All That Houston Has Ahead of It Now Is a Winter of Wondering

There will be no World Series for Kevin Bass, the overanxious outfielder who made the last out of the National League championship series, the man who expressed his disappointment in a flat, matter-of-fact voice until most of the Houston clubhouse had been cleared, then said bitterly: “You want to know what I really felt like? I felt like throwing my bat in the stands.”

There will be no World Series for Billy Hatcher, the little fella who blew the lid off the Astrodome with a magnificent 14th-inning home run, the man who said forlornly: “At that moment in time, I was probably the happiest man in the whole wide world.”

There will be no World Series for Bob Knepper, the left-handed pitcher who restricted the New York Mets to two hits for eight innings, the man who lowered his head and said regretfully: “I never wanted to win a ballgame so bad in my life. God, it’s going to be a long winter.”

There will be no World Series for Mike Scott, the Tomorrow Man, the man whose photographs adorned the walls of Knepper’s locker like religious portraits, the man who was going to take care of Game 7 for the Houston Astros, if only they, without him, could take care of Game 6.

They ran out of tomorrows, the Astros. They made the Mets sweat and suffer, made them charge from behind and gasp to stay in front, made them toil 16 innings before scratching out a 7-6 win, then went home wondering how something so good could turn out so bad.

They were enervated, drained, battle-fatigued. There were symptoms of shell shock evident from the minute the Astros returned to the clubhouse, their season over, as when relief pitcher Larry Andersen, who had just donated three of the finest innings of his life, turned to fellow pitcher Jim Deshaies with a look of helplessness.

“What are we supposed to do now, Jim?” Andersen asked.

Go home. Think it over. Run the videotape. Savor it. Agonize over it. There was nothing else for the Houston Astros to do, because the New York Mets were not going to be at the Astrodome when they showed up the next day. The Mets already would be back home, rehearsing for the classic sport pageant that no Houston team had ever been part of. All there would be at the Astrodome was leftover equipment and memories.

Bass sidled over to Hatcher’s locker, slumped into a folding chair next to him and said in just above a whisper: “Glad you were the one to hit that ball, Hatch.”

Hatcher just kept staring vacantly into the stall ahead of him, at a mound of used shoes.

“What am I gonna do with all this crap?” he asked.

Every ounce of strength on the part of the Astros had been sapped by trying to hang tight against the Mets, trying to hold onto early leads and buy time until Scott’s arm had had a proper rest. But after 28 innings of baseball with an airplane ride sandwiched in between, all the Astros had done was lose the two games that had been played since Scott had last pitched, and betray the noble efforts of Nolan Ryan and Knepper.

Never before had such good pitching gone so unrewarded. At the point where Knepper took a 3-0 lead into the ninth inning of Wednesday’s amazing game, the Houston pitchers had given the Mets nine measly hits in the last 29 innings. And yet, neither Ryan nor Knepper recorded a victory in this series, a fate that also befell Dwight Gooden of the Mets, who labored 19 innings and was scored upon twice.

If only the Astros could have altered their fate, made one nip here, one tuck there. If Alan Ashby could have made contact on a squeeze bunt. (“I was surprised when I missed the ball,” Ashby said. “No, I was sick when I missed the ball.”) If Bill Doran could have batted down a high-hopper. If Hatcher could have run under Darryl Strawberry’s 16th-inning pop-up. If Bass could have made a better throw to the plate to nail Strawberry . . . two better throws to the plate . . .

If only Bass could have gotten wood on one of the six breaking pitches that New York’s Jesse Orosco had served him in the 16th, with two out, two on. “I kept thinking that he’s gonna make the mistake, that the pressure was on him, “ Bass said. “But he wasn’t gonna give me nothing good to hit. It was like trying to swat flies up there.

“It kind of rips at you when you don’t come through, but Lord willing, this situation will come up again someday. If I was perfect, I would have hit a dinger and thrown Strawberry out. But nobody’s perfect. Wish I was, but I ain’t.”

Oh, how they were trying to be. For two solid hours Wednesday, the only thing the Astros did wrong was score three runs in the first inning when they should have scored four. The aborted squeeze bunt accounted for that. Otherwise, all was well, and in their hearts and souls they knew the Mets were sitting in their dugout thinking: “Mike Scott tomorrow, Mike Scott tomorrow . . . “

Came the ninth inning, and Met hits galore. Knepper had to go. “It was so important to me to be the person to shut them down, to have the best game of my career,” Knepper said. “And for eight innings, I did. Then I fell apart.”

Dave Smith replaced him, and everything fell apart. Smith thought he had Ray Knight out on strikes with a fastball on the corner, but umpire Fred Brocklander disagreed. Ashby, the catcher, took umbrage and made a noise. “I groaned, I grunted, I don’t know what the hell I did,” Ashby said. “But Knight said something, I said something, and, as they say, tempers flared.”

Brocklander separated Ashby and Knight. Knight then tied the score with a sacrifice fly. Still disgusted, Smith spiked the baseball after getting the side out, then had words with the umpire. “I’m probably going to get a letter from (league president) Chub Feeney fining me for arguing that call by Brocklander, but he missed it, and Ray Knight knows he missed it,” Smith said.

Into extra innings the game went. Lots of extra innings. When the Mets scored in the 14th, helped by a bad throw from right field by Bass, the Astros looked dead, but Hatcher revived them with a thrilling home run off the left-field foul pole.

In the 16th inning, the Mets scored again. Three times. Again, the Astros looked dead. But in came one run, then another, until finally there stood Bass, their most consistent hitter of the season, the amiable Californian with the thick mustache who cracks up his teammates mimicking Sammy Davis Jr.’s voice and Groucho Marx’s walk.

There was hope. “I never gave up, ever,” Hatcher said. “I knew we had a chance to win as long as there was one out left.”

Bass came up swinging, lunging.

“I had all the visions of having the big hit,” he said. “My adrenalin was pumping. I was out of control. Too aggressive. What can I say? I wanted to hit it a mile.”

He finally calmed down after two wild swings and ran the count full. Virtually everyone in the Astrodome stood. The foundations shook. The din was remarkable. Bass dug in.

And struck out.

In their clubhouse, the Astros tried to become accustomed to the notion that they had no more games to play. Andersen, red-eyed, voice cracking, appealed to Deshaies as to what to do next. Third baseman Denny Walling dressed quickly and shook hands, businesslike, with every teammate: “Enjoyed playing with you. See you next spring.”

Shortstop Craig Reynolds sat motionless in a director’s chair. “Tomorrow, we’ll have pride in what we did,” he said. “Tonight, we’ll have pain.”

Hatcher was despondent. “I feel, I feel like . . . “ He felt like being graphically honest. “I feel like I should just go into a room by myself, shut the door, drink two or three beers and pass out,” Hatcher said.

Bass latched a hand on Hatcher’s shoulder.

“No use worrying about it no more,” he said consolingly.

Most of the players already had gone. Bass rose to leave. He was asked: “Will you remember this as a classic game or as a loss?”

“Loss,” he said quickly.

“Why?”

“Because we ain’t playin’ no more,” he said, and headed for the long winter.