Orel Can Silence All Bats

What would you have to think Orel Hershiser and Walter Johnson had in common?

Their fastball? Nah. Johnson’s was better. Their curveballs? Nah. Johnson didn’t have one.

Maybe the fact Hershiser holds the National League (and major league) record for consecutive scoreless innings and Johnson holds the American League?

Nope. What makes Orel and the Big Train brothers is that they both qualify for what I would call the Job Award--to be given annually to the longest-suffering member of baseball’s fraternity.

What they have in common is that they were always getting beat, 1-0. Or, at the very least, getting shut out.

Walter Johnson pitched in more 1-0 games than any pitcher who ever lived, 64 of them. He won 38, lost 26. In many ways that’s a more amazing statistic than any of the others he set. It’s a wonder he didn’t go to the Hall of Fame in a straitjacket.

Walter Johnson was in 175 shutout games in his career. He won 110 but he lost 65. He lost 10 shutout games in one season (1909); in fact, he lost five shutout games in one month.

Some day, someone is going to have to explain to me why it is that Hall of Fame pitchers seem to throw a pall over both teams’ hitters when they take the hill. It happens too often to be coincidence. It is as observable a phenomenon as the Northern Lights. It is a matter of record that, on the day Sandy Koufax threw his fourth no-hitter, a journeyman pitcher for the Chicago Cubs, Bob Hendley (lifetime, 48-52) pitched a one-hitter. And Hendley was 4-4 for that year with an earned-run average of 5.96.

Consider that Walter Johnson, unarguably the greatest right-hander who ever threw, got one or no runs 64 times in his career, sometimes in extra innings, and bring me the answer to that one in 100 words or less.

Johnson is an extreme example, but it happens all the time with great pitchers. You would think their teammates, vastly encouraged to be playing behind a legend, would go out relaxed and get him a rack of runs.

It never works out that way. The great Grover Cleveland Alexander won 17 1-0 games. But he lost 11. Koufax won 10 1-0 games in his relatively short career. He lost four. It got so bad at one time that, on the day Koufax pitched his third no-hit game, his teammate, Don Drysdale, who lost a 1-0 game in 10 innings the night before, was in Washington when someone rushed up with the news: “Have you heard? Koufax just pitched a no-hitter!” “Oh, yeah?” was Drysdale’s reaction. “Who won?”

It was not all that funny. Pitcher Jim Maloney lost a no-hitter, 1-0, once. Harvey Haddix lost a 12-inning no-hitter once, 1-0, in the 13th--to a pitcher who gave up 12 hits.

Of the 185 no-hit games since 1900, one in five (31) have been 1-0 games--and seven of them were lost.

Something happens to a team when it gets superb pitching. Just ask Orel Hershiser.

Orel is not yet in the class of Walter Johnson, Grover Cleveland Alexander or Sandy Koufax but he may yet pitch and lose a no-hitter.

He has lost four 1-0 games this season. The major league record is five. He won one 1-0 game. The team has been shut out six times when he pitched.

Orel Hershiser was the toast of baseball last year. The honors came in bunches. He was the Cy Young Award winner, he broke the game’s consecutive scoreless-inning record with 59, he pitched five consecutive shutouts, he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated as the Sportsman of the Year, he dominated the playoffs and World Series. He was ready for Mt. Rushmore, a statue in center field.

But he should have begun to hear voices when, in the throes of setting a scoreless-inning record in San Diego, he left the game without a decision in 10 innings. The Dodgers ultimately lost in 16 innings.

Orel Hershiser won 23 games in 1988. His earned-run average was 2.26. He struck out 178, gave up 67 earned runs and 208 hits.

This year, Hershiser’s record is 14-15. He has lost seven in a row. He has gone nine games without a victory.

What has happened to Orel Hershiser is the same thing that happened to Walter Johnson, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Christy Mathewson (he won 83 shutouts but lost 40), Sandy Koufax. He has become a superstar. His team stops hitting behind him. It goes with the territory.

Orel’s numbers, except for wins and losses, are virtually comparable to last year. His earned-run average is 2.38 (vs. 2.26). He has struck out 170 (vs. 178), he gave up 65 earned runs (vs. 67) and 216 hits (vs. 208).

Since Aug. 13, his team has gotten him six runs in nine games.

Is the club that ineffectual? Well, it was the notion that the old Washington Senators were a wretched collection for Johnson. The schoolbook maxim of Washington as “first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen” was amended by the wags to read that Washington was “first in war, first in peace--and last in the American League.”

But after Johnson joined them, the Senators finished last only once and shortly moved to contenders. They were pitiable only on the days Johnson pitched, it seemed.

Thus with the Dodgers with Hershiser. It’s just another example of the high cost of fame.

Job would understand perfectly. The Bible tells us the Lord said of him, “Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? And still he holdeth fast to his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause.” He couldn’t buy a run either. For Job, it came out all right in the end. He got “fourteen thousand sheep and six thousand camels and a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand she asses.”

Hershiser would settle for a couple of three-run homers.