Orel Surgery Cuts Dodgers to the Heart

Orel Hershiser is hurting--hurting inside his arm, hurting inside his heart.

He has something wrong with his right shoulder, and Orel Hershiser cannot make a living without his right shoulder. He needs it the way a concert pianist needs hands, the way a high-rise construction worker needs eyes. Without a sound right shoulder, Orel Hershiser, 31 years old, must find another line of work.

It is a pity, a tragedy, an occupational hazard with which colleagues from Fernando Valenzuela to John Tudor can empathize. It is a crying shame, and indeed, Orel Hershiser cried. He choked up last Thursday on the Dodger Stadium infield with a microphone in his face the way he never once choked up there with a baseball in his hand. And it hurts to see a grown man cry, particularly this grown man.

Hershiser, like Valenzuela, epitomizes everything one would want out of a Los Angeles Dodger or out of a baseball player or out of a professional athlete. He leads, by all outward appearances, a virtuous life. He is, with rare exception, pleasant to strangers and patient with children. He speaks with intelligence and eloquence and is refreshingly free of profanity. He is hardly St. Orel, but on the whole he really is the sort of guy you would expect to endorse not beer nor shaving lather, but Johnson’s Baby Shampoo.

If Hershiser does not make it back this season, which appears likely, it is Los Angeles’ loss. If Hershiser does not make it back ever, it is everybody’s loss. He is good for the game. He is a good man at whom to point your finger when you nudge your son and say: “Now this guy’s what I call a ballplayer.”

Not once have we read or written a word about speeding tickets or income tax evasion or hidden mistresses where Orel Hershiser is concerned, and here’s betting we never will. The Dodgers practically have had their own motto every spring: Let he who is without sin cast the first pitch.

Where vice is concerned, to our knowledge, about as madcap as Hershiser gets is to run over to Atlantic City when the Dodgers are in Philadelphia and drop a bundle on one deal of baccarat, as Rick Dempsey once got a kick out of telling.

Before anybody frets about bad gambling habits, remember, this is the same Hershiser who donated stacks of money to charity, who dared Tom Lasorda to drop some weight, doubled the bet to keep Tommy dieting, and, in so doing, lowered the manager’s cholesterol while raising thousands of dollars for a Tennessee nunnery.

We do not usually get too worked up over an athlete’s injury, but this one means more to the Dodgers than just complicating their current predicament in which their star outfielder, stopper relief pitcher, starting third baseman, backup catcher and ace pitcher have been banished to the infirmary.

Stripping Fernando Valenzuela and Orel Hershiser from the Dodgers was like removing their heart and soul. Valenzuela still has the heart and stubbornness of a bull, but his arm is nothing like it once was. Hershiser is the soul and spiritual leader of the Dodgers in many ways, the perfect counterpoint to Kirk Gibson’s volatility or Mickey Hatcher’s tomfoolery.

Somehow we get the feeling that we will not be the only one today wishing Orel Hershiser a full recovery, for our sake as well as his. He is needed. Guys like him are rare.

He gave audiences thrills beyond belief in 1988, stringing zeroes along the scoreboard and volunteering for desperate-situation bullpen duty and ultimately making the free-swinging Oakland Athletics wave at his offerings like blindfolded men playing Wiffleball. He sang hymns in the dugout and knelt in prayer near the mound. He was almost too good to be true.

So . . .

Dear Orel:

It won’t be the same here without you. Dodgers have been pitching baseballs for 100 years, but few any better than you.

We appreciate all that you did and all that you were going to do. We know that life plays as many tricks on a ballplayer as a breaking pitch does, and in your particular line of work, as you know, not everything is fair.

We also know that you have a higher authority to consult about all this, and we don’t mean Lasorda. There is a good head under that red hair and blue cap, so keep it on straight.

If worse comes to worst, we’ve seen the way you hit. Don’t forget, Roy Hobbs came back as a right fielder.

Be a patient patient, and tell the doctor he’ll get credited for a save.

And thanks. Thanks for the memories. If you can, come back and give us some more.