Craig’s Plans to Get Even With La Russa Drown in Chicago

The last time these two tangled with something at stake, the Earth moved. This meeting produced nothing more spectacular than an hourlong shower, so it should come as little surprise that Roger Craig feels cheated.

Again.

And he is only the first at the end of a very long line.

Commissioner Fay Vincent, still shy of a year on the job, saw his first World Series humbled by nature last fall and now his first All-Star game numbed by boredom. Worse yet, he missed a foul pop-up by inches.

But at least he got in for free. CBS paid enough for the telecast to kick-start the economy of a small corner of Eastern Europe, and all the ratings numbers they likely will receive in return wouldn’t buy more than a few pebbles from the Berlin Wall.

And if there was any doubt that the network knew it was surrendering its audience by the minute, consider that the show it cut to during the rain delay --appropriately, “Rescue 911”--was a rerun.

Even those losses, however, were of little solace to the fans inside the ballpark. They ponied up anywhere from $40 (face value) to a rumored $1,500 (scalper’s value) and didn’t get the opportunity to see comedian Bill Murray serenade the rest of the nation. At least that was funny.

Still, there was no doubt who drew the shortest straw.

Craig blew into the Windy City around 3 a.m. Monday and made it clear before he sat down to lunch that he was gunning for Tony La Russa. And Tuesday night, he played more hunches than a mother of six on a roll during Las Vegas night at the neighborhood church, used four more players than his counterpart, violated All-Star Game protocol by ordering two intentional walks, gave it one hell of an effort--and still lost to La Russa.

Again.

“I told my players I expect them to play like this was the last game of the World Series,” Craig said, “because I intended to manage it that way.”

That was the first mistake. After Craig’s Giants lost everything from the earthquake-delayed World Series last fall to a handful of exhibition games this spring to La Russa’s Athletics, he figured he had a break coming.

That was the second mistake. The way things turned out, American League Manager La Russa got more hits from his guys in one inning than National League Manager Craig got from his throughout the long, wet evening, though he was smart enough not to claim credit for a less-than-artistic success.

What passed for offense in the Friendly Confines on Tuesday night was pretty much confined to the seventh. Cleveland’s Sandy Alomar led it off against San Francisco’s Jeff Brantley by topping a ball that crawled into the hole at shortstop and arrived safely at first on the seat of his pants.

Lance Parrish followed by slicing a drive into right that landed just in time to beat the rain, which then landed all over Wrigley for the next hour and eight minutes.

Craig did a lot of thinking during that time and had resolved to leave Brantley in the game. But all that ruminating went for naught when the muscles around Brantley’s rib cage, made sore from nothing more serious than bouts of tossing and turning the last few nights, stiffened to the point where he had decided to work no more.

“He would have continued to pitch because he’s one of the best there is at getting out of a situation like that,” Craig said. “But the trainer said he was sore, and what are you going to do?”

What Craig did was get Nasty Boy Rob Dibble from the bullpen; that was mistake No. 3. The Reds’ right-hander brought a 4-2 record, seven saves and a 1.68 earned-run average into the contest. But the reason he pitches middle relief for Lou Piniella in Cincinnati is because Dibble also has this nasty habit of walking into explosive situations carrying a lighted match--and leaving somebody else to take the blame.

At the start of the season, Dibble inherited 21 runners, allowed 10 to score and still maintained a perfect 0.00 ERA. Tuesday night, he got ahead 0-2 against Julio Franco, then grooved a fastball that the Texan (by way of the Dominican Republic) drove into the right-center-field gap for a double and the only two runs of the game.

“It’s funny,” Craig said, even though he obviously didn’t think so. “Dibble had him 0-2, he’s a power pitcher, and I turned to (NL coach and good friend) Don Zimmer and I said, ‘Watch him try to throw the next one by him.’

“I hardly got the words out of my mouth when Franco hit it.”

It is no doubt small consolation by now, but La Russa hardly outsmarted Craig.

Again.

La Russa, in fact, had to stifle a grin when asked afterward whether there was any particular strategy involved in inserting Franco into the game in the fifth.

“It’s no strategy,” he admitted. “I was just trying to get the players on my squad into the game. Really, you can flip a coin. All of these pitchers can pitch and all of the hitters can hit, and there really wasn’t any strategy involved.”

So lighten up, Roger. The World Series might be like a chess game, and a case can be made for all that maneuvering in spring training to get a look at a lot of people.

But as La Russa demonstrated, success in the All-Star game simply requires the understanding that behind every good manager are a lot of good men. Let them play.