By George, Royals Win One : Brett 4 for 4 With 2 Homers in 6-5 Victory

The winning hit was delivered by Steve Balboni, a man who had been resembling The Goat.

The winning pitcher was unheralded Steve Farr, a man they call The Beast.

A description for George Brett?

Kansas City Manager Dick Howser suggested Friday night that Brett’s plaque at Cooperstown will eventually say it all.

“Nobody ever did it any better than George did tonight,” Howser said after the Royals had beaten the Toronto Blue Jays, 6-5. “He’s having a Hall of Fame year on top of a Hall of Fame career. The only thing he can’t do is manage.”

Howser had let Brett try in the meaningless regular-season finale against Oakland. The Royals lost.

A loss Friday night would have virtually eliminated Kansas City from the postseason playoffs. They would have trailed Toronto, 0-3, in the best-of-seven series for the American League championship. The Blue Jays could have ended it tonight behind Dave Stieb.

Brett didn’t let it happen.

He hit a solo homer in the first inning. He made a breathtaking play to maintain the 1-0 lead in the third. He doubled and scored in the fourth. He hit a two-run homer in the sixth. He singled in the eighth and then scored the winning run as the Royals took the first of three straight games to be played in their own park.

Of Brett’s performance, Toronto Manager Bobby Cox said:

“It was as good as I’ve ever seen and as good as I ever want to see--unless one of my own players can do better.”

A crowd of 40,244, watching in intermittent mist and rain, saw Brett drive in 3 runs, score 4 runs, total 11 bases, rewrite the championship series record book and help the Royals dump the burden of two long losing streaks.

Kansas City had lost 10 straight postseason games. And Howser was winless in 11 playoff games as the Royal manager.

“It’s something of a relief in that I’m glad I don’t have to be asked about it anymore,” Howser said, “but I’ve never felt I had to defend my managerial record, though in the playoffs it was tough to defend, I guess.

“The thing I feel best about is that we’re back in this now. Look out. We have two more games at home. We can turn the entire thing around.”

Brett agreed. He said it was important that the Royals had shaken off the burden of their streaks. He said it had painted an inaccurate portrait of a fine manager. He acknowledged that the Royals had played poorly in the first two games with the Blue Jays, that they had given them away, “but we’ve been coming back all year,” he said, “not giving up. This was our most important game yet.”

And was it Brett’s best?

“I hit three home runs (in a 1978 playoff game) against Catfish Hunter,” he said. “Maybe this wasn’t my best, but it was my most important in a long time.”

It came on a night in which Kansas City’s Cy Young Award candidate, Bret Saberhagen, was unable to get his breaking pitches over and ultimately left in a seven-hit, five-run Toronto fifth.

Jesse Barfield and Rance Mulliniks each hit two-run homers in the inning as the Blue Jays sent 11 batters to the plate and took a 5-2 lead.

Jim Sundberg erased part of it with a solo homer in the fifth.

Brett erased the rest in the sixth when he followed a Willie Wilson single with his second homer.

Cox entered the series saying he did not intend to let Brett beat him. The Blue Jays had walked Brett 10 times in 12 regular-season games.

“I knew it was their goal to pitch around me,” Brett said Friday night, “but I’ve been surprised in that they’ve come right at me.”

With everything in their pitchers’ repertory.

Doyle Alexander tried a change-up in the first inning: home run to right.

He tried a slider in the fourth: double off the right-center-field wall.

He tried a fastball up and away in the sixth: home run to left, the opposite field.

The frustrated Alexander, who won 17 games in each of the last two seasons, left after the next batter in the sixth, Hal McRae, doubled for the seventh Kansas City hit.

Dennis Lamp, who pitched 3 shutout innings in Game 2, pitched two more in relief of Alexander, then yielded to Jim Clancy, normally a member of the Toronto rotation.

