American League : Wilson Out, but Royals’ Season Isn’t Shot, Yet

If the race in the West goes down to the final weekend, when the Angels play three games in Texas, Manager Gene Mauch is praying that nobody gets sick, that nobody gets hurt.

“Nobody is going to get a shot in Texas,” Mauch said.

He was alluding to the fact that it has been a tough summer for Dr. B.J. Mycoskie, the respected team physician of the Texas Rangers.

Mycoskie first gave Billy Martin an injection for back spasms and punctured Martin’s lung, putting the New York Yankees manager in the hospital. Martin is still not at full strength.

Then, eight days ago, Mycoskie gave Kansas City center fielder Willie Wilson an injection for what the Royals said was a cold.

Wilson had a reaction to the penicillin and returned to Kansas City, where the Royal medical staff, suspecting that the injection had ruptured a blood vessel, performed surgery on his left buttock to relieve swelling. There was no rupture, but the suturing is expected to sideline Wilson another week, meaning he will miss the three-game series with the Angels that begins Monday night at Anaheim Stadium.

The Royals responded by signing Omar Moreno, who had been released by the Yankees in August, but the catalytic Wilson, the Kansas City leadoff hitter, is virtually irreplaceable.

Said catcher Jim Sundberg, who has been sidelined almost three weeks with a pulled calf muscle and is now ready to return: “You want to be positive about the thing, but you can’t skirt how valuable Willie is to the club. That’s the only thing that can keep this club from winning--injuries.”

Manager Dick Howser said: “A guy gets hit with a ball or hurt breaking up a double play, you can accept it. I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s tougher to take.” Tougher to take because of the way Wilson was sidelined and because, Howser said, “guys generally play with colds.”

Said Mauch: “I can empathize, but it’s hard for me to feel bad about it. We’ve gone without Doug DeCinces for more than 30 days this season. We went without Rod Carew for more than 30 and without Gary Pettis for more than 30.”

Mauch thought about the schedule that pits the Angels against the Royals again during the final week of the season, allowed the hint of a smile and said: “If this had happened (to Wilson) just a little later, he might have missed both series.”

How good is Bret Saberhagen, the Kansas City sophomore out of Reseda’s Cleveland High? Consider the numbers. He’ll face the Angels Monday night with a 17-5 record and 10 wins in his last 11 decisions, a span in which he has walked only seven.

“How good is Sabe?” reliever Dan Quisenberry said rhetorically. “How good is Gooden? We don’t get to see Gooden. They don’t get to see Sabe.”

Win or lose, the Angels can be proud, at least in the view of Detroit Tigers Manager Sparky Anderson, who offered the following comments on the Angels in the Detroit News:

“They compete. That’s what I like. You don’t lead all summer by accident. They’ve done a great job.

“I don’t know another team in this league that’s done more things right. I guarantee you that California has outbunted everyone, moved up runners and scored more runners from third than everyone. When you lead as long as they have, you’ve done everything right or you’re lucky, and I don’t think this is a case of being lucky.

“The Angels will be able to walk tall even if they don’t win it.”

The Minnesota clubhouse didn’t figure to be big enough for both pitching coach Johnny Podres and new Twin Manager Ray Miller, the former Baltimore pitching coach. Podres quit the other day.

“I don’t want to stay where I’m not wanted,” he said. “He (Miller) doesn’t like me because I know more about pitching than he does.”

It has been a disappointing summer in Baltimore, but the Orioles may have found a third baseman. He’s Floyd Rayford, 28, who was reared in the Angel farm system, traded to Baltimore for outfielder Larry Harlow in June 1979 and has spent 10 1/2 seasons bouncing from position to position in three organizations.

Rayford entered the weekend series with the Angels having started 41 of the last 44 games at third and batting .337. His overall average was .333. Rayford previously drew more attention because of his waistline. He weighs about 200 pounds and is said to be 5-10, though 5-8 or 5-9 seems to be closer. His nickname is Sugar Bear.

“I see Earl Battey (the similarly built former Minnesota catcher) in him,” Oakland A’s pitcher Don Sutton said. “He looks like a guy who should be playing for Bingo Long’s Traveling All-Stars or the Homestead Grays. I never thought of him as that good a hitter, but he’s really shown me something.”

He’s shown the Orioles enough that they’ll go to spring training with a remodeled and a set infield of Rayford at third, Cal Ripken at short, Alan Wiggins at second and Eddie Murray at first. They also plan to send outfielder John Shelby to the winter instructional league, where he’ll play the infield, a potential understudy to Ripken and Wiggins.

Mike Flanagan, the former Cy Young Award winner who has won 12 or more games in seven of eight seasons with the Orioles, faces the Angels today with a 2-4 record and a 5.84 ERA. Flanagan rejoined the Orioles in midseason after rupturing an Achilles’ tendon playing basketball in January.

“I’m just going through my spring training, my dead-arm period, at the worst possible time,” he said. “The hitters have had five or six months to get their timing. I have to be more patient. One of the problems has been that I’ve been too hard on myself.”

Flanagan’s problems are just one factor in the unexpected breakdown of the Orioles’ staff, which has come in a year in which Baltimore is averaging more than five runs per game and leads the league in home runs.

“We’ve waited 10 years to get all these runs, and for whatever reason--Palmer’s absence, my absence--the pitching didn’t produce,” Flanagan said. “When guys struggle, it compounds itself. We’ve always had two pitchers hot at a time in the past and we haven’t had that this year.”

Wade Boggs’ bat control is such that he has gotten 96 of his 194 hits after being down in the count by two strikes and no balls. The Boston Red Sox third baseman has not popped up to the infield once this season. Last year, he popped up only six times. The closest call came in April when he lofted a foul fly down the left-field line in Chicago and third baseman Luis Salazar raced back to make the catch.

Two reasons for the Tigers’ demise: They are assured of their first losing record against the West--38-43--since 1977, and their team batting average of .253 is the lowest since 1975, when they batted .249 and lost 102 games.

Mike Easler, Boston’s designated hitter, could have joined Lou Gehrig as the only player ever to hit three grand slams in a five-game span, but he was robbed of the honor Thursday night by umpire Ted Hendry.

Playing against Cleveland, Easler hit a high drive that everyone in Fenway Park except Hendry saw bounce off the top of the net above the left-field wall for what should have been a bases-loaded homer. Hendry, operating in a three-man crew, raced out and said the ball hit on the warning track, a stunning difference of about 75 feet from where it had actually hit. Easler was restricted to a three-run triple.

Indian left fielder Joe Carter, who did not even pursue the ball when it fell back on the field, shook his head later and said of Hendry, “If he had asked me, I’d have told him it was a home run.”

While much attention has been given to the possibility of a Freeway Series between the Angels and Dodgers or a Subway Series between the Yankees and Mets, there’s also the possibility of a Missouri I-70 Series between Kansas City and St. Louis.