by Roger Angell
Purists are saying that the postseason baseball this year was not of a particularly high quality. In the World Series, the first five games were played out without a vestige of a rally, or even of a retied score; that is, the first team to bring home a run won the game. Each of the first four games, moreover, was lost by the home team: not much fun for the fans. One of the games turned on an egregious muff of a routine ground ball, and another produced the decisive event (it turned out) on the third pitch of the evening—a home run by the Mets’ Lenny Dykstra. Neither of the pennant winners’ famous and dominant young starters, Dwight Gooden and Roger Clemens, won a game in the Series. In the playoffs, the Angels committed three errors in one inning in the abysmal second game, and gave up two and then seven unearned runs in their last two games. In that same series, a plunked batsman figured significantly in the outcome of the critical fourth game—and again in the fifth. The Astros, over in the other league, contributed to their own downfall with an errant pickoff throw in the twelfth inning of their penultimate game, and with a butchered fly ball, a throwing error, and two wild pitches in the sixteenth inning of the finale.
No matter. These games, although slipshod and human in their details, were of a different order from the sport we thought we knew—“too fairy-tale-ish,” in the words of one Mets pitcher. As the long eliminations ran down, the events on the field sometimes seemed out of control—not the plays or the players but the game itself, the baseball. The World Series became the focus of mass hopes and private wells of emotion, not just because of the rival kinships and constituencies of the Red Sox and the Mets, of Boston and New York (Athens and Sparta, in the words of Peter Gammons in Sports Illustrated), but because of a cumulative fan sense of intensity and gratitude that grew around them near their amazing end, by which time the strongest feeling seemed to be a wish that there should not be a loser. But probably that was a second wish, after we knew how it did end, and maybe not one that is felt much to this day in New England. In mid-October, however, caring had become an affliction. More and more, we fans wanted each game to go our way, to come out right, to end the right way—our way—but again and again, it seemed, that wish was thwarted or knocked aside, and we would find ourselves tangled in a different set of baseball difficulties and possibilities, and pulling for that to end right somehow. We wanted to be released, and until the very end the games refused to do that; the baseball wouldn’t let us up. And if we were sometimes sorry for ourselves, because of these wearying repeated pains and disappointments and upsets, I think we felt worse about the players and the managers (sometimes the managers most of all), because they, too, were so clearly entwined in something they couldn’t handle, couldn’t control or defeat, in spite of all their efforts and experience and skill.
“Come on,” we fans said again and again, addressing the team or the score or the situation. “Come on!” In the end, that cry didn’t seem to be directed at anything except the sport itself, which twisted and wrung us, day after day, to the point where we wanted the games over with and this strange trial ended, even while we laughed and smiled at each other and wanted it to go on forever. “Wasn’t that wonderful!” we cried. “My God, wasn’t that terrific?” And “Did you see that? I couldn’t bear it! Wasn’t it awful!” And then “I just can’t take it anymore. It’s too much.”
No poll or instrument can determine whether such paroxysms of fan feeling were felt in more distant parts, away from the big-city narcissism of Mets-mania or from the peat fires of devotion and doubt of the Red Sox faithful, but it is my guess that every fan was affected by these games to some degree. It’s hard to be sure—and here a bias must be confessed. As readers of these reports may know by now, I am a baseball fan as well as a baseball writer (most scribes, however grizzled and game-worn, are fans at heart, although they love to deny it), and although I am capable of an infatuated interest in almost any accomplished or klutzy nine that I happen to watch over a span of four or five games, the true objects of my affection down the years have been the Mets and the Red Sox. I have written almost as many words about these two clubs as I have put down about the twenty-four other major-league teams combined. I have publicly exulted in their triumphs (the World Series captured by the boyish Mets in 1969; the wholly unexpected pennant in 1973, after the Mets went into first place in the National League East and reached the .500 level on the same evening in mid-September, the autumn weeks in 1967 when the Red Sox’ Carl Yastrzemski seemed to have taken a pennant and a Series into his own hands; the sudden, scintillant glory of Game Six of the 1975 World Series), and I have put forth nostrums and philosophies to explain then-much more frequent disasters and stretches of ineptitude. It did not occur to me that an October might arrive when my two true teams would come face to face in a World Series, and that I would have to discover and then declare an ultimate loyalty. The odds against two particular teams’ meeting in a World Series in any given year are so extreme (a hundred and sixty-seven to one against, in fact) that I felt safe in moonily wishing for this dream date: when it came closer, during this year’s pennant races and then again late in the playoffs, I became hopeful and irritable, exalted and apprehensive, for I didn’t know—had no idea at all—which outcome would delight me if they did play, and which would break my heart. In dreams begin responsibilities, damn it.
