THE WORLD SERIES : New York Mets vs. Boston Red Sox : Did Satchel Paige Have Nights Like This? : Mets Would Welcome Another Opportunity to Kick The Can in Series

Dennis (Oil Can) Boyd had promised them Satchel Paige. He had promised black shoes and low-riders and mastery of the New York Mets.

The fans had crowded Fenway Park expectantly Tuesday night, chanting “Oil Can, Oil Can” while he was still in the bullpen, warming up for Game 3 of the World Series.

Only three pitches into the game, when Len Dykstra swung and the ball rose high into the New England night and dropped precipitously into the right-field stands, the crowd began to sense that Boyd had promised too much.

Seven batters into the game, after the Mets had scored four lightning runs, it became apparent that on this night, Boyd would deliver only disappointment.

Had Paige, the Negro League great whose spirit Boyd had vowed to summon, shown up too late to spare the Red Sox right-hander a 7-1 loss to the Mets?

“Not really,” Boyd said softly from the director’s chair in front of his locker full of his beloved shoes.

“I’m sure he had some hard times, too.”

Boyd ran a slender hand in front of his eyes and leaned back against the wall, while the reporters crowded around him and the flashbulbs went off in his haggard-looking face.

“They got me before I got going,” he said. “Then I settled down. I was just hoping that we’d get a big inning like I gave them.”

That big inning never came for the Red Sox, even though the Met pitcher was left-hander Bob Ojeda, a former teammate who was supposed to come undone at the sight of Fenway’s Green Monster.

Boyd had said so himself. It never occurred to him that he was the pitcher who would become unraveled, in the park he loves best and with his mother and father in the stands.

“I was just mad, man, you know that,” he said, when asked about Dykstra’s home run.

“I was furious. That ain’t the way I wanted to start the ballgame.”

He had thrown Dykstra a slider, he said, not a great slider, but a decent enough pitch--until the Met center fielder hit it out.

“He seems to be an unorthodox hitter,” Boyd said. “I saw his hands come through the strike zone. He came at it like he was going to hit it inside-out (to the opposite field) like Wade Boggs, but all of a sudden he yanked it.”

That was the beginning. Wally Backman then singled. So did Keith Hernandez. Gary Carter doubled home a run, and after Boyd struck out Darryl Strawberry, the Red Sox botched a rundown play, giving designated hitter Danny Heep the chance to single home two more runs.

Mets 4, Red Sox 0, and Manager John McNamara had already made one visit to the pitcher who has been described as 145 pounds of nerve endings.

“His adrenaline was flowing,” McNamara said. “But I thought he settled down after the first inning.”

Boyd said that, yes, he was keyed up, but he didn’t need McNamara to act as a calming influence.

“I wasn’t hyper or anything,” he said. “Every time I’m hit around doesn’t mean I’m hyper, man. It’s not like that.

“I’m not crazy, man.”

In the visitor’s clubhouse, the Mets weren’t so sure.

“It’s kind of crazy for any pitcher to say something like that about a team he’s never seen before,” said Darryl Strawberry, referring to Boyd’s pledge of mastery over the Mets.

“We just wanted to go out there and stick it to him. I hope we can even up the series so we can face him again. That way, we can stick it to him again.”

After the first inning, Boyd said, he went into the tunnel behind the Boston dugout.

“I was boiling after the first inning,” he said. “But I was quiet on the bench, very observant. I took away all my pep talk and pulling for the guys. I knew I had to go into the tunnel and get my own act together.”

And he did, retiring 17 of 18 batters he faced until Rafael Santana hit an 0-and-2 pitch into center field for a one-out single in the seventh.

Dykstra followed with another single, one of his four hits. Backman flied out for the second out, but Boyd, pitching carefully, walked Hernandez to load the bases.

McNamara came to the mound again. Boyd got two quick strikes on Carter, then made another mistake, which Carter hit into left field for a two-run single.

“I wanted to bounce a screwball,” Boyd said. “I wanted to put a nice bite on it, but I overthrew it, it stayed up, and he banged it into left field.”

Until that point, Boyd had held out hope of a comeback. Ojeda, he believed, could be had, a belief he clung to even after the Met left-hander was accepting a winner’s handshakes.

“Bobby pitched a good game, but it wasn’t gutsy,” Boyd said.

“I feel he pitched around everybody in the lineup, including Spike Owen.

“I saw him throw some of my guys . . . five or six changeups in a row.

“He didn’t have anyone spinning in the brain. If anything, my guys were frustrated.

” . . . My guys can swing the bat, but they might have been like me--very keyed up, and a little too aggressive.”

On the one hand, Boyd wants another shot at the Mets. On the other, he hopes the Red Sox have clinched the Series by then, before a seventh game, which would be his next start.

“Sometimes it’s not meant to be your night,” he said. “I kind of feel I let myself down more than anything.

“But I’m still confident.”