Hitting THE Skids ON Interstate 70 : Somehow, Royals and Cardinals Get Turned Around

Less than a year after they turned the 1985 World Series into a Missouri showdown, the Kansas City Royals and St. Louis Cardinals have littered the highway with injuries, inconsistency and ineptitude.

The Royals, who rallied from 1-3 deficits and won the American League playoffs and World Series on heart and pitching, are beyond resuscitation. They trail the Angels by 14 1/2 games in the American League West and could be mathematically eliminated during a three-game series beginning at Anaheim Stadium tonight.

The Cardinals, some of whom sunk to embarrassing behavior in the World Series after a dramatic duel with the New York Mets in the National League East and an equally dramatic playoff victory over the Dodgers, have already been eliminated by the Mets. In Manager Whitey Herzog’s chronicled view, the race was over by June 1, when his Cardinals were 14 1/2 games behind. Now Herzog says:

“I don’t think any team anywhere, even if they played over their head, could have beaten the Mets this year.

“But as it is, we didn’t exactly play over our heads. We’ve scored three runs or less in 85 games. You’ve got to have a lot of Koufaxes and Drysdales to win with that.”

And the Royals? Said George Brett, the Kansas City third baseman:

“There’s only one word to describe the rise and fall of the Kansas City dynasty, and that’s inconsistency.

“Last year, we won because of pitching. This year, we lost because of pitching, hitting and defense. It was a total team effort.

“The desire was there, the dedication was there, the expectancy was there. The ingredients were there again, but the consistency wasn’t.”

THE ROYALS

KANSAS CITY -- The manager of the Royals sat in his team’s dugout before a recent game. He wore street clothes and a floppy golf hat. He seemed healthy and in good spirits.

It has been two months now since Dick Howser had surgery for a malignant brain tumor and then began radiation treatments. The prognosis is being kept private. Howser watches home games from a box on the press level. He greets reporters warmly, but he does not talk of his ordeal.

The Royals learned of his condition in the first week after the All-Star break. They were eight games under .500 and 8 1/2 games behind the Angels. They are 28-27 under acting manager Mike Ferraro, the third base coach.

This is a team that generally owns the second half of a season. The Royals were 6 1/2 games behind the Angels at last year’s All-Star break, then rallied and won the title by a game. Would there have been a similar charge under a healthy Howser?

Most of the Royals seem to doubt it. Most seem to believe they were too many games under .500 and playing too poorly to overcome a series of pivotal injuries.

General Manager John Schuerholz isn’t so sure. He said that Howser’s loss was the most devastating of the season.

“The steady leadership and synergistic force wasn’t there,” he said. “I don’t know if that in itself would have made the difference, but I do believe we would have been more of a factor.

“When do we always make our move?” he asked. “I sensed it was starting to happen again right before the All-Star break. Dick has done it in the past. He’s kept a floundering team together and brought it back as a winner.”

Jamie Quirk, the veteran utility man, agreed. He said that during the month after the All-Star game, at a time when the Royals generally initiate their move, they were in emotional shock.

“There was a month there when a lot of us wondered if winning a baseball game was all that critical,” he said. “It sounds like an excuse, but you’re talking about a human life.

“I mean, we’ve always been a second-half team that’s had the attitude that if we stay close we’ll get ‘em, whether it’s the Angels, Chicago or whoever.

“But losing Dick was an absolute shock.

“The day the priest came in the clubhouse in Baltimore to talk with us . . . well, we just kind of looked at each other and said, ‘Hey, this is for real.’ I mean, it was scary. It put some fear in us. You had to wonder if baseball was really that important.”

As big a blow as it might have been, though, losing Howser was not all that troubled the Royals, Schuerholz said. He pointed out that no World Series champion has repeated since the 1977 and ’78 New York Yankees, and said that the instant security that now comes with the guaranteed, multiyear contacts of this era has diluted desire.

“I don’t think anyone consciously says that they won’t try as hard or that they don’t care if they don’t win,” Schuerholz said.

