His Attitude Very Unreal, but He’s Not

John Shelby knows that he isn’t Babe Ruth. Knows, in fact, that he isn’t even Babe Herman.

If you don’t think this is unusual, you don’t know ballplayers. All golfers think they are two to five shots better than they are. And all ballplayers think they’re 20 percentage points better than the book shows.

It’s customary for a ballplayer, faced with a benching, a demotion or just plain non-starting, to storm into the manager’s office, pound desks, scream, tear up a locker, shout, “Play me or trade me!” and threaten to call his lawyer, sue the league, jump the club or all three.

John Shelby doesn’t do any of the above. John Shelby deals in reality. His blood pressure would have to double for him before he could even be considered excitable. Shelby accepts things as they are.

You approach John Shelby knowing a case could be made that he didn’t get a fair shake, a full chance, with the Baltimore Orioles.

You look at the record and see where there was a lot of in-and-out-of-the lineup, a lot of spot playing, a lot of shuttling back and forth between the big club and the minor league farm in Rochester.

You bounce this off John Shelby. Unfair, right?

John Shelby shakes his head. “I didn’t hit,” he says.

First, you hit yourself on the side of the head to be sure you’re hearing right. This is so outside acceptable baseball behavior, you think he misunderstood the question.

“But when they brought in Freddie Lynn and Lee Lacy and put them in your position,” you push on, “didn’t you think that was rotten?”

“Fred Lynn is a proven major league player,” rejoins John Shelby. “What’d you expect them to do?”

One of the things they did was to send John Shelby back to Rochester for the third time.

Now, for a lot of major leaguers, that would be a signal to pout, sulk, sound off in the newspapers, disappear and refuse to report.

Shelby was in uniform in Rochester the next day.

He might have stayed there to this day, or the rest of his career, if the bottom hadn’t fallen out of the Dodgers this year. Management went on a coast-to-coast rummage sale hunt.

Executive Vice President Fred Claire, dangling relief pitcher Tom Niedenfuer, approached Baltimore. He remembered Shelby because the Dodgers’ Lou Johnson had reported to the front office in spring training that the Orioles had a pretty good outfielder who had starred in the 1983 World Series--he hit .444--but who was falling between two chairs trying to play regularly in the Baltimore outfield.

Shelby’s expectations were so modest that when Claire phoned him, Shelby wondered apologetically if the team could help him move his pregnant wife to a downstairs apartment “before I make that long trip to Albuquerque.”

“Albuquerque!” Claire said in astonishment. “You’re not going to Albuquerque. You’re coming to New York. We’re playing in Shea Stadium tonight.”

There was a pause. “You mean I’m on the Dodgers?” Shelby croaked.

“Starting in center field tonight,” Claire assured him.

It’s probably a good thing Shelby is so low-strung. You see, his is not the name Dodger fans had in mind for center field this year. The man they pictured was Montreal superstar Tim Raines. Raines had let it be known over the winter that he hankered to be in Dodger blue, and set bleacherites dreaming of turning Raines into pennants from Heaven.

John Shelby is not likely to manage that. Shelby is not a franchise player. But he has been a pleasant surprise in an otherwise catastrophic year for the once-proud Dodgers.

Getting to bat regularly has seen him move his average into the .270 range, give or take. He has hit 18 home runs in only a little more than half a season. He has driven in more than 50 runs. He can cover center field with the best in the league. He satisfies the Leo Durocher criteria for a major league ballplayer: He can hit, hit with power, run, field and throw.

But you will be able to pick him out of a crowd because he is the one who never throws his helmet, kicks the water cooler, charges the mound, runs into the manager’s office. If he strikes out, he might come back to the dugout and say, “It was a good pitch.”

John Shelby sat in a dugout, a bat between his knees. “Say,” he said suddenly, “this is a l-o-o-o-ng interview, isn’t it?”

“Not particularly,” said the reporter.

“Well, it is for me,” said Shelby.

“Don’t people usually talk to you a long time?” the reporter wanted to know.

“Usually, not at all,” Shelby sighed.