Blue Jays’ Molly Is Some Kind of Player, by Golly

First time I ever saw Paul Molitor play baseball, he rapped out five hits. It was a 1982 postseason game and afterward, when I heard this articulate, soap-opera handsome athlete discussing his day’s work, I said to myself: “Here’s someone we’ll be reading about for a long time.”

Well, we did and we didn’t. Molitor did proceed to have a wonderful career in Milwaukee, where he is somewhat less famous than Hank Aaron, Robin Yount and Miller High Life but no worse than a close fourth. And yet, as things would have it, the man they call Molly was never heard from in postseason play again.

It wasn’t until now, as he strokes his way through the American League playoffs with an average of .400 while admirers in Toronto serenade him with “MVP! MVP!” that another opportunity has arisen to assess the career of Paul Molitor, perhaps the most nondescript superstar in the game today.

He has come to take nothing for granted, not fame, not fortune and not a 3-2 advantage with a World Series in sight, remembering his only previous appearance of 11 years ago and saying, “I remember going into St. Louis and winning the first game, 10-0. But I didn’t take home a ring that year.”

Or any other year.

As time went by, Milwaukee went into a slide much like the Brewer mascot who does a header into a vat of suds at County Stadium after every Brewer home run. There were certain nights when it was enough to have Molitor and Yount on their side, but the breaks were mostly bad, like the chronic pain that kept pitcher Teddy Higuera from fulfilling his destiny, or catcher B.J. Surhoff turning out to be more good than great.

The team also had character--baseball has few upstanding citizens to compare with Molitor or Yount--but began to lack characters. Every successful team seems to require at least a little comic relief from someone who makes a 162-game daily grind a little less dull.

“I keep reading about the Philadelphia Phillies and all their crazy characters,” Molitor says, laughing. “Our team had Gorman Thomas, Mike Caldwell and Pete Vuckovich, so don’t tell me about Philadelphia’s characters. We had characters.”

Alas, what the mini-market of Milwaukee didn’t have in the end was the wherewithal to keep Molitor from earning what he’s worth. Every moan and groan out of Toronto that accompanied the departure of designated hitter Dave Winfield was quickly silenced by the signing of Molitor, who could not only DH but grab a glove and occupy any position on the field, with the possible exception of the ones nearest home plate.

The first thing Molitor found when he got to Canada was that shortstop Alfredo Griffin was wearing his uniform number, 4. Never one to make waves, Molitor foraged through the equipment manager’s closet until he found a uniform that suited him. The number on it was 19.

“For Robin,” he said. “If I can’t play with Robin Yount anymore, the least I can do is wear his clothes.”

Molitor practices the sort of self-effacement that leads him to say that he hopes some of Yount’s greatness will rub off on him. What we have here is a genial, country squire of a ballplayer not given to scandal or overstatement. It is a running gag at the playoffs that the daily question-and-answer column Molly is doing for the Toronto Sun tabloid is still awaiting, as of Game 6, its first colorful answer.

Molitor doesn’t play that way. As others strain to remain tranquil--even Nolan Ryan punched somebody in the noggin--the steadfast Molitor keeps from rocking anybody’s boat, saying: “I’m the kind of guy who likes stability. It took a while before I called the Milwaukee Brewers ‘them’ and not ‘we.’ It took a while before I could call myself a Blue Jay.”

Just think of how long it has taken us even to know what to call Molitor, whose surname is pronounced like “monitor” by most but not by some, such as one broadcaster who maintains to this day that the gentleman’s name is “Mo-la-tor,” first syllable as in the guy from the Three Stooges. The player will simply tell you that he is happy to be called anything at all, but if I can toss in an footnote at this point, the man’s nickname is Molly, after all, not Moley.

Any player this good, you think we’d be saying his name more often.