Randolph Clean-Up Infielder

Willie Randolph bustled busily into the locker room. Willie Randolph always looks busy, a man with a mission. He doesn’t walk, he darts. He acts like a man who expects a tough day at the office.

He surveyed his locker. It was as neat as a chairman of the board’s. Some ballplayers’ lockers look as if a typhoon just went through. Willie’s looks as if the janitor just went through.

His shoes have a high polish on them. His uniform gleams white. Willie himself always looks as if he just stepped out of the shower. No one can ever remember his needing a shave. He wears a shirt and tie. He’d look right at home on Wall Street. He seldom raises his voice or gets alarmed.

He keeps second base as neat as he is. You’d think second base was the 18th green at Augusta. There are never any loose baseballs leaking around the bag when Randolph is there. He landscapes it with his spikes as carefully as if he were lining up an 18-foot putt.

Willie Randolph, like Maury Wills, never does anything without a purpose. You see him now as he goes over a check list to get ready for the night’s game. A reporter wants a few minutes of his time. Willie glances at his watch. OK, he has a few minutes to spare. Then, it’s into the training room, out on the field, stretching exercises, preparation for the evening’s encounter with the Mets.

Willie is as programmed as an English butler. Some ballplayers wander around a locker room in disarray, as aimlessly as refugees. Not Willie. He acts as if he has barely enough time to do what has to be done.

A fly wouldn’t light on him. You get the feeling that if Randolph had to slide into a base head first, he’d call time to get his shirt changed. And his shoes shined. Willie doesn’t like to look sloppy.

He plays baseball with the same deft, conscientious attention to detail. You get nine innings of impeccable baseball out of Willie Randolph night after night. Your money’s worth.

In the field, Randolph never seems to stretch or strain or anything frantic. He glides. When the ball gets there, he’s there. Second base is taken care of. Let ‘em hit it.

Not too many people playing the game today have something in common with Lou Gehrig. Willie Randolph does. They were both captains of the Yankees. Gehrig was the first. Randolph was the eighth. It is the measure of the esteem with which he is held by those who play with him.

Pitchers need no reminder. Fans rejoice when their teams sign the well-publicized sluggers, the fence-breakers. Pitchers shrug. Pitchers want the guys who will turn the double play when they make the batter hit their pitch--the low-and-away breaking ball that will be hit on the ground. Tommy John once told a reporter that he signed with the Yankees when he left the Dodgers because he had Graig Nettles and Willie Randolph to make sure his good pitches became outs.

“I throw ground balls for a living,” he explained.

If the public overlooks good fielding, pitchers don’t. A .300 hitter may win one game for a pitcher a season. A sure-handed fielder can win 20. Randolph couldn’t play his position any better on roller skates.

Yet, he has never won a Gold Glove. He twice led the league in double plays turned, and in 1979 led the league in chances with 846. He made only seven errors all last year and had made only five in his first 110 games this year.

He is as finicky about pitches as he is about his shirt collars. He is second on the team in bases on balls. Pitchers walk Eddie Murray because they’re scared of him. Pitchers walk Willie Randolph because he makes them.

The last thing they want to do is walk Willie Randolph. He has stolen 257 bases. Still, he has walked 1,075 times in his career. If you don’t think that’s a lot, consider that Henry Aaron walked only 1,402 times in his 23-year career. And Henry hit 755 home runs. Randolph is 706 behind him.

Randolph led the American League in walks in 1980. He swings at strikes. And usually hits them. He struck out only 24 times one year, only 25 another.

When he came over from New York to replace Steve Sax, the best guess in town was that he would be booed. Saxie was L.A.’s pet.

But nobody boos Willie Randolph. What’s to boo? He shows up on time. He’s ready to play. He’s as fastidious as a scrub nurse, as meticulous as a surgeon. Even in the rubber room that is Yankee Stadium, Randolph kept his dignity.

“George (Steinbrenner) and I had our troubles,” he acknowledges. “But I always figured his office door was open and we could close it and discuss the matter.”

Steinbrenner was more used to employees who took their grievances to the 11 o’clock news, not to him. But that was not Randolph’s style.

What no one had to worry about was that he would have trouble adjusting to a new double-play partner. Over the years, Randolph has played with 31 shortstops, including such memorable ones as Jim Mason, Luis Aguayo and Fred Stanley.

“Alfredo Griffin is a joy,” he says. “He plays the position the way it should be played.”

So, you have to think, does Willie Randolph. The Dodgers are third in club fielding with his glove in there.

Randolph’s job is to get on base (192 times, second on the team), score runs (second on the team in that) and make sure the other team never gets four outs an inning. He does that as well as anyone in the league. And he doesn’t even spit.