All-Star Game : Pitchers May Have Their Day in Twilight

In the Year of the Home Run, the 58th All-Star Game poses a stiff challenge for sluggers -- taming the twilight zone at one of the worst hitters’ parks in baseball.

A notoriously bad glare, the most foul territory in the major leagues and seemingly dead air make the Oakland Coliseum a brutal place to hit. And a 5:30 p.m. local start, arranged to accomodate NBC-TV, will make it even tougher for batters.

The last time the All-Star Game started at twilight, in 1984 in San Francisco, there were a record 21 strikeouts. The time before, in 1980 in Los Angeles, 15 All-Stars struck out.

But Tuesday’s game may not be a snap for Bret Saberhagen, Mike Scott, Rick Sutcliffe and other top pitchers.

Home runs are up 22 percent over last year’s record pace, and many of those heavy hitters will be in Oakland.

“At the beginning of the season, I didn’t know if I’d even have the chance to be on the All-Star team,” said Oakland rookie Mark McGwire, who leads the majors with 31 home runs despite not starting until the third week of the year.

McGwire, George Bell and Dave Winfield highlight a homer-studded lineup that can give the American League something unique -- its first consecutive victories in the All-Star Game since 1957-58.

The National League leads the series 36-20-1 and has won 13 of the last 15 and 21 of the previous 24. The AL broke through last year on home runs by Lou Whitaker and Frank White for a 3-2 victory at the Astrodome, which, statistically, is worse than Oakland when it comes to home runs.

Eric Davis leads an NL lineup that includes Jack Clark, Andre Dawson and Mike Schmidt. Davis tops the league with 26 home runs, and is batting .317 with 66 runs batted in.

Davis is also an oddity. While the All-Star Game moved west to Oakland for the first time ever, Davis was only player from a Western Division team voted to start. All 15 other players elected by fans came from the East.

“The East is where it’s at,” Winfield said.

Winfield, Don Mattingly, Rickey Henderson and Willie Randolph, the first four batters in the New York Yankees’ lineup, were all elected to start. Reliever Dave Righetti was selected to the nine-man pitching staff.

Even with Mattingly and Henderson on the disabled list, the Yankees have been the best team in the AL this season. Winfield, accused in the past by owner George Steinbrenner of not hitting in the clutch, has hit 19 homers with 67 RBI.

Righetti, though not as consistent as last year, has 17 saves and helped stabilize a pitching staff that was considered the team’s weak spot.

Righetti will join Tom Henke, Jay Howell and Dan Plesac as relievers on the staff. In the past, AL staffs often have been overloaded with starters and not enough relievers, a problem the NL usually manages to avoid when it constructs its pitching corps.

“You look around and you see all these great players, guys you admire, and you want to say ‘hello’ but as a pitcher you don’t want to get too friendly,” Righetti said. “You’ve got to get these guys out sometime down the road.”

One of the batters Righetti could face is Clark, who has been the strength of the NL East-leading St. Louis Cardinals.

The Cardinals have the best record in baseball and Clark is averaging one run batted in per game. He leads the majors with 82 RBI and is batting .306 with 25 home runs.

“This team never gives up. We don’t feel like we can lose,” said St. Louis’ Willie McGee, selected as an All-Star reserve outfielder.

St. Louis shortstop Ozzie Smith, batting over .300, was the top vote-getter.

“I’m basically known as a defensive player. I feel I’m a better offensive player than I’m known,” he said.

Also surprising this season are Saberhagen and Sutcliffe, former Cy Young winners who slumped during injury-plagued 1986 seasons.

Kansas City’s Saberhagen has rebounded royally from going 7-12. He leads the majors with a 14-3 record and has kept the Royals close in the AL West.

Sutcliffe leads the NL with an 11-4 record. He went 5-14 last year for the Chicago Cubs.

“Sutcliffe should start, he deserves it,” Cubs Manager Gene Michael said.

NL Manager Davey Johnson of the New York Mets and AL Manager John McNamara of the Boston Red Sox will announce their starting pitchers Monday.

Missing will be the pitchers who started last year’s game -- Boston’s Roger Clemens and the New York Mets’ Dwight Gooden. Also missing for the first time in his seven full major-league seasons is Los Angeles’ Fernando Valenzuela, who is just 7-7.

Clemens pitched three perfect innings in the 1986 All-Star Game and was its Most Valuable Player. He went on to a 24-4 record and was the AL’s MVP and Cy Young winner.

This year, Clemens walked out of spring training for 29 days and has been inconsistent. He is 7-6 with a 3.64 earned run average for the Red Sox, one of baseball’s big disappointments in 1987.

“The decision not to pick Clemens was not really difficult,” McNamara said. “There are people with much better won-lost records who didn’t make it.”

Gooden has fared better, going 5-2 with a 2.90. He did not pitch for the Mets until June 5 because of cocaine rehabilitation and follow-up conditioning. This is the first time in his four big-league seasons that he has not been an All-Star.

Although the Mets are well represented on the All-Star team -- Gary Carter and Darryl Strawberry are starters, Keith Hernandez is a reserve and Sid Fernandez was picked to pitch -- the Mets have struggled. Injuries to Bob Ojeda, Rick Aguilera, David Cone and Roger McDowell’s hernia operation decimated the pitching staff, and the defending World Series champions have spent almost as much time bickering as playing.

“This is the most frustrating season I’ve ever spent in baseball,” Johnson said.

One other familiar All-Star will be missing. There was speculation the AL might give one of its 28 roster spots to Reggie Jackson, who has been selected 14 times in the past. Jackson is batting just .200 with 11 homers as Oakland’s part-time designated hitter and is probably in his final season.

There was some thought Jackson might get a final hurrah in the place where he started his career. Instead, the sellout crowd of nearly 50,000 will get to cheer for McGwire, the newest slugger to wear the Athletics’ green and gold.