Yankee Championship Now Within His Sight

Alert Scarlett O’Hara: The Yankees are marching through Georgia again. Taking no prisoners. Atlanta is burning once more.

You know, World Series games have been decided by soul-stirring deeds--Babe Ruth’s “called-shot” home run, Pepper Martin’s baserunning, Sandy Koufax’s fastball--but Game 4 of this one was won by Wade Boggs’ eye.

You select players for the big leagues for many things--their speed, their swing, their power. But what makes Boggs great is his patience.

There is an old story in baseball which has to do with the great Ted Williams who was at bat when the young pitcher wound up and threw him a whistling fastball. “Ball one!” said the ump. The kid screamed. “Where was the pitch, ump?” The ump said nothing. The kid wound up, threw again. “Ball two!” said the ump. “That was a strike, you blind Tom!” screamed the kid. The ump was silent. The kid wound up, threw again. Williams swung and hit it 400 feet into the seats in right-center. The ump pointed a finger at the young pitcher. “You see, son, Mr. Williams will let you know when you have thrown a strike.”

Boggs will let you know when you haven’t. He ignores it.

Boggs has made a lavish living knowing a ball from a strike when he sees one. He disdains it. He has 20/12 vision, he admits. “Ted Williams had 20/10,” he tells you.

Most pitchers in baseball earn their money inducing hitters to swing at balls out of the strike zone. Even some great players were bad-ball hitters. Roberto Clemente, Yogi Berra come to mind.

Boggs is more picky. He cannot bring himself to offer at anything sub-strike. He is a perfectionist at the plate, a critic, if you will. It takes a lot to please him.

If you hit 50 homers a year and drive in 150 runs, it’s not unusual for a pitcher to “pitch around” you. In other words, walk you a lot and risk walking you more because you might hit a three-run homer. But Boggs was really not that long-ball threat. Boggs walked because he could spot a ball microscopically out of the strike zone. He never drove in 100 runs, but four times in his carer he drew over 100 walks. Twice he led the league. Three times he got more than 200 hits and 100 walks (Ty Cobb did that only once).

For a pitch to pass Boggs’ inspection, it had to be finely milled like a Mercedes engine. One result was, Boggs frequently found himself batting with a two-strike count. That was all right with Boggs. He cheerfully spotted the pitcher that because he usually needed only one pitch to do his job which was to get a hit.

He batted .368 one year. He batted .366, .363 and .361 others. He led the league six times. He got over 200 hits seven times in a row. Only when the pitch met all his requisite specifications did he hit it some place, usually off a wall. He led the league in doubles twice. He batted below .300 only once in his career. And six times in his career he reached base one way or another 300 times a year (once 342, an all-time record).

Those are Hall of Fame statistics and Boggs is as big a cinch for Cooperstown as anyone in the game. Reaching base safely is a high and holy art in the grand game.

And Boggs was at it again the other night. In Game 4. The situation was this: The score was tied, 6-6, in the 10th inning. After two were out, the Yankees’ Raines walked. Jeter singled, sending him to second. The Braves’ brain trust conferred and came up with the decision to walk Bernie Williams, a dangerous clutch hitter.

It was a high risk. It loaded the bases. The lead in the ball game was now only 90 feet away instead of 180 feet. There are several ways to score from third. Boggs knows the best.

Yankee Manager Joe Torre looked down his bench. There sat No. 12, who had 2,697 lifetime hits, a .334 career average, future Hall of Famer. “Boggsie,” he said, “get a bat and go up there and get something good to hit.”

Instead, Boggsie found something good to take. He surveyed the Atlanta left-hander’s samples like a diamond cutter looking through his loupe at a gem.

Sure enough, he soon had two strikes. The count was 1-and-2, a ball and 2 strikes.

Boggs had the pitcher right where he wanted him. After 14 years in the big leagues, he knew what would follow: the pitcher, with pitches to play with, would try to tempt him into offering at pitches that had “pop-up” labeled all over them.

For Boggs, they were beneath contempt. He sneered at them. Boggs would often go a whole season with only one or two pop-ups. He was waiting for the pitch that never came. If it had come, Boggs would have hit it. If it didn’t come, Boggs would not bite at what did.

A fact of baseball is that, in that situation, eight of 10 big league ballplayers would have gone up there and tried desperately to hit one of those non-strikes. Not Boggs.

It was his 1,280th career walk. It was probably the pivotal at-bat of the Series. It put the Yankees ahead. It won them Game 4.

“I make my living recognizing strikes,” Boggs told an interviewer in the Yankee dugout the next day. “Sure, I could go up there anxious to win the thing dramatically and go for the first pitch. Play into the pitcher’s hands. Not my game. Anyway, a run’s a run, isn’t it? It counts in the game no matter how you get it. And you’re talking of the winning run!”

As the golfer Lloyd Mangrum once said when his methods were questioned, “Are we playing ‘how’ or ‘how many?’ ”

“I never thought of a walk, but I knew Boggs had the eye and I knew he had the composure,” said Torre. “That’s his office up there.”

A walk is not ordinarily a highlight film clip of a World Series. But a case could be made this one turned around the Series for the Yankees.

They won again Thursday night when the only run of the game came as a result of a dropped fly ball by Atlanta’s best outfielder, Marquis Grissom.

The old Yankees would probably scorn winning in this fashion. When they got the bases loaded, they cleaned them. They hit balls where fielders couldn’t drop them.

But these Yankees scuffle. They win with a pair of threes, if they can. And when they send Boggs up there, he remembers you get three strikes in this game. And he only needs one of them. Or,in this case, none of them.