Are Pirates Finally Ready for Prime Time? : Baseball: Pittsburgh leads the National League East with players at the top of their careers--and playing like it.

Appearances may be important in baseball, except to the Pittsburgh Pirates. After two years of unfulfilled expectations, they have had it up to their scowls with appearances.

As a peek into the clubhouse of the team with the best record in the National League’s East Division reveals, the Pittsburgh Pirates may be looking great because, finally, they don’t care how they look.

In one corner is veteran pitcher Bob Walk. He is smoking, which is not unusual among baseball players. But a cigar?

In another corner is veteran Walt Terrell, the struggling starter who allowed 1.3 homers a game in his first 11 starts. He is ripping himself.

“I think we have a good fielding team, but you would never know it when I’m out there,” he says. “The only way our guys can field my pitches is to buy a ticket for the bleachers.”

In another corner is third baseman Wally Backman, signed as a free agent from Minnesota last year to lend this team dirty-shirt inspiration. As usual, he doesn’t stay in that corner for long.

One minute he is sitting in front of his locker, stroking his perpetual three-day stubble while muttering to himself about the previous night’s pitcher. The next he is playing cards with teammates on big chairs pulled around a tiny table, slapping the cards down and laughing with every trick.

One minute he is lying on a couch with a newspaper over his face. The next he is playfully screaming at a rookie.

Amid the chaos, he pauses to give thanks for being able to play in a place where he feels at home.

“Coming here from Minnesota, where the atmosphere was so complacent, it’s like coming out of the dark and into the light,” Backman says.

In another corner was second baseman Jose Lind, but he is gone now. It is “Cooler Day” at Three Rivers Stadium, and he is at one of the entrances, passing out free coolers and chatting with the fans.

“We didn’t ask him to do that, are you kidding me?” says Patty Paytas, director of community relations. “These guys just love doing the unexpected.”

In yet another corner is center fielder Andy Van Slyke. He is asked about the formula for this successful Pirate season. He stares at the ground and shakes his head.

He was the star of that young 1988 Pirate team that contended with the eventual East champion New York Mets until August, when they finally realized they were living a lie. They eventually finished 15 games behind.

He was also the centerpiece of a cocky 1989 team, one of the division favorites, until he became one of four key players injured in the first 12 days of the season. Largely because of those injuries, that team finished in fifth place, 19 games behind.

“If you’re looking for a formula, man, it’s not there,” he said. “We have been through so much in two years, we know that there isn’t any formula.”

Van Slyke is asked to analyze the Pirates’ roster. He answers as if he is talking about a Sunday afternoon softball team.

“We got three kinds of guys around here--guys just entering their prime, guys who are in their prime and guys hanging onto their prime,” he says. “We’ve got none of those baseball grandfathers. We’ve got no grandchildren, either, come to think of it.

“All we have is guys who go between the lines and get dirty and know that any day, all of this could come to a halt.”

Out of this Pirate-may-care attitude has emerged the league’s second-best record, a 37-23 mark that had put the Pirates two games ahead of second-place Montreal.

Before Friday’s 7-5 loss to the Mets, the Pirates ranked first in the league in hitting, third in pitching, and last in postgame celebrations. When they defeated the Dodgers, 6-5, with a five-run ninth inning on May 28, it was the first time this year the entire team has run out of the dugout at once.

“Back in 1988, it seems like after every game we were jumping up and down,” outfielder R.J. Reynolds said. “We were like some kind of a junior varsity or something.

“This year we win, we shake hands and we chill out. Because this year, we expect to win.”

In 1988, as they will admit now, they had no chance of winning. Only they didn’t know it then. With the emergence of a core of stars--Van Slyke, Bobby Bonilla, Barry Bonds, Doug Drabek and John Smiley--they were the talk of the baseball world.

They traveled to New York on the last days of July in second place, just two games behind the Mets. But in the next 11 days, the Mets beat them in six of eight games. So much for dreams.

“There was so much distraction and so much inner doubt all season, and then when the Mets just kicked our butts, we finally realized, we were not good enough,” Van Slyke said. “We know that now.”

Said Reynolds: “Nobody would say it then, but we could not play the game after the sixth inning, which is usually the only time the game counts. We did not have the horses. We did not have the confidence.”

Last season, being a year wiser, they thought things would change. And things did. They got worse.

In the season’s first two weeks, then-Pirate reliever Jim Gott, catcher Mike LaValliere, first baseman Sid Bream and Van Slyke were all sidelined with serious injuries. The team never recovered.

“I have never seen that many injuries that quickly in my life,” pitching coach Ray Miller said. “We were sky high and then . . . it was unbelievable.”

Said Van Slyke: “You could not write a more depressing script. It made us realize, every day you better come to the park ready to play.”

