World Series: Men for 1 Season

By the time a baseball season reaches October, the sport has, gradually over seven months, developed an entire set of mythological characters who, for that one season, have a talismanic quality.

To a large degree, the playoffs and World Series are an acting out of the oldest of battle scenes as a central hero or two, an Achilles or a Hercules, come out from each camp for combat. Who will remain a charismatic figure? Who will become human?

That all heroes are flawed is an idea that, in battle or sport, seems to flee from our minds as though some primitive response required that one figure step forward and let his courage and poise inspire the entire group. So what if this year’s legend can become next year’s goat? At least in baseball, The Season is a symbolic unit players not only respect, but to which they ascribe an unnamed power.

That’s what’s behind the cliche’s: “It’s his year . . . The hot hand . . . Team of destiny.”

At times, it can all start feeling very ancient, territorial and psychological. Of course Orel Hershiser bows his head for a moment in triumph and sings hymns in his trance between innings. Of course he kneels when he reaches base. He is in touch with his heritage: the man who, for a time, is favored by the gods.

The Los Angeles-Oakland 1988 World Series began with four men--two on each team--who stood so far above all others that what befell them carried disproportionate weight.

The Athletics had Jose Canseco, the first player to have 40 home runs and 40 stolen bases in the same season. He epitomized the A’s: intimidation through size with grace. One Dodgers scout, in a pre-Series meeting, actually said his goal was “to bring Canseco down off Mount Olympus and compare him to somebody in the National League.”

Oakland also had Dennis Eckersley, a baseball phoenix reborn as a relief pitcher. Left on the ashcan by the Cubs, he’d not only saved or won 49 games, but also saved every game in the American League playoffs. Nothing in baseball is harder than getting the last out. It’s been such a mental block for pitchers for a century that it is accepted dugout law that the invisible wall exists. The man who can smash it--time and again--somehow has appropriated the right to claim victory.

Though the Dodgers were the inferior team in talent, they had the ultimate suit of armor: Hershiser. Good pitching may or may not stop good hitting, but players believe that it does. So, the best pitcher in a Series is the ace of trumps. Hershiser entered the playoffs with the longest streak of shutout innings in baseball history. Thus, he was the ace of all aces. Then, against the Mets, he raised the mythic ante even higher by starting three games, saving another and sneaking into the bullpen to warm up in yet another game. When he should have been exhausted, he shut out the Mets in a winner-take-all game for the pennant.

Concerning Hershiser, the battered word “awesome” was in every mouth. And awe is reserved for heroes.

Los Angeles also had as symbolic a warrior as the game has seen in years: Kirk Gibson, a footballish fellow who seems to maim himself so his deeds will become doubly charged with leadership value. Playing in pain against the Mets, Captain Kirk, going where no man had gone before, hit two game-winning home runs within 13 hours--one at 1 a.m., then one at 1 p.m.

The Athletics’ great mistake in the World Series was their assumption that their own magic, their aura of collective power, was insuperably great. Canseco talked openly about dominating a quick five-game Series. Don Baylor, a mythic leader in other years but a slightly embittered man as his glory days wane, impugned the courage of the Dodgers’ key relief pitcher. He might as well have said: “We have the shield of Eckersley to protect us. You only have this timid person named Jay Howell. I know him--a mere mortal.”

In Game 1, Eckersley faced Gibson.

A Gibson who could barely stand.

Down to his last strike, Gibson hit a home run that, in some still photos, seemed to have been struck with one hand. No player, not in the entire 20th century, had hit a sudden-death homer to turn a World Series defeat into victory. Gibson became a redoubled myth. Until such time as Eckersley could undo the damage, he had been exposed as vulnerable. And Eckersley never got another chance.

As an added twist, Gibson’s blast upstaged a homer by Canseco. And not just a homer, but a grand slam. Wouldn’t such an act affect the pecking order in a band of a lions or tigers? Might it not bear upon some atavistic part of a man?

In Game 2, Hershiser demonstrated how--if your deity dues are all paid up--you can slay a dragon, cut a Gordian Knot or clean the Augean Stables. He not only pitched a shutout--his eighth unscored-upon outing in 10 starts--but had as many hits that game as the whole A’s team. That he fielded and ran bases stylishly moved him to an even higher level of grudging respect. Not just a pitcher, but an athlete.

Canseco went into a slump that would reach none-for-18 by Series end and his fielding became a tad sulkish, too.

“He threw me nothing but fastballs,” Canseco said of Hershiser. “No pitcher has ever done that and gotten away with it. If he can do it to me, he can do it to anybody.” Within two days, Canseco was saying he was “only a third-year player” and “carrying a team” was too much to ask of him. His team “wasn’t playing like the real A’s.” As for himself: “I’m still learning.”

