THE WORLD SERIES : OAKLAND ATHLETICS vs. SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS : Giants Just Can’t Understand How A’s Are Doing It So Easily

It only seems as if the Oakland Athletics are doing it with explosives. It only seems as if they are making a mockery of this 86th World Series with home runs and inside fastballs.

Two San Francisco Giants said Sunday night that the pain being inflicted upon them is much worse.

Those guys with the big arms, they said, were simply out-thinking them.

After the Giants’ 5-1 loss in Game 2, dropping them to a two-games-to-none deficit, losing pitcher Rick Reuschel was shaking his head while embarrassed third baseman Matt Williams was scratching his head.

Said Reuschel: “They did not do what I thought they would do.”

Said Williams: “To be honest, I’m very surprised.”

Reuschel was talking about the A’s patience at the plate. Acting as if they had faced him dozens of times, Oakland hitters ignored the pitches that have helped him win 211 regular season games--his lobs.

While most batters beat those bad pitches into the dirt, the A’s waited and waited and then either walked or saw a fastball they could drive. In four innings Reuschel gave up four walks, two more than he has averaged every nine innings in his career. And he gave up one home run, even though he was victimized only once every 11.5 innings during the regular season.

Williams, one of four Giant regulars to go hitless in the two games, kept thinking he saw fastballs from A’s starter Mike Moore. Williams being a fastball hitter, he kept swinging at those pitches.

But they weren’t regular fastballs, they were the best split-fingered fastballs the Giants say they have seen this season. Williams went hitless in four at-bats with two strikeouts, failing to hit a ball out of the infield.

The bigger they are, the harder they think? That’s what the Giants are saying about the A’s.

“They waited me out and hit good pitches,” Reuschel said after giving up five runs in four innings. “I’ve played with Dave Henderson before, I know he is usually a first-ball hitter. I know some of the other guys over there also have that reputation.

“But not tonight. They put me in a situation where I had to put the ball in there. What happened after that, I’m not sure.”

Reuschel’s wait for a good October continues. In three career World Series games, he is 0-1 with seven runs in 7 2/3 innings, an 8.21 earned-run average. In four league championship series games he is 1-1 with 12 runs in 18 2/3 innings for a 5.78 ERA.

“But I’ve never seen anything like him tonight,” Giant pitching coach Norm Sherry said. “Maybe not in his whole career.”

To start with, Reuschel walked leadoff batter Rickey Henderson on four pitches. Henderson later scored the game’s first run.

“I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen him even throw three straight balls, much less four straight balls . . . and to the first hitter in the game?” Sherry said. “You could tell right away they had decided what they were going to do.”

Three innings later, with the score 1-1, Reuschel started things by walking Jose Canseco and then gave up an RBI double to Dave Parker. But neither incident bothered him as much as what happened next, with Dave Henderson up. On five pitches, he put the free swinger on base with a walk.

“That was the big one,” Reuschel said. “He laid off pitches I was sure he would swing at. He waited me out and battled me. And he got on.”

Three pitches later, after falling behind Terry Steinbach 2-and-0, a frustrated Reuschel had to bring a fastball, which Steinbach hit over the fence.

“I had to give him something,” Reuschel said. “I thought it was going where I wanted it to go when it left my hand . . . but evidently it didn’t.

“You still have to look back on the walks. When you walk as many as I did, there’s trouble.’

Williams, who at age 23 is 17 years younger than Reuschel, doesn’t want to look back on anything he’s done in his first World Series. Yet the way the Athletics have been pitching him--he went one for 32 against them this spring and is hitless in eight at-bats against them this Series--he doesn’t want to look ahead to the rest of the week, either.

If it sounds as if Williams is cornered, well, that’s the way he appeared late Sunday after being asked several times about the problems of following up on a splendid league championship series.

“Oh, so you’re trying to get me to say that the pressure is bothering me?” he said sharply. “No. Two games don’t make a series.”

Williams, who hit .300 in the playoffs with a record nine RBIs in the five games, was asked to describe the problem.

“I’m hitting stupid,” he said. “I’m being fooled.”

It is not the A’s pitchers, he said. It is their pitch. It is the split- finger fastball that Dave Stewart used effectively in Game 1 followed by that of the man to whom Stewart helped teach the pitch, Mike Moore.

“The secret is, I’ve got to start recognizing it,” Williams said. “It comes in looking like a fastball. Looks just like a fastball. And I have been taught to hit that kind of fastball. So I swing.”

Surprise.

“As I swing,” he continued, “I discover that it’s not just a fastball. It goes out of the strike zone. It’s a bad pitch. So I swing and I miss.”

But it won’t keep happening, he said.

“I’m learning,” he said. “I’ll pick it up. I’ll start seeing it.”

Giant hitting coach Dusty Baker said Williams has already solved half the problem.

“To admit what he’s doing wrong, that’s a man,” Baker said. “He has taken the first step. He will be fine.

“The big thing is, we can’t panic. We have to show calm. They are sure doing something to us out there . . . but we have to be calm.”