Baseball : There’s Nothing Funny About Quisenberry’s New Relief Role

He could make the ball sink with his submarine delivery. Now it’s his status that keeps dipping.

John Wathan, the Kansas City Royals manager, made it official the other day. Dan Quisenberry was moving to the anonymous role of middle relief. He would no longer be the Royals’ closer. Then again, it has been a long time since he was that anyway.

Quiz registered 45 saves in 1983, 44 in 1984 and 37 in 1985, when the late Dick Howser, his manager then, began to lose confidence in his relief ace and used him only sparingly in the playoffs and World Series of that year.

It hasn’t been the same since. Quiz saved 12 games in 1986 and 8 last year, when he appeared in only 47, his lowest total since 1981. He has now received only three save opportunities since the All-Star break of last year.

Middle relief?

“I really have a long history of that,” Quiz said with sarcasm the other day.

The wit and humor that attracted reporters in droves is now seen about as infrequently as is Quiz. He sees nothing funny in this, believing he is the victim of a Catch-22 in that he doesn’t get enough work to be effective and that his ineffectiveness prevents him from working more.

He has pitched 15 innings this year, and left-handed hitters were batting .448 against him through Friday, the fourth straight year that left-handers have hit more than .400 against him.

Quiz would like to be traded but knows that his lifetime contract makes that difficult. He is guaranteed $1.1 million a year through 1990. A complex package of investments then guarantees his security long into the next century.

Quiz, at 35, still wants more than the financial satisfaction.

“Professionally, this is very embarrassing,” he said of the move to middle relief.

“I don’t feel part of the team anymore, and I haven’t felt that way in over a year.”

The lifetime contracts that Royal owners Avron Fogelman and Ewing Kauffman gave George Brett, Willie Wilson and Quisenberry provided motivation for second baseman Frank White, who appeared in his 2,000th game the other day and called it a career highlight.

“The driving force for me the last four years was when I wasn’t given a lifetime contract like Quiz, Willie and George,” White said.

“They said they were just giving them to the nucleus of the team, and I was too old.

“So I made up my mind that I would play as well or better than those three guys, and I think I’ve done that.”

Bo Jackson is rapidly challenging Brett as the best player on the Royals. Jackson batted .362 in a 12-game stretch through Thursday, driving in 11 runs. He leads the team in steals and outfield assists and was batting .296 through Friday.

“I didn’t think he’d be this good after the way he ended up last season,” Brett said. “It looked like he lost all confidence, both offensively and defensively. Now it looks like he learned an awful lot about the game over the winter. How about that? By playing football, he’s learned about baseball.”

Final Add Royals: Bret Saberhagen and Charlie Leibrandt were a combined 14-3 a year ago. Now they are 7-12, and Wathan is making changes. Known as Duke because of his fondness for John Wayne, Wathan has moved a picture of Wayne from a side wall in his clubhouse office to the wall behind his desk.

“Duke has been riding sidesaddle,” he said. “I need him looking over my shoulder.”

The decision to fire manager Chuck Tanner and his four coaches was part of a housecleaning that forced the Atlanta Braves to swallow about $1.9 million in guaranteed salaries.

Tanner was still owed $1.1 million on a contract paying him $400,000 a year through 1990. His four coaches were each owed about $40,000 over the remainder of the season. And second baseman Damaso Garcia, released a few days before Tanner’s firing, was still owed $640,000.

Willie Stargell will be inducted into the Hall of Fame this summer, but it has otherwise been a year Stargell would probably like to forget. He was fired as a member of the Braves’ coaching staff a few days after being booed in Pittsburgh, where he played his Hall of Fame career.

The boos stemmed from Stargell’s reported insistance that he receive an appearance fee and luxury car as part of a day that the Pirates planned in his honor and then canceled rather than being dictated to by Stargell. Amid the boos, Tanner reportedly told Stargell:

“I want to apologize to you for these fans. They didn’t deserve to have you. You never should have been a Pirate.”

