WORLD SERIES : TORONTO BLUE JAYS vs, ATLANTA BRAVES : The Championship Crosses the Border

What was it the poet said? “Do not go gently into that good night?”

He must have been thinking of the Atlanta Braves. These guys are harder to kill than Rasputin. The Toronto Blue Jays had them all but embalmed Saturday night. The mourners were all in place, the wreath was on the door.

And then, the corpse sneezed. And went into extra innings. At midnight, like Dracula, the Atlanta Braves get out of the coffin and go bite somebody. You wonder what you have to do--drive a stake through their hearts, make ‘em look in a mirror? They take a lot of killing. Just ask the Pittsburgh Pirates. They did everything but drop them in the river in cement shoes. Next thing they knew, here come those bubbles, followed by the Atlanta Braves. They turn into bats at the stroke of 12.

But the Blue Jays finally found a way to keep these skeletons in their closet, close the casket, run up the tombstone.

A tall, kind of clanky figure of a man who usually goes around with a gap-toothed grin and a toothpick in his mouth, finally figured how to put these haunts out of the house.

“Old Folks” Dave Winfield, who has been playing in this game since Nixon was president and who was batting a pusillanimous .143 at the time, came up in the 11th inning and finally got the stake through the heart and the grave dug.

But not until Atlanta went once more kicking and screaming into the night.

The Braves really lost on one of the more questionable pieces of strategy any World Series has been privy to.

The situation was this: The Braves, with the tying run on third and two out in the bottom of the 11th inning, had Otis Nixon, their star-crossed leadoff man, a .294 hitter during the season, at the plate.

He--come closer, I wouldn’t want the Little Leaguers to get wind of this-- bunted ! With two out, the World Series championship on the line, the tying run 90 feet away, he takes a crapshooter’s chance.

You bunt to move a runner over. You give yourself up to put a man in scoring position. Once in a while, you bunt for a base hit, usually when the infield is playing back and you want to ignite a rally. It’s really not your best shot, ever, unless you’re badly overmatched by the pitcher. It’s not a good ploy even in an otherwise lackluster midseason game.

It’s a moonshot in a World Series. You’re trying to win a lottery. You’re bucking a full house showing. You’re betting the rent money on a 100-1 shot.

It had been Nixon’s hit that tied this World Series game in a wild ninth inning. With two on, two out and two strikes, he swung at that ball and sent the World Series into extra innings. In the 11th, he choked up the bat and ended the World Series.

So, the Series finally ended with a whimper not a bang.

But it was a landmark World Series. Winfield’s hit in the 11th, a screaming 3-and-2 double down the left-field line meant that baseball’s World Series championship for the first time goes out of the United States. From Red Deer to Regina, from the Grand Banks to the Yukon, they can finally have their parade. Hockey can move over for week or two, or a season or two. But it gets the rest of us in North America a chance to move on, too.

You see, it was the first World Series championship won by a black manager and puts to rest that milestone.

We cut these prejudicial situations down one by one--sometimes shamefully slowly--but surely, all the same. They said black men couldn’t fight--and then Jack Johnson and Joe Louis and the young pugilists encouraged by them came along and made that a big laugh. They said they couldn’t be major leaguers--and Jackie Robinson shoved that lie down their throats. They said they could play football but couldn’t be quarterbacks--and Doug Williams won the Super Bowl.

Clarence (Cito) Gaston, who now joins John McGraw and Connie Mack and Casey Stengel as a World Series winning skipper and tactician, is a man of monumental dignity and calm. He’s a guy you would like to be next to in a lifeboat or a foxhole. He’s quiet but firm. He would remind you of Walter Alston.

He runs his team with an unflappable calm. He seldom raises his voice. He doesn’t panic. He’s not General Patton, he’s more Eisenhower or Bradley.

He doesn’t have the 1927 Yankees. The Toronto Blue Jays are an efficient crew, deep in some positions--but their pennant had to be put into place piece by piece. They’re Gaston’s men, they make that clear.

Dave Winfield is 41 years old and a veteran of the Steinbrenner wars with the Yankees, and he would probably storm a machine gun nest for Cito Gaston. He was in the game Saturday night because Gaston lets his players know he has faith in them. He has the slowest hook of any manager in the game. He expects big leaguers to be big leaguers--whether they’re 41 or 21.

This was his team that won the World Series Saturday night. It is a professional team. It doesn’t beat itself.

It didn’t fold when the Atlanta Braves kept coming back and coming back. The Blue Jays didn’t fold when the mighty Oakland Athletics tried to shake them.

The world championship is in Canada. And that’s a good thing. The winning manager is a black man. And that’s even better. Jackie Robinson, meet Cito Gaston.

It’s been a vintage World Series. It’s been good for the game, good for the country and good for the future. Let’s hear a chorus of O Canada! in the key of C, and let’s hear Take Me Out To the Ball Game and the Maple Leaf Rag. Eh!