BASEBALL / ROSS NEWHAN : Pitchers Hit the Showers in April

How to explain the longest, looniest, hit-happiest April ever?

This is how Tim Belcher of the Kansas City Royals explains it:

“Everybody’s blaming the pitchers, but it’s smaller strike zones, smaller parks and steroids. That’s not a good combination.”

Steroids? It was Belcher’s tongue-and-cheek reference to bigger and stronger hitters. All of it--from more muscle to expansion--weakened pitching to livelier baseballs to tighter strike zones to smaller ballparks--has been cited in reference to the record onslaught of an arctic April.

Consider the damage:

--The Minnesota Twins, without Kirby Puckett, set a major league record for runs with 175, in 25 games (that’s seven a game).

--The Seattle Mariners, without Tino Martinez and Mike Blowers (who combined for 54 home runs and 207 runs batted in last year), set a major league record with 45 home runs in 26 games, hitting four or more six times and at least one in 14 consecutive games.

--The 3,804 runs were the third highest in a month since the initial expansion in 1961.

--The per-game average was 10.58 runs, and three teams scored more than 20 runs in a game, the most since June 1950, when it happened five times.

--The Texas Rangers scored 16 runs in the eighth inning of a 26-7 victory over the Baltimore Orioles.

--The 828 home runs in 360 games projects to 5,216, which would eclipse the major league record of 4,458, set in 1987.

--Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield and Brady Anderson tied the major league record for homers in April with 11, and Anderson, the Baltimore Orioles’ leadoff hitter who has never hit more than 21 in a season, homered to open four consecutive games.

--The American League earned-run average was 5.30, compared to the record for a season of 5.04 in 1936, while the National League ERA was 4.25, compared to the season record of 4.97 in 1930. Only the Chicago White Sox (3.98) had an ERA of less than 4.00 in the AL, and the Detroit Tigers rivaled the Dow Jones at 7.71.

If all of that wasn’t enough, the Orioles and New York Yankees required 400 pitches and a nine-inning record of 4 hours 21 minutes to close out April in the Yankees’ 13-10 victory Tuesday, then welcomed May by playing 15 innings over 5:34 Wednesday, with the Yankees winning again, 11-6, as Cal Ripken Jr., silently steamed on the Baltimore bench after being lifted for a pinch-runner with the score tied in the eighth inning, the first time he has been removed from a game that was still to be decided since his streak of consecutive games played began in 1982. Pinch-runner Manny Alexander was promptly picked off first.

Said acting Commissioner Bud Selig of the offensive binge: “I like it within reasoned parameters, but I don’t think anyone expected this. The amount of scoring is startling, but it’s still early. We have to see how it plays out before suggesting that something needs to be done.”

Of course, everything that has been done over the last 25 years has been aimed at generating offense. This is what management wanted, and there is no reason to think the next five months will be any different.

But there are other meaningful numbers.

April attendance was up 7% despite horrendous weather in the East and Midwest. ESPN ratings were up 19%. Retail sales of baseball licensed merchandise in general were up 40%, and apparel and headwear sales were up 86%. Retail sales, officials say, could eclipse the 1993 record of $28 billion-$30 billion.

“I’ve said before, we’re in the early stages of a powerful recovery,” Selig said. “We still have a lot of work to do, and we still need a labor agreement as the centerpiece, but when you think back to where we were a year ago, I think we have to feel pretty good about the barometers.”

Amid ongoing talks, there is still no indication of an imminent labor agreement, but the game begins a rap of another kind today, unleashing a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign that features LL Cool J serving as baseball’s ambassador to the hip-hop generation, with Aretha Franklin and Mary Chapin Carpenter among those trying to target other audiences as the blitz unfolds.

The campaign is called “What a Game”--a label that could be applied to many of those played in April.

BONDS MARKET

In his 10 previous Aprils, Bonds had averaged only 3.6 home runs, but he emerged from this one with his record-tying 11, a major league-leading 32 runs batted in and new recognition as a diplomat. Barry Bonds? Really.

Last week, in the game in which he joined his father, Bobby Bonds, his godfather, Willie Mays, and Andre Dawson as the only players to hit 300 home runs and steal 300 bases, he was also ejected by Mark Hirschbeck for arguing a strike call. Bonds watched replays after the game and then went to the umpires’ dressing room to apologize, saying Hirschbeck had made the right call and he deserved to be ejected.

“We certainly accepted [his apology] because it doesn’t happen a lot,” umpire Bruce Froemming said of their stunned reaction.

