Other Gwynn May Have Done More Than Win a Game

Sometimes a single swing--one poke, one pow! --can turn around an entire team, an entire season. In the moonlight at Dodger Stadium, on a Saturday night with 52,082 people in the house, waiting for an omen, Chris Gwynn swung such a swing.

All night long, Dodger bats had been dead. All week long, in fact. But just when the team and the town needed someone to step forward and be a hero, Chris Gwynn picked up a bat, stepped up to the plate and busted one high in the sky, leaving his superstar of a brother standing in right field, looking up as though at a passing jet.

Pow.

And suddenly a bunch of players who desperately yearned for some excitement to get their juices flowing were pounding the popular Chris Gwynn from limb to limb, Chad Fonville practically body-slamming him in the dugout.

Suddenly Chris is being shoved back out, to take a curtain call, to raise both arms in triumph.

Suddenly Chris is being asked about himself, not about his brother, Tony, for what . . . the first time in weeks?

“Maybe months,” Chris says, happily.

Greatest moment ever?

“Maybe when my kids were born,” he said at his locker, wearing a smile that he has been waiting to use for months, maybe years, his son by his knee.

The Dodgers had just played a snappy game of Win With Gwynn, 4-2, putting one over on Tony and the Padres, preserving a victory for Izzy Valdes after the young pitcher gave them everything he had, with arm and glove.

One swing was all it took. One loud noise. One wake-up call.

As third baseman Tim Wallach put it, “I can’t think of a better way to win a baseball game.”

Or a better person.

“It couldn’t happen to a better guy,” Manager Tom Lasorda said.

And it couldn’t be a better way to launch this team into the season’s final week.

There are only days to go before the Dodgers will know if they really do have a chance to be in another World Series, or if this entire season was an illusion of smoke and mirrors.

Just think what the World Series could be.

Dodgers vs. New York Yankees. Now that the Angels have gone halo-first into their screaming spiral of death, the Yankees are coming on like gangsters--I mean gangbusters, sweeping a doubleheader Saturday. The Bronx is up and Disneyland’s down.

Therefore, we could have our 12th Dodger-Yankee World Series . . . with an added bonus, like a great big prize inside everybody’s box of CrackerJack, being the triumphant return of Darryl Strawberry to his home away from home, Tax Dodger Stadium.

Dodgers vs. Boston Red Sox. Oh, how they’ll clash. Dodger blue and Red Sox red against a Green Monster. Bring your long underwear. Frostbite at Fenway. Mortal combat between two swell towns, Beans and Tinsel.

They’ve already met. The World Series of 1916--first ever for the Dodgers--was won by the Red Sox in five games. Game 2 took 14 innings, and the winning pitcher was Babe Ruth. So, if we’re lucky, maybe veteran right-hander Jose Canseco will pitch an inning against the Dodgers, without endangering upper-deck fans or Vin Scully.

Dodgers vs. Cleveland Indians. These two teams met in 1920, with the Indians taking the World Series in seven games, Burleigh Grimes losing the last one. This was, I believe, the last time “Cleveland” and “the Dodgers” were mentioned in the same sentence.

But if things work out the way they could, guess who’s coming to dinner? Orel Hershiser. Eddie Murray. Albert Belle, who could have been Roger Maris had it not been for this strike. Dave Winfield, who played against the Dodgers in the 1981 World Series and went 0 for about 1,000 before getting a hit.

It could happen now.

The Dodgers needed a reason to believe in themselves.

A sign. An omen.

They needed to win one big game, suddenly, dramatically.

Chris Gwynn, take another bow. Maybe you saved the season.