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Eckersley Keeps Gibson Homer in Perspective

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NEWSDAY

Dennis Eckersley was driving to work one morning here when a car slowed alongside him. The driver of the other car recognized him and shouted something about an autograph. Eckersley, who didn’t think that signing his name while operating a motor vehicle was such a good idea, waved off the fellow.

The driver grew angry. He drove at Eckersley’s side, accelerating and slowing as Eckersley did. He hurled epithets and insults and, finally, a parting shot.

“He dropped a Kirk Gibson on me,” Eckersley said.

The driver was going after what he thought to be an exposed nerve, the way you might jar former President Nixon with Watergate, George Steinbrenner with Howard Spira, and Dustin Hoffman with “Ishtar.” But Eckersley did not respond. And when he arrived at the Oakland Athletics’ clubhouse, he told the story as if passing along a joke, laughing when he got to the punch line.

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“That doesn’t bother me,” Eckersley said. “At the time I thought to myself, ‘What a jerk. I guess you saw the game, too, buddy. Big deal.’ That was two years ago. I’ve done some other things in my career, too.”

If ballplayers put their most defining characteristic, and not their names, on the back of their uniform shirts, Eckersley would have the word “Control” arched over his No. 43. A man who conquered a drinking problem, rescued his career and who once faced 185 straight batters without walking any of them is not about to snap at the mention of Gibson’s name.

Eckersley, 36, has learned to deal with failure, rare as it may come knocking on the door of baseball’s best relief pitcher. He saved 48 games in 50 chances last season, walked four batters in 73 2-3 innings and posted the lowest earned run average (0.61) by any pitcher who ever threw at least 25 innings in a season.

In his three seasons as a closer, Eckersley is 12-4 with a 1.50 ERA, 126 saves in 143 chances (88 percent success rate) and -- this is no misprint -- 18 walks and 198 strikeouts in 203 1-3 innings. Yet the home run he allowed to Gibson in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series is as indelible as anything else he has done.

Then there was the last time Eckersley pitched, which resulted in another World Series defeat. Asked to preserve a 4-4 tie in the bottom of the 10th inning of Game 2 last fall, Eckersley permitted consecutive singles to Billy Bates, Chris Sabo and Joe Oliver. Only minutes after the loss, he joked about Bates’ hit -- a chopped ball on the turf -- by saying, “Yeah, that was smoked, wasn’t it?”

“We flew home after that and it was awful,” Eckersley said. “But it didn’t even come close to Kirk Gibson. That one was tough. I went out to dinner after that, a late dinner in L.A. I talked about it. I couldn’t sleep that night. I think it was the failure and having to live with it. Not so much for myself, but I let everybody down. It makes you think people look at you differently as a person. I know that’s not true. It has nothing to do with you as a person. Am I any less a man whether I win or lose? Of course not. But you take it personally.”

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Eckersley has walked the reliever’s tightrope -- fall and there is no net -- since April 3, 1987, when he was so lightly regarded that the Athletics needed to part with only three minor-leaguers to obtain him from the Chicago Cubs. The Athletics told him that he would be a set-up man for Jay Howell. He didn’t like the idea of being relegated to the bullpen.

“There’s a macho thing about being a starter,” Eckersley said. “And I didn’t like the uncertainty of it all, not knowing when you would pitch.”

But now Eckersley will admit that “it came at a perfect time for me.” The trade and his new role came less than three months after he received treatment for alcoholism at a Newport, R.I., rehabilitation center. He no longer had those four guaranteed off-days in between starts, days that allowed him to spend his nights without rest or moderation. To think his team needed him on any given day was a sobering thought.

Oakland traded Howell after that season and named Eckersley its stopper. He developed an entirely new aura around him. It was the way he jogged in from the bullpen with his long trusses bouncing from beneath the back of his cap; the way he worked quickly, throwing strike after strike, sometimes allowing barely enough time to get the sign from the catcher, as if to say, “Let’s get this over right away”; and the way he pumped his fist and shouted after a strikeout.

“I want them to think that when I come in, it’s over, that I’m in complete control,” he said. “And that starts with the way you carry yourself around the mound, the way you go about your business. I want them to think it’s over even if I know that day I’m tossing salad up there. You put up this wall, this facade, because inside you’re quivering. It’s not premeditated. It’s a natural defense mechanism.”

He has become so reliable that it is shocking to see him fail. It so happens that two of those rare breakdowns occurred in the World Series. The best reliever in baseball has more losses (two) than saves (one) in his six World Series appearances. He can deal with that.

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“When I fail, it takes 24 hours to get over it,” he said. “It goes right up to the next game. Then you get yourself ready to do it again. That’s what keeps you on edge ...

“I wouldn’t have been able to do this my whole career. I couldn’t have handled it then. I have control of my life now, and that’s the difference. But I wouldn’t change anything, believe me.”

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