BASEBALL DAILY REPORT

Toronto first baseman John Olerud on Tuesday became the third batting champion not to start a World Series game in the year he won his title.

Willie McGee of the 1990 Oakland Athletics, whose .335 average stood up in the National League after he was traded by the St. Louis Cardinals in August, did not start Games 2 and 3 of that year’s Series.

Chick Hafey of the 1931 Cardinals, who batted .349 during the regular season but went four for 24 through the first six games of the Series and dropped a pop fly in Game 6, was benched for Game 7.

“It’s a little bizarre,” Olerud acknowledged before Game 3. “But it’s also a little bizarre that the league’s No. 2 hitter (Molitor) will have to sit out the next two games. No matter how Cito did it, he was going to have to leave someone out of the lineup that deserved to be in it.”