OZZIE : The Phrase Good Glove Man Doesn’t Even Begin to Cover It; He’s Standard for Shortstops

Ozzie Smith puts shaving cream on his glove, but not on his face. That may explain why he’s got whiskers and his glove doesn’t, but what does it actually tell us about this man, Osborne Earl Smith?

We must realize that Ozzie’s glove is so important to him that it is vital to keep the leather soft by rubbing shaving cream, leather balm and aloe lotion into the pocket. This glove, after all, has made Ozzie a very rich man. He treats it right.

The shortstop of the St. Louis Cardinals is 30 years old, 5 feet 9 inches, 150 pounds, and will make $2 million this season and $8 million for the four seasons after. That is because a lot of people believe no one has ever fielded the shortstop position better in the history of major league baseball.

Ed Gottlieb, the agent who negotiated Smith’s contract, shares that opinion.

“Ozzie commenced the era of the glove in much the same way Babe Ruth commenced the era of the home run and Sandy Koufax commenced the era of pitching,” Gottlieb said.

Babe Ruth. Sandy Koufax. Ozzie Smith?

Better get over to the drugstore real quick, stock up on some shaving cream, and get your fingers in that stuff right away. Of course, there’s more to Ozzie Smith than simply massaging foam into leather.

Everyone knows he can field. But that’s just one part of Ozzie’s game. Smith is probably the best-dressed shortstop in baseball. He once made a list of the 10 best casually dressed men in America, along with Alexander Haig and Johnny Carson.

Alexander Haig. Johnny Carson. Ozzie Smith?

Yes, it is true, and no doubt you would be convinced of the list’s accuracy if you saw Ozzie entering the Cardinal clubhouse like a bolt of lightning, or perhaps a bolt of cloth.

There is Ozzie, resplendent in a striped silk jacket, white shirt (medium starch), gray slacks, lighter gray lizard-skin belt, black socks and black tasseled loafers.

“I was going to wear a pair of black, polished cotton slacks,” Smith said. “But it didn’t feel right. So I went with these gray slacks. And now I feel good. If you feel good about yourself, you look good.”

If only Ozzie could hit a little better, he might feel absolutely great. Maybe it doesn’t matter too much anyway. Ozzie can still find a lot of ways to feel good that don’t involve a bat or a pair of gray slacks.

He has been known to perform the greatest double back flips in baseball, acrobatic acts which he developed as a youngster when he jumped into piles of sawdust at a sawmill across the street from where he lived. He still performs an occasional flip, and with surprising results.

Ozzie flipped on his way out to the field on opening day in St. Louis last season and hit a home run. He flipped again on opening day this season and hit another home run.

So, should Ozzie flip more? He says no, it’s just a novelty. Smith’s manager, Whitey Herzog, doesn’t think so either, but Herzog sees nothing really wrong with Ozzie’s flips.

“Just as long as he doesn’t break his neck,” Herzog said.

Smith earns his keep not by flipping, but by fielding. After all, the swimming pool at his home in St. Louis is shaped like a baseball glove, not a pommel horse.

Ozzie has an uncanny knack of racing to his left or right, diving at a batted ball, then bouncing right back up and throwing out the runner at first base. This isn’t a particularly easy play for shortstops, except for Smith, who does it so often that Herzog is rarely surprised.

“I’ve gotten used to it,” said Herzog, hardly the excitable type, roused from a pregame nap.

“He’s the best shortstop who ever lived . . . defensively, “ Herzog said.

Maybe if Ozzie rubbed some shaving cream onto the barrel of his bat, his hitting would improve to the point where people talked about it as much as his fielding.

When the Cardinals played the Dodgers four times at Dodger Stadium over the weekend, Smith went 0 for 4--games. He was hitless in 15 at-bats, and that’s not going to help him reach his only unfulfilled goal in the major leagues, to hit .300.

Ozzie, it seems, was born to glove. Fielding comes naturally to Smith, but hitting seems to be running off in the other direction, so that’s why he has five Gold Gloves and a lifetime batting average of .238.

“Some people are born with the ability to hit the ball,” Smith said. “I was born with the ability to field. I wasn’t born with a lot of strength. The part of my game I have to work on is my offense. It’s the one area people always look at with me and probably always will, no matter how offensive I become. Once you get a label in this game, it seems to stick with you.”

These are wonderful times for Ozzie Smith, the kid from South Central Los Angeles who grew up and became a flipping millionaire. The Cardinals have been hanging onto first place in the National League East, and Smith is enjoying one of his finest seasons.

He has struck out only 13 times and committed just five errors. The National League record for fewest errors by a shortstop is nine by Larry Bowa in 1972, so that’s within reach. Ozzie, who is batting .268, even has an outside chance to hit .300. Whether he does or not, though, he knows he didn’t get rich because of his bat.

No, Ozzie is rich because he can field and because he happened to be a .238 hitter in the right place at the right time. That would be in St. Louis just after Bruce Sutter had left the Cardinals to take some of Ted Turner’s millions at Atlanta.

“You just have to take advantage of a situation when it arises,” Smith said. “People were really starting to question whether the organization was sincere about keeping their players around.”

There was an immediate answer by the Cardinals, and some of the club’s veterans suddenly were catching a lot of money being thrown in their direction. Pitcher Joaquin Andujar signed a three-year contract for $3.45 million, and second baseman Tommy Herr signed up for four years at $3.125 million.

