Leading Man Has Been Cast

It was a reasonable enough question and commentary, and Brett Butler accepted it as such. “How,” the reporter wanted to know, “do you get 90 walks a season? I mean, you’re not Babe Ruth.”

Usually, when you ask a ballplayer a question such as that, you get a learned dissertation about waiting for your pitch, being patient, learning the strike zone. Ted Williams would give you a half hour.

But, Brett Butler pondered the variables, then went right to the heart of the matter. “Well, you start with the umpires,” he began.

Wait a minute! The umpire !?

“Some of them are consistent, but some are inconsistent in their strike zones. You have to know what they think is a strike, too. And how they call the game.”

He paused. “Then, you can’t be too egotistical.”

Egotistical?! You have to be humble to be a selective hitter?

“You have to know your limits. You have to know what you can’t hit.”

What you can’t hit usually is ball four. A lot of big league hitters never learn this.

It’s easy to see what made Brett Butler one of the game’s premier leadoff hitters. In addition to studying the umpires, he also studied Rickey Henderson and Wade Boggs, two of the game’s foremost practitioners of the art. He talked with both about the arts and mysteries of leading off.

Unlike Macy’s and Gimbel’s, baseball players eagerly share secrets--even with the enemy. Pitchers tell pitchers what hitters don’t like. Leadoff men, almost a vanishing breed in this era of the over-swinging, over-eager modern batsmen who will try to hit anything that doesn’t hit them first, exchange tips regularly.

It’s a leadoff batter’s duty to make a pitcher work. Every at-bat should be a battle. His job is to start rallies, to get pitchers out of their rhythm, score runs one base at a time.

A leadoff batter shouldn’t be a hero. He should be a pest, a nuisance, almost an infection. Eddie Stanky used to starch the sleeves of his long johns so he could get hit by pitches (strikes, if possible) without leaving bruises. Luke Appling used to foul off pitches he didn’t care for till the pitcher would need a straitjacket.

The leadoff hitter has to have the soul of a pickpocket. His is a dirty-uniform position. He has to be a threat to bunt, a threat to steal. Brett Butler hit only three home runs last year. But he got on base more than 300 times. His on-base percentage, .397, was topped only by Barry Bonds and Jack Clark in the league. He got 192 hits. He scored 108 runs. He always scores 100 runs.

“Do you set goals?” he is asked. “Two hundred hits? One hundred runs? A .300 average?”

“I set goals. I don’t announce them. I announced them one year. Then, I went out and hit .217.”

“That wasn’t one of your goals?” he is asked.

“Missed my goal by 83 points,” Butler acknowledges.

If Butler answers a pressing need of the Dodgers for a leadoff man, he also goes a long way toward filling another gaping hole--center field. It has been proved over and over that teams can win pennants with marginal third basemen, barely adequate left fielders, even, sometimes, clumsy first basemen. But a team can never win a pennant with a klutz in center field. Usually, a Willie Mays or a Joe DiMaggio is out there. The Dodgers had Duke Snider and Willie Davis aboard in center field in their salad days.

Great center fielders play a shallow post and rely on speed and instinct to get them back for the long drives. But Candlestick Park, where Brett Butler patrolled, was not a hospitable environment for chance-taking. You played deep and prayed a lot in Candlestick.

“Willie Mays gave me the best advice on how to play Candlestick,” Butler recalls. “You waited on the fly balls. You counted ‘1000-and-one, 1000-and-2’ and then you went into your jump.

“Dodger Stadium should be a pleasant change,” he predicts.

The Dodgers hope so. The acquisition of Brett Butler allows the Dodgers to keep Kal Daniels’ potent bat in the lineup. It also, however, keeps Kal Daniels’ glove in the lineup.

Brett Butler is not worried. “At San Francisco, I had Kevin Mitchell on one side of me and Mike Kingery on the other. With Darryl Strawberry in the outfield, I don’t feel I’ll have to be making too many catches in right field.”

The Dodgers need to make up five games on Cincinnati. Any pitcher can tell you a skilled center fielder can be worth 5-10 games in a pennant drive. Any manager can tell you an active leadoff hitter can spark 5-10 games into the win column. If their new No. 22 can do both and the team wins the pennant, Dodger fans will be sure of one thing: The Butler did it.