The Pirates started this season as a question mark. They were picked to finish anywhere between second and sixth. But then some things happened that nobody but the Pirates had been counting on:

--Their two obscure free-agents, Backman and reliever Ted Power, have played like a million dollars.

After a third of the season, Backman was hitting .320 and Power, formerly with St. Louis, had four saves with 22 strikeouts and only five walks.

“Sure, Mark Langston was the first name on our free-agent list, like everybody else--and we started our search with the second guy on the list,” said General Manager Larry Doughty. “This market can’t afford somebody like Langston. We take who we can afford, and who we think has one common thread with everyone else in our clubhouse--somebody who will get their uniforms dirty.”

--Their little off-season deal that brought catcher Don Slaught from the Yankees for pitchers Jeff Robinson and Willie Smith has proved to be a steal.

With LaValliere still battling injuries, Slaught was pressed into regular service and responded with irregular numbers, like a .384 batting average for a .269 hitter.

More important, according to one Pirate, Slaught’s quiet demeanor has kept the clubhouse from turning into a fraternity house.

“Slaught has been the leader in environmental noise reduction around here,” Van Slyke said, pausing. “Of course, I guess Backman counteracts that.”

--A starting pitcher who had been battered for parts of eight big league seasons because he had only one pitch developed a new pitch and gave it a three-way name.

“It call it the screw-knuckle-change,” said Neal Heaton of a pitch that has helped him to a 9-1 record, 2.87 earned-run average, and probable All-Star berth. “I couldn’t think of anything else.”

After being racked for a 4.46 ERA during stints with four teams, Heaton knew he had to do something.

“The word was, I was giving a hitter two good pitches every at-bat, because all I could throw with confidence was the fastball,” Heaton said. “So this spring, fooling around in the bullpen, I put my fingers a certain way to try something different . . . and all of a sudden the pitch worked.”

Said pitching coach Miller with a smile: “The ball gets to home plate and dies. Now Neal can deceive someone as well as overpower them.”

Heaton has been complemented in the starting rotation by Doug Drabek, who is 8-2, and Walk, who is 4-4 but with a 3.18 ERA.

The only missing piece in the rotation is Smiley, the hard throwing left-hander who was 3-3 with a 3.35 ERA when he broke his left hand on May 19 by reportedly slamming it in a car door in Atlanta. The Pirates are hoping for his return by the end of June.

course, having seen hard times before, they reacted with maturity.

“I was so upset when I heard the news, I ran outside and ran every damn step in Atlanta Stadium,” Miller said. “Couldn’t walk for two weeks.”

--One of their top minor league outfielders, much to the dismay of management, decided last season that he would rather pitch.

Scott Ruskin is now one of the league’s top rookie relievers, with a 2.81 ERA and two saves in 25 games.

“I still think he was one of our best hitting prospects,” Doughty said. “But at his suggestion, we let him give it a try.”

After splitting time between the outfield and the mound last season in Class A and double A, Ruskin pitched full time for Miller this winter in Puerto Rico.

“I called Jimmy (Manager Leyland) right away and said, ‘Man, this kid has a block-out curveball,’ ” Miller said. “And right away I could see the advantage he has of thinking like a hitter. In other words, he knows how hard it is to hit good pitching. And he knows what hitters hate.”

The unlikely collection of newcomers has fit well with the core of Pirate stars, who have been inspired by them.

Outfielders Bonds, Van Slyke and Bonilla--all hitting at least .290 with at least seven homers and 30 RBIs--have taken their aggressiveness a step further.

They recently asked the Pirates to put padding on the outfield walls so they could make more crazy catches. The Pirates complied.

“It’s the least we could do,” Doughty said, smiling.

Lind is another player with new enthusiasm, having his best season at second base, with only two errors and at least a dozen spectacular plays as well as a .332 average. And reliever Bill Landrum, 31, who has never pitched a full major league season anywhere, is 2-0 with a 1.20 ERA and nine saves.

“Nobody (is) doing any one thing really, really great,” Van Slyke protested. “Just a bunch of guys (are) doing a lot of things well. A bunch of guys who, I think, know what it takes.”

And all of them led by a manager who smokes more cigars than the players, and who is not afraid to lead them on the field in fights with opposing teams. Jim Leyland is not even reluctant to scream at Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda, which he did during the teams’ recent beanball incident.

“All of this stuff about how we learned from 1988, about how we have veteran influences now, all this stuff is overrated,” Leyland said. “We got guys who can play and are healthy and that’s it. Shoot, it’s that simple.”

Leyland said that, like his team, the hard years have calmed him. Where he used to try to dismantle the clubhouse and his players’ egos during postgame lectures, now he says he throws tantrums, well, only some of the time.

“It’s like, I don’t have this phobia that I have to prove to the world that I can manage,” Leyland said. “I can be cool, because I know I can manage.”

His team knows the feeling.