Guerrero Has Already Made the Finest Move of the Season

Pedro Guerrero has my vote for National League MVP.

Actually I don’t get a vote, but if I did I would mail it tomorrow. No need to wait for the season. Nobody could do anything more valuable than what Pedro has already done for the Dodgers, not even if someone winds up hitting Tony Tubbs’ weight.

Allow me to explain.

Dealing with the modern-day ballplayer requires the delicate touch of a diamond cutter or brain surgeon. Or toxic-waste handler.

Check out what’s happening in the Toronto Blue Jays’ camp, for instance.

The Blue Jays have a couple of good-looking young center fielders, ready for the big time. Manager Jimy Williams wants to try the kids in center, so he asks regular center fielder Lloyd Moseby to move to left field, and he asks regular left fielder George Bell to become the designated hitter.

Williams does this for one of two reasons. Guess which:

--He wants to stir up trouble and get several players mad.

--He wants to win baseball games.

How do the players react to this logical shuffling? Like someone has sabotaged their hatbands.

Bell flat-out refuses to accept the move.

Moseby actually says: “Move me to Egypt or Japan, but not to left.”

Williams softens Bell’s hard line on becoming DH by threatening to fine the player $2,000 and suspend him for 30 days. Bell will be a fine designated hitter, assuming he learns to pout and hit at the same time.

The ballclub persuades Moseby to give left field a try by extending his contract one year, at $1.1 million. Pyramids have been built for less. Suddenly left field looks better than Egypt.

In a similar case, the Angels obtain a good hitter, Johnny Ray, who normally plays second base. Angel Manager Gene Mauch wants Ray to move to left field to leave room at second for a promising young player.

Ray’s agent hints that such a move will be conceivable only if a generous contract extension is involved.

Ray himself initially treats the move as if he has been ordered by Mauch to switch religions.

Mauch’s reaction is to do a lot of smoking. Without cigarettes.

And these are not isolated cases.

Big league camps this spring are filled with relief pitchers who want to start and starters who want to relieve, infielders who refuse to play the outfield and outfielders who demand that their contracts be extended if they will be required to play on legal holidays and their agents’ birthdays.

The sentiment that seems appropriate to this state of affairs is: Give me a break.

I know this is a flimsy, outdated concept, but isn’t baseball supposed to be a team game?

When the President of the United States chooses his cabinet, does he tell each appointee: “Glad you could join us here on Team America. By the way, which department would you like to be secretary of? State? Gee, that one is taken, but if you have your heart set on it, maybe the Secretary of State will move to the Interior. I’ll offer him a contract extension.”?

Am I wrong, or is it the manager’s--and general manager’s--job to tell a player: “You want an extension? I’ll extend your butt into the back seat of the next Greyhound headed for Egypt.”?

Every single big league player, when he first comes up or is traded, says something like this: “I just want to make a contribution to the ballclub.”

Then realism and capitalism set in, and the player changes his guiding philosophy to: “I just want the ballclub to make a contribution to me.”

Which brings us to the bizarre case of Pedro Guerrero.

The Dodgers ask Pedro to move from first base to third, so they can get more big bats in the lineup.

What does Pedro do?

He moves. Quietly. Doesn’t take a bat and bust up the clubhouse urinals to express his misgivings. Doesn’t throw pasta around the manager’s office or threaten to jump the club and sign with the Raiders. He does not even demand a contract extension.

Guerrero doesn’t even take the trouble to check with Bob Knepper, God’s player representative, to see if the Man Upstairs ever intended Pedro to be a third baseman.

No, he moves to third even though he knows his glove work at the hot corner is unlikely to inspire comparisons with Brooks Robinson, the Human Vacuum Cleaner. Pedro, in fact, risks becoming known as the Human Leaf Blower.

Why does Guerrero accept the new assignment so graciously? Possibly for the good of the team. He knows these are touchy times for the Dodgers and Manager Tom Lasorda, who is trying hard to downplay the negative impact of all the team’s internal strife.

Interviewed on TV Sunday, Lasorda said of the Kirk Gibson hatband incident: “It’s one of those things, you fabricate it and you blow it up and all of a sudden it’s forgotten.”

Not unlike Dodger pennant hopes, a cynic might say.

But the spring is no time for cynicism. Not when Pedro Guerrero is already having an MVP season.