Royals Show Me, You and Everyone Else : Saberhagen’s 11-0 Win Caps Remarkable Season for K.C.’s Comeback Kids

The St. Louis Cardinals completed the I-70 World Series Sunday night with all the grace of a wreck on the highway, leaving bodies strewn all over the carpet of Royals Stadium. John Tudor fled, then bled. Whitey Herzog was sent away. Joaquin Andujar was taken away.

The seventh game of the 82nd World Series was won by the Kansas City Royals, 11-0, in a command performance by 21-year-old Bret Saberhagen--the youngest player ever to win the Series’ Most Valuable Player Award--and a team that became the first in history to win a Series after losing the first two games at home.

History also will record that the Cardinals became just the fifth team ever to lose a series after leading, 3 games to 1.

That by itself is embarrassment enough. So is the fact that the high est-scoring team in the National League hit just .185, the lowest average ever by a team in a seven-game series.

“Thirteen runs in seven games,” Herzog said. “That’s almost a disgrace.”

It wasn’t the only one. In a fifth inning that rivaled anything seen in a Stanley Cup hockey final, Manager Herzog and pitcher Andujar were ejected for arguing pitch calls with home-plate umpire Don Denkinger, whose controversial “safe” call at first base in the bottom of the ninth inning on Saturday might have cost the Cardinals Game 6.

“That was the biggest disgrace I’ve ever seen,” said one Cardinal, who requested anonymity, after Andujar had made a nationally televised spectacle of himself by charging Denkinger twice and bumping him once. “When you’re down 10-0, you don’t argue calls.”

Andujar, a 20-game winner in each of the last two seasons but reduced to a mop-up role Sunday night, was unrepentant for his actions, which came when Denkinger called balls on two straight pitches to Jim Sundberg, the last on a 3-and-2 pitch.

“I no sorry,” Andujar said. “I had to do the right thing.”

Herzog was tossed on the 2-and-2 pitch, becoming the first manager to be ejected from a World Series game since Billy Martin of the Yankees in 1976.

“I went out to keep Joaquin from being kicked out,” said Herzog, the first manager ever be run out of a seventh game. “I didn’t mind leaving. I’d seen enough.

“I wanted them to enforce the 10-run rule, like they have in that Wichita tournament.”

Andujar was gone on the next pitch, and had to be restrained by teammate Terry Pendleton and coach Nick Leyva. Mike Roarke, the Cardinal pitching coach, finally wrapped his arms around Andujar and pulled him from the field.

But when someone suggested to Andujar that he had lost control, he shook his head. “Maybe it looked bad, but you have to be a dumb bleep to fight an umpire,” he said. “You could get thrown out of baseball.”

When asked the same question a few moments later, Andujar said: “I control myself. Did I kill anybody?”

Herzog had suggested that with Denkinger behind the plate, the Cardinals had “about as much chance as the man on the moon” of winning Sunday. After the game, however, he pointed his finger elsewhere.

“The umpiring had nothing to do with this game--we got beat, 11-0--but it had to do with last night,” Herzog said. “I don’t discuss what I say to an umpire, but I did tell him we should have been home celebrating last night.”

Andujar was one of five Cardinal pitchers Herzog used in the fifth inning, when the Royals scored six times on seven hits, one walk and a wild pitch. The Royals had chased Tudor out of the game by the third inning, when they took a 5-0 lead on a two-run home run by Darryl Motley and a two-run single by Steve Balboni.

Shortly thereafter, the Cardinal ace was on his way to the hospital for stitches in his pitching hand, having punched an electric fan in the visitors’ dugout.

“I made a stupid mistake and cut myself--that’s my personal business,” said Tudor, who had returned to the Cardinal clubhouse by the end of the game and stood there with a towel wrapped around his left hand, answering questions far longer than he had pitched.

Tudor’s exit, in a season in which he had won 23 of his last 25 decisions--including two Series wins and one in the National League playoffs--was his earliest of the season. The Mets had chased him after three innings on April 22, but that was when he was still mortal, losing seven of his first eight decisions.

“There’s nothing superhuman about me,” he said. “I just go out there and throw strikes, and let those guys (the Cardinals) go out and play. I didn’t do that tonight. I walked guys and I gave up a home run.

“This game was lost when we got down early. For me, it came down to one ballgame, and it was a complete disaster. Call it a choke, call it whatever you want, but I didn’t come through when we needed it.”

While the Cardinals were gradually turning from scarlet to crimson, Saberhagen was a rhapsody in blue, throwing just 93 pitches while allowing just five hits. He retired the last eight Cardinals and finished with a 0.50 earned run average in two complete games in the Series.

While others whined, Saberhagen just won.

“I would have been upset, too, if I wasn’t getting my share of calls,” Saberhagen said. “But you can’t let it get to you. Joaquin let it get to him. He got frustrated and lost his cool.”

St. Louis outfielder Andy Van Slyke said the Cardinals may never have recovered from the white heat of Saturday’s crushing defeat, when Denkinger ruled Jorge Orta safe at first on an infield chopper when TV replays clearly indicated otherwise.

“Maybe we were cheated a little bit,” Van Slyke said. “It’s one thing to beat yourself or get beat, but last night’s ballgame may have had a mental effect on us.

“Tonight, I think maybe we were trying to fool ourselves.”

They now have a winter to face the reality not only of losing, but of unraveling before millions.

“We saw things coming apart at the seams,” said outfielder Tito Landrum. “And we’re only human beings.

“Can they (the Royals) say the same thing wouldn’t have happened to them?”

The Royals, however, have to answer to no one. They are the champions. They showed ‘em all--the Angels, the Blue Jays, and, finally, even the Cardinals.

Joaquin Andujar had to be restrained by his Cardinal teammates, but there was no restraining the Royals.