Before Trying to Repeat, Team Clears the Air : Red Sox Take Step in Meeting

Marty Barrett had said it last fall after the Red Sox had lost a World Series they seemed to have won and after they had won an American League playoff they seemed to have lost.

“What goes around comes around,” Barrett had said. “I just didn’t think it would come around so soon.

Now, Manager John McNamara, preparing for a new season and Boston’s bid to become the first team to win consecutive titles in the league’s Eastern Division since the New York Yankees in 1980 and ‘81, has to deal with such ramifications of that World Series loss to the New York Mets as:

--The bitter memory of a 6-5 loss in Game 6 after the Red Sox had led, 5-3, in the 10th, and an 8-5 loss in Game 7 after they had led, 3-0, in the sixth.

--The intramural criticism and second-guessing that always seem to accompany such a demise.

McNamara held a team meeting last Sunday designed to clear the air.

“It was an opportunity for anyone who has a problem with me or anyone else to get it out of their system,” McNamara said.

“There were some quotes over the winter that might have offended some people.”

Most seemed to have been in a Sport magazine article in which relief pitcher Bob Stanley criticized McNamara’s continued use of rookie reliever Calvin Schiraldi in pivotal moments of Games 6 and 7, and also seemed to question Schiraldi’s fortitude.

Stanley’s wife, in the same article, also criticized catcher Rich Gedman for failing to catch her husband’s crucial 10th-inning pitch in Game 6. The Mets scored the tying run on what was ruled a wild pitch, the eventual winning run moving into scoring position.

The veteran Stanley claimed he was misquoted and reportedly apologized to McNamara even before Sunday’s meeting, though there have been rumors that some teammates shared his disenchantment with Schiraldi’s employment.

There had also been quotes by Bill Buckner to the effect that even had he gloved Mookie Wilson’s grounder, which went between Buckner’s legs and allowed the winning run to score in Game 6, he could not have made a play because Stanley failed to get off the mound to cover first.

All of that had been accompanied by occasional sniping from part-time and lower-salaried Red Sox over the penurious voting of postseason shares by their higher-salaried brethren.

McNamara said he was confident that Sunday’s 13-minute meeting, at which he stressed the need for the Red Sox to put ’86 behind them, served its purpose, even though no one accepted his invitation to “air it out.”

Clubhouse enforcer Don Baylor said he would ask McNamara to hold another meeting on the eve of the season, after the roster had been pared to 24 players.

Baylor said that he, too, had heard and read off-season statements that he didn’t like.

“If it’s ‘we’ when you win, it should be ‘we’ when you lose,” he said. “You don’t start pointing fingers just because one guy makes an error. The sooner we can forget Games 6 and 7, the better off we’ll be because we have to start all over and everyone will be shooting at us now.”

Said McNamara: “To come as close as we did to realizing the lifetime dream of winning a World Series and then to fail is bound to leave a bitter taste. There was a long period when I’d wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it.

“I mean, there’s going to be questions. We know that. We just have to deal with it, put it behind us and get on with preparing for the 1987 season.

“The way 1986 ended was a disappointment, but we were a team that was picked for fifth, had to overcome a choke label and eventually held off challenges by every team in the division after we went into first place on May 15.”

McNamara said that the reporting of almost all of his everyday players before March 1, when they began receiving meal and expense money and were officially scheduled to report, showed him that “the attitude and approach is the same as last year.”

He added: “Aside from what I feel I can do or the coaches can do, we’ve got such good leadership on the club, people like Baylor and Jim Rice and Dwight Evans, that they’re not going to let anyone dwell on last year or put up with any BS. If we didn’t have that maturity and experience, then I might be concerned.”

Morale aside, Boston’s principal concern is at catcher. Marc Sullivan, the son of club President Haywood Sullivan and a .193 hitter in 41 games last year, is it for now.

However, free agent Gedman has reportedly told many of his former Boston teammates that as disturbed as he is by his previous negotiations with the club, he wants to return May 1, when he is eligible to re-sign.

The three-year, $2.65-million contract that Gedman rejected through agent Jack Sands in January will remain on the table, according to General Manager Lou Gorman, who is openly optimistic that Gedman will return.

Other questions regarding the regular lineup involve:

--First base, where Buckner is returning after a fourth operation on his left ankle.

--Shortstop, where Spike Owen faces a challenge from rookie Jody Reed and veteran Glenn Hoffman, now returning from a season of injury and illness.

--Center field, where Boston’s refusal to exercise a contract option on Tony Armas has left playoff and World Series star Dave Henderson as the experienced favorite in a battle with touted Ellis Burks.

Said McNamara: “I feel confident we can repeat, because our pitching should be very solid. I think our first three starters are as good as any in the American League.”

Those pitchers are Roger Clemens, Bruce Hurst and Dennis (Oil Can) Boyd, all under 30.

Al Nipper will be the fourth starter, and there is speculation that Stanley or Schiraldi will be moved to the rotation as No. 5, depending on the health of southpaw relief pitcher Wes Gardner, who missed most of last season after being acquired with Schiraldi in the trade that sent Bob Ojeda to the Mets.

McNamara, in the meantime, prefers to look at what the surprising Red Sox accomplished in 1986 rather than what they didn’t. He reflected on the events of October and said, “If you think I felt bad, look at Gene Mauch.”

Added Barrett: “I think the only way we can forget last year’s World Series is to win this year’s. All people talked about when I first came up was how the Red Sox had blown the pennant in 1978. I hope it doesn’t take another eight years before we can forget ’86.”