“I think that what happens is that having won once, the subconscious takes control and makes it harder to turn the sacrifice meter.

“I’ve talked to players about this and know they disagree with me, but I also hear our players saying now that they’re going to do a better job of preparing this winter, that they want to come into the 1987 season with the same commitment they brought into the 1985 season. I mean, did our arms suddenly grow weaker this year, or was it the subconscious fallout of having won last year?”

The Royals won last year with a balance of brilliant pitching and timely hitting from an offense that finished next to last in the league in runs scored and batting. The rotation of Bret Saberhagen, Charlie Leibrandt, Danny Jackson, Bud Black and Mark Gubicza had a 75-52 record and started 160 of 162 games.

The 1986 offense is again next to last in runs scored and batting, but those five pitchers have a 42-44 record. Saberhagen, Jackson and Gubicza have been on the disabled list at various times, and all five have been used in relief at different times.

Is all of that subconscious fallout?

Some suspect that, in Saberhagen’s case, it was, but even Schuerholz said: “I think a healthy pitching staff would have permitted us to overcome the question of commitment.”

The Royals lead the league in team earned-run average, but their 3.81 is almost half a run higher than last year’s. And last year, the longest losing streak was four games. This year, Kansas City has not won more than four in a row, and the once-touted pitching failed to prevent an 11-game losing streak that swept the Royals out of the race in midseason. They were 37-35 and 2 1/2 games behind the Angels when it started June 26. They were 8 1/2 out when it ended July 8.

There was trouble in the bullpen, too. Relief ace Dan Quisenberry, having begun to lose Howser’s confidence last year, was demoted to middle relief for most of 1986, his late-inning role going to Steve Farr, who has responded with 8 saves and an 8-4 record, his best season.

Quisenberry, by contrast, has a career-low 11 saves. He was recently reassigned to his customary stopper role, but now only pride is at stake.

“Individually and collectively, it’s been a disappointing season,” he said. “I didn’t agree with their move, but what could I do? I had to learn to hang in a different way. I’ve never been out of the action before, and there was a certain amount of pain connected with it.

“I could say a lot of things, but there’s no sense pouting or stomping my feet. I think that if you look at my bubble gum card, you’ll see that I pitch best when I pitch a lot. I’m confident that pattern will continue. I’m confident I’ll pitch a lot more in the future.”

Confidence, of course, is elusive. Saberhagen, the wunderkind, had it last year, but lost it this year. If Howser’s illness left the Royals with heartache, Saberhagen’s inconsistency was a body blow.

“He was the bell cow, the guy who carried other guys along with him,” Schuerholz said. “We had no bell cow this year, nobody you knew for sure would stop a streak, would get you that win every five days.”

Saberhagen went from 20-6 and the Cy Young Award to 6-10 and one sigh after another. Last year, he didn’t lose two in a row. This year, he hasn’t won two in a row.

Maybe it was too much glory at 21, or the arbitration victory that lifted his salary from $160,000 to $925,000. Maybe the foot and shoulder discomforts that he continually complained about, that continually eluded definitive diagnosis, prevented him from repeating.

Saberhagen doesn’t deny that after riding the off-season merry-go-round, glorying in the response to his World Series and regular-season success, he may have been unprepared for spring training--or, at least, unprepared to throw as hard as he did as early as he did.

After nursing a sore shoulder through spring training, he failed to hold a 5-0 lead against the Yankees in his first start of the year. New York won, 6-5, in extra innings, setting a tone.

During the 11-game losing streak, the bell cow lost twice.

“Bret seemed to complain of tenderness from the time spring training started,” Ferraro said. “It was almost like we were working around him all the time. I mean, why run the risk of hurting a young arm? He has to be clear in his own mind that his arm is OK, and I don’t think he ever reached that point.”

The concern seemed to go beyond Saberhagen’s arm, however. Howser at one point said that he had seen many players of comparable ability wind up on street corners, implying that the problem was in Saberhagen’s approach and dedication. Schuerholz said he lectured Saberhagen about it.