Bonds, meanwhile, reflected on his fast start in San Diego recently. “I’m excited about it, but I’m an October man. If we’re winning, that’s when I’m happy. This is just May. There are a lot of games left. If the season ended today we’d finish second, so there’s not much to be happy about yet.”

Postscript: Bonds has a .191 average and one home run in 20 playoff games.

PEAKING PEEKER

The stunning start of former Dodger Henry Rodriguez was chronicled here last week, but here’s another aspect of it: Turns out that Rodriguez, now the Montreal Expos’ left fielder, likes to peek back to see where the catcher is setting up. He did it in the first game of a doubleheader split with the New York Mets on Wednesday night and homered against Mark Clark, who said:

“I didn’t notice it until I saw the replay. He was definitely looking back, and I made a good pitch, a fastball low and away. For him to hit it like that . . . well, you can throw the best pitch in the world, but if the guy knows where it’s going, he’ll hit it. Sometimes you learn the hard way.”

Added Met Manager Dallas Green: “We knew he was a little bit of a peeker, and there’s always that danger. Good catchers have to pick that up.”

SAVING GRACE

Met reliever John Franco, a former Dodger who might have saved that club from its long and expensive pursuit of a replacement left-hander for Steve Howe had he not been traded to the Reds for infielder Rafael Landestoy in ‘83, became the first southpaw to reach 300 saves Monday and said:

“I don’t know if it means the Hall of Fame or not since that’s out of my hands. I do know I’d like to pitch another four or five years. Who knows? If I stay healthy, 400 might be reachable.”

PUCKETT FALLOUT

The Twins begin collecting insurance on Puckett’s five-year, $30-million contract after he misses 60 games. He’s more than halfway there, but the loss of the Hall of Fame-caliber outfielder from career-threatening glaucoma goes beyond financial concerns. It could also affect Chuck Knoblauch’s decision to sign a multiyear contract after this season or go free agent after ‘97, and it could affect Paul Molitor’s decision whether to play a second season with his hometown team.

Molitor said Puckett’s situation wouldn’t be the overriding factor in his decision, but, “I will say that Kirby was one of the reasons I came here.”

Knoblauch said his priority is to re-sign with the Twins, but “I want to win too,” and obviously that’s tougher without Puckett. “I know they’re trying to build from within and develop people, and I know there is some legitimacy to the small-market excuse, but as a player you don’t like to hear excuses for not winning,” he said. “It’s been tough.”

Undoubtedly, but it hasn’t affected Knoblauch’s performance. He again ranks among the league’s top-10 hitters, as do Molitor and teammate Marty Cordova, the 1995 AL rookie of the year.

Of the run production without Puckett, Cordova said, “It’s kind of scary to think what would happen if we had Puck. Actually, we’d probably be scoring the same number of runs, but Puck would have all the RBIs, and the guys behind him wouldn’t get any.”

CALENDAR BOY

In his return to the Chicago Cubs after a year of retirement, Ryne Sandberg did nothing to alter his career pattern of April showers. A .235 career hitter in April with 20 home runs, Sandberg batted .188 this time with five home runs, sitting out the last six games because of an inner-ear infection.

But on May 1, true to a career form (he is a .306 hitter in May with 48 homers), Sandberg hammered two against the St. Louis Cardinals, and teammate Mark Grace said, “There’s only three things certain in life: death, taxes and Ryno hitting under .200 in April. It’s good to have him back.”

CALENDAR BOY II

Jeff King began the season with two April homers in 337 career at-bats but hit nine, including two in the same inning against the Cincinnati Reds on Tuesday night. “The ball must be juiced,” the Pittsburgh first baseman said. “If somebody had told me I’d have nine homers in April, I’d have called them a liar.”

STRAW POLL

On Darryl Strawberry’s signing with the independent St. Paul Saints, attorney Eric Grossman said he doesn’t feel there was a “collusive blackball” in which major league owners “got together and decided they weren’t going to sign Darryl,” but “they obviously shared a concern that’s difficult to understand when you look at major league rosters and see the number of outfielders who aren’t of Darryl’s caliber and when you consider there was no downside risk financially. Darryl wasn’t asking for that much money.”

Grossman said the Saints offered an opportunity for Strawberry to show major league clubs that he retains his playing skills and “has solved all his problems off the field. I mean, this is certainly not about money [Strawberry will make about $2,000 a month with the Saints]. It’s about the opportunity to play ball again.

“He’s enthused about the opportunity, not embarrassed by it. He’ll play both left field and right field, and he particularly wants to prove to National League teams that had written him off as a guy capable of playing the outfielder that they were wrong.”