He Makes Most of Situation

What do Danny Tartabull, Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle and Reggie Jackson have in common?

Answer: They have all batted cleanup for the New York Yankees at one time or another. It’s a hallowed spot in a hallowed batting order. Think of it: Babe Ruth never made it. Neither did Joe DiMaggio.

There’s another thing Tartabull, Mantle, Jackson and Gehrig had in common: They led the Yankees in home runs. Tartabull did it last year.

When Tartabull was a free agent two years ago, some fans were dismayed to see him sign on with the Yankees. It was a little like watching Little Red Ridinghood going into Grandma’s house or seeing a guy whose car broke down approaching Dracula’s castle. You wanted to rush up and warn him “No, no, Danny! Not there!”

Home runs go to die there. You see, the expanses of left and left-center field in Yankee Stadium are known in baseball lore as “Death Valley.” On a hot day, you can see the bones of home runs rotting in the sun. Even the great Joe DiMaggio with one of the most perfect batting strokes in baseball history settled for “only” 361 home runs. In a friendlier ballpark, he would have hit that many by accident.

Tartabull, the thinking went, had made a serious miscalculation. He should have opted for a Fenway Park, an Anaheim Stadium, Tiger Stadium, some place where the 460-foot out is not possible.

To be sure, they have juggled the dimensions of late to make the confines of the House That Ruth Built friendlier to a right-handed batter. But it would have to go a long way before being considered a bandbox.

So, Tartabull hit 25 home runs last season, 11 of them in Yankee Stadium and 14 on the road. He was otherwise a more dangerous batter at home than abroad. He batted .266 for the season, but .289 in New York. He drove in 48 runs at Yankee Stadium and 37 on the road.

If the Yankees are ever going to return to the glory years when they were the scourges of baseball, serial killers on the loose, haughty, imperious, the Gullivers of the game, contemptuous of the lilliputians around them, Tartabull might be the key. A Yankee juggernaut always has to have that Roy Hobbs in the driver’s seat--the No. 4 spot in the batting lineup.

Danny Tartabull hits 25 to 34 home runs a season no matter where the fences are when he plays a full season. His lifetime average is .284 and he walked 103 times last year--not exactly Ruthian stats (the Babe once walked 170 times) but enough to show that pitchers respect him mightily.

It’s a critical year for Tartabull. He’ll probably never be a statue in center field for the Yankees, but his bat--and Don Mattingly’s resurgence--have made the Yanks, if not Murderers’ Row, at least a congress of muggers again. Tartabull leads the team in homers, runs and runs batted in, which may not lead to comparisons to the Iron Horse or the Yankee Clipper, but it’s a start.

Danny is one of that growing sector in the grand old game, a second-generation player. Dad was Jose Tartabull, a journeyman outfielder with the Red Sox and Athletics who was hardly the threat his son is. Jose hit only two home runs in his career. Danny has 191 to date and is averaging 24 a season.

The Yankees outbid the rest of the league for Tartabull because he was what the club wanted, a power source in the middle of the lineup, the important ingredient in any attack. His presence means better pitches for a Mattingly in front of him and, often, a table-setting situation for the No. 5 man in the lineup. Cleanup hitters are not exactly a drug on the baseball market. Franchises let banjo hitters go into free agency with a shrug, but tend to negotiate with guys who hit 25 homers a year.

Tartabull knows he’s filling some pretty big shoes with the statues of Gehrig and teammates in center field. But, he’s also filling some small ones with Yankee No. 4 hitters of recent memory.

Does the reputation of left field as a kind of elephants’ graveyard for home runs bother him? Tartabull smiles and shakes his head, recalling he hit 124 home runs in five seasons for Kansas City.

“That’s the hardest park in the big leagues to hit a home run in, worse than St. Louis,” he says. “When you get ahold of the ball, it doesn’t matter where the fences are.”

Of course, what you find in the career resumes of former cleanup hitters on the Yankees, Gehrig, Mantle and Co., are pennants, world championships. Those guys came with the pennant attached.

The Yankees hope Tartabull does, too. The Yankees, like most of the league, are benefiting at the moment from a leveling of talent that finds the worst team in the league only 10 1/2 games behind the first and the Yankees only one game out of the lead. It is either a mess of mediocrity or a paragon of parity. Either way, it makes a pennant tantalizingly attainable.

That way, he can have something else in common with the Gehrigs, Mantles--World Series home runs. No Yankee cleanup hitter should be without them. Mantle has more than anybody. Gehrig is 10th. Tartabull would just like to get on the board.