“He has the chance to have a long and marvelous career,” the general manager said. “I only reminded him what the attendant obligations and responsibilities are.”

Saberhagen’s collapse compounded the pressure on a rotation already burdened by an anemic offense. Quirk, frequently the bullpen catcher, said the pressure was obvious. He said it was expressed in the pitchers’ bullpen conversations relating to how low the team batting average was.

“They know that if they give up three runs, they might not win,” he said. “That puts a lot of wear and tear on a guy making 35 starts a year.”

Said Leibrandt, who is 11-11 after a 17-9 season last year: “We (the pitchers) have a lot of pride, and when we struggled early in the year it built on all of us. I think it was a case of coming off a good year and wanting to prove it wasn’t a fluke, wanting something so badly that you don’t stay within yourself.

“You can’t throw a shutout every time, but we put an unrealistic amount of pressure on ourselves. During that 11-game losing streak, the pitching was awful and the hitting wasn’t much better. We just didn’t do anything very well all year. There was nothing you could count on. The pitching has settled down recently, but the season is basically over.”

There is a feeling that management may have made a costly mistake even before it began by not trading some of the surplus pitching, then at its most marketable, for a proven hitter to bat behind Brett, who had been consistently pitched around in the playoffs and World Series, a strategy he encountered again early in the season.

“It was a sin how he didn’t get anything to hit,” Ferraro said.

Steve Balboni, who has 29 homers and 88 runs batted in, and Frank White, who has 19 and 79, picked up some of the slack. And Brett accepted his walks, for a while. “I (finally) lost patience and started to swing at pitches that were out of the strike zone,” he said.

He has since suffered two shoulder injuries and appeared in only 116 of 142 games after avoiding his customary injuries last year when he appeared in 155 games and enjoyed what he considers his best season, batting .335 with 30 home runs and 112 RBIs. Now, sidelined for more than two weeks by the latest injury, he is batting .298 with 15 homers and 67 RBIs.

Schuerholz said that an attempt was made all winter to put together a major deal, but the pieces never fit. It has been reported that Howser, reluctant to break up his pitching staff, rejected a deal that would have brought Chili Davis from the San Francisco Giants for Gubicza. Now, Schuerholz said, the acquisition of a cleanup hitter is mandatory.

“You can’t be last in runs scored and team batting average every year and not address that issue,” he said.

It will have to be done through trade because the Royals do not hire free agents.

Neither will they write multiyear contracts, because of the recent arbitration ruling preventing the inclusion of drug testing clauses.

The conservative organization may be able to supply some of its offensive need from within, however.

Among the young players now being looked at is the renowned Bo Jackson. “Bo figures to be a very big part of the structure of this team and it could be as early as next year,” Schuerholz said.

Said Quisenberry, of possible changes: “I wouldn’t detonate this club. I’d say that even if we didn’t make any changes, we could regroup and come back. We’ve just lost our squatters’ rights for the year. We’ve had that happen before.”

But now, Brett said, the Royals will have to decide which way they like it: On top, showing off their World Series rings, or on the bottom, just another also-ran.

He said that only Balboni, Farr, White and shortstop Buddy Biancalana will be able to say they had good years.

“The 20 others didn’t do their job, didn’t carry their weight, and I was as much to blame as anyone,” he said.

“It was a disappointment, but maybe it will be a good learning experience, especially for the kids. I’m talking about Saberhagen and (Danny) Jackson and Gubicza. They’ve never been through this before, and I hope they feel like I do. I hope they like having people ask to see the ring.”

THE CARDINALS

ST. LOUIS -- The season ended early for the Cardinals, who won seven of their first eight games, then lost seven in a row, won one and lost five more, four of those to the Mets.

An 8-10 April was followed by a 9-17 May, giving the defending National League champions the second-worst record in baseball, which was compounded by the Mets’ jack-rabbit start.

