Bird Brains Make All the Right Moves

You know how in baseball they call a seven-game series “a short series,” as in, “You never know what can happen in a short series”?

And you know how they call a five-game series “a really short series”?

Well, you know what they call a three-game series?

A sweep.

That giant sucking sound you’re hearing is the Cleveland Indians going down the toilet.

“Remember when I said we dug ourselves a hole when we lost the first game?” Mike Hargrove, the Indians’ manager, said after Wednesday’s game. “Well, we’re in a deeper hole today.”

How deep?

If they dig any deeper, they strike oil.

In Melbourne.

Our Birds (yes, Our Birds--do you think a guy with my past vehicular history would let this bus go by without jumping on?). Our Birds made it two up and one to go on the defending American League champions, the 99-game winning, we’ll-see-ya-in-the-Fall-Classic defending American League champions. They’ve beaten Cleveland’s 17-5 ace, Charles Nagy. They’ve scuffed up Orel Hershiser, one of the scariest October pitchers ever. And they’ve got Mike Mussina going Friday afternoon. So it’s not hard to see why Davey Johnson, who as usual has that smug grin, like that’s his Bentley out in the lot, said, “I like our chances at this point.” Who likes Cleveland’s chances at this point? Arthur Modell? Please.

Wednesday’s game was a true Seamhead’s Delight -- the kind of game where your scorecard gets so annotated, it looks like a Joan Collins manuscript. It began as, of all things, a pitcher’s duel! For four innings Scott Erickson and Hershiser were locked up in a one-run, six-hit game. I had just gotten out of my seat in the bottom of the fifth to complain about the fact that I’d driven all this way, and I hadn’t seen a single jack yet -- when Brady Anderson teed it up 379 feet to right center. As they say on Sports Center: Boo-yah! Honestly, how amazing is Brady? Ten homers total in his first four years in the majors, 41 total since 1993, and suddenly, out of nowhere at 32 years old, he’s Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, Mo. He has now hit 52 home runs since they started keeping count this year. Go ahead, name me anybody in baseball history who has ever detonated an explosion like that so late in his career. I’ll wait. (Look, I’ve got to get on with this column. Fax me a name when you think of one.)

The O’s led 4-0 after five, but in the top of the sixth Cleveland got three back, two on Albert Belle’s line drive homer to left that was in the seats before B.J. Surhoff could turn around and try and get the license number. (Later in the game, the count would go to 3-0 on Belle, with two on, and nobody out. Apparently, Dave Nelson, the Cleveland third base coach, must have flashed Belle the take sign. Because Belle immediately called time, and walked over to Nelson to explain that nobody gives Albert Belle the take sign. People get their legs broken for less than that. Sure enough, Belle swung on 3-0, and when I looked Nelson was clapping.) Anyway, the pitcher’s duel was done, and the fun began.

From the bottom of the sixth inning to the top of the ninth, Baltimore and Cleveland used seven different pitchers, and so many combinations of players that when all the numbers went up on the scoreboard I didn’t know whether to write them down or scream, “Bingo!”

The eighth inning was Davey Johnson’s “Guernica.” In the top of the eighth he brought in Armando Benitez, with two on and nobody out, to face Belle, who had knocked the stitches off the ball in his previous at-bat. Benitez walked Belle (the denouement to the aforementioned Belle situation) to create a circumstance so perilous not even Evel Knievel would jump over it. Johnson stuck with the 23-year-old Benitez, and Benitez got out of the inning with just one run allowed. At that point, a 4-4 tie must have felt like kissing Linda Fiorentino.

In the bottom of the eighth Johnson made more moves than United Van Lines on a three-day weekend. He put in a pinch hitter and three pinch runners. (In this one half of an inning Johnson managed to remove players from his lineup who’ve hit 876 lifetime home runs -- Eddie Murray, Bobby Bonilla, B.J. Surhoff and Mark Parent. So you might say Davey had opened himself up to some second guessing if the game had gone into extra innings. Since it’s a little late in the opera to bring in Boog Powell.) Johnson’s moves are too numerous to fully elucidate here. Plus, they’re way over my head. Mark Maske was explaining them to me in the way you’d teach your dog how to boil an egg. But all I know is that at one point Davey sent in Pete “The Piano” Incaviglia to pinch run! Are you kidding me? This guy couldn’t pinch run at Leisure World.

Johnson called these moves “no-brainers.”

Which they would have been, had the Orioles lost.

The key to the game turned out to be the last thing you’d expect from the defending AL champions: self-immolation.

In the eighth, the Orioles had loaded the bases with nobody out on a walk to Bonilla (who was lifted for pinch runner Mike Devereaux), a ground rule double by Cal Ripken, and an intentional walk to Eddie Murray. With the Cleveland infield way in to force the runner at the plate, B.J. Surhoff hit what could only be described in Cleveland as the best thing to happen since Alan Freed -- a one-hop lollipop to the pitcher, Paul Assenmacher. Assenmacher started the lead pipe cinch 1-2-3 double play by throwing to Sandy Alomar Jr. Alomar then completed the double play by throwing to first baseman Jeff Kent . . . except the throw was wide and in the dirt. It got by Kent, and Ripken scored what proved to be the winning run.

The Indians argued that Surhoff ran out of the basepath, impeding both Alomar’s throw and Kent’s catch. The umpires said something like Boo-yah! And Davey Johnson sat and grinned. A series that began with a controversy about Robbie Alomar’s shame had proceeded to a controversy about Sandy Alomar’s aim. (I say that because it seems awkward to rhyme spittle with noncommittal.) The circularity of which led the distinguished gentleman seated next to me, Shirley Povich, to say, “Remember The Alomars!”