Dent Has His Own Troubles

Bucky Dent woke up Tuesday as the second-likeliest manager of a New York baseball team to be out of a job by nightfall. By dinnertime, he had moved up one place.

When the messengers brought Dent news of Davey Johnson’s unscheduled-scheduled departure from the Mets, he was standing a few feet behind the batting cage as the shadows of a cool evening lengthened across Comiskey Park.

He was hardly surprised. No manager ever is--and those who wear New York Yankee pinstripes are surprised least of all. Then the messengers reminded Dent that earlier this year, Johnson’s name was on the short list owner George Steinbrenner keeps by his nightstand.

“I have too many other things to worry about,” Dent said. As he talked, he kept pushing his fingers deeper into a child-sized fielder’s glove.

“If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. ... Why should I worry about it every day?”

Fair enough. On the other hand, Tuesday turned out to be one of those days when there was plenty to worry about if you happened to be managing the Yankees.

There was the matter of last place, of losing three straight, and by nightfall of knowing that somewhere in the sky above Comiskey Park, behind the glass of one of those climate-controlled luxury boxes, lurked Steinbrenner, watching the skid extend to four. And fuming.

Dent took over the sinking ship last August from Dallas Green, who got it from Lou Piniella, who got it from Billy Martin, who got it from Piniella before giving it back to him. But then, Billy Martin did that with a few people.

In any case, Dent has seen 83 games go by on his watch, and he has lost 48 of them. The latest, but by no means the most creative, came Tuesday night in the bottom of the ninth when reliever Lance McCullers, who threw three wild pitches in just eight warmup tosses, uncorked yet another one when it counted.

The beginning, though, wasn’t much better.

Yankee shortstop Alvaro Espinoza turned what might have been a close play into a double by wild-throwing Lance Johnson’s leadoff grounder to first. After Robin Ventura singled, starter Mike Witt hit Carlton Fisk with a pitch. A moment later, Witt hit catcher Bob Geren with a pitch. As luck would have it, though, Geren was using the wrong side of his mitt at the time. The passed ball gave the White Sox their first run. They had three more before Witt retired a batter.

There was more. Left fielder and part-time NFL cornerback “Neon” Deion Sanders, fittingly, did the work of two men. Unfortunately, he got his sports crossed. In the second, he knocked down a fly ball (though it was scored a hit and Chicago failed to capitalize). In the seventh, he walked with two out, stole second and, for reasons Dent is still trying to fathom, tried to gain the extra yard. Instead, he got caught trying to steal third.

Bucky Dent didn’t pitch, catch or hit a ball Tuesday night, didn’t rush “Neon Deion” into the bigs, didn’t rain money on such questionable talents as Pascual Perez and Andy Hawkins while scaring genuine talent away, or fray the nerves of Don Mattingly and Dave Righetti.

But who is left holding the bag for these and varied other offenses? Steinbrenner? His mysterious baseball operatives?

No. Bucky Dent. The same guy whose job is not as secure as the current manager of the Big Red Machine. Not Lou Piniella in Cincinnati--Gorbachev.

Talk about a tough spot.

“Bucky,” the post-mortem ended, “how do you accept a loss like this?”

“You don’t accept them. You tolerate them.”

“Is there anything you can say to them after a game like this?”

“I talked to them before the game,” he said. “I told them, ‘We’re hustling, we’re battling back. It seems we just can’t get the big hit.’

“Then we get the big hit (a game-tying home run by Mel Hall to open the ninth),” he finished. “And something like this always happens.”

As Roseanne Roseannadana, the “Saturday Night Live” character created by the late Gilda Radner, used to say, it’s always something. And Steinbrenner, if he was really paying attention Tuesday night, should know that the something isn’t always the manager. Or Dave Winfield. Or whomever the paper-tiger-for-the-moment happens to be.

Case in point: Jeff Torborg took over the Chicago White Sox in November 1988 after 10 years working for The Boss as a pitching coach, bullpen coach, bench coach, third-base coach, “everything you can coach but hitting,” he said, “and if you ever saw me hit, you can understand why.”

Before coming to New York, he managed Cleveland for parts of three seasons (1977-79) and was 157-201 over that span. His first season in Chicago went no better (69-92, last in the AL West), but owner Jerry Reinsdorf made clear the panic button had been put out of sight and this year’s White Sox team has become one of the biggest surprises in baseball.

“Lack of continuity definitely hurts players. If they know what you’re preaching is going to be in place for a while, they all won’t be happy, but at least they’re going to know what is expected of them,” Torborg said.

“You change guys, it’s ‘Try this approach, try that approach,’ and all you’ve got is confusion.

“We were really bad in the first half (of 1989), we steadied in the second half, and we’ve played with a lot of poise in the first quarter of this one. There’s no guarantee it’s going to go along all year like this, but we believe we’re headed in the right direction.

“I don’t know if you could do that in New York. In New York,” Torborg said, “it’s win now.”

Or else. Bucky Dent almost certainly won’t get a glimpse of the promised land when the Yankees get there. That’s assuming they find their way out of the wilderness first.