Cardinals Finally Find a Slugger--the Pitcher : Forsch Gets Key Extra-Base Hit for St. Louis, a Double, and Scores First Run

No major league pitcher has spent more seasons with the same team than Bob Forsch.

In fact, the only major league players to have spent more time with the same team are George Brett, Frank White, Mike Schmidt, Bill Russell and Dave Concepcion.

“I guess I’ve been lucky,” Forsch said Sunday at Dodger Stadium.

Just lucky, not talented?

“I don’t know if it’s talent as much as perseverance,” he said, smiling. “I’ve also never done anything to embarrass the organization.

“They’re a little sensitive about that here.”

How sensitive?

Joaquin Andujar found out after embarrassing the brewery that owns the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 7 of the World Series.

Rather than a distributorship, Andujar received plane fare to Oakland.

Now 36, Forsch remains.

He is in his 13th season with the Cardinals. He won 20 games in 1977, pitched no-hitters in 1978 and 1983, and fashioned an overall record of 131-107 while serving every capacity from regular to spot starter, from long reliever to late-inning stopper.

Now back in the St. Louis rotation, Forsch made his fifth start of the season Sunday.

Manager Whitey Herzog seemed excited.

It wasn’t so much that Forsch carried a 2.60 earned-run average, second among Cardinal starters to John Tudor’s 2.51. It was that Forsch came in with a batting average of .200.

Batting .205 as a team, the Cardinals would have preferred activating a club vice president named Stan Musial, but .200 seemed like a lot to at least three regulars--Terry Pendleton at .192, Tommy Herr at .156 and Mike Heath at .073.

In addition, it was almost as much as the .207 of Willie McGee, the National League’s incumbent MVP, and in the same numerical neighborhood as the .222 of Andy Van Slyke and the .237 of Jack Clark.

The Cardinals had lost five in a row and 12 of their last 13 games in the wake of a 7-1 start.

A team that led the league in runs and batting last year, the Cardinals were last in both categories, having already incurred six shutouts compared to a total of eight en route to the 1985 pennant.

While the losing streak ended Sunday, there is still some question about the slump.

The Cardinals defeated the Dodgers, 3-1, on four singles and two doubles.

One of the doubles belonged to Forsch, who drilled a hanging curve thrown by Orel Hershiser into the left-field corner in the third inning, moved to third on a wild pitch and then scored the game’s first run on another wild pitch.

A walk and three singles contributed to two more runs in the fourth, providing Forsch with a 3-0 cushion that he protected by yielding only three hits until the seventh, when three straight walks led to the arrival of successor Greg Bargar and the Dodger run.

Forsch emerged with a 2-1 record, a 2.38 ERA and a batting average of .231, based on 3 for 13.

Herzog, displaying an improved appetite, bit into a postgame taco and said: “It was just the other day I was saying our pitchers have to hit better.”

The pitchers, knowing they would have to hit better if they wanted to see any hitting at all, took their manager seriously.

“The guys have been grabbing bats and taking extra batting practice,” Forsch said. “We’ve been looking for ways to help.”

Forsch has always been able to do it better than most.

He began as an infielder and entered the 1986 season with 148 career hits, including eight home runs.

“When the regulars aren’t hitting, you tend to feel a little better about your own ability to hit,” he said, alluding to pitchers.

“I guessed right today, but if he hadn’t hung it, I still wouldn’t have been able to hit it.”

Was it part of a breakthrough?

Herzog said: “I don’t know what to think anymore. I mean, a double by the pitcher and two wild pitches isn’t exactly ripping the cover off the ball.

“It’s amazing. I’ve never seen such bleeping averages. I’d always heard that speed doesn’t go into slumps, but when those jackrabbits don’t get on, then you’re really in a slump.

“I mean, we can’t power our way out of it. We can’t sit back and wait for the home run because Clarkie (who has only 3 homers after hitting 22 last season) is the only guy who hits ‘em for us.”

Herzog said he still thought the Cardinals would steal 300 or more bases again, but it was imperative for Vince Coleman, now hitting .224, to reach base regularly and for McGee and Herr to have seasons comparable to their career averages.

Said Forsch, who displayed the same determination in coming back from a 1984 back operation that brother Ken has in rejoining the Angels after missing two years with shoulder and elbow injuries: “I feel that if the pitching holds up, we’ll be all right. We have a lineup of proven hitters. We have a lineup of guys who can all hit .300.

“I don’t see anyone pressing. I think everyone realizes we’re still a good team, that it’s only a matter of time until they start hitting. Once they do, we’ll catch fire.”

Until then, the pitchers will continue taking extra batting practice.