The Cardinals were 24 games behind at the All-Star break and so deep in the Mets’ shadow that it has gone largely unnoticed that they have had a better record than the Mets since then, 35-21 compared to New York’s 34-24.

But now, 72-71 and 21 games behind the Mets, only pride is at stake.

Or, as outfielder Andy Van Slyke said about his team’s second-half play: “It’s an amazing achievement, considering the baseball we played in the first half--if you call that baseball.”

Some have called it a continuation of the embarrassing collapse the Cardinals experienced after building a 3-1 lead in the World Series. As in October, the shock wasn’t so much that the Cardinals were losing. It was how they were losing.

St. Louis had led the league in runs scored and team batting last year. A lineup designed to take advantage of the synthetic surface at Busch Stadium seemed immune to a prolonged slump, since it featured both speed and an array of slap or contact hitters who could improvise runs.

There was only one problem: The contact hitters didn’t hit, and Herzog said he still can’t explain that.

“I’ve never seen a whole team go into a slump the way this one did,” he said. “The only guy who hit at all the first two months was Ozzie (Smith). If you’ve got Punch and Judy hitters who don’t hit the long ball and aren’t getting on base, then you’re not going to manufacture runs.”

The Cardinals hit .206 in April, .247 in May and are still last in team batting at .236, contrasted to .264 last year, and runs scored, an average of 3.7 compared to 4.6 last year.

On June 22, more than 2 1/2 months into the season, Tommy Herr, a .282 hitter, was batting .204; Terry Pendleton, a .267 hitter, was at .207; Van Slyke, a .255 hitter, was at .206; Mike Heath, a .250 hitter obtained in the trade for Joaquin Andujar, was at .180; Willie McGee, a .308 hitter who in 1985 won a batting crown with a .353 average and was voted the league’s most valuable player, was at .251; catalytic leadoff hitter Vince Coleman, who had hit .267 as a 1985 rookie, was at .252, and Jack Clark, the lone power source and a .277 hitter, was at .237 with nine home runs.

On June 22, Clark also got his 23rd and last RBI of the season. He tore ligaments in his right thumb two days later and was lost for the season. Said Herzog at the time: “I don’t think we’re going to catch Roger Maris.”

He was right. The Cardinals have 48 home runs compared to the 61 that Maris hit in 1961 and the 114 the opposition has hit this year.

“I think a lot of us were pressing, trying to make up for the World Series,” one veteran Cardinal said. “I think a lot of us were also pressing because we didn’t think the pitching was going to be this good.”

No one did. Andujar, a 21-game winner, was traded to Oakland, Cardinal ownership having been embarrassed by his World Series behavior. Andujar was thrown out of the final game of the Series, as was Herzog, after charging and bumping umpire Don Denkinger.

Danny Cox, an 18-game winner, injured an ankle late in spring training and did not return until early May. Jeff Lahti, who saved 19 games, nursed a sore shoulder through spring training and was lost for the season April 24. Left-hander Ken Dayley, who saved 11 games, was in and out of the bullpen with an elbow problem before going down for the season July 12.

Said Herzog: “Everybody questioned our pitching and I was among them. If I had known it was going to be this good, I’d have said we’d be right there (battling for a title) again. I mean, the only reason we’re even .500 now is because of the starting pitching and (Todd) Worrell.”

Worrell, the former Biola University right-hander, has 9 wins, 33 saves and a shot at becoming the league’s rookie of the year.

Ten wins by rookie Greg Mathews and 13 by veteran Bob Forsch have helped compensate for Andujar’s absence and the fact that Cox (9-12) didn’t get his first win until June 1. John Tudor, 21-8 with a 1.93 ERA as the Cardinals’ counterpart to Saberhagen last year, is 13-7 with a 2.96 ERA.

“I don’t think the first two months were the result of guys not trying,” Herzog said. “I can’t knock the work habits. Any club looks flat when it doesn’t hit. We did make a lot of mental mistakes that are tough to explain, but maybe guys were thinking too much about their averages.

