He Gave Dodgers a Shot in the Arm

Vero Beach was stretching and yawning from its winter nap when Orel Hershiser and the rest of the Los Angeles Dodgers straggled into training camp in 1988, reporting for duty. The team had done so terribly the previous season that everywhere Hershiser looked, he saw someone new--Kirk Gibson at one locker, Mike Davis at another, Jay Howell over here and Jesse Orosco over there.

So many strange faces, Hershiser figured he must have wandered into the wrong address.

“I thought I had been traded,” he said.

There was no way of anticipating what surprises lay ahead. Pete Rose bumped an umpire, Billy Martin blew his top at a topless bar and Wrigley Field discovered electricity. Baseball appointed a new commissioner, Bart Giammatti, and disappointed a woman umpire, Pam Postema. Each passing week of that summer of ’88 delivered new screwball comedy or drama.

When the first batter--Steve Sax--of the first game socked the first pitch out of the park, the Dodgers must have sensed that something was blowing in the wind. Something was. No matter what went awry, whether it was Pedro Guerrero trying to bean a pitcher with a baseball bat or Fernando Valenzuela’s left wing going flat after 255 consecutive starts, nothing fazed the Dodgers that crazy season. They were blessed.

Thus it didn’t discourage them when shortstop Alfredo Griffin lost two months to a busted hand or third baseman Jeff Hamilton six weeks to a separated rib cage. Didn’t disturb a thing when Guerrero got traded, Davis got benched and John Shelby’s batting average got sent to the lost and found. Didn’t cause dissent when Franklin Stubbs, Danny Heep, Tracy Woodson and Mickey Hatcher had to play eeny-meeny-miney-moe at first base.

For this was the finest hour of Orel Hershiser IV, the season when one pale, skinny pitcher flexed the muscle of his right arm and carried an entire team.

If it seems unjust to single out only one of Hershiser’s many contributions to Dodger baseball, we beg patience until we can take inventory of them all. Because few seasons come along like 1988, the one in the prime of this thrower’s career and the one that lingers in the hearts and minds of those who still adore baseball as before. Los Angeles was champion and Orel was jewel in the crown.

Upon accepting late last week that his Dodger days had theoretically been terminated, Hershiser’s response was a cordial “no hard feelings” and an acknowledgment that business is business. As a union man, he understands.

His familiar voice coming through the phone line, a day after the Dodgers resolved not to offer him a contract, Hershiser says, “When I became the highest-paid player or whatever a few years ago and I said of my contract that it would be a dinosaur in a year, people laughed. And sure enough, I was wrong.

“It was a dinosaur in three months.”

The shoe had squeezed the other foot a few seasons ago, when for weeks there weren’t enough Dodger dollars in the mint to get Hershiser’s name on a dotted line. His price had skyrocketed up, up and away after the twin-MVP prizes of the ’88 league championship playoff and the Series. Defending his determination to be like other contemporaries and make as much money as possible, Hershiser said at the time, memorably, “That’s the way we keep score.”

That was Hershiser in a nutshell, hard when he had to be.

He was the David Caruso of ballplayers, like that cop on “NYPD Blue,” meaner and stronger than he sounded or looked. The softness of his torso and fairness of his complexion had once inspired Hershiser to joke that he appeared to be made of flour. But people conveniently forgot the Hershiser who had been a defenseman and left winger in the Philadelphia Flyer hockey organization, which is why he occasionally had to remind them, whether addressing the gentility of an affluent upbringing or the devoutness of his faith, not to underestimate one’s ability to adapt.

In a line destined to earn him ink in Bartlett’s book of quotations, Hershiser declared, “You don’t have to be a wimp to be a Christian.”

At the time it was no more than a bon mot from someone known for a quick wit. But the proof of the pudding was not only the Herculean effort made by Hershiser from the mound as he faced down the New York Mets or the Oakland Athletics, but the reserve of will power and strength he called upon through two years of excruciating pain when that golden arm of his gave way.

As a sinkerballer who made hitters pound down on the ball, Hershiser had gotten by on ferocity more than velocity. You would have mistaken him, though, for Bob Feller or Bob Gibson by the way he buzzed through batting orders at the peak of his game. He went 19-3 his second full season in the show, including an 11-0 record at home. Later he worked 67 consecutive scoreless innings, including the opening game of the ’88 playoffs against the Mets.

His finest hour was at hand. One day after his eight-inning labors, Hershiser came out of the bullpen and got a save, then shut out the Mets in Game 7, then shut out the A’s in Game 2 of the Series, then gave them two runs in Game 7. He was in some kind of zone, some other-worldly state of grace. Maybe that was why he carried a hymnal in his hip pocket, and sang to himself in the dugout.

Even when he went to bat , Hershiser in the World Series went three for three, with two doubles.

Seven springtimes later, provided there is such a thing as a baseball season, the face missing from the little Florida clubhouse will evidently be Hershiser’s. He has come to terms with this inevitability, saying, “I was born and raised a Dodger, and I’ve grown up that way. I think that if the day comes that I don’t look down at my chest and see that Dodger emblem, it will be a strange experience, yes.

“But I cannot look back and treat this day as a day of remorse. I have had a fantastic relationship with the Dodgers and always will.”

He clears his throat.

“I’m not even sure this is big news. People might be so disgusted with baseball, they might not even care that this happened.”

They care.

For what he did before, for what he will do beyond, people will care about Orel Hershiser, the man who owned 1988.