Then in April, the Cardinals’ Louis B. Susman, a member of the board of directors, and Fred L. Kuhlmann, chief operating officer, pulled off their biggest deal with Smith’s contract

“Let’s be realistic,” Gottlieb said. “Ozzie was the best, so I had to get him the best.”

The Cardinals discovered the reality of Ozzie Smith to be expensive. They tore up Smith’s contract, which would have expired after this season, and gave him a $700,000 signing bonus. The next four seasons, Smith will make $1.8 million, $1.8 million, $2.2 million and $2.2 million for a five-year total of $8.7 million.

To put these figures into perspective, consider that Smith will earn about double what Fernando Valenzuela makes this season. Smith makes no apologies.

“With him (Valenzuela), you’re talking about a club that historically hasn’t really paid its players,” Smith said.

“Any time you set a precedent in anything, like I guess I did, there’s always going to be somebody criticizing you. Evidently somebody feels I’m worth it. They paid it to me.

“Baseball has always been an offensive-oriented game. That’s the thing that people have always gone to see. Yet it’s defense that puts your offense in position to win. It’s OK to pay a pitcher, who is basically a defensive player, so why not somebody like me?

“I didn’t get into the game to change the system. That’s just the way it came down. All I’ve tried to do is maximize my talent and be consistent, and it’s culminated with my being the highest-paid defensive player who ever played.”

Smith is big right now. He’s even got a public relations firm, Rogers & Cowan of Los Angeles, to represent him in matters of media interest. Smith, however, handles himself pretty well without help.

“He doesn’t need a manager,” Herzog said.

Maybe not, but there is something that he really seems to need, way down deep, to prove that he’s not pulling down his $2 million each year just by dragging his glove around the field.

“Everybody always talks about his fielding,” Cardinal first baseman Jack Clark said. “That’s so natural for him, and although it’s easy, he still works hard at it. But I’ll tell you, I think he’s like all of us--he has more fun hitting.

“You feel so much more as a hitter,” Clark said. “There’s no better feeling than as a hitter getting the hit that wins a game. There’s no play on defense that can give you a better feeling.”

In four years with the Padres and four with the Cardinals, Smith has had a lot of good feelings, but they have been experienced because of his glove. Under Clark’s definition of happiness, Smith is still unfulfilled.

Smith’s highest batting average in seven previous seasons was .258 his rookie season. Ozzie gets high marks, though, in doing things with his bat that do not help his average, such as moving a runner along the bases with an infield out.

Herzog said he has been trying to get Smith to hit the ball on the ground so as to take advantage of his speed and artificial playing surfaces.”

“I don’t know whether he’s able to hit .300,” Herzog said. “He’s been a streaky guy. We try to get him to keep the ball out of the air. He doesn’t strike out. He makes good contact, but he’s the kind of guy, with his size, that he really has to hit ground balls. His history here with us is that he has some real cold streaks. He’s not one of those guys who go 0 for 11. He might go 0 for 30.”

Even if Smith did go 0 for 30, it still wouldn’t detract from the beauty of his game in the field. Jack Buck, the Cardinal broadcaster, admitted he is sometimes at a loss for words to describe Smith’s defensive plays.

“I say, ‘Well, he did it again, folks,’ ” Buck said.

What Smith keeps doing again and again with his glove is setting goals of perfection for everyone else, said Red Schoendienst, a Cardinal coach. Schoendienst once played second base next to Marty Marion, generally acknowledged to be the standard by which all good-fielding shortstops are judged.

“Marty had great range, a great arm and could stop and throw right in his tracks,” Schoendienst said. “But day in and day out, I don’t think you could put anybody up there with Ozzie. He can do everything with the glove. He’s the best I’ve ever seen in about 40 years.

“One of these years, there’ll be some shortstop to come along and they’ll be comparing him to Ozzie,” Schoendienst said. “Ozzie will be the standard.”

So this is how it is for Osborne Earl Smith, the part-time acrobat and full-time millionaire shortstop. He flips even though he never had any gymnastics training--he has a trampoline now--and he hits even though he had only 68 games in the minor leagues.

Ozzie said batting has been on-the-job training in the majors because of his lack of time in the minor leagues. He’s getting stronger, he said, which has helped him hit four home runs this season after having hit just seven in seven previous seasons.

As for hitting more ground balls, well, Ozzie isn’t so sure that’s so smart.

“You can find out that hitting the ball on the ground can be very futile,” he said. “They have people up here in the big leagues who can get that ball and throw you out. People like me.”

Really, though, there isn’t anybody like Ozzie Smith. It’s no secret what makes him feel good and what has made him rich. There is magic in Ozzie’s glove. Whether there’s $2 million worth of it in there, who knows? Ozzie doesn’t.

“I really don’t get wrapped up in that, or any of that stuff like making the greatest plays or whether I’m the greatest,” Smith said.

“It’s never just one play. The most important word associated with the game of baseball is consistency. To be able to make the next play that comes to you, you have to forget that one, great play you just made.

“The thing that separates the good from the average or the good from the great is the degree of consistency with which you perform. I don’t necessarily believe I’m the greatest. I just want to maximize my God-given talent.

“Every night when I leave the ballpark, I ask myself this question: ‘Did you do your very best?’ To this point, the answer has been yes.”