Target Bearing 00 : Fans Toss Beer, Money, Batteries, Frozen Hot Dogs and Even Cowbells at Leonard

His and his team’s performance in Game 7 of the National League playoffs tonight will determine if Jeffrey Leonard is selected the Most Valuable Player and rewarded with the $50,000 that his contract guarantees.

He has already been selected as another kind of MVP--Most Verbal Player, which carries its own rewards.

The left-field zealots in a crowd of 55,331 at Busch Stadium Tuesday night, for instance, made several presentations to the San Francisco left fielder.

They threw beer, money, batteries, frozen hot dogs and even cowbells at the Hac-Man.

Cowbells?

An obvious case of mistaken identity.

Leonard, in this series, has merely degraded the pitching skills of Greg Mathews and John Tudor, knocked the Cardinals as a team and infuriated the St. Louis players and partisans with his in-your-face home run trot.

It was teammate Chili Davis who called St. Louis a “cow town” when the Giants visited here at the start of this playoff.

“That’s OK,” Leonard said after the Cardinals had won, 1-0, to force tonight’s climactic game. “I can handle the abuse for both Chili and myself.”

His manager, Roger Craig, doesn’t think he should have to handle any of the type abuse directed at him Tuesday night.

“When they threw the beer at him (in the sixth inning),” Craig said, “I told John Kibler (the chief umpire) that one more beer and I would take the team off the field.

“I mean, what happens if he’s going after a fly ball and they throw beer in his eyes. It could mean the game. He could be injured. If it happens tomorrow night again I just might take them off the field. I wouldn’t want to think of doing it, but it just might be the first forfeit in playoff history.”

Leonard stood at his locker later and said he would oppose taking the team off the field. He said the umpires had told him he could come in any time that he didn’t feel safe.

“If I had known that,” he said, “I wouldn’t have even come to the park.

“I mean, if I came in every time something was thrown, the game would go on for 15 hours.

“The point is that nothing happened that I didn’t expect tonight except we didn’t win and I had those two cow bells thrown at me (early in the game). I don’t mind the verbal abuse or any of the other things that were thrown, but the cow bells were dangerous.

“One landed about five yards from me. Fortunately, I heard them coming.”

Leonard, of course, knew what was coming. He had said that he was looking forward to it. The frequency of the calls to his hotel room throughout the day, however, forced him to put a lock on his phone. He instructed the hotel operator to switch his message light on when he received a call.

It never stopped blinking, he said, and at one point the operator told him:

“Gee, Mr. Leonard, you’re sure popular.”

There was even one report that a St. Louis radio station had encouraged its listeners to call and disturb Leonard and had hired a person to bang on his door, but Leonard said he was unaware of that and came to the park relaxed and ready.

“I got suspended once in grade school for raising hell,” he recalled, “and my mother and father yelled at me louder and longer than these people did tonight. That meant more than this does now. The only thing that upsets me some is that these people probably believe they’re the reason I struck out my first two times up.”

Leonard struck out in the first and third innings against the tenacious Tudor, singled in the sixth and walked in the eighth. He is 8 for 20 with 4 home runs and 5 runs batted in.

Tudor, a subject of Leonard’s earlier verbal abuse, was asked if he applauded the abuse Leonard received Tuesday night. He said the Giants should have felt at home considering the way things are thrown at visiting players in San Francisco, but he hoped it didn’t happen again tonight.

“I hate to see them do it,” he said of the fans. “Leonard is a jerk, but that’s not Cardinal baseball.”

A jerk?

Leonard said that he didn’t care to respond. He credited Tudor with pitching an outstanding game and said his strikeouts had nothing to do with the fans’ reaction.

“It didn’t get me out of my game. I just wasn’t patient,” he said. “I was swinging at his pitches. He struck me out twice with junk low and away. Slow and slower. Give him credit. He has to set you up to get you to that point. We weren’t selective. He had us doing it all night. The only thing I feel good about is that I came back and got that single.”

He could also laugh and say that the beer thrown at him in Busch Stadium was a Lite, that there was enough “serious money” thrown that he could pay his clubhouse dues if he had picked it up and that, despite the standing room only level closest to the left-field fence being cleared by security after the beer was thrown at him, “I think the ushers probably threw as much as anyone.”

At one point, facing wave after wave of reporters, Leonard tried to say he was “mad as hell,” but he continued to laugh and make light of it, pointing out that he enjoyed the creativity of some of the signs.

One, he said, read: “Will Rogers Never Met Jeffrey Leonard.”

Another, he said, showed the posterior of a cow with his uniform number, 00, on both cheeks.

The fans also taunted him with the sing-song chant of “Jeffff-rey, Jeffff-rey.”

“I got Jeffreyed to death after I first changed it from Jeff,” he said. “This was nothing new. It certainly didn’t bother me.”

None of it seemed to bother any of the Giant players, including Davis, who did not escape. He had a battery thrown at him and called it part of the game.

“A double A,” he said of the size. “Fits my Walkman. I hope they throw another tomorrow so I can listen to some music on our way to Minneapolis.”

That’s where the World Series starts Saturday. The Giants are still confident of going. Leonard reflected on the Cardinals midfield celebration of Tuesday night and said:

“They should have enjoyed it because it’s probably the last time they’ll be doing it. I don’t care what happened tonight. We’re going to win. I’m still convinced we have the best team.”