COMMENTARY : Talking Baseball During World Series

We’re talking baseball. We’re standing by the cage, talking country hard ball with the old banger from Binger, Johnny Bench, who once said his Oklahoma hometown is so small they saved money by putting City Limits on both sides of the same sign. We’re standing by the cage at the World Series talking catching with the best there ever was, Johnny Bench saying there are two ways to catch: “Either you do it by the Spalding Guide ABCs,” he said, “or you do it the way my father told me: ‘Just go back there and catch every ball,’ ” which for 20 years the obedient son did with such efficiency and flair that the silver-haired orator, Mr. Sparky Anderson, once admonished a reporter, “Don’t compare nobody to Johnny Bench. You just embarrass that guy.”

We’re talking baseball at the World Series. We’re talking Robby Alomar. A scout saw him at age 13 and said, “He played with the ball; the ball didn’t play with him.” Tony Gwynn saw Alomar at 20 and said, “A real natural swing, real fluid, real to the point.” Now 24, Alomar has done so many wonders at second base and at bat that Toronto’s manager, Cito Gaston, said the Hall of Fame words and this: “He knows the play he wants to make before it happens.” We’re talking Robby Alomar, who caught a line drive that passed over his first baseman’s head and said, “I don’t know how I did it, but I did it and when I did it I began laughing. How’d I do that?”

We’re talking the future. The future is now. The SkyDome. What a place. Play all the World Series here. Be fine with me. Restaurants in the outfield. Hotels in the upper deck. TV screen big as Utah in center field and there was Joe Carter, 55 feet tall, talking to us as Joe Carter, 6-foot-3, stood at home plate waiting for the larger Joe Carter to please shaddup. OK. The future is here: Give us interleague play. Give the N.L. the D.H. Let’s get on with it.

We’re talking how ugly are these Phillies? The Toronto Sun asked its readers. A Mike Batty replied, “So ugly their mothers wrap their sandwiches in road maps.”

Talking baseball. Talking Robby Alomar, Hall of Famer who did a bonehead thing in Game 2. Got picked off second, carrying a big run in the eighth inning. Picked off by Mitch Williams’ predictable spin move. Talking to Robby Alomar, who made no excuses: “I should have stayed at second. Shouldn’t have done it. After, I knew. It’s behind my back now. Can’t do nothing about it. Big mistake on my part.”

We’re talking hard ball with Lenny Dykstra, who said it was about time he made two good catches in Game 2. “I proved I could play center field with them two plays,” he said. While at it, Dykstra also told us he certainly could hit, hit with power, run, run with speed and do just about anything that Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson ever thought of doing. Amazingly, Dykstra said all that without once sprayin’ foul liquids on innocent passers-by.

We’re asking Johnny Bench the toughest pitcher he ever caught. Not a knuckleballer. “Sparky one time told me they were thinking about trading for Phil Niekro. I told him, ‘Trade for his catcher, too, because I’m not going back there.’ Toughest one for me was Wayne Simpson. Threw 95 miles per hour and he never knew which way the ball would move. It might move four ways at once. I’d be about to catch it and it’d dart down. After Wayne’s games, my palm was swollen twice its normal size.”

So a Toronto newspaper columnist, a friendly, goes to John Olerud, the squeaky-clean, low-key, batting champion/first baseman of the Blue Jays. She says to the choir boy, “The Phillies come in with the reputation of bad guys. What’s the baddest thing you’ve ever done, John?”

Olerud is mystified. He wants to help the friendly reporter. You can see him trying. His delicate brow becomes furrowed. He is riffling through the file of crimes he has committed. He begins to speak.

He says, “Gee, what a question.”

“Really, the baddest thing, the reporter says before giving up and moving to an alternate line of questioning: “How about superstitions? You do any really odd things?”

Olerud raises an eyebrow. It’s in his upbringing to help those who ask for help. He really wants to help. You wonder what he’ll come up with. Will he confess to pulling Peggy Sue’s pigtails that day in second grade? Will he say he sometimes wears socks of different thicknesses? Does he leave his bubble gum on the bedpost overnight before big games?

He finally smiles. Here it comes. And he says, “I’ve just got no good answer.”

So the phone rings. This is when Philadelphia eliminates Atlanta in the N.L. playoffs. You remember Atlanta. I remember Atlanta. I called Atlanta the best team since the Yankees of Mantle, Berra & Ford. Then Philadelphia beats this team for the ages in six games. And no sooner is the foul deed completed than the phone rings.

A voice on the phone says, “This is Ernestine, the telephone operator. I have a collect call from Mr. Sparky Anderson. Mr. Anderson says he is calling on behalf of the Big Red Machine. Mr. Anderson says, no, he is not a tractor salesman. He says we’re talking baseball. Says the Big Red Machine would have Atlanta for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He wants to speak to Mr. Kindred. Are you the gentleman to whom I am speaking? Are you Mr. Kindred?”

I say, “Never heard of him.”