For One Play, O.E. Smith Replaces Wizard at Short

The sun sets in the West.

The freeway is jammed.

Dodger Stadium is crowded.

Ella Fitzgerald sings great.

Elizabeth Taylor looks great.

Fernando Valenzuela pitches great.

Ozzie Smith misses a ground ball.

Ozzie Smith misses a ground ball!

Oh, sure. And Tom Lasorda eats wheat germ; Frank Sinatra sings Prince songs, and Orson Welles goes roller-skating in Venice.

Ozzie Smith doesn’t miss ground balls.

Except he did.

Just when you think everything in Los Angeles is as it should be--cars on the road, celebrities on the premises, Fernando on the mound--the Dodgers win a baseball game because the shortstop of the St. Louis Cardinals, the man with the golden mitt, the Nureyev of shortstops, lets a grounder go right by him.

It happened in the sixth inning of Wednesday night’s National League playoff game, when the Dodgers were clinging to a 1-0 lead. Bill Madlock was the batter. He slapped one in the hole between short and third. Ozzie Smith got to it. He always gets to those.

But he did not catch it.

The ball took a bad hop, no doubt about that. It was far enough to his right that it required a backhand stab, no doubt about that. It was scored a hit instead of an error, and, well, there was some doubt about that. But despite the fact that it was a fairly tough chance, as everyone in both clubhouses agreed, it was the sort of play Osborne Smith probably would make “99 times out of 100,” Cardinal Manager Whitey Herzog said. Probably 999 out of 1,000, using a mitten for a glove.

“When you get a reputation that precedes you,” Smith said, “people start taking everything you do for granted.”

Madlock wound up on second base with what was judged a double. It triggered a three-run inning that gave Valenzuela a 4-0 lead, on a night where runs were hard to come by. The Dodgers won, 4-1, with the most unlikely of breaks.

“I knew the minute I walked in here that this question was going to come up, that I was going to get asked about not catching that ball,” Smith said in the Cardinal clubhouse. “Well, hell. If I could have, I would have.”

When you hit the baseball to Ozzie Smith, initials O.E., nicknamed the Wizard of Oz, what you do is run to first base, to prevent being fined, and then go back to the bench. When Madlock hit the ball, he did not imagine himself sprinting to second base. “All you think about is making a U-turn like all those U-turns you made before,” Madlock said.

The Dodgers could not be blamed for blinking. The sight of Smith not catching something belongs on Steven Spielberg’s “Amazing Stories.” You can watch and watch for weeks without seeing anything like it.

“I’ve seen him get guys out on plays when I can’t even believe he got to the ball,” Dodger second baseman Steve Sax said. “He’s the best fielder in the game, hands down.”

First baseman Enos Cabell couldn’t resist a tease. “They pay him $2 million and he don’t hit .300, so he’s supposed to catch those,” Cabell said.

Truth is, no one admires Smith more. “He’s so automatic, it’s like watching somebody playing catch against a garage, catching the ball when it bounces off the cement,” Cabell said. “Nobody else would have even got to that ball, except maybe our guy, Mariano Duncan.”

Smith was entitled to an off day. He hit .275 this season and made only 14 errors at what is arguably the game’s most demanding daily position. Besides, it was more of an off play than an off day. He did have two hits, after all.

“What happens, happens,” Smith said. “You either catch it or you don’t. If I had kept my head down, maybe I would have had it. But it bounced funny and went off my wrist. It was a lot tougher than it looked.

“I accept whatever decision the scorer made. The fans see me make a play like that from a distance and they take it for granted. But it’s not always possible to catch every ball. Maybe they look at it and say, ‘My God. Ozzie Smith missed a ball.’ But I’m just a human being, you know.

“It’s like this: When you make a great play, you got to put it behind you, because it’s got nothing whatsoever to do with the next play you make. Well, it’s the exact same thing with a bad play, if you want to call this a bad play. I’ve just got to pretend it never happened and get on with business.

“Maybe I’ll make a good play in the next game,” said Ozzie Smith.

It would amaze no one.