Painful Truth for Hershiser: His Opening Day Must Wait

Since starting his comeback from shoulder surgery, the first thing Orel Hershiser has done every morning is rotate his right arm.

“Sometimes I’ll say, ‘Hmmm, this feels good,’ ” Hershiser said. “Other times it will be, ‘Oh, it’s a little stiff, but that’s OK.’ ”

But Saturday morning, Hershiser made a more anguished sound. His goal of being ready for the start of the Dodger season was gone.

It happened when he walked from his bed to the shower, one day after pitching five innings in an intrasquad game,

“It was like, ‘Ohhhhhh!’ ” Hershiser said. “My shoulder was tender.”

Hershiser said Monday that because he is experiencing soreness for the first time in the pitching phase of his rehabilitation, he has put his comeback on hold.

“I said I could be ready for the start of the season if nothing minor happened to me, but something minor has happened, and that kind of shoots that down,” Hershiser said. “That goal is gone.”

He will not start his first exhibition Wednesday as he hoped. He will not even pick up a baseball for a couple of days, and he said he has no idea when he will be able to face hitters again.

“I could be back on the mound in two or three days, or it could take a week to 10 days,” Hershiser said. “And when I come back, I don’t think they will put me right back in an exhibition game. I may have to bypass the simulated game and go back to pitching batting practice.”

The Dodgers, who have more than enough starting pitchers, were not unprepared for this news. They realize such a quick recovery from so serious an operation would have been a remarkable feat. That is why they re-signed Fernando Valenzuela last winter.

Although Valenzuela’s long-term status with the club is still in question, he will probably start the season in the rotation.

“I have always said that Orel will let me know when he is ready,” Manager Tom Lasorda said recently. “I’ve never counted on him, or not counted on him.”

If anything, this news relieves the pressure that Hershiser might have been putting on himself.

“Opening day (April 9) was always sitting out there in front of me, every day was focused toward that,” he said. “But now, opening day for me is whenever I am ready. . . . I am looking at my rehabilitation with a little more patience. The intensity has been taken back.”

If Hershiser sounds matter-of-fact about the setback, it is because he has been preparing for problems as strongly as he has been preparing for success.

“I always said opening day was a goal, not a reality,” Hershiser said. “This is the reality finally setting in. I was going through a super-human rehabilitation, but this just proves that I’m human.”

It also indicates that Dr. Frank Jobe, who performed the landmark surgery on Hershiser’s shoulder April 27, was not being overly pessimistic when he said he would not be surprised if Hershiser was not ready until at least May.

“He has soreness, but it is not unusual,” Jobe said Monday after examining Hershiser. “The only thing unusual about this is that he has never had any soreness before.

“This is actually more of what we’ve been expecting. This is not a big deal at all.”

Said therapist Pat Screnar, “I have never seen anybody rehabilitating an arm who has not gone through a number of these little problems. We knew he would have peaks and valleys, and this is just his first (valley).”

Hershiser was coming off a successful 52-pitch outing Friday, his second intrasquad game. He worked four innings against a combination of Dodger major leaguers and minor leaguers, throwing the most pitches since undergoing surgery.

“I certainly don’t think we have rushed the rehabilitation,” Hershiser said. “If anything, we have gone slower than what I could have done. I could have been in an exhibition game two outings before last Friday.

“This is exactly why we have been taking it slow, because of the chances of this happening. This is no reason for us to pick up our tent.”

Dodger Notes

The Dodgers lost for the ninth time in 12 spring games Monday, 5-1 to Cincinnati at Plant City. It was the first of two spring meetings between the West Division rivals. The game featured an impressive spring debut by Mike Morgan, who gave up two hits in two shutout innings. Morgan reported to camp a week late because of an injured hip.

Kevin Gross, the starter and loser, struggled for the second consecutive start, giving up four runs in four innings. The Reds scored four runs against Gross in the fourth. In his last start, against Atlanta, Gross gave up six runs in the third inning. Overall, he has given up 11 runs in 10 innings. . . . Left-handed relief pitcher Dennis Cook gave up one run in two innings.

Brett Butler had his sore left elbow X-rayed after complaining of pain that has lasted longer than his usual spring soreness. According to Dr. Frank Jobe, the X-rays showed no problems and Butler will not be sidelined.”He said the soreness goes away after about a week every spring, and even though it’s been longer than a week, we have no reason to believe it won’t go away this spring,” Jobe said.

For the second time this spring, catcher Mike Scioscia played catch in a driving rainstorm at Dodgertown. He believes in working on his arm every day, and feels he cannot properly do work in a batting cage. “It wasn’t raining that hard until I got outside,” Scioscia said with a smile.