WORLD SERIES : Coach Lee May Makes Royals’ Catch of Night--on Brett

had nothing to do with Danny Jackson’s five-hitter or Willie Wilson’s two RBIs or the Kansas City Royals’ 6-1 victory that sent the I-70 World Series back across Missouri with St. Louis still needing only one win but now leading by only 3-2.

Ultimately, however, it may prove to have a lot to do with the Royals’ attempt to pull off another comeback, a Cinderella charge of the type that overtook the Angels in the regular season and the Toronto Blue Jays in the American League playoffs.

Lee May, a man noted more for his bat during a 16-year major league career, made what Kansas City Manager Dick Howser later called “the catch of the night” in the seventh inning, thus preserving George Brett for Game 6--and 7, if it’s needed.

“I’ll play Saturday unless it rains,” Brett said, meaning he will play unless it’s rained out.

The heir to Reggie Jackson’s crown as Mr. October was nearly wiped out when he vigorously pursued a Terry Pendleton pop-up toward the Kansas City dugout, saw the roof coming at him like a guillotine and decided that a discretionary slide was the best course.

Brett hit the synthetic surface, however, and couldn’t stop. It was as if he was in the fast lane on I-70. He still had his eye on the ball and his glove outstretched in a bid for the catch when he took the dugout steps in the manner of a bumper slide.

“I was afraid to look,” Howser said later. “It was chilling.”

May, now a hitting instructor with the Royals, saw it coming.

“I had a lot of practice when I was a DH with Baltimore,” he said. “Rick Dempsey (the Oriole catcher) is the kind of guy who would slide head-first into an iron fence. He was always sliding into the dugout, upsetting chairs and rattling the bats. You always had to be alert.”

May said that when he saw Brett leave his feet, “I knew he’d be in the dugout. I knew he’d end up in my lap if I didn’t get to him first.”

Said Brett: “I didn’t know who it was at the time, but I knew someone had caught me as if I was a bowling ball.”

May cradled Brett’s head and shoulders as he bounced down the stairs, inadvertently sticking a finger in his right eye.

“I have to think a red eye is better than a concussion,” May said.

The eye bled some and was rinsed out by trainer Mickey Cobb. Brett slowly returned to his position, experiencing a measure of fuzzy vision. He singled in the top of the ninth and was replaced at third base by Greg Pryor in the Cardinals’ ninth.

“The more I thought about it,” Howser said later, suppressing a smile, “the more I had to figure that it was Pryor who stuck his finger in George’s eye. Some guys will do anything to make a World Series appearance.”

Brett stood at his locker some 30 minutes after the final out and said his vision was now clear.

“It wasn’t that bad,” he said. “It was just that everything I looked at seemed to have an outline around it. I didn’t mind it when I was hitting, but I wasn’t getting a jump on the ball in the field.”

Brett, of course, could hit blindfolded.

He’s batting .333 in the Series and .341 in 13 postseason games. His career postseason average for 38 games is .343.

Shouldn’t a man who generally shoulders the burden of an impotent offense avoid risks of the type he took in the seventh inning?

“First of all,” Brett said, “we’re not the George Brett Royals. We’re the Kansas City Royals. People try to portray us as a one-man team, but we’re not. We’re a 25-man team. I didn’t win every game we won.

“Secondly, I play hard. I want to win. Maybe, if I had known I was going to slide into the dugout and get poked in the eye I wouldn’t have done it. Maybe if we had been leading, 10-1, I’d have thought twice about it.

“But it was my own dugout, and I knew there were guys who would protect me. I thought I could make the catch. It was one out in a 4-1 game. We’re playing an outstanding team in their home park. Who knows if it’s going to turn around or how.

“Every out is important.”

The ball hit the heel of Brett’s glove as he went down the steps.

“It happened too quickly for me to know what happened,” Brett said. “I saw the roof coming at my head and knew I had to go down or lose it.

“It wasn’t until I was on the floor of the dugout that I stopped sliding. I heard Dick yelling, ‘Are you all right, are you all right?’

“I said, ‘I’m fine, but somebody poked me in the eye.’ I didn’t know it was Lee. He should have been called for face-guarding.”

In the meantime, there are more important matters. Jackson kept the Royals alive in Game 5 of the Series, as he had in Game 5 of the playoffs with Toronto. The Royals ultimately won three in a row. They’ve come to accept this as their M.O.

“There were periods in the past,” Brett said, “when we’d be happy to get this far. Winning was important, but we’d be satisfied to be able to say, ‘Well, we at least got to the fifth game of the World Series.’

“Now our pitching is so good that we feel we can beat anybody, that we can come back from 1-3. We proved it against Toronto, and now we’ve got Charlie Leibrandt going Saturday, and Bret Saberhagen Sunday.

“Leibrandt pitched a masterpiece and should have won Game 2. Saberhagen pitched a masterpiece and won Game 3. I’d rather be up 3-2 than down 2-3, but I feel good about our situation.

“This team doesn’t give up or doesn’t give in now. The Cardinals may become world champions, but they’re going to have to earn it.”