It seems like only a few minutes ago that San Diego Padres owner Joan Kroc was on the verge of selling her team to Seattle Mariners owner George Argyros in a scenario reportedly orchestrated by Commissioner Peter Ueberroth.

Then, amid a series of negative articles concerning Argyros and the alliance with Ueberroth, Kroc backed out, saying she would not desert either the Padres or the city without first developing a winner.

Chub Feeney, the National League former president, came out of retirement to become Padre president, reportedly diluting the authority of General Manager Jack McKeon to an extent that McKeon is said to have been looking for another position. He found an additional one Saturday, replacing Larry Bowa as Padre manager while retaining his duties as general manager.

Is this interim or permanent? What about the speculation that Chuck Tanner will eventually become manager and that Dallas Green will become general manager? Who’s in charge? Have they moved the zoo to San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium?

While there are no definitive answers, this much is clear: Bowa had to go before it became necessary to turn the entire team over to Nurse Ratched. It became increasingly evident that Bowa lacked the temperament and patience necessary to handle a young team. If the manager wasn’t having a stress attack, his players were.

Under Bowa, the pitching was said to be in disarray, and Padre confidence had bottomed out. You knew the manager was in jeopardy when Mr. Nice and a staunch supporter of Bowa’s, Tony Gwynn, spoke out the other night in Montreal.

“Right now, we don’t have a winning attitude,” he said. “It’s like, ‘Let’s see how we’re going to lose tonight.’ It was the same attitude we had last year in our first 58 games (the Padres were 15-43).

“We’ve been talking about the same things for a year and a half, and we’re still getting beat.

“What this team needs is some confidence. We don’t have confidence.”

And direction?

Pete Rose officially returns to the helm of the Cincinnati Reds Wednesday. Coach Tommy Helms, who has been the bench manager during Rose’s suspension, does not like what he has seen. The Reds entered a weekend series in Pittsburgh with an 84-89 record since last May 14, and Helms said of the players:

“From what I see, they don’t care, they don’t want to play.”

Helms said that a 6-0 loss to Larry McWilliams and the St. Louis Cardinals Wednesday night was an embarrassment to the team and the city.

“I don’t know where their minds are,” he said.

Veteran outfielder Dave Collins was equally mystified.

“A lot of guys on this club have played a couple years and should know what it takes to win,” he said. “But some of our young players seem to believe that statistics will win ballgames, and that’s not true. You have to pull together, and that’s not the way it is.”

The Philadelphia Phillies have become a comparable puzzlement. Said club president Bill Giles: “I’ve seen clubs where everybody had career years and they won pennants, but I’ve never seen a club where everybody had an off year.”

Much of the unrest has centered on Mike Schmidt, who, at 38, has had hitless streaks of 30 and 19 at-bats this year, has had more games in which he has made errors this month, four, than games in which he has driven in runs, three, and was batting .216 through Friday with two hits in his last 25 at-bats.

Of his decision to drop Schmidt to fifth and sixth in the batting order, Manager Lee Elia said: “I wouldn’t call it desperation. I’d call it what’s the difference?”

Of Bob Welch’s eight victories with the Oakland Athletics, Manager Tony LaRussa said: “We expected a lot of him. We made a major trade for him. We had big needs and big expectations. It’s very hard to satisfy both needs and expectations, but he’s done it.”

Of the A’s, Detroit Tigers Manager Sparky Anderson said: “Ain’t nobody going to catch them. How are you going to catch a team that’s got better pitching than you when you’re 10 games behind?”

Tom Filer, 31, joined the Milwaukee Brewers from triple-A Denver and pitched a five-hit shutout against Detroit Tuesday.

Filer was 7-0 with the Toronto Blue Jays in 1985, developed elbow trouble late that year, blew the elbow out in spring training of ‘86, underwent surgery and did not pitch that year. He came back to pitch at three different minor league levels in ‘87, was sold to the Brewers at the end of that season and was 4-2 at Denver before his recall.

Said Blue Jay scout Gordon Lakey: “If anyone believes in reincarnation, baseball is a good place to start.”