Who’s on Third? Just the Performer the Dodgers Need

Ordinarily, when a ballplayer wins four league batting championships--only 11 players have done it--you expect to have to cut the uniform off him, and it will be the same uniform he wore when he got his first hit. He might even become a statue in the park in that uniform.

So, you look at the life and times of Bill Madlock Jr. and check the luggage tags and you figure you’re looking at a lifetime .240 hitter, a guy in and out of the lineup, maybe a guy they keep around for late-inning defensive insurance.

Bill Madlock is probably the best pure striker of the baseball in the game today, certainly in his league. He has this short murderous chop at the ball, he could get wood on a wasp in a cave, and most pitchers consider him the most dangerous man they could face with a game or pennant on the line.

He won the first game of the 1985 postseason National League playoffs Wednesday by doing what he does better than any man in the tournament--getting wood on a sliding, curving baseball and driving it somewhere with authority. And following this up with the most alert, intelligent base running of the evening.

Neither hit is apt to have Cooperstown calling for the ball. Madlock has hit 1,800 balls in his career better and harder--but these two won the game. Madlock does this well, too.

In the fourth inning, the game was deadlocked and going nowhere fast. There was one out when Madlock picked out a chest-high slider and drove it right at the Cardinal third baseman on a hop. The scorer figured it for an error, probably because no one ever mixed up third baseman Terry Pendleton with a Pie Traynor, anyway.

A couple of pitches later and Bill Madlock was sliding safely into second with a clear stolen base. The Cardinal infielders reacted as if they had just been bitten by Santa Claus. Bill Madlock is a few pounds over his best base-stealing weight and, although it was the 170th base steal of his career, it was just his eighth as a Dodger.

One pitch later, Pedro Guerrero had hit a bloop drive, parachuting into right field. It looked catchable, but not to the practiced eye of Bill Madlock who took off with the trajectory of the ball and scored well ahead of the right fielder’s throw. It was a masterful piece of base-running.

In the sixth inning, the score was 1-0, one out, when Madlock picked out another rising fast ball and drove it to the right of the shortstop from Oz, the wonderful wizard from over the rainbow, Mr. O. E. Smith.

When the ball shot off Ozzie Smith’s glove, there was a shocked silence. The crowd reacted as if someone had thrown a brick through a stained glass window. In the midst of it, Bill Madlock splashed down on second base. The scorer this time gave up. It was a double, he ruled. Either on the theory that, if Ozzie Smith can’t make that play, neither can St. Peter, or on the theory that you can’t keep ascribing Madlock line smashes as outs.

A few seconds, after a purposeful walk to Guerrero and an out by Mike Marshall, and Bill Madlock was scoring from second on a Mike Scioscia hit to center.

It was enough to win the ball game but it ignited a rally that put it out of reach altogether.

Bill Madlock is a careerist who, like most, performs better when his emotions are up. He has spent too much of his career in the slums of baseball not to be appreciative when he moves into a split level with a three-car garage.

Bill Madlock started out life with the old Washington Senators which is the baseball real estate equivalent of the Marseilles waterfront. When they became the Texas Rangers, it was a move west but not up. Madlock got traded--for Ferguson Jenkins, no less--to the Cubs.

The Cubs had a lock on last place in those days. “I used to look over and see great players like Ernie Banks and Billy Williams and we used to have a saying ‘Well, it’s World Series time--time to get the television fixed.’ ”

Madlock nevertheless batted .313,.354 and .339 for the Cubs and won two batting titles. The Cubs didn’t need batting titles, they needed bodies and they traded Madlock to San Francisco for two guys who were never going to win batting titles or pennants either.

San Francisco, the town that cost Willie Mays Babe Ruth’s record, was the equivalent of playing on the north slope of Everest for Bill Madlock and his average dipped to the low .300’s until Pittsburgh beckoned, dangling an entire pitching staff.

Madlock responded with two more batting championships and a pennant-winning year for the Pirates but as the franchise chilled so did Madlock’s bat.

When the Dodgers got him this year, shoulder and elbow injuries and general despondency had dipped his average to the .250’s.

No pitcher in the league believed those numbers and neither did the Dodgers’ Al Campanis. He dealt off two outfielders and a first baseman to shore up a position which has been an eyesore in the Dodger infield for two years.

Madlock reacted as he did when he left the barren wastes of Candlestick Park. He shaved off a beard which he had sported for four years in Pittsburgh. “I would have shaved my head,” he acknowledges.

He batted .360, he got 40 hits and 20 runs in just a little over a month with the Dodgers, he got hits in 26 of 33 games. He anchors an otherwise inexperienced (in big games) infield.

He’s like a kid in a candy store, he’s so happy it makes him sick. He’s a baseball rarity in another sense. Usually, when a guy sets sail through four or five franchises, it’s because the ones that had him wanted the divorce. Madlock goes because the franchises that want him make an offer that can’t be refused.

Two of the luggage stickers may say National League pennant on them before he’s through. His traveling show may be over even though it can be billed “Have pennant, will travel.”