Twenty postseason ballgames (the same total was rung up last year, when the league championships were first expanded from a three-out-of-five game playoff to the full four-out-of-seven format that governs the World Series) are too many to keep in mind, even with the help of line scores and summations, and at this late date it may be possible to recapture some trace of these vivid and engrossing baseball doings and to glimpse the men on the field in their moments of duress and extremity only by concentrating on a handful of particular games, with perhaps more of our attention going to the league championships than to the World Series itself, for there is little doubt in my mind that the earlier events surpassed the classic. This was the possibility foreseen and deplored by so many baseball people (including this one) when the expansion of the playoffs was first proposed, but after it happened it didn’t seem to make any difference. An exceptional set of games, wherever it may come, enhances our appreciation of the richness and surprises of the pastime, and there is a carryover of involvements and good feeling that burnishes the next game we see, and the one after that. Baseball is cumulative, and rewards the stayer.
What will not be set forth here is much news of the regular league seasons—two thousand one hundred and two games (three late-season dates were cancelled by natural causes, and there was one tie that was never untied) that will now vanish by magical elision, since they did not produce a vestige of a pennant race in any division. Lost in this process is a proper full appreciation of some players who enjoyed remarkable seasons while toiling for clubs that did not make the finals. Mike Schmidt, for instance, at the age of thirty-seven, led his league in homers (he had thirty-seven) for the eighth time and in runs batted in (a hundred and nineteen) for the fifth, and later was voted his third Most Valuable Player award. Don Mattingly, who failed for the second year in a row to beat out Wade Boggs as the American League batting champion (.352 to Boggs’ .357), nonetheless put together an altogether brilliant year at the plate, becoming the first American League player to surpass thirty homers, a hundred runs batted in, and two hundred and thirty hits in a single season; his two hundred and thirty-eight hits were the most ever by a Yankee batter. His teammate, the relief wizard Dave Righetti, accounted for an all-time-record forty-six saves; and their skipper, Lou Piniella, beat perhaps even longer odds when he was rehired to manage the Yankees for another year. Fernando Valenzuela, of the Dodgers, won twenty games for the first time (he was 21–11 at the end), and so did his fellow-countryman Teddy Higuera (20–11), for the Brewers; the two Mexicans were the talk of the All-Star Game, when they went head to head in three blazing middle innings. The Indians, of all people, came up with a genuine star in their third-ye
ar outfielder-slugger Joe Carter (.302, twenty-nine home runs, two hundred hits, and a hundred and twenty-one runs batted in); his nearest rival in the last category was Oakland’s rookie bombardier Jose Canseco, who had thirty-three homers and was perhaps the best of a notable freshman class in the American League that also included the Rangers’ Pete Incaviglia, the Mariners’ Danny Tartabull, and the Angels’ Wally Joyner.