Mythic apprenticeship is hard work, especially your first brush with an evil spell. So far, Canseco’s doing nicely.

The final weapon in the Dodgers’ arsenal of ideas was their team notion that no defeat can demoralize them. Why? Because, in their collective humility before the gods of talent, they freely admit their weaknesses. As compensation for their lack of skill, they were granted superhuman resiliency.

Neither a lucky bloop by the Mets’ Gary Carter, nor NL President Bart Giamatti’s stern sentence when Howell was found to have pine tar in his glove during the National League Championship Series, nor Mets pitcher David Cone’s atonement for his Dodger-bashing in a newspaper column could deflect them.

When Mark McGwire homered to end Game 3--only the seventh sudden-death homer in Series history--the Dodgers got a chance to prove this point to the A’s. Slip us the black spot; we ignore it.

This Series was decided in Game 4. The A’s led their ace, Dave Stewart. The Dodgers countered with a rookie who’d lasted two innings in Game 1, failing, he admitted, from nerves: “I was going crazy out there,” said Tim Belcher. Because of mounting injuries, the Los Angeles lineup was a collection of “Stuntmen”-spurned role players dedicated to earning some respect.

If any recent game has been mostly a meeting of minds and mythologies, it was Game 4. From the moment the Dodgers scored two mysterious runs on one tiny single in the first inning, the A’s seemed mesmerized. Has their courage paralyzed our power?

When Howell--the exile, the avenger, the wrongly accused--took the mound, the feeling rose, and remains in retrospect, that he could not lose. Could the A’s really bring themselves to deny him? After all, the year before he was one of them.

By the time Howell had defeated Canseco, McGwire and Dave Parker--about 700 pounds of muscle--there was hardly any need to play Game 5.

One by one, all the A’s myths about themselves for 1988 had disintegrated. Canseco and McGwire (a combined two for 36), Stewart and Eckersley (both beaten) had all been disarmed. Merely excellent. But not possessed of magic or luck.

At least not This Season.

In the final game, the head Stuntman, Mickey Hatcher, hit a home run in the first inning. Other such folk provided more stunts--Mike Davis a two-run homer and Rick Dempsey an RBI double. Gibson was never even needed.

In the end, it became clear whose year this was. Like Bob Gibson in 1967 or Reggie Jackson in 1977 or Willie Stargell in 1979 or George Brett in 1985, there was one character clearly blessed by the fates: Hershiser.

To cynics, fate is another name for the process of elimination by which sports creates one champion per year. A team is always left standing; one man usually carries its flag. So, he’s got a heck of a chance to look like Agamemnon.

Superstition has its proper place in sports. There are times when it’s a wiser course than strategy. And Tommy Lasorda loves to believe in mysteries. That’s why he left Hershiser in to face Canseco--the tying run--in the eighth inning. Talk about burning The Book! All managers know you never let a tired pitcher give away the last run of a big lead when you have a strong bullpen. However, Lasorda trusted his gut--and Hershiser’s. Our magic’s better than yours. Let it ride.

The count on Canseco went to 1-2. Hershiser shook off Dempsey once, twice. What was he thinking?

“I wanted to surprise Canseco,” said Hershiser.

What the choirboy wanted to do was tempt fate, trust his luck, finish his roll. He wanted to throw the last pitch in the world that anyone would dare.

A fastball belt-high and inside.

Miss by inches and it’s the pitch Canseco hits farthest. Hitters love to say your strength and your weakness are usually only a couple of inches apart.

Hershiser didn’t hit Dempsey’s glove. He hit the fly sitting on the glove. And Canseco’s sickly popup fell like a dying dream.

After that, the A’s were mush. Parker swung at what Hershiser mischievously called “a 55-foot curveball. So I threw him another one.” Why not? His spell was at full virulence. The inning, and the A’s last rally, ended as Parker took two preposterous swings at pitches that bounced before they reached him.

In defeat, the A’s were philosophical and gracious. What else could they be? When you feel yourself in the grip of ancient scary powers, humility is easy. The Dodgers, immortal now for a winter, drank champagne, the wine of forgetfulness.

Next spring, The Season begins again. The mythology starts from zero. Because we have all agreed to say that it does. On opening day, the Dodgers will still wear a residual glow. The A’s, as they receive their Series losers’ rings, may hang their heads with just a hint of a hex still clinging to them.

But what the Dodgers and Athletics bring forward with them from this week in October will last them exactly one game. That’s the half-life of a demigod. Then, it will be 1989--the “next year” we all invoke. And, once again, we will say to each other that, while baseball is just a game, we’re certainly glad it’s back, with all its strange, almost haunting power.