“It’s a funny thing about hitting. One guy stops and everyone seems to stop. It was really strange in our case because we had hit well in spring training and beat Kansas City in our last two (exhibition) games. Then we won those seven of eight at the start of the season but didn’t really hit well, and you could see it coming. I knew we’d be in trouble if we didn’t hit.”

Herr, now at .244, and Van Slyke, .272, have rallied some, but the Andujar trade has been a bust--Tim Conroy is a disappointing 4-8 and Heath was hitting .205 when traded to Detroit Aug. 9--and there has been mostly frustration with the pivotal McGee and Coleman.

McGee has been on the disabled list once and sidelined twice by hamstring pulls, but he wasn’t running in April and May, when he was healthy. He has only 15 steals, a miserable on-base percentage of .308 and a batting average of .254.

Said a mystified Herzog: “Sometimes I think he was trying too hard to live up to his MVP award. At other times, it was as if his intensity wasn’t there. He’s a good kid, but he just couldn’t get himself relaxed. I expect him to bounce back. He has too much talent not to be a high-average hitter.”

Coleman has 96 steals and a chance to break Lou Brock’s National League record of 118, but his .242 batting average and .314 on-base percentage exasperate Herzog, who has been trying to sell Coleman on the rewards of selectivity and a level swing.

Said Herzog: “I’ve told him that if he’d hit four ground balls a night, he’d hit .270, and if he’d hit three ground balls and a line drive, he’d hit .300. It’s been a tough road with Vince, a real learning process, but he’ll get it together eventually.”

The Cardinals altogether? Herzog thinks they’ll get it together again next year. He thinks they went a long way toward doing it in the second half. He still likes his lineup but thinks that re-signing Clark, who is eligible for free agency, and acquiring another power hitter at any position are imperative.

Will he lose sleep over 1986?

“I don’t worry about it,” he said. “We’re going to draw 2.5 million, we still have a chance to finish second and we’ll have the third- or fourth-best record in the league.

“The Mets are the class of the league right now, but I don’t think there’s 20 games’ difference between us if we both play as well as we can. They played as good as they can possibly play the first two months and we played as bad as we could play.

“With what we went through the first half, I personally feel that I had to manage a hell of a lot better than I did last year just to keep the team where it’s at.

“Of course, everyone can say that. It’s easy to manage when a team is playing well.”

It has not been easy for either Whitey Herzog or Dick Howser in 1986. Herzog will soon head toward his Independence home on I-70 for a winter of hunting and relaxation. For Howser, the route is less certain.

AL WEST

1985 STANDINGS (Through Sept. 15)

Team W L Pct. GB Kansas City 82 60 .577 -- California 80 63 .559 2 1/2 Chicago 73 69 .514 9 Oakland 70 74 .486 13 Seattle 66 76 .465 16 Minnesota 65 79 .451 18 Texas 52 90 .366 30

AL WEST

1986 STANDINGS (Through Sept. 15)

Team W L Pct. GB California 82 60 .577 -- Texas 74 70 .514 9 Kansas City 68 75 .476 14 1/2 Oakland 67 78 .462 16 1/2 Chicago 63 80 .440 19 1/2 Seattle 63 81 .438 20 Minnesota 61 82 .427 21 1/2

NL EAST

1985 STANDINGS (Through Sept. 15)

Team W L Pct. GB St. Louis 86 55 .610 -- New York 86 56 .606 1/2 Montreal 76 66 .535 10 1/2 Philadelphia 69 71 .493 16 1/2 Chicago 66 75 .468 20 Pittsburgh 47 92 .333 38

NL EAST

1986 STANDINGS (Through Sept. 15)

Team W L Pct. GB New York 93 50 .650 -- Philadelphia 75 68 .524 18 St. Louis 72 71 .503 21 Montreal 70 71 .496 22 Chicago 61 82 .427 32 Pittsburgh 58 84 .408 34 1/2