HAMMER'S TIME

By ROSS NEWHAN

April 8, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

A 13-year major league career during which he was a four-time all-star wouldn’t seem to have been a trivial pursuit, but in some ways that is what the career of Davey Johnson became.

The Dodger manager takes delight in pointing out that he is the walking, talking answer to two of baseball’s most renowned trivia questions.

Clip and save:

Question: Who was the last player to get a hit off Sandy Koufax before the celebrated Dodger left-hander retired?

Answer: Davey Johnson, as the Baltimore Oriole second baseman in Game 2 of the 1966 World Series.

Question: Which player batted behind Hank Aaron on the night he hit his 715th home run to break Babe Ruth’s record and behind Sadaharu Oh on the night he hit his 715th?

Answer: Davey Johnson, a teammate of Aaron’s with the Atlanta Braves on that memorable night in 1974 and also a teammate of Oh’s with the Yomiuri Giants when the legendary Japanese slugger hit his 715th in 1976 on the way to the global record of 868.

One more for a beer?

Question: Which player set a major league record for second basemen with 43 homers in 1973 but was forced to share the record with Rogers Hornsby at 42 on a technicality?

Answer: Davey Johnson, who hit 43 in ‘73, joining Aaron, who had 40, and Darrell Evans, who had 41, to make the Braves the first team in history to have three players with 40 or more in the same season, but one of Johnson’s came as a pinch-hitter in a game he otherwise did not play in, meaning he was credited with only 42 as a second baseman.

“It’s kind of an asterisk deal, but that’s fine,” Johnson said with a smile. “I said at the time that I don’t want to be there alone. People will think I’m really somebody if you put Rogers Hornsby’s name next to mine.”

Why these snapshots from the Johnson scrapbook?

Primarily because this is the 25th anniversary of the night on which Aaron went deep against the Dodgers’ Al Downing in Atlanta Fulton County Stadium to break Ruth’s fabled record and because Johnson shared some of the history as a member of the Braves in 1973 and ‘74--moments frozen in time.

“I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to be a teammate and friend,” Johnson said. “He was the greatest hitter I ever saw. He could do whatever he wanted to do at the plate. He had those great wrists and huge forearms, but he didn’t muscle anything. He was all grace--stealing a base or hitting 40 homers when he was 40.”

For Johnson, batting practice alone was a phenomenon--not that Aaron took part in it every day or turned it into a fan-captivating power display as Mark McGwire has.

“Here was the greatest home run hitter of all time, and all he would do in batting practice was hit soft line drives and use the whole field,” Johnson said, suggesting a well-oiled machine loosening up. “It was a joy to watch, and I’d watch like a hawk. You couldn’t help but become a better hitter just by watching.

“I asked him once what he looked for at the plate and he said, ‘breaking balls.’ I said, ‘Why?’ and he said, ‘Because I know they can’t throw the fastball by me.’ I said, ‘You got that right.’ ”

The 755 homers and the Hall of Fame statistics convey Aaron’s skills, but there was so much more to the pursuit of Ruth, so much that McGwire and Sammy Sosa didn’t have to cope with in the wonderful summer of 1998. The racist letters and phone calls. The need for two hotel rooms on the road--one under an alias. The threats.

“It was sad in so many ways,” Johnson said. “Henry didn’t talk about it much, but we knew what he was going through. I was only there a short time, but the fan treatment, the fact he didn’t get any endorsements, he had every right to be bitter, but the only time I saw him get upset was when I got into his locker once and he found me changing the channels on his stereo.

“With all the pressure and media attention, the thing that made him most uncomfortable was that he didn’t want it to detract from the team. He mentioned many times that the team was more important than what he was doing, but that night he hit the 715th was just electric and we were all happy it was over. Everyone wanted him to do it, but we just didn’t want anything to happen to him in the process.”

As an all-star regular on a succession of championship teams in Baltimore, Johnson never hit more than 18 homers in a season before he hit the 43 with Atlanta in 1973.

The Orioles wanted him to be an inside-out swinger who hit behind the runner, which tended to negate his gap power and natural pull swing.

He was in the process of reestablishing those innate skills in 1971, with 15 homers in midseason, when an injury to his left shoulder robbed him of strength (he finished with 18), eluded medical diagnosis, restricted him to a .221 average and five homers in 1972, and, coupled with the arrival of Bobby Grich, led to him being traded to Atlanta at the end of ’72.

The Braves were aware of his injury but identified it as stretched tendons and put Johnson on an isometric program. By May 1973 he was feeling strong enough to challenge Evans to a friendly wager.

