Baseball’s April: Not the Cruelest Month, Simply the Weirdest

The first month of baseball’s regular season is history. It was a short one, to be sure, abbreviated by the spring training lockout. In fact, by combining the exhibition and regular-season schedules, most teams have only now played as many games as they would have in a full spring slate.

Maybe that accounts for so much of the weirdness we’ve seen so far. Like Boston catcher Tony Pena, a National League retread, hitting .410 at the end of last week. Or former Giants malcontent Candy Maldonado, reborn as a Cleveland Indian, having four home runs when he hit just nine all last season.

Speaking of resurrections, St. Louis picked John Tudor off the junk heap last winter and gave him a contract lean on guarantees but full of incentives, and now he’s practically untouchable again. When’s the last time anyone won the Cy Young and Comeback Player of the Year awards in the same season?

That’s the sublime. Now the ridiculous. Mike Greenwell, a lifetime .320 hitter, began the weekend batting .211. Houston’s Mike Scott, the 1986 Cy Young winner, is winless in six starts, although he pitched well enough to win Sunday. Jack Clark and Fred Lynn, with their big, expensive bats, are both hovering around .200 for San Diego.

There’s plenty more my eyes have trouble comprehending. For instance:

I don’t believe the two teams currently closest to the first-place Oakland A’s in the American League West standings--Texas and Chicago--pose any sort of lasting threat. I don’t believe last-place Kansas City can be counted on to keep on being its own worst enemy, either. Check back in a month. The Royals should have righted themselves by then, just in time for seven meetings with the A’s over 11 days, from May 31 to June 10.

I don’t believe the A’s are going to wait for anybody to catch up, either.

I don’t believe Cincinnati will continue to win 13 games in 16. Too much of what the Reds have accomplished so far is compromised by the fact that they did it mainly against the N.L. West’s weak sisters--the Braves and Astros. Small wonder four of the top five National League hitters at the end of last week were Reds. But their infield is still mediocre.

I don’t believe the Dodgers are in quite as much trouble as others have suggested since Orel Hershiser was lost for the season and Jay Howell went on the shelf after knee surgery. The Dodgers can still go three deep in quality starters (including Giants befuddler Ramon Martinez, who struck out 10 Cubs on Saturday), which makes the rest of an otherwise so-so team look pretty imposing. The Dodgers may not win the division, but neither will they fade.

I don’t believe Pittsburgh is a serious threat to win the National League East. Even though the Pirates dusted the Giants and Padres six straight times, I’m suspicious of their starting rotation and their infield. There’s no way Bobby Bonilla can hit enough home runs to overcome all that’s wrong with the Bucs.

I don’t believe the rest of the N.L. East standings look much like they will in another two months, either. When the shuffling is finished--around July 1--Philadelphia and Montreal, with their shortages of everything, will have returned to the second division where they belong, and the St. Louis-New York match race ought to have commenced in earnest.

I don’t believe there is much more that can be said about Dave Stewart. In a mid-spring chill Sunday at Fenway Park, the Oakland ace’s determination came out in steamy breaths as he out-dueled Boston hero Roger Clemens. It was the fourth time Stewart has beaten Clemens in five meetings, and it ran his stretch of April wins to an astonishing 17. All the while, you wonder who will beat him out for the Cy Young Award this time. Let’s see. Is Stewart the Greg Norman of baseball, or is Norman the Dave Stewart of golf?

I don’t believe I have heard many color announcers who are more delightful than the recently retired Mike Krukow. This weekend, bouncing between the radio and Sports-Channel booths, Krukow was a hopeless but lovable homer. I love that clubhouse jargon--knock, dong, heat--and his playful feud with Cardinals shortstop Ozzie Smith.

I don’t believe we have seen the last of the Giants. Their bullpen may still make your heart race, but their hitters began to find themselves during their series with the Cardinals. Except for their ineffective flailing at Tudor on Saturday, the Giants have begun to muscle the ball around as advertised. However. . . .

I don’t believe we’ll see another Bay Bridge World Series this year.