World Series Notes : Tudor Can Pitch Three Games, If Needed

On what was to be the seventh day of baseball in the National League Championship Series, the St. Louis Cardinals rested. For that they were grateful. They were thrilled not only to win the pennant with a 7-5 victory over the Dodgers in Game 6 Wednesday, but also because they wanted and needed a day off rather than a Game 7.

Had the Cardinals lost Wednesday, manager Whitey Herzog would have been forced to use John Tudor, his best pitcher, in Game 7. If St. Louis then won the pennant, Tudor would have been able to start a maximum of two games in the World Series. Now Tudor can pitch three times, if needed, against the American League champion Royals, including Game 1 here tonight. Kansas City, which needed seven games to defeat Toronto, used its ace, Bret Saberhagen, in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series Wednesday night.

“We didn’t want to go to a seventh game,” St. Louis second baseman Tommy Herr said. “The advantage could have switched to the Dodgers. And we had our eye on the American League series. We knew both of their aces were pitching in Game 7 Saberhagen and Toronto’s Dave Stieb. Now we’ve got our ace ready to pitch three times if he has to. They don’t.”

This is the first season that major-league baseball has used a best-of-seven format to determine its league championships. A bit of good fortune was involved for it to work as well as it did, with the Royals and Cardinals winning pennants on the same day. In the instance of a four-game sweep, the American League playoffs might have ended one week prior to the start of the World Series. A sweep in the National League series would have given the pennant winner five off-days.

Herzog, still wet from celebratory champagne Wednesday, took note of what he considered to be a flaw in the playoff system. When he was asked to comment on having Tudor available for three games, Herzog said, “Well, he will be if we need him. If Danny Cox is ready he will pitch the second game and Joaquin Andujar will pitch the opener in St. Louis.

“If they are going to have a seven-game league championship series, they should not allow them to end on separate days. It is to the advantage of one club. It worked out this year because we both finished Wednesday. But if we or the Dodgers had finished tomorrow night, we would have been at a disadvantage. It is a disadvantage being the club to play last.”

The day off Thursday was as beneficial for leftfielder Vince Coleman as it was for Tudor. Coleman missed the final three games of the series against the Dodgers when the automatic tarpaulin at Busch Stadium rolled over his left leg Sunday. Coleman took batting practice and did some running before Game 6, but Herzog said, “The trainer thought he was only 60 to 65 percent.” Herzog added that it was unlikely Coleman would have played in a Game 7.

But when Herzog was asked if Coleman would be ready for the opening game of the World Series, the manager responded, “I would bet on it.”

The most talked-about team, other than the participants, was the Mets. Hardly a day went by when the Cardinals or Dodgers didn’t make some reference to the Mets. Once Jack Clark remarked, “If our series against the Mets wasn’t a playoff atmosphere, I don’t know what is.” Then, when Herzog was asked to make some general comments right after the clinching game, he started by saying, “Having to beat a club like the Mets, who won 98 games and we had to win 101, that’s a compliment to our ballclub.”

The Cardinals’ win in Los Angeles snapped a 13-game winning streak by home teams in National League Championship Series play.

When Andujar lost a high bouncer in the sun in the fifth inning Wednesday, it recalled a great World Series moment. Andujar was charged with an error and the Dodgers went on to score two unearned runs, increasing their lead to 4-1. In Game 6 of the 1952 World Series, Brooklyn pitcher Billy Loes lost a ground ball in the sun. The hit, off the bat of Yankees pitcher Vic Raschi, scored the tying run. The Yankees rallied to win the game and the series. When Andujar was told that such a freak play had occurred before, he said, “Not to me it hasn’t.” Then, when he was told it happened to Billy Loes, he said, “Billy who?”

One more time with Dodgers manager Tom Lasorda, when asked why he didn’t walk Jack Clark, who belted the pennant-winning homer: “It’s easy to second-guess now. But nobody came down to the dugout and told me he was going to hit a homer. If they did, I would have walked him.”

And from Clark: “It had crossed my mind the last couple of nights when I was trying to get to sleep, if I’d get a chance to hit in that kind of situation and if I’d come through. It happened.”