“He had nine homers and 20 [runs batted in] and I had two and 11, and I told him that I’d spot him that lead and beat him in two of three categories--homers, ribbies and average,” Johnson said. “I could hear him thinking, ‘This is a lock.’ Well, the next month I hit 13 homers, blew right by him and ended up hitting 43.”

Part of it was the physical stability.

Part of it was the urging of an offensive-minded manager, Eddie Mathews, to be the type of hitter he had always thought he could be.

Part of it was watching Aaron.

“I didn’t know the league, but I didn’t care,” Johnson said. “I was just trying to hit the pitch out front and hit it hard. I was expressing the talent I always had rather than suppressing it, and it was a lot of fun.

“I had started to do things my own way in ’71 and probably would have hit 30 homers if I hadn’t been hurt. Being myself again taught me a lesson that has helped me as a manager. I became real conscious of how coaches can adversely affect players. In some ways I’m glad it happened to me. I’m more aware of it and been able to keep an eye on it.”

With Johnson at 43 and Evans at 41, Aaron hit his 40th on the next to last day of the ’73 season, connecting against Jerry Reuss of the Houston Astros in Atlanta. It was his 713th. Aaron had a shot at Ruth on the final Sunday, but had three singles before popping up in his final at-bat to carry the pursuit into 1974.

The Braves had a postgame news conference that Evans and Johnson attended with Aaron. In his biography, “I Had a Hammer,” Aaron quotes Evans as saying, “Davey and I knew that the only way we would be in the Hall of Fame was if we all hit 40 homers. Hank was the last one to do it, but of course he was the one all the attention was on. When we had the press conference, nobody asked Davey or me a single question. Finally Hank said, ‘Look, I wanted to share this with these guys. If nobody is interested in that, then the press conference is over.’ And he got up and walked out. End of press conference.”

The Braves opened the 1974 season in Cincinnati with the intention of not playing Aaron in any of the three games so he could take aim at Ruth when they returned to Atlanta to play the Dodgers. However, then-commissioner Bowie Kuhn interceded. He ordered the Braves to play Aaron in two of the three games or face serious consequences.

Aaron responded.

In his first at-bat in the first game, he connected against Jack Billingham to tie Ruth at 714. He did not play in the second game, but struck out twice and grounded out against Clay Kirby in the series finale--at which point he was removed by Mathews, already furious at having his lineup dictated by the commissioner.

The massed media followed Aaron to Atlanta, where he didn’t keep them waiting. He walked in his first plate appearance of the first home game, then drilled the electric home run.

“We were all on the top step and knew it was gone,” said Johnson, batting sixth in a lineup in which Aaron hit fourth and Dusty Baker fifth. “I’ve never been one for reliving events. The fun and joy is in experiencing it, but that’s one I’ll always remember.”

Aaron was traded to Milwaukee at the end of the year, proving nothing is sacred.

Johnson, in his words, was banished to Japan, where a year later he got an up-close view of Oh’s 715th. The rush wasn’t quite the same, but he said:

“The fences are a little shorter and the competition isn’t as tough, but I don’t care what league it is, you’ve got to be a great hitter to hit 800 or more home runs, and he was.”

Oh had a nation behind him. Aaron had mixed support.

“I could never put myself in Hank’s shoes or imagine what he went through,” Johnson said. “He came up in a difficult time, but even in the ‘70s there was still so much racism. People wanted him to fail and didn’t care how they expressed it.

“He was the greatest player I ever saw, but it was what he had to go through to be that. He was like Jackie Robinson. He raised the level of play and the level of excellence. He made the people around him better in more ways than one.”

Nothing trivial about that, of course, but how about one more question:

Which player set a major league record with two pinch-hit grand slams in the same season but held the record for only a week?

Answer: Davey Johnson, who did it with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1978 only to have Mike Ivie of Detroit hit two the next week.

Sultans of Swat

How the greatest home run hitters in major league history matched up:

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RUTH AARON 22 Seasons 23 714 Home Runs 755 8,399 At Bats 12,364 2,873 Hits 3,771 .342 Batting Avg. .305 2,174 Runs 2,174 2,211 Runs Batted In 2,297 1,330 Strikeouts 1,383 2,056 Walks 1,402 7 World Series Titles 1

*--*

All-Time HR Leaders

PLAYER: NO.

Hank Aaron: 755

Babe Ruth: 714

Willie Mays: 660

Frank Robinson: 586

Harmon Killebrew: 573

Reggie Jackson: 563

Mike Schmidt: 548

Mickey Mantle: 536

Jimmie Foxx: 534