ANALYSIS : Series Loses Luster, Not Importance

The word most overworked by members of the World Series rival San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics in reaction to the devastating Bay Area earthquake has been perspective.

As in: “This puts everything in perspective. This proves how meaningless baseball is.”

Of course, many of those same players can be expected to reshape that perspective when their contracts come up for negotiation, but this isn’t about cynicism.

It’s about perspective and the need for it again in the wake of Sunday’s decision by baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent and San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos to delay restarting the already delayed World Series from Tuesday to Friday.

By any perspective, it should be clear now that the World Series of 1989 is nothing more than a symbol for the Bay Area. A beacon, of sort, on the road to recovery. A start on the healing process.

To think of it in any other terms would be a fallacy. In no way can this World Series still be considered a championship test. If baseball had been interested in preserving the integrity of the Series--rather than preserving it’s historical streak and providing the Bay Area with an alternative to the earthquake updates--then it would have dismissed a further delay and declared that the A’s, who lead the best-of-seven event, 2-0, as Series champions.

Instead, the 1989 Series will always carry an asterisk denoting that it was an exhibition event at championship prices played for the psychic benefit of the Bay Area.

How else can it be catalogued? The A’s and Giants, come Friday, will not have played for 12 days.

Dave Stewart and Scott Garrelts, the Game 1 starters who will be rematched in Game 3, will not have pitched for 13 days.

Is this anticlimactic or what? How appropriate that the A’s, because of inclement weather in the Bay Area, are considering spending the week at their spring training base in Phoenix. The Cactus League schedule gets started again Friday.

None of this is a knock at Agnos or Vincent. They are trying to deal with obvious priorities amid tragic circumstances. It’s just that there’s a need now to put this twice delayed Series in perspective, to call it what it is.

As Giants’ catcher Terry Kennedy said Sunday: “Everyday we don’t play it gets a little harder. Hopefully the intensity will return, but I can’t say it will be the same.”

Said batterymate Kelly Downs: “It’s been hard enough to get back up, and this takes that much more wind out of it.”

Even Oakland General Manager Sandy Alderson said: “I think the players understand, but this certainly creates problems for pitching and motivation.”

Does it figure to affect the outcome, however significant that outcome now is?

Probably not, although the Giants will benefit from the new delay.

Kevin Mitchell has been nursing a sore wrist for more than two months, Robby Thompson has been handicaped some by a sore shoulder and Will Clark was hit by a cold and laryngitis last week.

Garrelts, who gave up five runs in four innings of Game 1 and later complained of a sore elbow, has recovered sufficiently to be able to start Game 3, which will be played 10 days after being postponed by Tuesday’s earthquake.

Rick Reuschel, who started Game 2, will go in Game 4 and Don Robinson, who had been scheduled for Game 3, will drop back to Game 5, if it is needed.

The A’s, however, demonstrated in the first two games that they are clearly the deeper and dominate team and will be favored to close out the Giants before the weekend is over, salvaging a measure of prestige from a Series that should have erased their disappointment of last year and enhanced their claim to the title of baseball’s best.

The A’s still may get the sweep, but it will encompass 15 days. A timetable of that type might handicap some teams with the A’s power, their big bashers losing timing, but Rickey Henderson provides the A’s with a self-contained scoring machine, and the A’s know how to play little ball, in addition to long ball.

Then there’s Stewart, who complained at times during the second half of a tired shoulder and should benefit from the delay.

The new schedule is such that if the Series goes seven games it will end in November, and if it goes longer than five it will end later than any Series ever.

The 1981 Series between the Dodgers and New York Yankees, which started later because of the double playoff format adopted in that strike season, ended Oct. 28, the current Series mark for latest closing.

Did Agnos and Vincent consider canceling it?

Only briefly, they said, adding that neither money nor television were the motivating factors. To give in, to cancel, they said would have been to foreclose on the spirit of the Bay Area.

“Life goes on,” Agnos said, pointing out that the cable cars are back running, the opera is performing and conventions are gearing up again.

Said Vincent: “This city waited 27 years for a World Series, and that’s what we’re going to give it.”

In reality, hope and healing seem to be what baseball is providing.

The perspective here is that it’s a World Series in name only.