Buck-Ninety Player Looks Like a Million : Twins’ Tim Launder, a .191 Hitter This Season, Delivers the Big Hits

His batting average after five-plus seasons with the Minnesota Twins is .218. He hit .191 in 113 games this year, which is why the banner hanging from the right-field upper deck at the Metrodome Sunday night read: “Buck-Ninety Fan Club.”

Buck-Ninety? Tim Laudner looked like a million. The Minnesota catcher slashed a two-run single in a six-run fourth inning and hit a solo homer in the sixth as the Twins dumped St. Louis again, 8-4, to take a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven World Series.

Laudner is now hitting .200 in the post-season, but his four hits have driven in six runs. Tom Kelly, his manager, once saw him drive in 104 runs and hit 42 homers in a season. That was when he managed Orlando in 1981 and Laudner was his 23-year-old catcher.

“They don’t throw the same curve down there that they do up here,” Kelly said while sitting alone in his office Sunday night. “It’s the great equalizer.”

Laudner hit a Danny Cox fastball for his single and a Lee Tunnell fastball for his homer. Would Kelly like to believe that Laudner, now 29, will come to grips with the curve, that the clutch bat he has displayed in the post-season will herald the start of something big?

Will Tim Laudner ever hit the way he did at Orlando?

Will he ever hit, period?

“I flatly don’t think so,” Kelly said in an astonishing admission. “He’s gone through 100 different batting stances and approaches.”

“He’s got one now that allows him to hit the ball to all fields. He’s got a chance now, but can he maintain it? What more can he do than what he’s doing now, but we’ve seen this before, then whammo, he can’t maintain it, he’s lost it, he goes up there without a chance.

“I can’t explain it because I don’t understand it. I’ve talked to Tim about it, I’ve talked to my coaches about it.

“I really don’t know what to do about it unless it’s to send him to a psychiatrist.”

The congested Twins’ clubhouse was no place for self-analysis. If Tim Laudner was excited by the events of Sunday night, as he claimed, it didn’t show.

Is it because he and his road roommate of the last five years, Randy Bush, have learned to live with the highs and lows, the uncertainties of their roles, their status?

“We’re survivors,” Bush said. “We’ve been through a hundred-loss season here, some personal frustrations and now we’re in a World Series and having fun.”

They both had some in this game.

Bush, who platoons with Don Baylor in the designated hitter role, slammed a two-strike change-up from Cox into the right-field corner for a two-run double in that decisive fourth inning.

It extended a 1-0 lead to 3-0. Roommate Launder made it 5-0 a few minutes later, Bush scoring on it with a head-first slide that enabled him to elude a throw that reached catcher Tony Pena ahead of him.

Bush and Laudner were both drafted in 1979, are both now 29 and have both spent five-plus seasons with the Twins.

Laudner seldom played regularly until Mark Salas was traded to the New York Yankees earlier this season.

Bush played only seven games in the field during his first 2 1/2 years here, was baseball’s leading pinch hitter in 1986 (going 13 for 30) and was platooned in left field and as the DH this year. He has never hit more than 11 homers, never driven in more than 56 runs. His career average is .247.

“There’s another guy who will hit well for 8 to 10 days, then loses it,” Kelly said of Bush. “I don’t know what to make of him either.”

Some people will take the roomies as they are.

Bush, for example, had a banner of his own, high in the right-field bleachers. It read: “Randy Bush Fan Club.” The membership?

“There’s about 12 to 15 guys who like to let me know they’re here,” he said. “The players like to kid me about it, saying they’re the only guys in the state who know my name, but it’s nice to realize that someone knows it.”

The crowd of 55,257 knew it. They chanted Bush’s name following his key double. Bush called it the biggest moment of a career in which there haven’t been many.

“Sure,” he said. “I want to play. I’d like to know what my position is. I’d like to come to the park and find my name on the lineup card. If I don’t, I just have to stay ready. The way it’s been this year, all 24 guys have contributed, we’ve picked each other up.”

Bush stood by his locker and Laudner by his.

The latter was asked if the postseason represented a chance for redemption, a chance to erase the memory of that buck-ninety?

“I don’t look at it like that,” he said. “This was a frustrating year, but I tried the best I could not to dwell on it. I didn’t come into the post-season trying to make up for a lost season. I didn’t want to put that pressure on me. I’ve tried to to approach it like just another game . . . get a good pitch, take a good swing. Hitting is contagious. The way we’re going now, it goes up and down the lineup.”

Laudner shook his head and said he couldn’t really explain .191 or the three RBIs of Sunday night. Where did he get the big bat?

“Louisville,” he said.

The fan club?

“I hope they change that name for my sake,” he said.

The success of the Minnesota pitchers has relieved a key problem. Laudner threw out only 16 of 84 opposing base runners this year.

“Tim knows he has to do the job defensively or he won’t be here,” Kelly said.

Said Laudner: “Tom taught me many years ago that I have to separate the two, that I can’t take my at bats behind the plate with me,” Laudner said. “The way we’re scoring runs, that negates a lot of the Cardinals’ speed.”