Guzman’s No-Look Class Is the Stuff of Pennants

It matters very little whether it’s Shoeless Joe or Clueless Bo who comes stepping into the batter’s box. What makes all the difference is whether your pitcher still has anything on the ball, as Juan Guzman of the Toronto Blue Jays surely must have been thinking from the edge of his dugout seat Sunday when a menacing Bo Jackson dug in against a relief pitcher intent on saving Guzman’s game, Duane Ward.

“Well, let me tell you that I wasn’t watching the game,” Guzman confessed. “I was in the weight room, doing my exercises.”

Curious approach. I suppose that a professional baseball club has to have supreme confidence in whoever’s out there pitching. The Dodgers must have had this kind of faith in their holdovers back in 1987 when they parted with Guzman, the gifted discovery of Dodger scout Ralph Avila, in order to shore up their infield with a fellow who stuck with them until just a few days ago, Mike Sharperson. They obviously sized up Guzman as expendable.

How good is he now? So good that the Blue Jays are as close as can be to returning to another World Series, even though absent from the pitching staff that carried them to last season’s championship are such luminaries as Jack Morris, David Cone, Jimmy Key and Tom Henke. Somehow this ballclub remained so deep, so strong, it could even kiss Dave Winfield goodby without missing a beat.

Guzman was the winning pitcher in Sunday’s Game 5 of the American League playoffs, giving him a 5-0 record in postseason play and proving again to the baseball world that he is one tough Dominican. He toyed with perfection for 13 batters before Ellis Burks cranked one into SkyDome’s left field seats, then Guzman acknowledged to his manager after seven innings that he was out of gas and had only enough energy left to go do those exercises.

“You mean you weren’t watching Ward against Jackson with the game-tying run at the plate?” Guzman was asked.

“No, I didn’t know what was happening until the game was over,” Guzman said.

Talk about trust. I guess he felt the game was in good hands, that Ward would do exactly the same thing Guzman himself had done to handcuff Bo--fastball, fastball, then make him lunge for a slider, low and away. With some hitters it is wise to be careful, Guzman said, but his personal book on Jackson was “not try to be fancy,” to bring it right to him. On half of Bo’s swings, the ball already was in the catcher’s web.

This was hardly the Juan Guzman everyone saw on opening night of the playoffs. That Guzman couldn’t find his catcher, much less hit his mitt. I can’t say that I have ever seen any winning pitcher any wilder than old Juan was in Game 1, when he unleashed four pitches to the screen, walked eight in six innings and personally turned both Steve Blass and Ryne Duren by comparison into control freaks.

What a familiar sight this must have been to certain parties in the Dodgers’ organization, who if asked could tell you many stories about a young scatter gun from Santo Domingo who put dents in backstops from Vero Beach to Bakersfield, once catapulting 50 wild pitches in 69 games, endangering any number of batboys and vendors.

So, they let him go.

Much to the delight of the pitching-rich Blue Jays, who might have come armed with more famous names to the previous playoffs but who, according to Robbie Alomar, an infielder not given to exaggeration, have been counting on Guzman from the start.

“Juan has been our ace since he came to the big leagues,” Alomar insists.

Very little argument will be given by the White Sox. Rarely did they even give Guzman any trouble, and once when they did, in the seventh inning, he immediately took care of it by showing Frank Thomas and Jackson strike three. Of course, nobody is making much contact for the Sox, from their tag-team of designated non-hitters to a catcher, Ron Karkovice, whose embarrassing whiffing is instigating a movement back home in Chicago: “Bring back Pudge!”

All the Blue Jays have to do now is take care of a little Comiskey business and another shot at the championship of the North American Pastime will be theirs. They aren’t worrying much about who would start the World Series for them. He’s in the weight room, doing his exercises.