The Baseball Gods Must Be Perverse

The headlines of the day will tell of the game being won by a Bobby Grich smash in the bottom of the second extra inning, but longtime baseball-watchers know different.

The game was not won by anything as mundane as a base hit, it was won by the perverse little creatures that always manipulate the game at this time of the year. The October Pests, to coin a pun.

Because of them, baseball in the after-season is the least formful of all the games people play. They reserve their ultimate malice and mischief for the registered heroes of the game. They reward anonymity.

Consider Saturday night at Anaheim: A magnificent pitcher named Roger Clemens, on his way to the highest prize in all pitcherdom, was breezing along into the ninth inning on the wings of a brilliant four-hit shutout when the gremlins swung into action.

They gave his manager plenty of warning they were on a Halloween tear. Every out was a savagely hit ball for an inning and a half. When the manager ignored them, they decided to really teach the team a lesson. A homer, a double, two singles, an intentional walk and a hit batsman later and you could hear their mocking laughter all over Orange County.

Roger Clemens is not the first all-time ballplayer to feel their naked wrath.

For every Babe Ruth who once batted .625 in a World Series, you had Ted Williams, who batted only .200. Even Stan Musial had a .222 Series, Jackie Robinson a .182 set, and Ty Cobb twice batted .200. Gil Hodges once went 0-fora-whole-Series, and Dave Winfield went 1-for-a-Series.

But it’s pitchers these wretches reserve their most sadistic performances for.

When Roger Clemens failed for the second time to post a win in postseason--on the heels of Dwight Gooden losing his first effort in Houston--they were not the first all-timers to stumble on their way to the Hall of Fame.

Who would you guess is the game’s all-time greatest pitcher and what would you say his postseason, or World Series, record is? Walter Johnson? He had a 3-3 record in postseason play. He gave up 56 hits in World Series.

How about Cy Young himself? He won 511 lifetime games. You think he dazzled in October play? His World Series record was 2-1.

A great many people think Lefty Grove was the game’s most accomplished pitcher. He sure was one of them. He won 28 games in 1930 and 31 in 1931. He lost only 4 games one year and only 5 the other. But his World Series record? A puny 2-1 each year.

Carl Hubbell was as close to perfection as a pitcher can be in his prime. But not in the World Series. Hubbell had a .500 record against the Gehrig-DiMaggio Yankees, who beat him in one game, 8-1.

Dizzy Dean was as great a pitcher as he was a character, but he got knocked out of the box by the Yankees in 1938 on a homer barrage. One was by the great Joe DiMaggio, but the others were banjoists he wouldn’t have known came to bat in midseason.

Christy Mathewson? He used to win 30 games every year (or thereabouts). In his last three World Series, he was 2-5. In 1912, he got beat twice by a pitcher named (are you ready?) Hugh Bedient!

To bring the focus down to more modern confrontations, no one threw the ball any better than Warren Spahn, who won 363 games lifetime but was 4-3 in three World Series. He got driven from the mound in four innings once, sucked up an 11-5 win in relief in another.

Bob Feller never won a World Series game. He lost a two-hitter in one but got shelled in six innings by a seven-run attack in another.

Tom Seaver, as great a right-hander as ever threw, was 1-2 in Series play. Even the great Bob Gibson, as successful as he was, was to lose the last Series game he ever pitched. So did Sandy Koufax.

Roger Clemens never had a chance. Your only chance to fool the baseball nasties is to sneak in a win before you get famous. If there’s anything that irritates them, it’s the sight on the mound of a guy with good stuff, a winning season record and the gamblers backing him to a man. They taunt you. They let you rack up 6, 7, even 8 scoreless innings. They lull you. Then, Pow! The party’s over. Lights out. Next victim.

It’s probably not possible to pitch eight more impeccable innings than Roger Clemens pitched Saturday night. He had every right to tie up this pennant playoff, to send it back to Boston.

Hah! Little heed did he pay to the rattling in the attic, the noises coming from the basement, the scratching sounds in the other room. For about 130 pitches, Roger was a Cy Young Award pitcher. The other four belonged to the little dirty-pool elves.

To show you how perverse they are, they let a Bobby Grich off the hook to star in their carefully staged rise and fall of Roger Clemens. Bobby, to them, had been the victim of their malicious attentions. He had struck out three times and made one of two consecutive errors in the eighth that let Clemens and the Red Sox enjoy a brief, illusory 3-0 lead. Then, Bobby ripped a fastball into left field for the big win. They’ll take care of him later.

For them, it’s enough--for now--that they’ve taken care of young Master Clemens, let him know that a masterful fastball, curve, slider and control are not enough to win at the grand old game.

You have to appease the gods of postseason play. If you’re a great ballplayer--particularly a great pitcher--you just tick them off. They don’t care that you lose the game officially. Their deal is to see you don’t win. Clemens must be a great pitcher. Because that’s the only kind they ambush. And they’re guys that just love their (dirty) work.