Second Thoughts About Some Game 1 Strategy

As a war of wills and wind chills between the baseball team representing “The City” and the baseball team representing “The Second City” commenced here Wednesday night, San Francisco’s Will Clark came to bat against Chicago’s Greg Maddux three times in four innings--and first time up, Maddux clearly got the best of it.

Held him to a double.

This, in time, would explain why Wrigley Field often has billed itself as baseball’s “friendly confines,” because, for one inning anyway, the park did, indeed, confine Clark. Kept him inside its walls, secure as Alcatraz.

Alas, this quaint establishment, situated on the very same Chicago street-- Clark Street --where Bugs Moran’s thugs got tommy-gunned down inside a garage by Scarface Capone’s boys one long-ago St. Valentine’s Day, was hardly large enough. Customers on rooftops across Sheffield Avenue, far beyond the right-field fence, had a much better chance of catching Clark’s next two swats than Cub right fielder Andre Dawson did.

Clark took Maddux deep, deeper, deepest.

For this, Don Zimmer must bear much of the responsibility for Chicago’s 11-3 loss to the Giants in Game 1 of the National League playoffs. Because this was a night the chubby Cubbie was too brave for his own good. This was a night Popeye should have been content to be chicken.

The manager’s courage, if that is what one wishes to call it, in being unafraid of pitching to the National League’s most dangerous hitter was a matter, for one night anyway, of Zimmer’s having more guts than smarts. As even he acknowledged later: “That’s the decision I made, and it didn’t turn out too good.”

About the only doubt lingering from Zimmer’s fourth-inning foolishness was which of his errors ranked as most grievous--the ordering of an intentional walk to the slap-hitting Brett Butler with one out and runners occupying second and third, practically guaranteeing that Clark would come to bat, or the permission granted to the right-handed Maddux to remain on the hill and work to the left-handed Clark, who had been using him for batting practice.

A Cub lefty, Paul Assenmacher, was warm and loose in the bullpen. Even after the decision was made to put Butler on, setting up a force at every base, the notion of sticking with Maddux with Clark at bat seemed unthinkable. If Zimmer was praying that Robby Thompson would hit into a double play, thereby stranding Clark in the on-deck circle, he was praying for an awful lot.

“I decided that if Maddux gets out Thompson, I was going to leave him in to pitch to Clark. If he didn’t get Thompson out, I would’ve brought in Assenmacher,” Zimmer explained--although exactly what this explains, we have no idea. It’s like closing the garage door after Capone’s men are gone.

At the time the score was 4-3, Giants, and Thompson, determined not to deaden the rally, tried first to suicide-squeeze a run home. When he failed, he swung away--and popped weakly to second base, leaving things up to Clark.

Already, Zimmer had seen Maddux serve up a two-bagger to deep left-center and a four-bagger into the right-field seats, but after a huddle on the mound, Zim left his starting pitcher out there. Clark, on the very first pitch, hit a ball that traveled so far, it deserved to be a five-bagger.

His grand slam flew over Dawson’s head, over the spectators’ heads, over the heads of scalpers and ball shaggers loitering in the street. Guys aboard sailboats on Lake Michigan ducked when they saw Clark’s ball coming. It came down someplace between Murphy’s saloon and the moon.

Six runs batted in after four innings, that’s what Mr. Clark of Clark Street had.

“He had a hell of a week, “ Zimmer deadpanned.

Pitch around him, Popeye. We know Kevin Mitchell bats behind him, know Mitchell mashed 47 taters, know Mitchell matched one of Clark’s homers before Wednesday’s game was over. But we also know that Mitchell did not hit .333 this season, as Clark did, and that Mitchell’s average was 93 points lower than Clark’s in the 1987 playoffs, and that Maddux, Mike Bielecki and Rick Sutcliffe, the Cub starters, are right-handed, Zim. All of ‘em.

“Oh, you know how baseball is,” Clark aw-shucksed afterward. “Tomorrow, everything can change.”

Yeah.

Tomorrow, maybe he reaches that lake.