Judge Keeps the Red Sox in Session

A game is never over till the final out. --Ancient Baseball Maxim The opera’s not over till the fat lady sings. --Dick Motta, basketball coach It’s never over till it’s over. --Yogi Berra FLASH!--ANAHEIM--The California Angels won the 1986 American League pennant Sunday taking a 5-2 lead into the ninth inning of their game with . . . (Attention editors, BUST THIS, BUST THIS!)

FLASH!--ANAHEIM--The Boston Red Sox in a record comeback rallied from the brink of defeat in the ninth inning to down the pennant-seeking California Angels, 6-5, Sunday . . . (Attention, editors, BUST THIS, BUST THIS!)

It was not the greatest game I have ever seen, but it was the greatest inning. It should go directly and intact to Cooperstown.

Ninth innings are usually tame affairs in postseason--or in-season--ballgames. A trend has been long since established in a match and usually runs its course. A game ends with a whimper.

Not the one between the Boston Red Sox and California Angels at Anaheim Sunday. A whole season was compressed into six outs.

The champagne was iced, the balloons were blown up, the cameras and lights were at the California locker-room door. The goings-on on the field were just a formality. California’s best pitcher had the Red Sox eating out of his hand with a three-run lead and three outs to go. Coming up were three guys he had retired all afternoon except for one dink single. Pop the cork, start the music, wine clerk!

No one particularly looked up when Bill Buckner slapped a single up the middle. They smirked when Jim Rice fanned.

They gulped when Don Baylor hit a two-run homer. Three batters later, they paled when Dave Henderson hit a two-run homer.

Their color returned when the Angels tied it up in the bottom of the inning. But they started to lose their lunch again when Baylor got hit by a pitcher for the 228th time in his career in the top of the 11th. And they faded into the parking lot when he dented the plate with the game-winning run on a sacrifice fly three batters later.

Will somebody please cut down the Boston Red Sox from that scaffold? They’re still breathing, their eyelids are still fluttering.

The collapse that everybody has been predicting since Opening Day has been postponed again, for about the 15th time this season. The people who have been waiting with a net, listening for the thud, trying not to get hit when the Red Sox splatter on the sidewalk, are going to have to stand on tiptoe a while longer.

The Red Sox, goes the refrain, are like a flimsy building with a rotting foundation. Collapse is always imminent.

They’re not a team, they’re a clique. In Boston, the home of the bean and the cod, the Lowells may speak only to the Cabots and the Cabots only to God, but the Red Sox don’t even speak to one another, goes the whisper in New England. The old joke has it: How do you know the Red Sox are in town? Because there are 24 different cabs at the locker room door. Some guys get separate checks. The Red Sox get separate tables.

The introductions before the game are not for the audience, they’re for the team. The only thing the Red Sox have in common is the color of their sox. And so on.

But all this was before Don Edward Baylor joined the team this year. Don Baylor didn’t lead the team. He united it. He did what George Washington did. Or Ben Franklin when Franklin said, “We must all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

“Leadership” is an ephemeral thing. “Leadership is a three-run homer in the ninth inning,” the late Casey Stengel used to say. Leadership is also a two-hit shutout.

But the Red Sox had those things. And it didn’t translate into leadership. The Red Sox had the reputation of being the country club of the big leagues, a mass of indifference, a bunch of guys like the waiter who says “Sorry, that’s not my station.”

There have been celebrated judges in American history--Judge Roy Bean, the “law west of the Pecos,” Judge John Sirica, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, hanging judges, weep-easy judges.

Judge Don Baylor took over the Case of the Dissensioned Ballclub--and he wielded a heavy gavel.

No more would indifferent or incompetent play be shrugged off. No more would a Red Sox player wave at a 3-and-0 pitch, pop it up and say, “Well, I tried my best.” No more would a guy take a called third strike with the bases loaded and two out. No more would a guy laugh off leaving a runner on third with fewer than two outs. No more would a guy be caught in the runway munching a ham sandwich during a home-club rally. No more would a guy miss a bunt sign or get caught in a rundown--and giggle about it later.

Judge Baylor was no powdered-wig, puffy-eyed bored M’lud of the bench. Judge Baylor was an activist. He fined you--and he read the riot act to you. He threw the book at you. You were lucky that’s all he threw at you. The fine was the easy part. It was the glower that made your knees weak. Judge Baylor could make Death Row look like a day at the beach.

“Leadership” on a ballclub is usually said to reside in a guy who goes 5 feet 8, weighs 145 with his shoes on, makes a lot of noise and gets hits you could play “Oh, Susanna” on. Baylor speaks softly but he carries, so to speak, a lot of weight. About 220 pounds worth. All of it muscle. The Red Sox started to act like a team and not a pack of operatic tenors when Judge Baylor went on the bench. They were suddenly an orchestra, not a pack of soloists.

Baylor could lead with three-run homers, too. He led with a four-run homer in the first home game of the season and he hit 30 other homers for the 315th of his big league career before it was over.

Guys who can hit those kinds of numbers don’t usually need to be holler guys, too.

But Don Baylor was hoarse from hollering in the locker room after the game in Anaheim Stadium Sunday.

His Honor had taken a game that was all but out of reach and put it back in his team’s grasp. Leadership is a two-run homer, too.

Baylor has been hit more than any player in American League history. That’s because the pitchers know if they don’t hit him, he will hit them. “I stand right on the plate, I’m aggressive,” Baylor admits. “If I move off the plate, I lose my perception of the strike zone.”

A few contusions, a headache or two, are a small price to pay for a chance at the Stengel notion of leadership, the two- or three-run homer.

The Red Sox are not turning, turning, slowly in the wind today, because their judge and jury won’t permit it. It’s against the new Boston penal code.

The Red Sox were two outs from going home for the winter Sunday when he came to bat in the ninth Sunday. “I decided it might be my last at-bat of the season,” Judge Baylor said of his homer-hitting appearance. “I wanted to make it a good one.” He didn’t want to have to fine himself, even though he has all season.

As for the Red Sox, when their chief justice led off the 11th with a hit-by-pitcher and was on third base, glaring in, they didn’t dare leave him--and the 1986 pennant--there. If they did, no lawyer in the land could save them. They might swing higher than Morgan the Pirate. Theirs is one judge who is not soft on crime. Particularly, a terrible one like leaving the judge on third with the season in the balance.