Other Henderson Steals the Show

The longest, eeriest, most schizoid, nervous World Series in the annals of baseball resumed Friday night. The Oakland A’s were late arriving. Not as late as the Giants. They didn’t show up till the ninth inning. In the immortal words of Joe Gould, they should of stood in bed. By the time they got there, the game and maybe the World Series was stolen. No team has ever come back from an 0-3 deficit to win a World Series. No team has ever come back from 0-3 even to stretch the Series to six games. Only three of them have even come back to win the fifth game. Then, all went quietly.

No one ever thought of Candlestick Park as a bandbox before. The Oakland A’s turned it into a phone booth.

Speaking of phone booths, someone better check the one the center fielder of the Oakland A’s steps into every October as the baseball version of the mild-mannered nice guy and comes out in a cape and block S and home runs bounce off him.

Before the World Series started, the San Francisco Giants knew Henderson was a guy who was going to be a big problem for them. They loaded up on scouting reports on this guy. They knew he leads the world in stolen bases, he can hit home runs, he has 101 ways to beat you. He kept them up nights. When he walks up there, pitchers’ palms sweat, the back of their neck hurts and they wish the manager would come out and yank them.

Only, they had the wrong Henderson. Rickey is supposed to be doing all those terrible things to them, beating them five ways, rubbing their faces in it--on his way to Cooperstown.

The other Henderson is kind of baseball’s version of a high plains drifter. Sort of Have Bat, Will Travel. He has been around some of the major backwaters of baseball. Even Seattle gave up on him. He had a career as somebody’s caddy--the guy who goes in the late innings for the star or for defensive purposes.

He stole a base every other eclipse of the moon. He’s miles behind Babe Ruth in lifetime homers. He was a fill-in, a throw-in in trades. He gets swapped for people like Randy Kutcher. He has to look down at the front of his uniform to see what town he’s in.

But, that’s June and July. In October, Dave Henderson becomes the Sultan of Swat II.

You will all remember the October he was a member of the Red Sox as a kind of afterthought in a deal where Boston got Spike Owen. The Red Sox gave up Rey Quinones for Owen, but for Henderson only the ever-familiar player-to-be-named. (Turned out to be someone named John Christensen.)

The Angels were within one strike of the American League pennant that season when Dave Henderson came to bat in the playoffs at Anaheim. With a man on, he put a Donnie Moore fastball into the seats to wipe out a 5-4 lead for the Angels. In the 11th inning, he hit the fly ball that won the game--and, to all intents and purposes, the pennant.

In the World Series that year, he hit a 10th inning home run to help put the Red Sox ahead 5-3. It wasn’t his fault they couldn’t hold it.

Friday night at Candlestick Park, Dave Henderson came within an inch of hitting three home runs in one Series game. This is the kind of thing only the Babe Ruths and the Reggie Jacksons do. Henderson hit two indubitable home runs. The third one hit the top of the right-field fence and, when it bounced into the air, fell on the side of the field in play.

He got three hits for 10 bases, scored two runs and drove in four.

Reggie Jackson may be baseball’s Mr. October, but he’d better spare a week for Mr. Henderson.

For a guy who wasn’t even the right Henderson, he tore the Giants’ pitching into little pieces Friday night. For a night, he made Rickey the Other Henderson. Rickey stole his 2 bases, scored his run, got his hit--but the Henderson who wasn’t Rickey did all that damage just standing there.

The Giants realized who was doing them the injury. In the eighth inning, they paid him the ultimate baseball accolade. They hit him in the neck with a pitch.

All season long, Dave Henderson is the mild-mannered Clark Kent type. He hits his .270 or .250, catches everything hit to him and grins his way to another playoff and World Series. That’s when he starts to leap tall buildings. That’s when he becomes Super Dave.

Part of his success is looseness. If Henderson were any more relaxed, he’d take the field sound asleep. When a Spanish language crew approached him before Game 2, Henderson begged off. “I don’t speak the language,” he explained. “In fact, I don’t speak my own too well.”

In any language, he’s a Series hero. He’s the right Henderson for these games, the two-run homer Henderson.

Home run Henderson cannot explain his autumnal heroics. “A time at bat is a simple thing to me,” he grins. “Either, he gets you out--or you hit him. I don’t check the calendar, just the pitch.”

So, the curious World Series of 1989, the star-crossed classic, the Series nobody wanted, continued its haunted way to conclusion.

It was a beleaguered Series, under unaccountable flack from many sources right up to the first pitch.

No one could figure out why. There was racing at Bay Meadows, a rodeo at the Cow Palace, crap games in the bars. Japanese tourists had the town pretty much to themselves, probably because they have a long tradition of living with earthquakes.

The opera was playing Mozart, the San Francisco symphony was doing Tchaikovsky and Ravel, the strippers were out in force, you could see “Kill Me Again” or “Shocker” at select theaters and drive-ins.

But the prevailing opinion seemed to be, Baseball had some nerve going on with its revels in the midst of this sad state of affairs. Baseball, like Presidents and vicars--and Caesar’s wife--seemed to be held to a higher standard than the rest of society.

The presumption was, people would be tuning in to see it for the same reasons they flocked to train wrecks or four-alarm fires--morbid curiousity. The game would be incidental.

Well, all the damage was done to Candlestick’s reputation, not its structure. Seven home runs rattled out of its premises Friday night--two by the Henderson who wasn’t Rickey, one by Jose Canseco, Carney Lansford, Tony Phillips, one by Matt Williams and one by somebody named Bill Bathe. It was Bill’s sixth career big league homer. Bathe hit most of his homers in places like West Haven, Conn., and Clinton, Iowa, before Friday night.

The only people who could think of a good reason why the 1989 World Series should not be resumed today are the San Francisco Giants.