Good Things Come in Freeze for Cleveland

C-C-C-CLEVELAND--The boys of summer have frostbite.

It is midnight in the Midwest, and how do you like your Marlin, fresh or frozen? Game 4 in this Ohio igloo is over. Winter has come to the Fall Classic, where “warming up in the bullpen” is . . . well, nobody.

There is something absurd about a World Series game that begins with Christmas carols coming through the loudspeakers. Taking batting practice Wednesday night, while Jacobs Field became a gigantic snow globe, “Let It Snow” and “Winter Wonderland” rang forth as the visitors from sunny Florida limbered up.

At hearing “Jingle Bell Rock,” a Marlin player, Jeff Conine--batting in a wool cap--could no longer keep a straight face.

“Let’s sled to first base tonight,” he said.

To keep warm, Florida’s players wore black masks and hoods. Edgar Renteria appeared to be baseball’s first ninja shortstop.

Temperature at game time: 38 degrees.

Windchill: 18.

Precipitation?

“I heard an announcement,” Orel Hershiser of the Cleveland Indians said before the game, setting up a gag. “They’re switching the fifth-inning drag [by the groundskeepers] to the fifth-inning plow. And they’re thinking about bringing in salt trucks.”

Fielders didn’t need gloves. They needed mittens.

In the dugout, Marlin teammates didn’t sip Gatorade; they sipped coffee. Manager Jim Leyland set an old-fashioned hot water bottle on the bench by his side. He squeezed it to warm his hands.

Lucky for the other manager, Mike Hargrove, that a 10-3 Cleveland victory didn’t clinch the World Series. If anyone had dumped a bucket of Gatorade over him, Hargrove might have frozen like a statue, right where he stood.

The catchers were catching pneumonia.

The umps looked as if they had mumps. Their cheeks were so swollen, they could barely squeak out “out” or “safe.” Some of them could have used an oil can, like the Tin Man.

Working at second base in a ski mask was king-sized Ken Kaiser, with nothing visible but the slits of his eyes. He turned into the Indomitable Umpire.

So what in the World Series was pitcher Brian Anderson doing out there in his Indian uniform, dressed in short sleeves?

“I’m an idiot,” Anderson explained.

No, he isn’t.

He’s left-handed, is all.

Anderson is originally from Geneva--Ohio, not Switzerland--about 25 miles up the road. To him, the weather Wednesday night was nothing. Zero is nothing. Below zero, now that’s something. But 38? To Anderson, hey, that was like tanning under a sun lamp.

“Honestly, I couldn’t tell you if it was 8 degrees or 80,” Anderson said.

He and the Indians can tell you more, once they get back to Miami. By winning, they assured themselves of a return trip. This series will be settled in South Florida--where it was in the high 70s for Games 1 and 2--one way or another.

Baseball will be played the way the Good Lord meant it to be played--without masks and hoods.

The climate sure didn’t bother Jaret Wright, the hot rookie from Orange County. He was the winning pitcher Wednesday.

“I started in Akron at the beginning of the year, and it was freezing. You just put on your sleeves and the adrenaline does a lot of work to keep you warm,” said Wright, wise beyond his years.

Thanks to him, 44,877 fans at the Jake felt all toasty inside. (Although some of them must have felt like singing, “Buy me some peanuts and cocoa, Jack.”)

No World Series game has been called off since Oct. 9, 1979, when Jaret Wright was warming up for preschool. It snowed that day in the Baltimore area . . . only an inch, but enough for the Orioles to postpone Game 1 against the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The snow in Ohio was steady, but didn’t stick. Hershiser was kidding about that plow.

Lea Thompson of TV’s “Caroline in the City” sang the national anthem, excellently, here in a city where she once also starred in “Howard the Duck.” For that, she deserves a comeback-of-the-century award.

A public-address announcer shouted to the crowd, “Let’s get ready to rumble!” when a far better word would have been tremble.

Then the Indians took the field in their high socks, wishing they could pull them all the way up, like body stockings.

“This is the World Series,” Hargrove said, “and it’s amazing how that can keep you warm.”

Know what else can keep you warm?

Miami.