

Said Brett, who has been limping along gingerly on a tender muscle: "All of our question marks have turned into exclamation points."

The seven weeks he missed at the start of the season (knee surgery) coincided with the suspension of Outfielder Willie Wilson, evidently the only member of a quartet of jailed drug offenders whose skills warranted Royal rehabilitation. He has repaid the debt with a .300 batting average and an improved disposition. First Baseman Willie Aikens was banished by the Royals even before his replacement was found: Steve Balboni, who in 122 games hit 27 homers and struck out 136 times. Another motley find was Darryl Motley, for whom the Royals had no minor league space last year in Omaha, so the Tigers graciously put him up on loan in Evansville. He batted nearly .290 for Kansas City, with 15 home runs. With Dan Quisenberry--that remarkable pitcher--in the bullpen, the Royals need only stay close.

Nothing against Kansas City or San Diego, but a Detroit-Chicago World Series would have a particular charm. Nostalgia has won the day, and Ernie Banks has been called back into an honorary uniform. When those less-than-great wartime teams met in 1945, Paul ("Dizzy") Trout was a righthanded pitcher for the Tigers. Now Dizzy's son Steve ("Rainbow") Trout is a lefthanded pitcher for the Cubs. In both the baseball and trout worlds, this is a year of complete reversals. --ByTomCallahan