National League : Rose Has His Doubts on ‘Mr. America’ at Bat

It’s a safe bet that when Dodger second baseman Steve Sax goes to the beach, no one kicks sand in his face.

Sax could feel right at home with the body-builders who work out at Gold’s Gym in Venice. Pete Rose, in fact, wonders if Sax might be muscle-bound.

Rose is as fit a 44-year-old as you’re going to find, but he has no use for weightlifting in baseball.

His advice to aspiring ballplayers?

“Don’t have anything to do with lifting free weights,” Rose told Bill Conlin in the Sporting News.

“I look at Steve Sax and shake my head. When he came up with the Dodgers, I saw a little, quick guy with a quick bat. Then he went gn some weight program and now he looks like Mr. America.

“But check out his swing and his batting average. He looks all tied up through the shoulders.

“My message to kids is, no free weights if you’re interested in a baseball career, particularly if you’re a pitcher or an infielder, and if you get into a Nautilus program, make sure you balance it out with stretching exercises.

“You don’t need to look like ‘The Terminator’ to be a good baseball player. I built my body up to the way it looks now loading and unloading Railway Express trucks in Cincinnati in the off-season after my first year in pro ball in Geneva in the New York-Penn League. I made $2.83 an hour for hauling big boxes around eight hours a night, and that’s how I got these big arms.”

Looking for a pitcher who might know how to get Pedro Guerrero out? Try Fernando Valenzuela, who once pitched against Guerrero in a Caribbean series. Guerrero went 0 for 3 against him.

“He struck me out twice, too,” Guerrero said.

Valenzuela got him not with his famous screwball, but with curveballs, Guerrero said.

Guerrero claims to have been at a disadvantage, however. “I had been in Hawaii and went to Los Angeles before going to Mexico (for the Caribbean series),” Guerrero said. “I hadn’t played in 2 1/2 weeks.”

Trivia question from Jay Johnstone, in his new book “Temporary Insanity,” written with Daily News columnist Rick Talley.

“What do Tom Lasorda, Danny Ozark, Jim Frey, Lee Elia, Chuck Tanner, Dick Williams, Billy Martin, Roger Craig, Bob Lemon, Lefty Phillips, Bill Rigney, Jim Bunning, Rocky Bridges, Marty Marion, Joe Adcock, Bobby Wine and Sherm Lollar have in common?

“Answer: They all survived managing me.”

Of all of his managers, Frey of the Cubs seemed to appreciate Johnstone’s sense of humor least. He didn’t think it was funny, for example, when Johnstone wore Lasorda’s shirt with pillows stuffed under it and waddled onto the field. He also didn’t like Johnstone’s showing up for a group picture dressed as Michael Jackson instead of wearing a tux, as the rest of the Cub players wore.

“Maybe some day Jim Frey and I can meet away from the ballpark and have a few laughs,” Johnstone writes. “But I don’t think I’ll wear a white glove or stuff any pillows under my shirt. For Jimmy, I think I may need a different routine.”

Add Johnstone: Besides chronicling his own repertoire of pranks, Johnstone has listed some of baseball’s more bizarre routines:

John Lowenstein attacked cakes with a bat. Mickey Hatcher put a pig in Lasorda’s office. Bert Blyleven gave chewing tobacco to his Little League players. Richie Zisk filled Rene Lachemann’s hotel bed with Jell-O. Al Hrabosky carried voodoo pins and dolls and once bit the head off a fan’s parrot. Doug Rader liked to hide among clubhouse ceiling pipes and spit tobacco juice on victims below. Moe Drabowsky used the bullpen phone to place international calls. Mark Lemongello once bit his own shoulder. And the list goes on.

As Johnstone asks: “And they’re calling me a Moon Man?”

Did you hear the one about the . . . quadruple steal? It happened Thursday in Chicago’s Wrigley Field, and naturally, it involved the St. Louis Cardinals, the barons of Fleet Street.

Cardinal rookie Vince Coleman, who was on second, and Willie McGee, on first, pulled a conventional double steal in the first inning of their 9-8 loss to the Chicago Cubs.

But Coleman overslid third base, saw he couldn’t get back to the bag, and headed for home.

The Cubs had him trapped in a rundown, but somebody forgot to cover home plate and Coleman scored. McGee, meanwhile, tooled into third.

How to score it? At first, official scorer Randy Minkoff called it a double steal, but after consulting with league statistician Seymour Siwoff of the Elias Sports Bureau, he awarded each runner two stolen bases.

“(Siwoff) told me the rule book doesn’t specifically cover the situation,” Minkoff said. “He said, ‘You’ve just seen one of the most unusual plays in baseball.’ ”

Neither manager agreed with the call. Manager Jim Frey of the Cubs said that Coleman should have been called out for running out of the basepath. Cardinal Manager Whitey Herzog said it should have been ruled a fielder’s choice.

Add steals: On the play, Coleman broke Juan Samuel’s record for most stolen bases by a rookie, set last season when the Phillies’ second baseman stole 72 times. Coleman’s double steal gave him 74.

Add Herzog: In the same game, the Cardinals lost in the 14th inning when Cub shortstop Larry Bowa laid down a perfect suicide squeeze bunt with a two-strike count.

Bowa said it was the first time he could ever recall squeezing with two strikes.

Herzog, asked if he had suspected Bowa might try, said:

“Sure, we thought he might still squeeze. What the heck, he can’t hit.”