He Keeps Boredom Off Base

Philadelphia’s Phillies lost Game 3 of the World Series Tuesday night due to a lousy break. No, it was not the break that prompted Toronto Manager Cito Gaston to bench the league’s leading hitter in favor of Paul Molitor, who got three hits for eight bases, drove in three runs and scored three.

It was the break in the weather that did in the Phillies. It stopped raining in Philly at 9:25. And they got soaked, 10-3. “Dry gulched” you might say.

This World Series is like a fight between two drunks, a semi-main between two palookas at St. Nick’s. Babe Ruth must be crying in his beer some place today. John McGraw must be cursing. Casey Stengel must be delivering a harangue on the “butcher boy” World Series. Nolan Ryan must be weighing a comeback.

The catchers in this Series must be wishing they could get to hit against the stuff they are catching.

World Series ordinarily belong to pitchers. They are the property of the Warren Spahns, Allie Reynoldses, Sandy Koufaxes, Lefty Groves, Bob Gibsons, Tom Seavers. This one belongs to the bullpen. And the hitters. When the Series moved to Philadelphia, no starting pitcher had gone more than six innings. In three games, 20 pitchers have taken the mound. One guy (John Kruk) is batting over .600, eight players are batting over .300, there have been seven home runs, 63 hits and 25 walks.

That’s not a World Series, that’s a fat man’s picnic.

The first two games of the Series totaled 7 hours 2 minutes. Three games took 10 hours 14 minutes. That’s not baseball, that’s chess. Checkers in the park. Cribbage in the firehouse.

If it’s hard to recognize the game as baseball, it’s hard to recognize one of the teams as baseball players. The Philadelphia Phillies look in poor light like four Irish bartenders and five off a beer truck. They all need a shave and a haircut. The Broad Street Bellies, one wag called them. They shouldn’t have a bat in their hands, they should have a broom. Or a bar rag. They have got one guy listed on the roster as “relief pitcher”--but that’s a laugh. Whatever Mitch Williams does, it is not bring relief. They should list him as an “anxiety pitcher” or an “acid stomach” pitcher.

I don’t know what Mitch Williams is, anyway. Neither does he.

I think he was raised by wolves. Maybe he’s an alien.

In another incarnation, he would have been robbing stagecoaches. You figure Billy the Kid looked like this. Wild. A human bucking horse.

If your daughter brought him home, you would probably pack her off to a convent school the next day. Or before it could get serious.

But whatever he is, Mitchell Steven Williams is not dull. Nobody goes out for a beer when he is on the mound. Maalox, maybe. Excedrin.

He is a magnificent physical specimen. Between 6 and 7 feet tall, somewhere between 200 and 210 pounds, he is one of the few flat-bellies on the Phillies team. He doesn’t look as if he ruins his eyes reading. His legs and arms are long and so is his hair, which he keeps in place with a headache band.

He can throw a ball about 100 m.p.h. Trouble is, he has no idea where it’s going. The second deck is not an outside possibility.

You can’t hit it. Actually, you can’t find it. The good news is, you don’t have to. He is the only guy in the league you could bat against blindfolded. In fact, against Williams, it’s a good idea.

Actually, the batter is the safest guy in the ball park when Williams winds up. It’s the hot dog vendors who should stay alert. The catcher doesn’t need the mask, simply track shoes.

Williams has never started a big league game in his life. And he never will. The way he throws, his arm would be a ragdoll by the fourth inning.

You all know how a relief pitcher is supposed to be. A calm, contemplative, preferably pipe-smoking type, a guy who could stand on the deck of a sinking ship and sing hymns or sleep through an earthquake. He has to have the discipline and self control of a preacher and the pitches to match. He comes in a game like a guy trying to rescue a baby off of an ice floe with a clothesline and and a hairpin. He has to have the iron nerve of a guy asked to put out oil well fires. He might come in with the bases loaded, the count 3 and 1 on the batter and the World Series on the line--and he is supposed to have a pulse rate in the low fifties and blood pressure normal.

Williams comes in like a guy jumping through a skylight or having a frothing fit. He looks--and is--excited. His teammates cannot bear to look. You can always tell when Williams is coming into the game. The starting pitcher covers his head with a towel and starts to sob. The manager wanders into the clubhouse and kneels to pray. The umps cross themselves. Rosary beads rustle all over Philadelphia.

Williams winds up and fires the ball in the general direction of the horizon. He is interested in velocity, not accuracy. He doesn’t throw curves, he throws UFOs. Some of his pitches get up in the traffic pattern of the Philadelphia airport.

You could steal on him in a wheelchair. That’s because he delivers his fastball with a high kick that would do justice to a chorus line. He is as off-balance when he lets go of the ball as a guy on a banana peel.

He once walked 165 men in 132 innings. But he struck out 175 that same year.

He stood around a batting cage before Game 3 on Tuesday night, surrounded as usual by reporters. Was he, someone wanted to know, nervous before a relief appearance in the Series? Williams hooted. “I figure the whole stadium is nervous, a whole benchful of people in the dugout is nervous--why should I add to it?”

Did he mind running up the count, walking so many? “It’s not how many guys come to the plate. It’s how many cross it,” he corrected.

What does he do in the early innings? “I wear a skirt down there for six or seven innings. I’m just a fan for six or seven innings, I watch video.”

Did he ever tend to aim the ball when he fell behind the count with ball three? Williams shook his head. “I know only one way to do it--throw as hard as I can. When I can’t do that, I will hang them up.”

Did he ever feel like apologizing to his team for keeping their hearts in their throats when he took the mound? “I apologized to (teammate) Curt Schilling for scaring him. Then, he won the playoff MVP and I took it back.”

“I’ll tell you something. Nobody in baseball stays ready to pitch any more than I do. I take the ball every time they give it to me. I’ve proven myself in the course of my career. I’ve saved 187 games.”

He does it like the tightrope walker who pretends to slip or the magician who makes the trick look harder. “I wake everybody up when I go out there,” he says.

He did not get into Tuesday’s game. Williams does not go into blowouts. But before the Series is over, he can add one more group of people he scares when he takes the mound--the Toronto Blue Jays. He hopes to make them wish it had kept raining, too.