Baseball / Ross Newhan : Craig, McKeon Angry Because Atlanta’s Starters Sitting

The question of integrity--a significant issue during the Pete Rose gambling investigation--has re-surfaced in the final days of the National League West championship race.

Roger Craig and Jack McKeon, managers of the San Francisco Giants and San Diego Padres, respectively, have accused Russ Nixon, their Atlanta Braves counterpart, of a lack of it, producing some colorful rhetoric but not much support.

Craig and McKeon filed complaints with league President Bill White Tuesday when they learned that Nixon was removing Tom Glavine, John Smoltz and Pete Smith from his rotation and starting rookies Gary Eave, Rusty Richards and Tommy Greene against the third-place Houston Astros Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights.

Eave and Richards were making their major league debuts. It was the second start for Greene.

White called Nixon 30 minutes before Eave’s start Tuesday to inform him of the complaints, but did not demand any changes and has refused comment since.

And what did Nixon think of the complaints? He called them paranoid and weak and said of Craig:

“I don’t think if I had a five-game lead and the best team in the league, I’d be worried about the last-place club. I’m going to remember this, damn right I am.”

McKeon, however, wasn’t deterred.

“They worry about integrity of the game, huh? Well, what is this?” he asked from Cincinnati, where his Padres were five games behind the Giants and a game ahead of the Astros.

“You’re telling me that you have to play five regulars in a spring training game and you don’t have to do it in the regular season when three clubs are competing for the pennant? You don’t have to throw your best? Give me a break.

“We’re not asking Cincinnati to play their kids, are we? They’re tying to beat us and that’s the way it ought to be.”

And that’s the way it was in Atlanta, where Eave and Greene, each supported by four other rookies, helped pitch the Braves to 3-0 victories.

Houston scored its only victory in the game started by Richards, but it took 14 innings, 7-6.

“I guess they look like fools,” Atlanta shortstop Andres Thomas said of Craig and McKeon after the Braves took two of the three. “Who made them the authority anyway?”

But Craig, who watched part of each game on the jumbo screen at Candlestick Park, couldn’t resist adding a little fuel to the fire, saying of Nixon and the Atlanta rookies:

“Maybe they’re better than the guys they’ve been running out there. Maybe he knows what he’s doing.”

There are always new lineups in September as the also-rans take an early look at some of next spring’s prospects. Are they giving in and playing out the string, forfeiting their integrity? Or are they breathing life into a dying season?

McKeon and Craig, eager to keep the Astros behind them, saw it one way.

Tony LaRussa of the Oakland Athletics and Art Howe of the Astros saw it another.

“To me, there isn’t a ballclub that’s going to take the field in the next 11 days--I don’t care if it’s a sixth- or seventh-place team--where the manager of that team doesn’t want to win badly,” LaRussa said in midweek.

“Sometimes the manager may figure, ‘Hey, I’ve looked at this veteran and he may be tired or he may have mentally bagged the season and I have this kid who is pitching for his life and I have a better chance to win with him.’ ”

Said Howe: “Sometimes I’d rather play (against the) regulars. These kids are super aggressive. It’s a new year for them.”

Then, alluding to next weekend, he delivered a shot of his own at Craig, saying: “I don’t think there’s any doubt they won’t play their studs against the Padres the last weekend if they’ve (already) clinched. We (the Astros) could be playing for second place but nobody seems to be worried about that.”

If anyone had a right to be upset with Nixon’s charges it was Glavine, 23, a developing young pitcher himself.

Glavine has won six of his last eight decisions in running his record to 14-8 and needed only one more win to tie the club record for victories in a season by a left-hander.

He is being deprived of three starts, including a final weekend start against the Dodgers, who are winless in four decisions against him this season.

“Sure I’m disappointed,” he said of the premature end of his season. “I guess I might have even been a little angry at first, but that’s life. I’ll get over it.”

League president White, in his first year in office, has been virtually inaccessible to reporters, refusing comment on his league’s and the game’s major developments and rejecting interview requests. It is a strange stance for a man conditioned to expressing opinions as a longtime broadcaster and an articulate player before that.

“Bill wanted to get a year on the job, a feel for the controversies and issues that develop,” the league’s Katy Feeney said. “Plus, he prefers the background.”

Unfortunately, there are occasions when the league president must be out front. Media relations is a significant responsibility of the office. American League President Bobby Brown has provided a yardstick for accessibility. Perhaps White will soon measure up. He seems to fit the job in every other way.

Ten teams remain in mathematical contention for a division title as the final week begins.

A dominating and familiar figure, however, has already conceded a race he won in six of the last eight years, including the last four.

