He’s Actually on Loan From Cooperstown

It was the bottom of the ninth inning of the game in San Francisco. The score was tied, 6-6, but the Giants had the bases loaded with one out when the batter, Will Clark, shot a clean single--or what appeared to be--to center field.

Charging, the center fielder for Cincinnati dashed in, swept up the rolling ball and just kept running. He beat the runner from first base to the bag for a forceout, fired the ball to first, narrowly missing a double play. The winning run scored, but barely, on the play.

The next night, in Dodger Stadium, in the third inning, with one out and Steve Sax on first for the Dodgers, batter John Shelby lofted a lazy fly to short center.

It was to fall safely, but baserunner Sax, suddenly seeing the Cincinnati center fielder coming after it, turned tail and went racing back to first without even looking back.

The ball wasn’t caught, but the center fielder quickly picked it up and threw to second for the force play on Sax.

Meanwhile, back at first base, Shelby, entitled to the bag, nevertheless got confused and began to run back to home plate. No one knew what he thought he was going to do when he got there, and ump John McSherry was shaking like a bowl of jelly, he was laughing so hard, when he called Shelby out.

In the press box, a Cincinnati reporter was delighted. “Just your regulation routine 8-4-3 double play!” he called out.

The moral of these extraordinary episodes is that there is a remarkable new young athlete aboard in the pastures of center field these days.

In each of the above cases, it was his presence and his presence alone that caused the opposition to begin to act like Little Leaguers. He is having that effect on the game.

Not since the great Willie Mays has anyone been the Presence in center field that Eric Keith Davis of the Cincinnati Reds has become.

Willie Mays happened to be in town the same week as the man they are calling Mays II, and Willie, at a Cedars-Sinai sports banquet, was recalling the time when his manager called his outfield together before a big game and instructed them, “Remember, if the ball goes in the air out there, Willie gets it!”

The right fielder took him literally. “The ball was right on the right-field foul line,” recalls Mays, “and Dusty Rhodes just stood there and looked at it and then looked at me. He made no move toward the ball.

“I had to run all the way over there and catch the ball--on the right-field foul line!--and turn and make a throw to the plate to catch a guy trying to score. And I said, ‘Hey, man, that was on the foul line!’ And he says ‘Well, I got out of your way, didn’t I?’ ”

But the point is, if a public address announcer 20 years ago could have said, with relative accuracy, “Now playing right field, center field and left field for the Giants--Willie Mays,” Cincinnati announcers can note that Eric Davis is playing center field, shortstop and second base for the Reds. “Davis-to-Concepcion-to-Parker” may one day replace “Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance” in trivia.

The three-base hit may have become as extinct as the dinosaur with Willie Mays. The three-base hit disappeared in the glove of Willie Mays.

But the center-field home run may disappear in the glove of Eric Davis. Five times this year, he has soared over the outfield fence to take an apparent homer away from a player who was already going into his home run trot.

Jack Clark, for instance, would be alone at the top of the league’s home run hitters instead of tied at 24 with Eric Davis and Dale Murphy if it weren’t for Eric and his Electric Glove.

Says Tommy Lasorda: “He’s going to break Ruth’s record for a season. He’ll hit 50 homers and catch 20!”

Some teams, the Cardinals for instance, make a practice of trying to beat out infield hits. With Davis, they may have trouble beating out outfield hits.

Players like Eric Davis come along once a generation. They’re on loan from Cooperstown.

You can see it in their stride, in their eyes, in the way other players creep up to the top step of the dugout when they come up for batting practice.

Fans scurry for vantage points to catch home runs, umps stop what they’re doing, even vendors pause to watch, because Eric Davis is more than just another speedster with a glove.

It’s not just that Eric Davis is fast. So is his bat. It has such velocity that 24 home runs have jumped off it this year, putting him up there with the Murphys and Mike Schmidts in frequency of four-base wallops.

Davis gets on base 4 out of every 10 times at bat, he has stolen 33 bases and driven in 64 runs.

“He’s gonna be the first guy in history to hit 50 home runs and steal 100 bases in a season!” roars Lasorda.

“He should be leading the league in triples,” insists his own manager, Pete Rose, “because every time he gets on first, he will be on third if the inning lasts long enough. He came all the way home from first on an overthrow of a pick-off play the other night. When he gets running, you have to listen for him ‘cause you can’t see him.”

You might expect from listening to his admirers that you were going to be greeted with some imposing mass of muscle with a barbed-wire beard, a shaven pate and a chaw of tobacco in his jaw.

Eric Davis looks as if he got lost on his way to the ballet theater.

He’s so thin, you could mail him. He has no hips or waist. If he stands sideways, he disappears.

Pitchers used to look at him and figure he was going to try to bunt his way aboard. Instead, they found themselves swiveling around to watch Ruthian wallops disappear into the seats. He wields his bat like a blacksnake whip.

Eric the Red is going to be the kind of player who gets known by one name.

When they say “Willie” in Baseball, it’s enough (McCovey is “Stretch”).

There was only one Babe, only one “Man,” and “Sandy” is enough said.

When you say “Eric” nobody in the game says “Eric Who?”

“The Reds have a pretty fast outfield,” the scribe was saying in the press box the other night. “Yeah, I’ve seen it,” retorted another. “It’s wearing No. 44. It’s the fastest outfield I’ve seen since No. 24 on the Giants.”

It also gives the Reds an unfair advantage. It gives them an extra player.

How else would you describe a player who can play center field and shortstop or second base? At the same time.