Good Days Are Back for Reuschel

In the theatrical endeavor “The Bleacher Bums,” which has been running on stage in Los Angeles for a couple of hundred weeks now, the protagonist Chicago Cubs are playing baseball against those antagonistic St. Louis Cardinals, and the starting pitcher for our heroes takes care of the Cardinal leadoff man in short order.

“That was rapid riflin’ Ricky Reuschel,” says a blind kid in the left-field bleachers, listening to a transistor radio and then acting out the role of sportscaster for the other Wrigley Field bums. “Looks like he’s got that good fastball today.”

Another guy says this is good news, and, since he also likes the St. Louis pitcher, offers to make his usual wager that the Cubs will win--”but only by two.”

Those were the days. Cub fans could buy the cheap bleacher seats on the morning of the game, peel off their shirts--with certain restrictions depending on their gender--soak up some sun, soak up some suds, heckle the left fielder and root for friendly confines favorites such as Rick Reuschel, who for a while was the team’s starting pitcher supreme.

“I still do,” Reuschel said Tuesday afternoon, before a scheduled pitching assignment against the Dodgers, when asked if he ever thought back to those afternoon delights with the Cubs. “That’s probably the most memorable time of my career.”

He pitches for Pittsburgh now, and pitches well. For a time it appeared that Ricky Eugene Reuschel would have to find another way to make a living, since the seasons from 1981-84 had not really amounted to much. But now, at 36, Reuschel is back in Bleacher Bum-era form, firmly entrenched in the Pirate rotation, and already has won more games than he did during the last three years.

“I started a game about May 21 or 22 and beat the Astros, 3-1, and haven’t been out of the rotation since,” he said. And that hardly tells all of the story. The last-place Pirates won just 16 games from May 23 through July 8--and Reuschel won seven of them.

He began the season in Hawaii, wondering if that was where it was going to end. It is not an easy thing for a man who has been the ace of a major league staff to find himself pitching in the Pacific Coast League while approaching his 36th birthday. But Reuschel persevered. “I wasn’t ready to quit,” he says.

A decade ago, everything was going his way. He never made it to a World Series with Chicago, but he did go 20-10 in the 1977 season, when the Cubs kept themselves in the pennant race at least until August.

Reuschel liked it in Chicago. He had Bruce Sutter to back him up. His brother, Paul, pitched for the Cubs for a while. His family’s farm was in southern Illinois. His home was in suburban Arlington Heights--and still is.

It was a sad time for Reuschel, then, when the Cubs decided they didn’t need him anymore. On June, 12, 1981, he went to the New York Yankees in a swap for pitcher Doug Bird and $400,000. For the next season and a half, which is all the time Reuschel spent with the Yankees, he won four games.

Back then, he said he wasn’t comfortable in New York, would just as soon go back to Chicago, and he even promised at one point that he would pitch again for the Cubs some day.

He did. After missing all of the 1982 season with an injury, after spending much of 1983 with farm clubs in Columbus, Ohio, and the Quad Cities in Illinois, rapid riflin’ Rick Reuschel returned to Wrigley Field. He picked up a win for them before the season was over, and five more in 1984.

But luck was not on his side. Reuschel was left off the roster for the postseason series with the San Diego Padres, after the Cubs, miracle of miracles, had won their division title. They did not think he could help. They said he was hurt. He said he was not. They told Rick Reuschel: “Sorry, your season is over.”

So, during the off-season, he left them a second time, signing as a free agent with the Pirates. “They made me the best offer,” he said. Pittsburgh already had a staff of solid starting pitchers, but still decided to give Reuschel a chance.

Since then, the Pirates have moved John Candelaria to the bullpen, have demoted the snake-bitten Jose DeLeon, and have mourned tearfully the trade that sent John Tudor to St. Louis. Reuschel turned out to be about the only good thing that has happened to the Pittsburgh Pirates this season.

As for the Cubs, boy, could they use Reuschel now. They paid Rick Sutcliffe, Steve Trout and Dennis Eckersley enough money to keep Harry Caray in Budweiser for several weeks, but what they have gotten for their money thus far is a lot of nagging injuries and an overworked bullpen.

Very little is the same at Wrigley. You can’t even be sure of buying bleacher tickets on the morning of a game anymore. The Bums are wondering if they will be buying their tickets in Schaumburg some day. They aren’t sure what terrible thing will happen next: electric lights, maybe, or an order from the front office that from this day forward, all Cub hitters must swing at the ball with rolled-up Chicago Tribunes.

Rick Reuschel is doing fine without them. “Pittsburgh has turned out good for me,” he said. “I’ve got no complaints.”