Bobby Bo Just Had to Go

In a Tuesday night baseball game that had more scoring than Monday night football, Marlins and Indians ran around and around and around and around. I haven’t seen anyone move around Cleveland like this since the day Art Modell and the Browns fled town.

The runners kept on coming, circling Jacobs Field all night long, around first, around second, around third. It didn’t look like a World Series. It looked like a Breeders’ Cup. I have seen 14-11 games before. Usually, they involved touchdown runs or field goals.

Let me tell you about the guy who ran hardest.

He is a guy who hurts so bad, perhaps he shouldn’t be playing.

But he is a guy who ran as hard as he could in the ninth inning, because, as his own manager put it, “He had a flash, like he said, ‘Hey, this is the World Series.’ ”

His name is Bobby Bonilla. He is a guy who has a song called “Bad to the Bone” played for him every time he steps up to bat in Florida’s home games.

Bad to the bone is how Bobby Bo has felt lately.

He has a hamstring problem, an ankle problem and has just gotten over a serious case of flu.

Bad to the bone also described the way Bonilla played, for the first few innings of Game 3.

He came up in the third inning with the bases loaded.

But he ran so poorly, he couldn’t even beat Cleveland’s pitcher to the bag. Bonilla was doubled up on an embarrassing 3-6-1 double play.

In the bottom of the third inning, Manny Ramirez hit a ball right to him at third base. Bobby Bo bobbled it. Ramirez beat it out.

Sometimes things go the way Bonilla said after Game 2, when he booted a ninth-inning ball: “When you’re hurting a little, that damn ball will find you.”

In the fourth, it did.

There were two gone and the score was tied, 3-3. But Cleveland had a threat going. One run was in and Indians were all over the base paths.

Ramirez hit the ball Bonilla’s way again. He charged it, scooped it up, but couldn’t pull the trigger, double-clutching before releasing the ball. Bonilla’s wild throw got away at first base. When the runners stopped running, Cleveland had the lead, 5-3.

If this game--and this series--were to have a goat, Bonilla was setting himself up as a candidate.

He didn’t have to be out there. Bonilla is in enough pain that he could approach Manager Jim Leyland and ask not to play. Leyland is a manager who refuses to ask players if they’re hurt, expecting them to come to him.

Or, this being an American League park, Bonilla could be a designated hitter.

“Uh uh. No way. I’m not DH’ing,” Bonilla says. “Trust me. I’m 0 for the world, DH’ing.”

In the sixth inning, Bonilla struck out swinging. You began to think this wasn’t his night, or Florida’s.

But when he began the Marlin ninth inning by drawing a walk--and believe me, walking is something Bonilla would rather do than running--his whole evening went from bad to the bone to good as it gets.

Darren Daulton ripped a single to right-center. Bonilla easily could have pulled up at second base.

However, the score was tied.

“I had to get my butt in gear,” Bobby Bo said later.

That he did. Bonilla came rumbling around second toward third. Marquis Grissom, playing center field, threw true to the base, trying to cut Bonilla down. Bobby Bo would have looked pretty silly had Grissom thrown him out.

Instead, the throw brushed Bonilla as he slid into Matt Williams at third. The ball kept going, into the photographers’ well. Bonilla was awarded home plate, with a run in a game in which every run counted.

“Bobby is not real fast,” Leyland said, “but he’s a good baserunner. He wasn’t sure if he was going to go, and then it looked like he had a flash, like he said, ‘Hey, this is the World Series,’ and he took off. . . . He probably even hesitated a little bit too much.”

All told, seven Marlins ran around the bases in the ninth.

They circled the Indians’ wagon.

And when this wild game was over, a lot of the Florida players were exhausted. It had been a long, long night.

“Not me,” Bonilla said. “Let’s keep playing.”

No, 25 runs, that’s plenty.