His Critics Strike Out : Braves’ Pendleton Proves Success of MVP Season Wasn’t a Fluke

His prodding and production pushed the Atlanta Braves from worst to first in the National League last season and to another Western Division title this year. He was voted the league’s most valuable player last season and might repeat.

“He taught us how to win,” Atlanta infielder Jeff Treadway said of Terry Pendleton.

Preparing for tonight’s opener of the playoff rematch with the Pittsburgh Pirates, the third baseman from Oxnard said he had had two goals when he left the St. Louis Cardinals after the 1990 season:

Play home games on a natural surface, and return to Southern California with either the Dodgers or San Diego Padres.

“The Padres told me they wanted a third baseman, but I wasn’t the one they wanted,” Pendleton said. “I think they were interested in Gary Gaetti.”

Free agent Gaetti signed a four-year contract with the Angels, who are kicking themselves for failing to include a two-year escape clause. San Diego acquired Gary Sheffield early in 1992.

The Dodgers?

“They said they were going with Jeff Hamilton. I mean, what could I do?”

What Pendleton does now is smile broadly.

“No knock at Lenny Harris and Mike Sharperson (the platoon that replaced the failed Hamilton for the last two seasons), but I think the Dodgers might have done better if I’d been at third,” Pendleton said.

Might have? The Dodgers finished a game behind the team he led to a division title last season and infield instability contributed to the recent Dodger disaster, while Pendleton led the Braves to another division title and 98 victories, a franchise record. The Dodgers lost 99 games.

“I don’t know how the Dodgers feel, but I’m very happy,” Pendleton said.

How happy are the Braves, who wisely rejected Gaetti’s demand of $11 million-plus and signed Pendleton to a four-year, $10.4-million contract?

“Considering what he’s done, we didn’t pay much,” Manager Bobby Cox said. “We needed a guy who could pick it up at third, maybe hit .270 and drive in 80 runs. He’s done a lot more and been our quarterback from Day 1.”

Added General Manager John Schuerholz: “It’s not for me to pat myself on the back and say he’s the best free-agent signing since the process began, but I have heard other people say it. Terry defines MVP and professionalism. He’s a managerial extension on the field and in the clubhouse.”

A .259 career hitter who never hit more than .286 in six full seasons with the Cardinals, Pendleton won the league batting title at .319 last season, drove in 86 runs, hit 22 home runs, anchored a rebuilt defense that allowed the young Atlanta pitchers to begin challenging hitters and was a voice of conscience in and out of the clubhouse.

Pendleton arrived at spring training this year and heard cynics suggesting that he had played over his head and couldn’t repeat. Such criticism became louder when he batted .150 during the spring and struggled through six weeks of the season before looking at tapes of ’91 and finding a flaw in his stance.

“I’ve never doubted my ability to swing the bat, but I had never shown much consistency, either,” he said. “I guess the doubts were legitimate, but I didn’t pay them much heed. People said I had a career year when I drove in 96 runs in ’87. How many career years can a guy have?”

Pendleton has had another, finishing in the top 10 in 10 offensive categories. He led the National League with 199 hits, batted .311, hit 21 homers, set an Atlanta record with 39 doubles and became the first Atlanta third baseman to drive in 100 or more runs--he had 105--since Darrell Evans in 1973.

Pendleton smiled and said he would salute without bitterness any of five other players if they are voted MVP--Barry Bonds, Andy Van Slyke, Larry Walker, Darren Daulton and Sheffield--but that he thinks he had a better season than last year’s. He cited greater consistency and run production and said, “The thing I’m proudest of is that I was out there almost every day.”

Despite suffering a strained groin muscle in early August, Pendleton didn’t sit out a game until Aug. 18, then didn’t sit out another until Atlanta clinched the division title last week.

Of Pendleton’s transformation as a hitter, former St. Louis Manager Whitey Herzog, now an Angel executive, said: “Only the size of the (St. Louis) park prevented him from putting up the numbers he’s putting up in Atlanta. He gets 10 to 15 doubles a year now that were long outs in St. Louis. I’m not surprised by what he’s done there.”

Pendleton doesn’t dispute that. He said he might still be in St. Louis if they had moved the fences in, as they did this season, but he also said he is more relaxed in Atlanta, that he has become more aggressive with pitches in the strike zone and that he had to get off the Cardinals’ synthetic surface.

