Hershiser a Real Throwback

When his pitching career is over--and who can tell when that will be?--Orel Hershiser would like to teach baseball, which would be as close to playing baseball as he can imagine. He’d like to go from farm team to farm team teaching pitchers how to understand their minds and bodies the way pitchers did in his old days.

“I don’t need the money,” Hershiser mused Wednesday night. “I’d love to say, ‘Now here’s a job I can do to the best of my ability, have fun and the money wouldn’t matter. Just the satisfaction.’ ”

In the time of demanding big, bigger and biggest money, Hershiser is the other dimension. When the very young Pedro Martinez--the one who’ll start the All-Star Game for the American League this year--was sent down by the Los Angeles Dodgers, Hershiser--the one who was the star known as Bulldog--secreted a ball in Martinez’s bag to be unpacked in Albuquerque. It was inscribed, “You’ll be back. You’re going to have a good career. Best wishes . . . “

What he would be trying to teach is what he showed to Bobby Valentine and pitching coach Dave Wallace by starting Wednesday night against the Montreal Expos on one day’s rest since being driven from the mound in less than three innings Monday. Hershiser is a rare blend of the old pitcher from the gone-by era of the complete game who has survived into the era when a starter who gets his team into the sixth inning gets high-fives in the dugout.

“It’s not unprecedented, but rare,” said Valentine, who was appreciative of the gift that set his pitching rotation for the Yankees this weekend.

Hershiser is a rare person whose introspection is worth hearing. “It was very unique case of a player knowing himself, knowing his body and knowing the circumstance,” the manager said. So it wasn’t very unique or even unprecedented, but Valentine respects what Hershiser has done in the past. “I was on the edge of my seat the whole while,” Valentine said. “If I made the wrong decision, maybe he comes off the mound for the last time.” Hershiser shutout Montreal for five innings and Valentine said that was enough.

He’ll be 41 years old in September. When the Mets picked him up late in spring training, he was to fill the marginal role of fifth starter. He used to throw that sinker, and even when the hitters knew it was coming, it was a good pitch. Now he has to throw more “peripheral” pitches to set up the sinker. The radar guns say he has the same velocity as he did in his “heyday,” but he says they use the “marketing gun” these days, and he must have lost three, four, five mph. He also finds fatigue dulls his control earlier.

He has won nine times, most for the Mets. He has pitched 92 innings, second on the Mets. And Wednesday, in the aftermath of his two starts in three days, he declared he felt fine.

Few pitchers ever had as good a season as his 23-8 for the Dodgers in 1988. He set the record of 59 consecutive scoreless innings. That was also the year the Mets beat the Dodgers 10 out of 11 meetings before the playoffs and, well, Hershiser shut them out in the seventh game of the National League Championship Series. And he won the final game of the stunning World Series upset of the Oakland Athletics. Both complete games. “To be on the mound knowing we’re going to the World Series, and to be on the mound knowing we’re the champions,” Hershiser said. “That may be the only things in my career I wouldn’t change for anything.”

The closeup cameras revealed that during the greatest tension, Hershiser was singing Christian hymns on the mound. He wasn’t trying to convert the unbelievers, he said. “Those times can be bigger than life, and you become dysfunctional,” he said.

In the first game of the playoffs he pitched eight innings and lost. He pitched seven in the third game and lost. The Mets were on the brink of taking a lead of three games to one when Mike Scioscia homered off Gooden, sending Game 5 into extra innings. Hershiser volunteered to pitch, but Tom Lasorda said no. So Hershiser went to the bullpen and said Lasorda had sent him. When the game went into the 12th inning, the bullpen coach reported he was throwing better than the day before. Lasorda said, “Keep him hot.”

Hershiser got Kevin McReynolds for the last out. Then pitched the shutout that finished the Mets.

It remains his only 20-game season. That year he started five times and pitched once in relief in 16 days. Valentine wonders whether that ordeal led to Hershiser’s shoulder surgery. He has now won 199 games--99 before and 100 after surgery--one short of a milestone. “I didn’t expect to be close until August or September,” he said. “At 40, pretty good.” Especially since he was 2-4 with an ERA that had him considering retiring, which would have sent him for tear-duct surgery in May.

He is the thinking pitcher’s pitcher; he understands what he can do and what he can’t. He used to establish his stuff in the early innings and plan what he’d throw in the sixth. “Now I have to find out who I am, what kind of peg I am--square or round--and where does it fit,” he said.

The idea of bringing back Hershiser on one day’s rest occurred to Valentine and Dave Wallace while Hershiser was still flinching Sunday. Monday, Wallace checked with Hershiser and the pitcher said he felt fine. “Don’t think I said, ‘Boy, what a good idea,’ right away,” Valentine said.

Now Hershiser gets to go after his 200th today against the New York Yankees. He won’t misunderstand the excitement. He won’t be outsmarted, either.