Coming Through When It Counts Is His Trademark

It was a meaningless spring training game that had, to the disgust of almost everyone, found its way into the 11th inning. Detroit was ahead, 3-1, going into the bottom of the inning, and the press box, to a man, was rooting for it to stay that way.

The Dodgers put two men on base in the bottom of the inning, then bunted them to third.

Out of the dugout came a familiar figure, a boy-man wearing No. 18. Billy the Perpetual Kid Russell himself. A writer groaned. “Just what we need,” he lamented. “Billy the Boy Scout Russell. He’s bound to misunderstand the situation. He’ll get a hit.”

A moment later, the writer’s worst fears were realized. With a two-strike count, Bill Russell casually reached back and poked a two-run single to center, tying the game. The air rang with curses.

It was hard for Russell to do anything else. He has made a career out of not making last-inning outs.

Russell has 1,872 lifetime hits and sometimes it seems as if he had had all but 11 of them in the last two innings of a game, with that game or the pennant on the line.

Russell never wasted a word or a hit in his life. As loose and laconic as Gary Cooper in cleats, Billy plays as spare and lean and free of emotion as himself. He has dead-panned his way into stardom.

Russell didn’t make hits, he invested them.

Item 1--It is 1977, Game 3 of the playoff series between L.A. and Philadelphia. The Phillies are ahead, 5-3, and there are two out in the the ninth inning, nobody on.

Vic Davalillo bunts his way on base. Manny Mota lofts a ball that pops over the left fielder’s arm and onto the fence. A throw gets away from the second baseman and Davalillo scores. Davey Lopes gets a hit to bring in the tying run. He goes to second on an errant pickoff attempt.

Russell comes out of the dugout and slaps a patented line-drive base hit through the legs of pitcher Gene Garber for the winning run. The next day, the Dodgers win the pennant.

Item 2--It is 1978, Game 4 of the playoff series between Philadelphia and the Dodgers. It is the bottom of the 10th inning, the score is tied. Ron Cey is on first for the Dodgers when Dusty Baker drops a soft liner into the hands of Philadelphia’s center fielder, Garry Maddox, who drops it.

Russell comes up with the pennant on second base and promptly drives it in with the widely known drive to center field and the champagne starts to flow.

Item 3--It is 1981 in the World Series between the Yankees and the Dodgers. This is a matchup the Dodgers have lost twice previously, thanks largely to the all but incredible wizardry of Yankee third baseman Graig Nettles, whose specialty is turning two-base hits down the line into routine outs and double plays.

Bill Russell hits a shot down the left-field line that not even Nettles can get to. But Nettles tries. He dives for another miracle but this time he misses and lands on his thumb, jamming it so hopelessly that he is out of the World Series.

Russell has un-Nettled the World Series for the Dodgers, who go on to win in four straight after dropping the first two. It is the most important hit of the Series. It is vintage Russell.

As dependable as sunset, as taken for granted as grass, Russell quietly became the most durable Dodger of his time, almost of any time. Only the legendary Zack Wheat and Pee Wee Reese have played more games, and Russell, with 2,076, is not through yet.

Bill Russell will not make the Hall of Fame because, for some reason, shortstops never do. Look it up. But by any yardstick, he is as good as some who have made it there.

He has not only outlasted his contemporaries, he has outperformed them. He has played three decades of impeccable baseball at a position he didn’t take up till he was almost 23 years old.

Most players would take up a new position in their baseball dotage kicking and screaming. Russell did it with a shrug.

“It was the best thing that ever happened to me,” he says now. “I just didn’t have the numbers to be a center fielder. You have to put up 25 home runs and 100 RBIs to be an outfielder.”

Russell was a pet of two successive Dodger managers and the late Walter Alston once explained why:

“You give him a glove and a bat and forget about the position. It will be taken care of. You look down the row of lockers before a game and Billy Russell is there, suited up and ready to play. You’re going to get nine innings of his best every night. Billy Russell is where the ball is. You never have to worry about Bill Russell.”

The fans of Los Angeles were less discerning. Russell became the shortstop after the eras of Pee Wee Reese and Maury Wills and that is like making a movie with a dog and Shirley Temple.

The fans could never forgive him for not stealing 100 bases a year, or not turning triples into triple plays. It wasn’t enough to be the best in the league, he had to be the best in history. They wanted doves to fly out his ears.

When he hit Reggie Jackson in the wallet with a double-play ball in the ’78 World Series, every baseball man in the country knew that Jackson had stuck his anatomy illegally in front of the throw. You couldn’t have gotten that ball around Jackson by mail. But the reaction around Dodger Stadium was, “Russell done it to us again.”

When Russell came up, he was part of the famous Kiddie Korps, the Little Blue Tricycle, the New Boys of Summer. He was lost somewhere between the infield and outfield. He was also lost in the protective coloration of Steve Garvey, Bill Buckner, Bill Sudakis, Billy Grabarkewitz, Teddy Sizemore and Tom Paciorek.

They’re all gone now and William Ellis Russell is the third-most productive player in all Dodger history.

The manager still doesn’t have to worry about him. And, some time this summer, when the team needs a hit, a run, a pennant, a play at the plate, Bill Russell will come out of a dugout and deliver it.

But, no matter what he does--or did--he’ll probably always be remembered for one unjust call in a great career and the bleacher lament: “Billy Russell? If he doesn’t hit Jackson in the butt, we win the World Series in ‘78, man!”