No Hard Feelings : Pugnacious the Night Before, Dodgers Are at Peace Again

Sweetness and light returned to the Dodger clubhouse Wednesday night, and except for the headlines in the New York tabloids and the scratches around Tom Niedenfuer’s eyes and on his arms, there was little reason to believe it had ever been any other way.

“Hey, Greg, did you bring your gloves?” Steve Sax asked Greg Brock, his adversary the night before during a disturbance in the Dodger dugout.

“No, we’ll fight back in my room tonight,” Brock said.

Sax: “How about Madison Square Garden?”

Judging by the coverage they received, Sax and Brock had gone toe-to-toe in the Felt Forum.

“Sax, Brock Square Off in Prelim to Main Event,” the New York Post said.

“Slam! Bang!” the New York Daily News answered.

All that was missing was the Tale of the Tape for an incident that began when Sax--upset that Brock stuck his bat in the way while he was playing catch with Mike Scioscia--threw a ball that struck Brock in the back.

Brock said something to Sax in the Dodger dugout, voices were raised, but teammates intervened before the disagreement turned physical.

“It was nothing,” Enos Cabell said with a scoff.

“I kicked C.C.’s (Cesar Cedeno’s) butt one year in Houston until he bit me. He bit me in the head. I had him in a headlock and was twisting it, and he bit me, right in the head.

“We threw blows and stuff. We wrestled and tussled. Everybody would wait until it was over to break it up, they’d pick us up and we’d be laughing. C.C.’s my best friend.

“These boys (Brock and Sax) don’t even know how to fight.”

But that isn’t what Sax and Brock read when they awoke Wednesday morning, after taking the subway from the ballpark to the hotel together following Tuesday night’s game.

“Ridiculous,” Sax said. “If we were in Cleveland, this wouldn’t even be an issue.”

But this was Flushing Meadow, and what was at issue was the pregame tiff between Sax and Brock, followed by the bench-clearing melee triggered by Niedenfuer, who hit Ray Knight with his first pitch after George Foster’s grand slam.

Knight was fined $300, Niedenfuer $250, and the Dodger reliever also received a few pungent phone calls in his hotel room Wednesday afternoon.

“I didn’t put a ‘hold’ on my phone, and I got about three calls in an hour,” Niedenfuer said. “You know the goofballs they have in this town.”

Under his left eye, Niedenfuer still sported a bruise, at the center of which could be found the impression of a fingernail. He closed his right eye to show where he had been gouged in the eyelid. And he held up his arms to show the deep red scratches.

“And to show you how bad I’m going, I pick a fight with a Golden Gloves boxer,” Niedenfuer said. “I couldn’t pick just a baseball player.”

Knight, the Met third baseman, was once an amateur boxer.

Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda said he had narrowly escaped injury when a fan sitting behind the Dodger dugout threw a quarter that struck him just above the eye. Lasorda was still so upset about it Wednesday that he refused to sign a couple of autographs, which is almost as shocking as if he had skipped a meal.

But he also made light of it. “Whoever it was, just missed my eye,” Lasorda said. “I’d like to know who it was, because he had good control. I might want to sign him.”

Dodger first baseman Franklin Stubbs confirmed that someone had thrown a jackknife at him. Stubbs said he picked up the knife, which was closed, and gave it to plate umpire Steve Rippley.

“I don’t know why they threw it out there,” Stubbs said, “but that’s the way it goes when you rumble.”