Royals Make It a ‘Pinch Me’ Showdown, 2-1 : Iorg’s Single Defeats Cards, Forces Game 7

There were twists and turns along the way, but it came down to this:

The hit that Manager Whitey Herzog put on the three American League umpires working the I-70 World Series Saturday night carried considerably more punch than had his slumbering offense.

The St. Louis Cardinals scored one run Saturday night. It was good for a 1-0 lead entering the ninth inning, but not good enough to prevent a 2-1 loss to the Kansas City Royals.

A one-out, bases-loaded single by Dane Iorg off Todd Worrell lifted the resilient Royals to an improbable victory that tied the best-of-seven Series at three games apiece.

The Show Me Showdown is now just that.

A decisive seventh game pitting 21-game winner John Tudor, who owns two of the Cardinals’ three wins over the Royals, against 20-game winner Bret Saberhagen, who pitched a complete-game victory in Game 3, will be held tonight.

Kansas City center fielder Willie Wilson, exhilarated by the Royals’ comeback from a 1-3 deficit against the Cardinals, matching their recovery from a similar deficit in the playoff with Toronto, lighted a victory cigar and said:

“I might sleep here tonight. I might not go home. I’ve got Tudor on the brain, man.

“We’re going to kill him.”

Teammate Jim Sundberg, equally excited, shook his head and said:

“This is unbelievable. This is better than Toronto. I just don’t want to see us get so pumped up and excited that we forget that we’ve still got one more to go.”

The Cardinal clubhouse resembled a morgue. It was as if the Redbirds were dead birds.

Losing a three-games-to-one Series lead was one thing. Losing a 1-0 ninth-inning lead on an unlikely series of events was another.

The Cardinals had been 89-0 in games they led going into the ninth. Worrell, the Bible student from Biola, had not lost since becoming a relief pitcher at Louisville on July 18. The traumatic loss in this one was not really of his own doing.

There was a suspect call by an umpire, a pop foul that wasn’t caught, a passed ball by his catcher, all of which left Worrell in a fatal fix.

There was also the bottom-line fact that the Cardinals had gotten only five hits off Charlie Leibrandt and Dan Quisenberry and are now hitting .190 in this Series, having scored 13 runs in six games.

Of the continuing struggle on offense, Herzog said: “We faced another Lefty Grove tonight, but that don’t make a bleep. We still had the World Series won tonight.”

The Cardinals failed to win it, Herzog said, because umpire Don Denkinger blew a call at first base opening the Royal ninth.

“The whole inning was bleeped up when he missed that call at first,” Herzog said.

“We got some guys umpiring out there who shouldn’t be umpiring for the Fort Worth Daisies.

“Now we get this same bleep behind the plate tomorrow night. We’ve got as much chance of winning as a snowball in hell.

“I mean, he worked behind the plate in Game 1, and Tudor walked five guys. He hasn’t walked five guys all year. (Actually, Tudor walked only two batters in Game 1.)

“Maybe we won’t show up. I’ll have to call Gussie (owner August Busch) first.”

The Cardinals will show, but Herzog would like to know that baseball’s best umpires will, too.

The umpires are now assigned to postseason events on a rotation basis. It was formerly done on a rating system.

“The two best teams are supposed to be in the World Series,” Herzog said. “I would think you’d want the best umpires. This is what you get when you don’t rate ‘em. I mean, we should rate ‘em all year, then take the best.”

Herzog said he wasn’t talking about the three National League umpires.

“We haven’t gotten any breaks from them,” he said, “but they’ve done a good job, an objective job.

“I’m not really supposed to talk about the umpires, but if you want to know my opinion of the American League umpires . . . well, all I can tell you is that we’ve come up on the short end a few times. We’re getting bleeped, and I don’t care if I get in trouble for saying it.”

Herzog said that Jim McKean, working behind the plate in Game 3, put the squeeze on Joaquin Andujar. He said that John Shulock, working behind the plate in Game 5, missed a pivotal call in what should have been a scoreless inning when he called Jim Sundberg, running from second, safe on a single to right; the Royals went on to score a second run in the inning.

Then there was the ninth inning Saturday night.

Right-hander Worrell was summoned to replace Ken Dayley when Daryl Motley was announced as a pinch-hitter for Pat Sheridan opening the ninth.

With Worrell coming in, Motley was replaced by Jorge Orta, who hit a grounder wide of first. Jack Clark fielded it and threw to Worrell, covering the bag. The replay showed the throw beating Orta. Denkinger called him safe.

“I thought that maybe Todd came off the bag,” Herzog said. “If Denkinger had told me that, I’d have gone back without an argument. Instead he says that Orta beat the throw. I said, ‘If he beat the throw, how the hell could he have stepped on Worrell’s foot?”

Worrell stood at his locker and shook his head.

“I’d like to see the replay,” he said, “but he came down square on my heel. I’m lucky that his cleats didn’t tear my Achilles’ tendon.

“Everyone will tell you that the first out of the inning is the most important out,” he said. “That made it kind of hairy, but I tried not to get too far ahead of myself. I reminded myself to take it one batter at a time.”

The next batter was Steve Balboni. Worrell got two strikes, then saw Balboni lift a foul pop-up near the Kansas City dugout. Clark and catcher Darrell Porter pursued it, but the twisting fly fell untouched behind Clark, who said later: “I glanced to see where the dugout was, looked up, saw the ball again, but now didn’t have the right angle. I was too close to the dugout to plant my left foot and reach back for it. It was catchable, but I botched it. It shouldn’t have been that tough.”

Balboni fouled off another pitch, then singled to left, putting Orta on second. “It was a good pitch,” Worrell said. “Down and away. I can’t second-guess myself.”

Now, it was Sundberg, who fouled off two sacrifice attempts, took the count to 2-and-2, then bunted again, this time fair. A surprised but poised Worrell responded with an excellent play, throwing alertly to get the force-out at third.

The next batter was Hal McRae, pinch-hitting for Buddy Biancalana. The second pitch was a curve, low and away. Porter got his glove on it but couldn’t hold it. Said Herzog later: “He should have caught it, that’s all.”

The ball rolled behind Porter, allowing Onix Concepcion, who was running for Balboni, and Sundberg to advance and forcing the Cardinals to walk McRae intentionally, loading the bases.

Iorg, who batted .529 as Herzog’s designated hitter in the 1982 Series against Milwaukee, now batted for Quisenberry. He took a ball, then got a low fastball and stroked it into right field, bringing home Concepcion and Sundberg and ending the game.

“I didn’t think it was that bad of a pitch,” Worrell said. “I didn’t think he hit it that well, but I guess he hit it well enough.?

“I’m disappointed, but sometimes you’re not going to win, no matter what you do.”