All He Does Is Simply Get Batters Out

No one knows why Orel Hershiser is the best pitcher in baseball. No one knows why a bee can fly, either.

Hershiser doesn’t have the blood-curdling fastball. Nobody ever called his curve “Public Enemy No. 1.” He’s not an intimidating factor out on the mound. He’s not a scowling Don Drysdale or a blue-bearded Burleigh Grimes. He doesn’t even have a beard. He was once described by his pitching coach as “having the ferocious look of a librarian” on the mound.

Whitey Herzog once said Hershiser was so fastidious out there, he “should be wearing an apron.”

His manager likes to call him Bulldog, but if Orel were a canine, he’d probably be wearing a jeweled collar and a shaved torso. If he was any paler, he could haunt a house.

Pitchers are supposed to swagger and spit and have bad tempers and big egos. They have to feel insulted when a hitter digs in against them.

That’s not Orel’s style. He giggles a lot. He appears to be terminally happy. Some pitchers chew tobacco to relax themselves on the mound. Orel sings hymns. Not “Nearer My God to Thee” when a Jose Canseco comes up to bat, but joyous hymns. He once sang “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow” on Johnny Carson’s show. God loves Orel Hershiser. And vice versa.

Still, how do religious fervor, a cheerful attitude, an unprepossessing physique and the almost gee-whiz approach to the game of a kid watching it through a knothole get big league hitters out?

Hershiser gets them out because he’s a big league pitcher.

He explains the distinction in his new book, “Out of the Blue” (Wohlgemuth & Hyatt, $7.95) in the bookstalls now.

Orel concedes that he would make poor casting as the premiere pitcher in the game today. He describes himself as “looking like I worked in a flour factory.”

Adds he: “My stats make it appear that I am a dominant pitcher, with my low ERA, my complete games and my shutouts, but in truth I’m not the type who mows down hitters, striking out half of them. I was seventh in strikeouts in the National League last year, but that had as much to do with my leading the league in innings pitched as it did with having overpowering stuff.”

It isn’t as if Hershiser were entering the game unarmed. His fastball--90-plus m.p.h.--is above average, his curve is hellacious and his sinker has double play written all over it.

“I’m not a junkballer by any standard,” he says. “But I do take a decidedly mental approach to the game. I think. I study. I learn. I prepare. I work at it.”

And he gets people out. He practically ate baseball last season--23 wins, 59 consecutive scoreless innings, baseball’s all-time best. Most valuable player in the league championship series, most valuable player in the World Series, Cy Young Award winner. And he did all this in the heat of a title race, with every game counting, every hitter bearing down, every pitch a pressure pitch.

To the fan, the art of pitching looks simple: Just throw a ball that does such tricks or goes by so fast, no one can get a bat on it. Throw ‘em where they ain’t, so to speak. Not 10 pitchers in the history of the game could do that. Walter Johnson could. Sandy Koufax, Lefty Grove, Bob Gibson, Bob Feller.

Hershiser quotes Manager Tommy Lasorda as explaining the problem: “In the big leagues, you could stand on the mound with a pistol and shoot bullets at the hitters and, eventually, they’d time ‘em.”

Putting a ball where you want it and where the hitter doesn’t expect it is the real art of pitching. Never underestimate a bad hitter--”The key is to bury the bad hitters because the good hitters are going to eventually get their hits. regardless.”--or overestimate a good hitter.

Hershiser tells of the time in the playoffs last year when the dangerous Darryl Strawberry came to bat with two men on and one out, and ran the count to three balls, one strike. Hershiser’s thought processes went like this: “I can’t walk him and put the go-ahead run on third. If I throw a ball, he has a 100% chance of getting on base. If I throw a strike, he has a one-in-three chance of getting a hit. Even if the best hitter in history was up there, the odds are 2-1 in the pitcher’s favor. Those percentages should make a pitcher more confident and aggressive.”

He threw a strike. Strawberry hit into a double play.

It was a lesson Hershiser learned very early in the game. When he was a--moderately successful--relief pitcher with the Dodgers, Lasorda called him in one day and, eyes popping, neck-muscles bulging, delivered a typical Lasorda heart-to-heart talk, which is to say it was about the decibel level of the San Francisco earthquake. “Hershiser, you’re givin’ the hitters too much credit!” he yelled. “You’re scared to pitch in the big leagues! Who do you think these hitters are, Babe Ruth? Ruth’s dead! Quit bein’ so careful! Go after the hitters! If I could get a heart surgeon in here, I’d have him open my chest and take out my heart, open your chest and take out your heart, and then I’d have him give you my heart. If I had your stuff, I’da been in the Hall of Fame!”

It was vintage Lasorda. Audible in four counties and an 8 on the Richter scale. But it had its effect.

The best parts of the game are cerebral, anyway, Hershiser reports.

Before Kirk Gibson hit the most famous home run of the decade in Game 1 of the World Series, Mike Davis had walked. That was because Lasorda had put Dave Anderson in the on-deck circle and hidden Gibson in a corner of the dugout. Looking over, the Oakland pitcher, Dennis Eckersley, had seen Anderson, who hadn’t played in two months and who had hit only three home runs in two years--and pitched too carefully to the dangerous Davis.

Then the manager called Anderson back and sent baseball history up to the plate.

Hershiser could have told Eckersley the odds were 2-1 in his favor. And that Babe Ruth’s dead.