Clancy is working strictly in relief against the Royals. His appearance in the eighth inning was his first of the series. Brett was the first batter he faced. Forkball, down and in: broken-bat single to right.

“Hell,” a chagrined Cox said later, “that was as good as we could do against him.”

McRae sacrificed. Frank White grounded out, putting Brett on third.

Cox ordered an intentional walk to the left-handed-hitting Pat Sheridan. Who could question it? Balboni was next. Cox, of course, wanted his right-handed pitcher working to a right-handed batter, but there was more to it. Balboni had only one hit in his 24 previous playoff at-bats. He was hitless in his last 16, including 11 in this series. He also carried the weight of having made costly errors in each of the first two games.

The count went to 1-and-2. Balboni, who hit 36 homers and drove in 88 runs during the regular season, then hit a pop fly to shallow center. Center fielder Lloyd Moseby raced in. Shortstop Tony Fernandez and second baseman Damaso Garcia raced out. The ball fell untouched for a clean single, scoring Brett with the sixth and decisive run.

Balboni shook his head later and said he had been lucky. He said he took a bad swing at a bad pitch, hitting it off his fists.

“It’s ironic,” he said. “The way I’ve been going, you don’t expect them to fall in.”

Had he been discouraged, frustrated?

“There’s so much riding on each at-bat,” he said, “that I’ve tried to put the last one out of my mind and go on to the next. I’m not wrapped up in personal goals, so my discouragement has been with the way the team has played. Maybe this will get us started.”

Saberhagen had started shakily. He allowed two doubles, two singles and a walk through four innings. He had a shutout only because Brett took a run away from the Blue Jays in the third.

Garcia was at third with one out when Moseby hit a grounder down the line. Brett backhanded it behind the bag, his momentum carrying him into foul territory. Then, while still in motion, still moving away from the plate, he threw a bullet over Garcia’s left shoulder. The ball reached Sundberg in time to complete the improbable play.

“Of all the things George did tonight,” Howser said later, “that may have been the most impressive.”

It kept the Blue Jays off the board until the fifth, when Barfield and Mulliniks hit their two-run homers, Mulliniks connecting on an 0-and-2 pitch after Moseby had driven in a run on a line-drive single that caromed off Saberhagen’s left heel, temporarily flattening the 21-year-old right-hander.

Mulliniks completed the job with his first homer since Aug. 31. The call then went to left-hander Bud Black, who had pitched seven innings as the Game 2 starter.

Black had told Howser that he could pitch to a batter or two if needed. He got the first batter, Willie Upshaw, on a ground-out, but then yielded a pair of singles and a walk, loading the bases with two outs.

Barfield was next. The call went to Farr, a 28-year-old right-hander who appeared in 31 games with Cleveland last year and was then released in spring training, the victim of a contract dispute.

Farr returned to his Maryland home, confident he would find re-employment, but it was not until May that the Royals called to offer a Triple-A contract.

Farr went 10-4 at Omaha and was then summoned to join the Royal bullpen as a middle man. He made 16 appearances, producing a 2-1 record and a 3.11 earned-run average. He also appeared in Game 1 against Toronto, pitching poorly in relief of Charlie Leibrandt.

“I wasn’t challenging anyone,” he said. “I dug my own hole. I wasn’t going to do that tonight.”

He didn’t. He retired Barfield on a ground-out, ending the long fifth inning, then allowed only two singles over the final four innings, facing the minimum of 12 batters.

“The players call him The Beast,” Howser said of Farr. “He looks like Carmen Basilio (a former boxer). That’s the kind of makeup he’s got. He’s one of the reasons we’re here.”

The larger reason is Brett, who emerged with playoff series records for career hits (34), homers (8) and total bases (71), among other things.

Said Dane Iorg, the Kansas City utility player who gets a close-up view of Brett every night:

“That’s the difference between us and everyone else--George Brett. Every day, you think there’s nothing more he can do, then he goes out and finds more. He goes out and does it.”