Giants Are Cut Above Cubs When It Comes to Big Plays

They both bat swift center fielders leadoff, followed by smooth second basemen. They both boast first basemen with gaudy, Gehrigesque playoff batting averages, not just above .300 but beyond .600. They both have stormy-weather ballparks, long-suffering believers and old-school managers who just happen to be old friends.

Their hitting is superior to their pitching. They met on the field of battle a dozen times during the season, evenly splitting the spoils. The pitcher who today will try to navigate his team into the World Series--Rick Reuschel--was once the favorite pitcher of the very team he will be trying to eliminate.

Their differences seem few. One side has an M. Williams with thinning hair, the other an M. Williams with a thick, tumbleweed bush of it. Otherwise, these baseball clubs seem so much alike--such absolute scratching-and-spitting images of one another.

So, what exactly is the big difference between the Giants and Cubs?

We can answer that, we think, at this stage of the National League championship series, now that San Francisco has picked up the scent of its first World Series appearance since 1962, and now that Chicago could be finding itself about to commit both hara-kiri and Harry Caray.

In the clutch, so far at least, there has been one very important difference separating the two finalists of the National League championship series, and, as academic as it might seem, it sums up San Francisco’s success of the past two days as accurately as anything else can:

Whenever a Giant needed to hit the ball out of the park, he made it go out.

Whenever the Cubs needed to hit the ball out of the park, he made an out.

Too broad? Too simple? All we know is that whenever a moment of truth has occurred during the National League championship series games of Saturday and Sunday, the big bad bats of the Bay Area Bombers went boom. We have just seen San Francisco pry open a 3-1 series advantage over a bunch of free swingers who happen to be batting .305 as a team for the playoffs, if you can believe that.

First there was Saturday night’s man of the hour, Robby Thompson, who stepped into a seventh-inning pitch and sent it winging toward a 5-4 Giant victory. When the Cubs needed heroes in the last two innings, no one stepped forward. The tying and winning runs were left on base, in bunches.

Sunday night, same thing. San Francisco needed to sock it to ‘em, and Matt Williams delivered a two-run screamer over the left-field fence. Came the ninth inning and bases full of Cubs, Andre Dawson waved at strike three, assuring broken glassware in half the saloons and households of greater metropolitan Chicago.

We hardly mean to pick on the poor old Cubs. Lord knows life itself has done plenty of that. All we mean to emphasize is that the Giants have risen to the occasion every time there has arisen an occasion, and the Cubs have not. And while it is not too late for them, the sky is definitely getting dark.

“I’m going to use Yogi Berra’s line, ‘It’s not over until it’s over,’ ” Cub Manager Don Zimmer said. “I know we beat the Mets three times in a row this year. We beat the Cardinals three times in a row. We beat the Expos three times in a row. We can’t worry about three in a row now. We got to worry about tomorrow.”

That they do. And whatever solace they can find in baseball’s old sun’ll-come-up sanctuary of optimism has as its foundation the comebacks made by other Boys of Autumn throughout this decade--the Cardinals coming back to overtake the Brewers, the Cardinals defeating the Dodgers, the Royals over the Blue Jays, Royals over Cards, Twins over Cards, Mets over Red Sox, Cards over Giants, even the Padres to jolt the Cubs. Baseballs take funny bounces.

What the Cubs must do is keep their heads screwed on tight. They are blowing this thing with bonehead plays, blowing the opportunity of a lifetime, wasting the wonderful hitting of Mark Grace, Ryne Sandberg and Luis Salazar by leaving baserunners stranded, taking foolish risks on the bases, making strange managerial decisions, even losing track of the count on the batter, as Les Lancaster did in Game 3.

As for the Giants, they are making the most of things, and not just at the plate. One minute Kevin Mitchell is catching a two-on, two-out line drive from the seat of his pants. Next minute Will Clark is scooping a throw out of the dirt, or upsetting a Cub infielder with a hard slide at second base, breaking up a double play.

The Giants look loose, relaxed. When Shawon Dunston of the Cubs check-swinged a dinker down the right-field line, Kelly Downs, the Giant pitcher, an old winter-ball acquaintance of his, glanced over to first base and made a joke, something on the order of: “You’re not gonna take that one, are you?” He was smiling, he said.

Dunston wasn’t. At that moment he wanted to do exactly what the Cubs did not do enough of Sunday: Hit Kelly Downs.

“Maybe Shawon didn’t see the smile,” Downs said.

Maybe. Maybe the Cubs see nothing amusing about their current predicament, and won’t unless they are given the opportunity to laugh last. Maybe they will figure out how to pitch to Clark, Mitchell, Williams and the others before that becomes the Oakland Athletics’ worry, not theirs. Maybe they will salvage this thing yet, or maybe Yogi Berra was full of it.

Two thousand miles they roamed, hoping to bring this series back home. But the Chicago Cubs are sitting on the dock of the bay, watching their time slip away.