With Brett Hitless, Royals Go to Plan 2 : They Ask Jackson for a Shutout, and the Left-hander Delivers

When you’re a Kansas City Royal, baseball is stripped to the bare-boned basics. When you’re a Kansas City Royal, your methods of winning baseball games are limited to a precious two.

One: You wait for George Brett to hit a home run.

Two: You pitch a shutout.

No other options exist. Just ask Charlie Leibrandt, who had a shutout Saturday night through eight innings but came away a 3-1 loser.

Sunday afternoon, with the Toronto Blue Jays about to rub playoff elimination into the Royals’ faces, George Brett went hitless. Somehow, though, the Royals still managed to score two runs.

That dumped everything else into the the lap of 23-year-old starting pitcher Danny Jackson. “When you only get two runs, you have no choice,” said Kansas City Manager Dick Howser, by now an expert on the subject. “You need shutout pitching.”

And from Jackson the Royals got it . . . although it was one of the darndest shutouts you’ll ever see. Toronto had eight hits in the first six innings, leaving six runners stranded in scoring position.

The Blue Jays began the fourth inning with back-to-back hits, but had George Bell thrown out while trying to go from first to third on Cliff Johnson’s single.

The Blue Jays began the fifth inning with back-to-back hits, but left Garth Iorg at third and Ernie Whitt at second when the next three Toronto hitters failed to get the ball out of the infield.

The Blue Jays began the sixth inning with Bell drilling the ball toward the fence in left-center field--only to have a leaping catch by Willie Wilson interrupt an extra-base hit. They continued by loading the bases with two out--and left them loaded when Jackson got Whitt to ground to second.

Soon, the Blue Jays began to run out of chances. Jackson allowed no more the rest of the way, retiring the final 10 batters he faced to wrap up a 2-0 victory.

It was a nice little eight-hitter, brought to you by the same man who virtually ended the Angels’ season 10 days ago with a 4-1 triumph. In that one, Jackson scattered 11 hits in 8 innings.

Meet Danny Jackson, the man who was born to pitch out of a stretch.

“That’s the way he throws,” Kansas City catcher Jim Sundberg said. “He gets into trouble, and he’s able to get out of it.”

In the process, Jackson also stretches his manager’s nerves and patience to the limit. But Howser, whose team tied for last in the league in hitting, has learned to live with a little anxiety.

“We had a good trade-off today,” Howser said. “They missed a few good scoring chances and we got enough for a run.

“Danny pitched out of some jams. But, that’s what good pitchers do. And it’s not a case of the hitters not doing their job. Give the pitcher some credit. They weren’t hitting any line drives out there. Just a few nubbers.”

Nervous? You have to be kidding, Royal catcher Jim Sundberg kidded.

“Two-to-nothing,” Sundberg mused. “That’s a laugher for us. For us, two runs are a big outpouring.”

The Royal pitchers have learned to make due. “They had to do the same thing last year so they knew what they were getting into this year,” Howser said. “I think they’re all due to get raises.”

But life lived continually on the edge isn’t easy. Jackson had just pitched the game of his life--a shutout that preserved his team’s chances in this championship series--and his reaction was strangely subdued, almost a non-reaction.

“I’m exhausted,” Jackson explained. “I’m mentally drained. All I want to do is go home and take a nap.”

The mind works overtime when you’re pitching with a 2-0 lead, not knowing when--or if--your side will score again. Especially when the other side has runners on second and third in almost every inning.

“You bear down,” Jackson said--so much so that when Jackson strode into each pitch he “couldn’t hear anything. When I’m throwing the ball, I’m not hearing the crowd. Nothing. I get into a zone and no one can penetrate it.”

Lately, with each start growing in importance for Jackson, he begins the bearing-down procedure the morning he’s scheduled to pitch. It starts the same way, with Jackson listening to his favorite tape, “The Eye of The Tiger,” by the rock band Survivor.

“That song was popular in 1982. That’s when I did some of my best pitching in Double-A,” Jackson said. “I listen to it and start to visualize how I pitched then.”

As Jackson tunes in, he begins to tune everything else out.

“I feel sorry for my wife,” Jackson said. “She asks me something and it’s always, ‘Yeah, what did you say?’ If I’m pitching that day and driving around, the other drivers better watch out.”

Sunday, Jackson remained in his own private zone for nine innings.