“I’d begin each morning by bending over to see if my knees were still there and measuring the distance to the shower,” he said. “It was like running sprints on concrete.”

Pendleton batted .230 and played in only 121 games in 1990, his final year with the Cardinals. A bitter arbitration the previous winter had reduced his respect for General Manager Dal Maxvill, and Herzog’s resignation that summer brought in Joe Torre and the plan to move catcher Todd Zeile to third base.

Pendleton was so convinced that Maxvill and Herzog had been operating on different wavelengths that he refused to sign with the Braves until he could have a three-way phone conversation with Cox and Schuerholz.

“I said, ‘If you’re not thinking on the same level, I might as well hang up right now,’ ” Pendleton recalled. “I went through that in St. Louis. Whitey and Dal never saw eye to eye, and you can’t win that way.”

Pendleton said he liked what he had seen of the young Atlanta players, but didn’t expect the team to succeed until this season. Even so, he and newly acquired Sid Bream went to work in the spring of 1991, telling the Braves that the business of winning started in the spring, that it was time to get serious and drop the sloppy habits and attitudes he had seen from the opposing bench.

That wasn’t the last the Braves would hear from Pendleton, who had once upbraided Cardinal pitcher Bryn Smith for showing up Willie McGee in St. Louis but who was generally thought of there as the quiet, Gold Glove third baseman.

“I was always the young buck, low man on the totem pole,” said Pendleton, 32. “I had Ozzie Smith, Willie McGee, Jack Clark, Tommy Herr. They’d let you know when you screwed up and when you did good. That’s all I do here.

“I mean, leadership is usually something that comes from example. I don’t care if I’m hitting a buck-eighty, I want to be up there with the game on the line, and I think that rubs off. I barely talked to anyone at all during the pennant race of last year. I didn’t want them to think too much, to get too tight. They were doing fine the way they were.”

Pendleton set the example, batting .320 with runners in scoring position and .353 overall in the final 28 games of the race with the Dodgers.

This season, he had 33 hits in his last 65 at-bats with runners in scoring position, had 55 RBIs in his last 65 games and he batted .444 in his last 45 at-bats. His two-run homer against Norm Charlton during the ninth inning of a game with Cincinnati Aug. 4 produced a 7-5 victory, prevented the Reds from taking a half-game lead in the division race and propelled the Braves to a series sweep.

But there is more to it than example. Pendleton set the tone he wanted in the spring of 1991 and kept at it. He is always at the mound, coaxing some pitchers, goading others.

“It’s like having another pitching coach out there,” said John Smoltz, Atlanta’s starter tonight. “I mean, there are times I go to Terry to ask him what pitch to throw, and he’s always right.”

There was also the time last season that he challenged a slumping Ron Gant to a dugout fight so that Gant could relieve his frustration and stop carrying his failures to the plate. He jumped on David Justice for ditching young Brian Hunter and Keith Mitchell on the night they were arrested for drunk driving. Pendleton also made sure both rookies understood their responsibility to the team and carried his phone number for emergency use.

He called a team meeting in May of this year, believing the Braves were thinking they could easily win the NL West again. He told them it was time to get into gear.

“I’ve never seen a team play better,” Pendleton said of the 53 victories in 71 games that followed, but he called another meeting a few weeks ago.

“We built up that 10-game lead, then relaxed, let down, became too comfortable,” he said. “I was as guilty as anyone and it was time to say something about it.”

Said Charlie Leibrandt, the veteran pitcher: “It’s a long season, but this team generally comes ready to play. You have to beat us most of the time because we don’t beat ourselves. But when there’s a lapse, Terry is the one who speaks up. There’s no way we’d be here again without him. We could lose just about anybody and survive, but I don’t think we could if we lost him.”

Pendleton has proved the doubters wrong, proved that the Padres and Dodgers made mistakes in the winter of 1990-91, proved to Maxvill that the case Maxvill built against him during arbitration was circumstantial. Now?

“Both of us have something to prove,” he said of the playoff against the Pirates. “They feel they should have beaten us last year, and we feel we should have won the World Series. The goal we set in spring training was to finish the unfinished business.”