When Shouting Is Over, He’s Still on Bench : After Fast Start in Spring, Dodgers’ Chris Gwynn Held Back by Injuries

It was a year ago this week, the final days of the 1988 season. One night while the Dodgers were visiting San Diego, the two lineup cards were brought to home plate by the brothers Gwynn.

Tony of the Padres shook hands with Chris of the Dodgers. Everybody smiled. It was baseball, it was family, the only thing missing was the picture frame.

But it wasn’t finished.

As he was walking from home plate, Tony Gwynn stared into the Dodger dugout at Manager Tom Lasorda. And he began screaming.

“I was asking Lasorda, why in the hell wouldn’t he give my brother a chance?” Tony recalled earlier this year. “I was telling him, he was blowing it by not playing my brother more. I was all over him.”

Lasorda’s response?

“What do you think?” Tony said. “He yelled back.”

Brother Chris’ response?

“I thought, ‘Hey man, whatever it takes,’ ” Chris said.

Friday night, after watching the rain pelt Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, resulting in postponement of the Dodgers’ game against the Atlanta Braves, Chris Gwynn remembered that story and laughed. Then he stopped.

After another year of hollering, the Dodgers’ No. 1 pick in the June 1985 draft still doesn’t know what it takes.

Coming off the best spring of his career, which was followed by the best big-league chance of his life, Gwynn will finish this season Sunday as merely another guy with a sore knee and mood.

“Sure, sometimes, you think, ‘Why me?” said the outfielder, still a rookie even though he will be 25 next month. “I worked my rear off in spring training and then--boom--it’s like I’m the chosen child for all the bad things that can happen. For a while, I was wondering, ‘What can happen next?’ ”

Nothing that would surprise him. Just this season, he has been:

--Sent to triple-A Albuquerque despite leading the Dodgers with a .444 spring average.

He was so upset at being caught in what the Dodgers told him was a numbers crunch, that before reporting to Albuquerque he couldn’t even stand to watch their entire opening-day game in Cincinnati on television.

“I turned it off after two or three innings,” he said. “Couldn’t stand to watch anymore.”

--Moved into the starting lineup in May in time to suffer a stress fracture in his right foot in a home-plate collision with Houston’s Craig Biggio, who at 5-feet-11, 180 pounds is one of the smallest catchers in baseball.

The injury wouldn’t have been so bad except Gwynn played on it for another week.

“It was my big opportunity to play, and I couldn’t sit out,” he said. “I’d leave it in an ice pack all night, then limp to breakfast, then go on to the field. Finally I told them, I just couldn’t go on.”

--Appeared ready to return from the foot injury in late July, in time to strain ligaments in his right knee in a home-plate accident more bizarre than the one with Biggio. This time he collided with no one.

“Thinking about this still turns my stomach,” he said of the injury suffered while on a rehabilitation option in Albuqurque. “I just slipped on hard turf and my knee gave out. When I finished rolling around I thought this was finally it. This was the big one.”

He sat up all night in his Portland hotel room thinking about all those injured Dodger outfielders and how, instead of replacing them, he was one of them. The next morning he squeezed himself into an airplane seat for a flight to Los Angeles that was so painful, he hobbled straight from the airplane to the office of Dr. Frank Jobe.

“I was hurting so bad, I didn’t even make an appointment,” he said.

Jobe said the knee would heal with therapy and rest. Two months later, Gwynn has had it up to his chin in therapy and rest. He has not played a game since June 11, and will finish the year having played in only 32 games, with a batting average of .235.

In the three years since he first joined the Dodgers as a September recall in 1987, Gwynn has spent more time on the disabled list (nearly four months) and in the minor leagues (138 games) than in the major leagues (61 games). And he’s still looking for his first major league home run.

“Not quite what I expected,” Gwynn said. “I’m glad my wife (JoAnn) has been there telling me I could still play. Because hardly anybody else was saying that.”

The Dodgers don’t know what to believe, simply because they haven’t seen enough of him. Strangely, this is the reason that when they break up their overcrowded outfield this winter, Gwynn probably will be one of the few players left untouched.

“I think he’s got the chance to be a good ballplayer--but since he’s been here, he’s been hurt all the time,” Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda said. “We want to see him play regularly. You have to see him before you can make a decision on him.”

So, the Dodger manager has ordered Gwynn to spend this winter at “Lasorda University.” Gwynn will attend ‘classes’ not just for his knee, but also his midsection, which has increased by a few pounds since he went on the disabled list, making him prone to further injury.

“Gwynn and I have a pact,” Lasorda said. “This winter he is going to lose weight, he is going to work really hard, he is going to get healthy and get in shape. Then this spring we will see what we’ve got.”

“It’s nice to be around him,” said Gwynn of Lasorda. “His enthusiasm is good. It can’t help but make you feel good about yourself.”

Perhaps Lasorda will be his new good-luck charm. As Chris Gwynn once said, whatever it takes.

Dodger Notes

Friday’s game will be made up as part of a doubleheader tonight, beginning at 4:10, EDT. The first game will match the Dodgers’ Fernando Valenzuela (10-13) against the Braves’ Marty Clary (4-3). The second game will pit Orel Hershiser (14-5) against Gary Eave (2-0). . . . The Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium gates were opened two hours before Friday night’s game despite a downpour. Then officials waited more than an hour after the start of the heavy rain to postpone the game, at about 7:30 p.m. This weekend, the Braves are attempting to become baseball’s final team to pass the one-million mark in attendance this season. With two dates remaining, they are 19,910 short. The doubleheader comes on Fan Appreciation Night, which should help. . . . Pitcher Tim Belcher had a bone spur and cartilage chips removed from the area around the fifth finger of his right hand Friday at Centinela Hospital Medical Center. The hand will be immobilized for two weeks. Belcher will probably spend Sunday trying to catch the St. Louis Cardinals-Chicago Cubs game on television. His National League-leading 200 strikeouts is four ahead of St. Louis’ Jose DeLeon, who is scheduled to make his final start Sunday. . . . Dodger third base coach Joe Amalfitano has a close understanding of Cubmania, which will show itself nationally next week in the National League Championship Series. He managed the Cubs for parts of 1979-80-81 and remembers: “I came back to Chicago about three years later, in the winter of 1984. I got on this packed city bus. And all of a sudden somebody turns to me and says, ‘So, Joe, what are you doing in town?’ I had never seen the guy in my life. Four years after I managed there--and I never won there--and somebody still knew me.”