Thanks to Dodgers, Braves’ New World Finally Includes a Win

Chuck Tanner was enjoying the fruits of victory--a glass of cheap red wine and a bean burrito--when the phone on his desk rang.

When your team has lost its first 10 games of the season, setting a National League record, as had Tanner’s Atlanta Braves, then finally wins one, a postgame phone call can mean only one thing.

Ronald Reagan.

It had to be the Fan-in-Chief, phoning his congratulations. Or inviting the Braves to the White House. Or asking Tanner to serve on the Reagan cabinet as the nation’s Secretary of the Inferior.

But no, it wasn’t President Reagan calling. It was an even bigger guy, Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda, whose Dodgers had just done the Braves an enormous favor by losing, 3-1.

Lasorda was calling from the other side of Dodger Stadium, from his Rectangular Office. He was phoning not to ask the obvious questions, such as how a banjo virtuoso like Damaso Garcia could smash a two-run homer, or how a struggling pitcher like Zane Smith could throw a four-hit classic. No, it was a simple congratulatory phone call, friend to friend.

“He’s a great man and a great manager,” Tanner said of Lasorda, after hanging up.

And it was a great day and a great game for the Braves, a monumental victory, an enormous win. Tanner even compared this one to winning a World Series game.

Braves hugged one another on the field after the final out, which you hardly ever see two weeks into the season. In the visitors’ clubhouse, a tape deck blared out Clarence Carter’s catchy “I Be Strokin’,” and players were savoring their burritos like they were caviar.

I’m sure if the Dodgers had been able to see the glow on the faces of the Braves, if the Dodger players had been able to see the sheer joy in the opposing clubhouse, they wouldn’t have felt so bad about failing to hit their way out of a wet paper bag and falling on their faces against the worst team in the National League.

Not that the Braves are as bad as their record. With the talent this team is featuring, the Braves will win dozens more games this season. But that first one was a toughie. After 10 straight losses, the Braves were under more pressure than the buttons on third base coach Willie Stargell’s uniform.

“Son of a gun, I think we’re gonna be OK,” said Tanner, the world’s most enthusiastic man. Baseball is a funny game, as I once said to Kirk Gibson after he took off his hat. You can never tell about anything. Dodger starter Don Sutton went through a time warp Sunday. He struck out five of the first six Braves he faced, a Koufaxian feat.

Sutton looked unbeatable. The Braves couldn’t produce an effective foul ball. Ozzie Virgil, strikeout victim No. 5, was fooled so bad on one pitch he fouled off his bat. Virgil lost his grip and the bat landed 10 feet behind home plate.

But nobody in the Dodger dugout noticed that Sutton’s magic was fading in the fifth, when the Braves were making solid, if unproductive, contact. At age 43, you just don’t get stronger in the late innings.

In the sixth, the Braves got to Sutton for a line single and Garcia’s home run, and a double. With Sutton, you hope to get five or six solid innings, but you have to have the pen ready. The Dodgers didn’t, so they lost.

Not that you win many games with one run. The volcano that is the Dodgers’ new, improved batting order is still smoldering, waiting to erupt. Sunday, you could have gotten more heat from a kitchen match. The heart of the Dodger lineup, two through five in the order, went 1 for 19, the one being a Mickey Hatcher single in the ninth.

The question now is, are the Dodgers as good as their 8-4 record, or have they just been the benefactors of the softest early scheduling since Hitler’s European Tour?

Will all those Dodger home run hitters ever get their bats unsacked, or will the local fans have to be satisfied to marvel at the long-ball exploits of the league’s Damaso Garcias?

Garcia has now hit as many home runs this season at Dodger Stadium as any Dodger.

Ah, but it’s still early. Ask the Braves. They’re 1-10, but Chuck Tanner left town wearing a smile wider than his burrito.