Wade Boggs, trailing Kirby Puckett and Carney Lansford by about 15 points in the American League batting race, announced the other day that it’s out of reach and he will concentrate on a bid to attain 200 hits. He needs five to do it for a seventh consecutive season.

If either Puckett or Lansford wins the batting title, as it appears, it will be first time a right-handed hitter has won the AL crown in a full season--Lansford won it in the 1981 strike season--since Alex Johnson of the Angels in 1970.

“Lets face it, if I was having a typical year, it wouldn’t even be close,” Boggs told Steve Buckley of the Hartford Courant the other day. “But I think a lot of things went into the season I’m having.”

A .356 career hitter, Boggs will hit about 30 points less than that. He has refused to discuss the reasons for his falloff, but they are believed to include the legal and fan reaction to his affair with Margo Adams, the trade rumors and in-season contract talks, and a second-half battle with a sore right knee.

Boggs may need arthroscopic surgery when the season ends.

“I’ve been playing in the major leagues for eight years now, 145 to 150 games a year, and it takes a toll,” he was quoted as saying in the Boston Globe.

“It beats you up physically. This is the worst my knee has been. I’m like a car with a flat tire. If one thing is missing, you can’t perform to your capability.”

The Chicago Cubs’ struggle to find a reliable fourth starter has been compounded by concern over the ailing shoulder of the recently ineffective Rick Sutcliffe, meaning the Cubs could be reduced to a playoff rotation of Greg Maddux and Mike Bielecki, providing they reach the playoffs.

Sutcliffe is scheduled to start Monday at Montreal, but Manager Don Zimmer, clearly exasperated, said he is tired of the confusion regarding Sutcliffe’s health, tired, in his words, of it being made to seem he has been pitching a cripple.

“I’m not mad at Sutcliffe,” Zimmer said unconvincingly. “I’m just tired of everything going back and forth. I want an answer. Either the doctor tells me he’s healthy or he’s not.”

Zimmer is scheduled to get a medical update today.

Jesse Barfield is eligible for free agency when the season ends but will re-sign with the New York Yankees, he said, if they guarantee that he will continue to play right field, where Dave Winfield used to play.

Winfield, who has missed the season because of injury, may move to left field in 1990, with Roberto Kelly staying in center.

Barfield, who leads AL outfielders with 19 assists and has 132 in eight major league seasons, said of his desire to stay in right:

“I don’t mean to sound that I’m bragging, but the statistics speak for themselves. I don’t mean to sound cocky, but Dave has played left field before and I haven’t and you put your best arm in right and everybody in baseball knows that I have the best arm.”

Winfield to left?

“Why not? Barfield is the best right fielder in baseball,” Yankee Manager Bucky Dent said.

Bo Jackson stole his 26th base Monday night but his first since Aug. 23. A thigh muscle strain has reduced Jackson’s desire to run, which can’t excite the Raiders much. “I feel like I’m trying to play with an old man’s body,” Jackson said. “I’m probably about 70%. The only way to get better is with rest, but I’m not going to get rest in a pennant race.”

Maybe the football season will be more conducive to it.

Just when you think it can’t get any worse, the New York Mets prove that it can--and probably will.

“I can’t tell normal from chaos anymore,” Manager Davey Johnson said after a chaotic week. He had a closed-door shouting match with catcher Gary Carter over Carter’s reduced playing time and another with Darryl Strawberry during a team meeting in which he fined and criticized Strawberry and Kevin McReynolds for being in the clubhouse during the ninth inning of Monday’s game against the Cubs at Wrigley Field.

Bob Ojeda defended his teammates, pointing out that during the Mets’ decisive rally in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series against the Boston Red Sox, a half-dressed Kevin Mitchell had to be summoned from the clubhouse to pinch-hit and Keith Hernandez watched on TV in Johnson’s office, sipping a beer.

“We have one set of rules when the team wins and one set when the team loses,” Ojeda said. “It’s been that way for as long as I’ve been here.”

The latest eruptions have:

--Reportedly left Johnson’s status in doubt, although he is signed through 1991 at $350,000 a season.

--Cast a suspicious light on the quiet McReynolds’ team commitment.

Although Strawberry is often the target for Met failures and frustrations, Tom Verducci of Newsday took aim at McReynolds in the wake of the Chicago incident and wrote:

“Reporters are routinely amazed how McReynolds can shower, dress and leave the clubhouse within a few minutes of the last out. Now we have a clue how he does it.

“McReynolds has proven skills on the field. But he gives nothing more than what he absolutely has to. He has no interest in fostering a sense of team spirit.” “