He’s a Texas Matinee Idol : NL playoffs: Doug Drabek’s hometown of Victoria, Tex., can’t wait for the Pirate pitcher to start Game 2 Friday afternoon.

The folks in Victoria, Tex., can hardly believe their rotten luck. This is the moment they’ve been awaiting for months, watching their hometown hero pitch in the National League playoffs, and putting them on the map for all of the world to see.

Why, Doug Drabek is about the biggest thing that has happened around those parts since the widening of Main Street. The town might be only 120 miles west of Houston but the folks have severed their ties to the Astros, and become Pittsburgh Pirate fanatics.

“You should see it around here, everyone’s going crazy,” said Steve Tibiletti, the baseball and football coach for the last 28 years at tiny St. Joseph High School, Drabek’s alma mater. “That’s all anyone’s talking about is Doug.”

But the problem in Victoria is that Drabek is not pitching until Friday afternoon, of all times, when he starts Game 2 against the Cincinnati Reds.

He pitched last Sunday, throwing a three-hit shutout in the division-clinching game against the St. Louis Cardinals. And instead of taking a chance and pitching him tonight in Game 1 against Jose Rijo, Pirate Manager Jim Leyland is using him on his normal four days of rest.

“It would have been ideal to have Doug for Game 1,” Leyland said. “But we had to clinch the division before we worried about anything else. We had no choice.”

That’s bad news for Victoria, a ranching and oil town of 50,000, because with a local 2 p.m. start, most folks will be working, and unable to sneak away to their TV sets.

“We’re all disappointed about it,” said Tony Drabek, a sales representative, and Doug’s father. “This is a hard-working town. Nobody can take time off just to watch him on TV. I think all we can do is just tape the game, and watch it after work.”

Said Tibiletti: “The ideal thing would be for us to shut the town down and go up and see the game in person. But I’m 50 years old, and I’ve never been on a plane in my life. . . .

“So we’ll just wait for the season to end to see him, and when he comes home, we’ll give him a hero’s welcome like you’ve never seen.”

And knowing Dougie, as they like to call him back home, his speech to the crowd will last a good, oh, 45 seconds, before he shyly steps aside.

“I really hate talking in front of groups,” Drabek said. “That’s the worst part about this job. I remember I used to break out in a cold, clammy sweat when I talked in front of people. The first speech I had to give in high school, I stood up, said a few words, and just froze.”

It hasn’t gotten a whole lot better, either. In fact, his shyness and modesty explain why the American public knows more about the engines in Jose Canseco’s sports cars than the pronunciation of Drabek’s name (DRAY-bek).

“I know I’m tough to know, because basically I’m boring,” Drabek, 28, said. “And I know I’m boring. . . . But that’s just me. I really don’t know what to say. I don’t have any stories. I’ve always been like this.”

Said Andy Van Slyke, the team’s humorist: “I feed him jokes all the time. I even tell him he can use some of my stories. But I never see them in print. I think he forgets them.”

Still, when people get to know this man, they soon learn that he is an athlete who refuses to cut his roots, and not even a Cy Young Award would change him.

“To me, this whole Cy Young business is a weird feeling,” Drabek said. “You heard guys talking about it, and I’m asked about it all of the time, but I don’t know what to say. I hate saying I’m even in that category, or worth mentioning.

“I mean, a Cy Young, you win one of those things, it’s like you died and went to heaven.”

Yet, the guy whose father thought he should be concentrating on his studies in business administration, whose high school coach thought he should stick to football, and whose wife thought he should relinquish these fantasies of playing in the major leagues, just happens to be the favorite to become the Pirates’ first Cy Young winner since Vernon Law in 1960.

Drabek finished the regular season with a 22-6 record and 2.76 earned-run average. He went 14-2 after July 8, yielding two or fewer runs in 12 of his 17 starts, and four or fewer hits in six of those games.

“If he doesn’t win the Cy Young, why even have the award?” asked Ray Miller, Pirate pitching coach. “I’ve had some of the best on my staff, (Jim) Palmer, (Mike) Flanagan, Steve Stone, but I tell you what, he’s as good or better than any I’ve ever had.”

The Reds certainly know all about him, and in the words of second baseman Mariano Duncan, “That’s the one guy on that staff that can hurt us. The way he pitches, man, it’s going to be tough. You just don’t score off that guy. And when you do, well, you hate to say it, but it’s luck.”

And if Cincinnati Manager Lou Piniella disliked his former boss in New York before, think how he feels about George Steinbrenner now, knowing that Drabek should still be wearing Yankee pinstripes.

“I’ll never forget it,” Piniella said, of an October organizational meeting in 1988. “My message to the organization at the end of the year, was, ‘I know we’re going to make some trades, but whatever you do, leave Drabek out of it.’ I said, ‘Trade anyone else you want on the staff, but not him.’

“So what happens, he was the first (player) we traded.”

It took about three months for the Yankees to learn that they had made a major mistake. Drabek went into the 1987 All-Star break with a 1-8 record and a 4.79 ERA, then learned a curveball, changeup and a sinking fastball from Miller. He is 61-29 since that ’87 break, and this year led the league in victories and winning percentage.

“I think it’s hard for all of us to imagine,” Tony Drabek said. “None of us even thought he’d go to the pros. And when he did, we thought he’d have some good years, but nothing like this.”

Everyone around Victoria knew that this Drabek kid was a fine athlete. He was pitching for his high school team when he was 13, and pitching in the state title game when he was 14. He went 33-8 as a high school pitcher but was better known for his hitting skills, still holding the school record for 14 homers in a season.

In football, he was the fullback, punter and kicker, and was offered several scholarships. His winters were spent as a forward on the basketball team. And when spring came around, once baseball practice ended, he would saunter over to the track, where he cleared 6 feet 4 as a high jumper.

“It was pretty much a thing where about every boy had to play sports,” Drabek said. “If you didn’t, you better have a pretty darn good excuse.”

After his senior year, Drabek was drafted by the Cleveland Indians in the fourth round but his dad wouldn’t let him turn pro. It was school first, Tony Drabek said. So he went off to the University of Houston, and the score book will reveal that Drabek got the save when Houston beat a starter named Roger Clemens in 1982, ending the Texas Longhorns’ 33-game winning streak.

He stayed in school for three years, compiling a 27-11 record, then was drafted in the 11th round by the Chicago White Sox. They offered him $13,000 to sign and Drabek took it without putting up a fight.

“It’s almost the same thing now,” said Larry Doughty, Pirate general manager. “When we took a few people to arbitration over the winter, we heard some of the nastiest things you can imagine. . . .

“But Doug, he didn’t say a word. Of course, he won his case (getting $1.1 million), but even if he had lost, we wouldn’t have heard a peep.”

Teammate R.J. Reynolds said: “If I had to pick a guy who’s most popular in here, it’s Doug. I mean, he’s never going to be the life of a party or anything, but he’s just so well-liked by everybody.”

And, who knows, maybe with a couple of playoff victories, and a trip to the World Series, the rest of the world will learn all about Drabek, too.

“I really don’t care about that stuff anyway,” Drabek said of attention and endorsements. “It’s kind of embarrassing when people call out your name in the streets, or stop you in restaurants. They know your name, but you don’t know theirs.

“Maybe I’ll get used to it, but it sure is a funny feeling having people outside Victoria knowing who you are, too.”