Tudor Brings Down the House on Royals, 3-0 : Five-Hitter Leaves Cardinals a Win Away From Series Title

Cardinal pitcher John Tudor steered St. Louis into the express lane of the I-70 World Series with a 3-0 shutout of the Kansas City Royals Wednesday night.

The Cardinals, who were on Fleet Street all season but have stolen only one base in the first four games of the Series, turned down Power Alley against Royal pitcher Bud Black. Tito Landrum, a fashion model whose next assignment may be to wear the Series MVP crown on his head, and Willie McGee hit solo home runs to put the Cardinals a game away from their 10th World Series championship.

Kansas City, down three games to one going into tonight’s game here, was possibly looking at a long, lonesome highway ride home after Tudor, reigning member of the Peabody, Mass., branch of the House of Tudor, created a Royal blush with a regal five-hitter.

“It was very embarrassing, very frustrating,” said Kansas City blueblood George Brett, who was made to look silly twice while being fanned by Tudor, who struck out eight Royals in all. “My head was going one way, my body another.

“He’s changed a lot. I wish he hadn’t changed that much. A little bit would have been fine, but he’s done a complete turnaround. Now, I know why he threw 10 shutouts.”

Tudor, who has beaten the Royals twice in the Series after splitting two games with the Dodgers in the National League playoffs, is 3-1 in postseason play, with an earned-run average of 1.59.

Wednesday night, he threw 106 pitches, 78 for strikes, and tossed just one pitch to get out of his only jam, when the Royals loaded the bases with two out in the seventh.

Hal McRae, an old Tudor nemesis--he hit .468 with five home runs against Tudor when he was still an ordinary left-hander in the American League--came to the plate as a pinch-hitter for the light-hitting Buddy Biancalana after Tudor had walked the slumping but still dangerous Steve Balboni.

“The first thing that went through my mind,” Tudor said, “is that I’m in a lot of trouble. When I saw Hal taking his jacket off, I tried to get Balboni.”

Too late for that. But McRae hit into a force play at third on Tudor’s first pitch, ending the inning.

“I did just about everything right tonight,” Tudor said.

On the mound, his work spoke for itself. Off the mound, however, he spoke for himself, which didn’t come out quite so smoothly.

“I don’t care what you write, write whatever you want, which is what you do most of the time anyway,” Tudor said to one reporter, who had inquired why Tudor took such a condescending attitude toward the media.

Example: When Tudor saw the crush of reporters around his locker in the Cardinal clubhouse, he said: “What’s it take to get a media pass, a license?”

Right or wrong, the reporter had suggested that people were forming impressions of Tudor as a person by the way he was conducting himself during these interview sessions. Tudor’s eventual response: “You want me to take a swing at you--would that make it easier?”

So much for diplomacy.

That exchange, of course, was of little consequence to the outcome of the game, in which Tudor also took no prisoners. He retired 13 straight Royals between Willie Wilson’s bloop single with one out in the first and Balboni’s two-out single in the fifth. Balboni also drew Tudor’s only walk of the game, in the seventh.

Landrum, hitting a team-leading .400 even though he is playing only because rookie Vince Coleman is hurt, hit an opposite-field home run in the second. In the third, McGee drove a 1-and-2 pitch into the left-field seats.

Two innings later, Terry Pendleton tripled and scored when catcher Tom Nieto laid down a squeeze bunt with a full count.

Black barehanded the ball and made an off-balance throw to the plate that might have been there in time to get Pendleton, but the ball went under the glove of catcher Jim Sundberg. Black was charged with an error.

“The throw wasn’t that bad,” Sundberg said. “It wasn’t that far from me, but it was a situation where the guy was coming sidearm hard on top of the plate. It was hard to move when you consider the distance, the speed and the circumstance. I didn’t have time to react.”

Tudor showed little reaction to his win.

“I’m much more of a competitor than I show,” he said. “I can’t jump around saying, ‘That’s it, we won,’ because we have one more game left to win.”

While Tudor didn’t act like someone enjoying himself, his teammates derived great pleasure from his 16th consecutive win at home.

“I don’t think he (Tudor) is uncomfortable with it,” said second baseman Tommy Herr, talking about Tudor’s response to all the attention he’s receiving. “He just resents the fact that people are acting so surprised with what he’s doing.

“In his own mind, he’s been a good pitcher all along. He just needed a good team with a good defense.

“People often have approached him with this I-can’t-believe-you’re-doing-this type of attitude.”

But even Tudor, little better than a .500 pitcher until this season, concedes that there was no way to anticipate this kind of success.

“I couldn’t imagine a year like this,” he said.

The Royals, one game away from ending their year, aren’t conceding anything.

“This looks like the regular season and the playoffs,” reliever Dan Quisenberry said. “We’ve become friends with our backs to the wall. We know all the crevices.”