The real news around the leagues, however, was the manner in which the four divisional winners entirely suppressed the opposition throughout the summer. The calendar is conclusive. The Mets took over the top of their division for good on April 23rd, the Red Sox on May 15th, the Angels on July 7th, and the laggard Astros on July 21st. The Mets’ four starting pitchers—Dwight Gooden, Ron Darling, Bob Ojeda, and Sid Fernandez—had a combined record of forty-one wins and ten losses at the midseason All-Star-Game break, by which time the club led its nearest pursuer, the Expos, by thirteen games. Its ultimate 108–54 won-lost record for the season tied the modern National League level set by the 1975 Reds (the 1954 Indians went 111–43, to establish the modern American League and major-league mark, but it should perhaps be noted that the Mets’ .667 winning percentage is less remarkable. Twenty-six previous clubs, most of which date back to the one-hundred-fifty-four-game schedules in effect prior to the league expansions in the early sixties, surpassed that win-two-lose-one ratio, including Frank Chance’s stone-age 1906 Cubs, who finished up at 116–36, or .763; the thunderous 1927 Yankees, with 110–44, or .714; and even the 1942 Dodgers, whose 104–50, .675 season only won them second place, two full games behind the Cardinals). The Mets’ home attendance total of 2,762,417 was the best ever for any New York team in any sport. In retrospect, the Red Sox’ one important (or perhaps only symbolically important) game of the summer seems to have been a series opener at Yankee Stadium on June 16th, when Roger Clemens bested Ron Guidry in a 10–1 blowout and ran his record to 12–0 for the season to that date; it was Guidry’s sixth loss in a row. The injury-depleted Sox sagged a bit during a swing west in late July, but stood firm against all comers thereafter (to the amazement of their careworn, wary fans and many of their writers), running their lead from three and a half games to ten in the first twelve days of September.
Nobody finished like the Astros, however. Pitching and defense was their game—or let’s just say pitching. On September 23rd, in Houston, rookie left-hander Jim Deshaies struck out the first eight Dodgers of the evening and shut out the visitors, 4–0, on two hits. The following night, Nolan Ryan gave up no hits to the Giants in the first six innings, and wound up with a 6–0 two-hitter, and the night after that Mike Scott beat the same team with a 2–0, no-hit game that clinched the Astros’ divisional pennant in the National League West. The absence of a race or of any sort of rival to these top four teams did not deter fans from coming out to the games this summer; 47,500,347 turned up in all, which was a new record, and, for the first time ever, no club drew fewer than a million in its own park. The pennant races were a success in another way as well, for they produced divisional winners that, for once, really were the best four teams in baseball. The championships promised well, and that promise was kept.
The Mets’ runaway, I think, was responsible to a considerable degree for all the speculation around New York about Dwight Gooden. “What’s the matter with Doc?” became a handy substitute for talk about the onrushing Expos or Cardinals or Phillies, who never onrushed at all. If we are to undertake a brief exploration of Gooden’s year, it should start with the understanding that by most pitchers’ standards there was nothing at all wrong with Dwight in 1986, when he finished with a 17–6 record, an earned-run average of 2.84, and two hundred strikeouts in two hundred and fifty innings pitched. These are wonderful figures by almost any standard except Gooden’s own. His performance in 1985, when, in his second season in the majors, he was 24–4 and 1.53, with two hundred and sixty-eight strikeouts, allowed him to walk away with the Cy Young Award in his league, along with the consensus opinion that this was the finest young pitcher to turn up in baseball since Bob Feller. A good many well-respected (by me, at least) baseball sages are of the opinion that Gooden’s somewhat diminished record this year is perfectly in line for a great young hurler (he has just turned twenty-two) who is on the way to a Hall of Fame career. Tim McCarver, the Mets’ perceptive television announcer, has stated his belief that no pitcher, including Dwight Gooden himself, will again put together anything like Doc’s summer of ’85, and that it is unfair to expect him to duplicate something unique in the annals of the sport. For all that, Gooden’s at times disappointing performance this year—he was more disappointed than anyone else, for he is a hardworking professional, and very mature in his approach to his tasks—is worth speculating about, since it tells us so much about the rigors of his job. I think we can put aside some of the simpler, one-shot or cheap-shot explanations—an ankle he sprained in the middle of the winter last year (which never bothered him for a day of the season, he and his coaches insist), rumors of drug abuse (no proof of any sort), and some difficulties in his private life—and just think about pitching.