Cardinals’ Tudor Feels Better and It Shows

John Tudor, the St. Louis Cardinal pitcher who has won three games in the past two weeks after winning only four in parts of two years with the Dodgers, was smiling Tuesday.

For those at Dodger Stadium who had never seen him with that expression, yes, that was a smile.

And why not? After having to devote the entire 1989 season to rehabilitation of a surgically repaired left shoulder, Tudor has since experienced nothing but wonderful.

He is pitching without pain. He is pitching with run support. And he is pitching far from L.A.

“Nothing against the ballpark, nothing against the team, how can I have any hard feeling against them?” Tudor said Tuesday, before the start of his new team’s three-game series with the Dodgers. “But I’m not a patient person. I don’t like sitting in traffic. I don’t like waking up in the morning with eyes burning. The lifestyle here was not for me.

“I had always wanted to return to St. Louis. That was no secret.”

He got to St. Louis as a free agent after leaving the Dodgers. And if he continues his recent hot pitching, he could be the comeback player of the last few decades. In three starts, he has a 3-0 record with a 1.29 earned-run average. During those games, the Cardinals have outscored opponents, 21-3.

“I go up to him and he says, ‘Hey, you’re having a good start,’ ” Dodger pitcher Tim Belcher recalled. “I said, ‘Good start! Look whose talking about a good start!’ We all knew John was so competitive, if he was healthy this could happen. But to see it actually happen . . . “

For overcoming his injury, Tudor ironically would like to thank the Dodgers. He said that between leaving them last fall and going to spring training, he did nothing more than lift a hammer. That meant he felt ready when St. Louis got him.

“That’s just great,” yelled one Dodger behind the batting cage Tuesday. “We get guys healthy so they can go somewhere else and beat us!”

Said Tudor: “The Dodgers have a great medical staff, they took great care of me, they helped me get going.”

Tudor left the Dodgers after going 0-0 with a 3.14 ERA in six games last year. In 1988, before surgery on his shoulder, elbow, and knee, he was 4-3 with a 2.41 ERA after being traded from St. Louis.

Said Dodger trainer Bill Buhler: “We helped, but any rehabilitation was largely due to John’s hard work.”