He Can’t Mask Pain of Bench

His twins, age 4, have not seen Robby Thompson’s face since it was disfigured. Neither have his older kids. They all stay in far-away Florida with their mom. The naked eye no longer can see any white in the San Francisco Giant second baseman’s bloodshot left eye, and he dabs at the purple-black blotch of flesh beneath it with his index fingertip.

“Might scare the little ones,” he says.

This is not all that pains him. Thompson longs to be out there where he belongs, playing baseball. The Giants need him. Even though Barry Bonds took a sledgehammer to the Dodgers in Friday night’s game, the Giants remain poised on the very brink of success or failure. Thompson, though, hasn’t played in a week, since a hardball slung by Trevor Hoffman of San Diego traveling 95 m.p.h. caught him flush on the left cheek, fracturing it.

The sound was so loud, such a crack, an assumption was made that the ball had struck Thompson’s helmet. It had not. It hit all face. That sound is something Thompson heard with his own ears, something he can describe in terribly vivid detail.

“Take a hard-boiled egg and drop it on a hard surface,” he says. “That was me.”

On the ground, he was unsure what the damage was. There was a sound and then he was down. He remembers thinking: “Am I bleeding? Is my nose broken or what?” All he knew for certain is that it hurt like hell and he was crying.

Not me, Thompson would think much later, atop a hospital bed, once his head had cleared. Not now. Not with one week left of a 27-week season. Here were the Giants, needing every bat, needing every glove, and here he was, with that fat .314 average and those 19 home runs, and all he could do was watch what remained of the pennant race with his one good eye.

A transparent plastic mask was created for him, shielding his entire face, fastened in back with a padded strap. “One of those (Bill) Laimbeer things,” Thompson called it, modeling the mask around the batting cage before Friday’s game, recollecting the faceguard worn by the Detroit Piston center.

Thompson took infield practice.

“I found the softest part of the infield, so no bad hops,” he said.

He took batting practice.

“I told the guy, ‘Hey, take it easy,’ ” he said.

The whole left side of Thompson’s nose is numb. The nasal passage is closed. He gets dizzy when he looks down to field grounders. His head swoons.

But he aches to play. He shouldn’t play. He probably couldn’t play. This is something, though, that Thompson does not particularly care to hear. It’s his life. His team needs him. Maybe he could play this weekend. Or maybe he could play next Monday if there’s a one-game National League playoff with Atlanta. Or maybe. . . .

“Oh, I’ll definitely play next week,” Thompson says, vowing not to miss a championship series game.

Because this is crunch time. Ooh. The word itself hurts at this point. Crunch. That terrible sound again. That reminder.

Thompson ignores it. He says: “It’s going to hurt whether I play or not, so why not play?” He says once a game gets under way, he will be too busy to be preoccupied by pain. And these are the Giant games not to be missed. These are the games where a Robby Thompson can become as heroic as a Bobby Thomson.

Dusty Baker, manager of the Giants, would love to see something equally dramatic. Baker looks around and says: “I’d like to introduce the new shot heard ‘round the world to the old shot.”

Strolling nearby is Bobby Thomson, on hand as a spectator. He passes a few feet away, just as Robby Thompson is adjusting his phantom-of-the-infield mask. Bobby will turn 70 in a few weeks and looks great. Robby is a young 31 and looks horrible. Life’s quirks.

It’s the Giants and Dodgers again, like old times. Bobby Thomson revels in the excitement and says things will never change between these teams. Somebody asks if a move to Florida by the Giants would have changed anything. Thomson thinks this over carefully, then says: “No, I don’t think you can ever separate the two.”

They sit back and watch, Robby and Bobby both. The Dodgers score four. The Giants score four back. Then Bonds cuts the tie that binds them. The Giants sit back and enjoy.

Two games to go. Robby Thompson wishes he could look into the future through a clear plastic mask.