* One theory, much enunciated in the pressrooms during the playoffs and the World Series, arose from the premise that experienced major-league hitters learn in time to stop swinging at great fastballs up near the ceiling of the strike zone, or just above it—which is the path of Doc’s heater—and that the umpires, for their part, become more stubborn about calling that same high strike in a second season. If that is the case, the umps (and the hitters, too) must have held a series of extensive longdistance conference calls along about June 10th of this season to settle on their new strategy, for it was not until Doc’s thirteenth start of the year, on June 13th, that his year began to look much different from the one that preceded it. After Gooden’s first twelve starts of this season, his record stood at 8–2 (there were two no-decision games), with a 2.11 earned-run average, seventy-one strikeouts, and six complete games, including four shutouts. He was less of a pitcher after that, with no shutouts in his remaining twenty-one starts (there were eight no-decisions), a 9–4 record, and an earned-run average of 3.29. No injury or sudden stratagem by the opposition explains this. For me, the answer may be found in Doc’s strikeout totals. Let’s take a look at his three major-league seasons to date:
GAMES WON-LOST E.R.A. INNINGS STRIKE-OUTS WALKS
1984 31 17-9 2.60 218 276 73
1985 35 24-4 1.53 276.2 268 69
1986 33 17-6 2.84 250 200 80
The 1984 total of two hundred and seventy-six strikeouts led every other pitcher in the majors, and translated out to an astounding 11.39 strikeouts per nine innings pitched. Along the way, Gooden had fifteen ten-strikeout-or-better games, thus giving birth to Shea Stadium’s “K Man” placards. In September of that season, Dwight threw two sixteen-strikeout games in succession.
What was happening, I should say at long last, was that Doc was simply trying to become a better major-league pitcher. Outs, not strikeouts, are what count, and Gooden, who is intelligent, has clearly been persuaded that retiring the side on six or eight pitches, with no strikeouts, is easier on an arm and on a career than taking fifteen or sixteen pitches to fan the side. In spring training this year, I saw Gooden working assiduously at a new pitch—an off-speed, high-to-low breaking ball—to add to his famous fastball and its lethal curveball counterpart. He fell in love with the new delivery, as young pitchers do when they find a beautiful toy, and for a time he had success with it in the regular season. The K’s went down, as we have seen, but his performance and his success ratio were just about as before. In midseason, though, he ran into unexpected difficulties, and there were several games in which I saw him begin to struggle as never before. He would miss—just miss—with a cut fastball or an off-speed breaking ball, and fall behind in the count, and when he then came back to the fastball and its companion he often couldn’t quite find the strike zone. The heater would be up a bit, or wouldn’t seem to have much movement on it even when it
was in the black. He began walking batters, sometimes five, or even six, in a game (unheard of, for him), and after May 6th there were no more shutouts. He had some excellent games along the way (a four-hitter and a two-hitter in September), but he wasn’t the same: he was a little less.
In the postseason games (to look ahead a bit), Gooden pitched powerfully in his two starts in the playoffs, and his loss in his only decision was on an unearned run; in the Series, he gave up six runs in five innings in Game Two (he was the loser), and was taken out in the fifth inning of Game Five, by which time he had given up four runs and nine hits. He was deeply troubled by this last outing, and so were his teammates and his manager. But never mind the results for the moment. To me, Dwight Gooden in this game looked like a different pitcher altogether, just as he had in some stretches in midseason. The beautiful flow and freedom of his delivery weren’t there, even when he did throw the fastball for a strike. He didn’t seem to be finishing his motion in quite the same place as he did last year, with his body twisted over to the left and the fingers of his pitching hand almost down by his left shoe. He was straighter away on the mound, somehow.
