For Struggling Sax, It’s .179, Not 1986

A funny thing happened to Steve Sax on the way to the Hall of Fame.

All right, maybe Sax wasn’t on his way to the big Hall, but a few more seasons like the one he had in 1986 and Sax would put himself on a lot of people’s all-time Dodger teams.

He murdered the ball last year, hit .332 and had a nice season with the glove. Sax did more than any other Dodger, except maybe Fernando, to salvage some Dodger pride in an otherwise humiliating season.

It was such a good season, Sax went back for another look at it Sunday afternoon. After going 0 for 3 in a Dodger loss to the Padres to extend his slump to two hits in his last 25 at-bats and lower his batting average to .179, Sax locked himself in the Dodgers’ video room and watched the 1986 version of himself. You might say he was watching re-runs of “Happy Days.”

“I was a little smoother than I am now,” Sax said after the video session. “I’m trying to get back into that frame now, know what I mean?”

I think I do. I had a slump myself. Back in ‘81, I think it was. Hey, I just kept hackin’ away at the keys and finally typed my way out of it.

I think there’s hope for Sax, too. He’s 27 years old, and looks like he’s 19, so it’s probably too soon for him to be over the hill.

Still, this slump is really getting to the six-year veteran. He has been throwing helmets and bats, and generally having a lousy time.

“I’ve never had a start like this,” he said.

Sax is usually the life of the party in the Dodger clubhouse, a happy, lippy guy with something to say to everyone. But lately he’s been sort of quiet.

“You can see right now he’s really pressing,” said Dodger coach Bill Russell. “Instead of laughing and carrying on in the clubhouse, he’s pressing. I told him about that today.”

The advice didn’t take right away. Sax was very low-key after the game, but then you can’t expect a party when the worst team in baseball embarrasses your club at home.

Sax opened the season as the Dodgers leadoff hitter, but Tommy Lasorda dropped him to eighth in the order last week, trying to take some pressure off.

Sax is lucky he doesn’t play for a manager like San Diego’s Larry (Blowtop) Bowa. Bowa got mad at one of his starting pitchers last week and yanked him out of the rotation, opting for a four-man rotation. After Sunday’s game, Bowa might decide to go with a one-man starting rotation--Eric Show and pray for rain.

The level-headed Lasorda only blows up weekly, not daily like Bowa. Lasorda, instead of shipping Sax to Albuquerque, or the Yakult Swallows, simply gave Sax a day off last week, and is waiting patiently for his team leader to come around.

In the field, Sax has only two errors in his 20 games, but he’s not asserting himself. He seems hesitant to make some throws. For instance, twice in a recent game he made two nice stops behind second base but didn’t attempt to throw out either runner.

“He’s not making errors,” Russell said. “But he’s playing a little defensive. We’d like to see him a little bit more daring. He’s playing safety first.”

In a recent game at San Francisco, Sax struck out and flung his bat almost all the way to first base coaching box.

“Best throw he’s made all week,” one press box cynic noted.

The Dodgers, never heralded as the last word in defense in major league baseball, need Sax to take charge in the infield. Sunday the Dodgers needed that kind of leadership.

Franklin Stubbs, playing first base, leaped to snag a high hopper in the sixth inning, then began searching frantically for the ball. He finally found it, in his glove.

Blame it on those modern, mattress-sized gloves. In the old days guys would lose a ball in the sun, or in the lights. These days, you can lose a ball in your glove. Stubbs is lucky he found the ball right away. It might have lodged itself in the webbing somewhere and fallen out a week later, in the midst of a game, causing lot of unnecessary confusion and embarrassment. Lasorda had a bad fielding day Sunday, too. He took a tumble in the Dodger dugout while trying to catch Dodger third baseman Tracy Woodson, who came hurtling into the dugout while chasing a pop foul. Woodson crunched into Lasorda and they fell to the ground. It would have been a 15-yard penalty, but Lasorda forgot to signal for a fair catch.

Sax, meanwhile, is trying hard to convince himself that slumps are part of the game. Hey, his old buddy Steve Garvey is slumping like crazy for the Padres. Garv whipped himself into Olympic decathlon shape in spring training, but he went into Sunday’s game batting .176 and battling to get playing time.

Sax tries to reason himself out of his slump. So does shortstop Mariano Duncan, who talks to Sax every day, tells him to hang in there, keep swinging. When Duncan was struggling in ‘86, Sax was there every day, offering encouragement.

Baseball is funny. Sax tears up the league in ’86. In the offseason he gets married and has pesky bone spurs removed from his heel, two bold and significant moves that figure to make him even sharper in ’87.

Instead, three weeks into the season he finds himself struggling. Instead of feeling natural and confident on the field, he feels awkward at the plate and tentative at second base. Instead of flowing, he’s jerking.

He takes it hard. He reaches back for the cliches.

“I’m just trying my hardest,” Sax says. “I’ve just got to put three or four good games together. We’ve only played one-sixth of the season, there’s still a lot of ball to be played.”

It’s more like one-eighth of the season, but when you’re batting .179, you don’t look too closely at the stats.