TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/100890/1008260.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 14.8 KB | 280 lines

                                                                                SPORT, Page 90

Streaking Hard for the Top


Led by rocket Rickey Henderson, Oakland looks to win another
World Series

By RICHARD CORLISS -- Reported by Lee Griggs/Oakland


    Baseball in October! It is the climax of an annual courtship
between the U.S. male and his faster, stronger, younger self.
As his favorite players dance through the 162-game season, a fan
takes in the teasing thrills, the endless conversation. Then
postseason nears, and his passion is stirred like a farm boy's
anxious lust on prom night. Larry Andersen, the veteran relief
pitcher, could have been defining America's obsession with
professional sport when he said, "You can only be young once,
but you can be immature forever." And that goes for women as
well as men, for dockworkers and day-care specialists. The
Octoberfest marks any fan's last chance to be a kid, ardent and
hopeful. Till next year. Baseball, like it oughta be.

    This year has offered plenty of thrills, some of them
actually on the field. Fans who swore they would never forgive
players for the lockout delay of Opening Day have since
misplaced their rancor and delighted in the annual spectacle of
stars born and reborn. Cecil Fielder, exiled to Japan last year,
signs with Detroit and threatens to become the first American
Leaguer to bop 50 home runs since Mantle and Maris in '61. Dave
Justice, toiling in Triple A, gets promoted to the haggard
Atlanta Braves in mid-May and hits 28 home runs: out of nowhere,
into orbit. The arms of half the Dodgers' pitchers fall off, but
the slim, steely mound grace of rookie Ramon Martinez helps
sustain Los Angeles in a last-gasp pennant race.

    Perhaps race is the wrong word for this season, since most
of the contestants are running backward. In the American
League's Eastern Division, the Toronto Blue Jays struggle to
realize their vaunted potential and atone for a notorious swoon
three years ago, when they lost a 3 1/2-game lead in the final
week. Such a hex would be no burden to Toronto's rivals, the
Boston Red Sox, who groan under a curse of mythological heft.
The Sox, as their minions are ever mindful, have gone 72 years
without winning a World Series. At Fenway Park, a fan holds up
a sign with nothing but the reproachful date on it: 1918.

    In the National League, talent carries a curse of its own.
The New York Mets, predicted first every season, but whose
favorite finishing spot is second, enjoyed a splendid June that
propelled them near the top of the N.L. East. For the other five
months, though, the Mets have played just .500 ball, allowing
the Pittsburgh Pirates -- a team too young to bathe in flop
sweat -- nearly unimpeded access to first place. In the N.L.
West, the Cincinnati Reds, champions-designate since their
springtime sprint from the gate, curled up in a summerlong
slumber. Only the mediocrity of their California pursuers --
the Dodgers, Giants and Padres -- clinched the division for the
Reds and ensured Cincinnati's being remembered for something
this fall besides an art-as-obscenity trial.

    To a fan of any of these teams, the thrill is in finishing
first, not fast. In a pennant race, closeness is all, and 1990
could boast a crucial series: Toronto-Boston last weekend, with
brilliant, battered Roger Clemens appearing to pitch the Sox to
a tangy win. Early autumn abounds in such epiphanies. But then
what? The survivors, already winded like nicotine addicts in a
marathon, will have to consider a more daunting task: facing the
Oakland Athletics.

    Cringe before the A's majesty, all ye who would oppose them!
Try to keep Rickey Henderson, the game's premier player, from
stealing you blind; he's on the verge of eclipsing Lou Brock's
all-time stolen-base record. Don't groove a pitch to Jose
Canseco or Mark McGwire; the Bash Brothers will lose it over the
far fence. Watch, and wince, as Dave Henderson or Carney
Lansford gets the clutch hit. Scan the depth of the A's bench;
almost any scrub could start on another team. Note the new
recruits, just in time for the big games: slugger Harold Baines
and spray hitter Willie McGee, an N.L. import who may win that
league's batting title.

    When you come to bat, dare to swing against Oakland native
Dave Stewart, the game's most feral competitor, whose "death
stare" would spook Cyclops. Or face Bob Welch, the first
American League pitcher since 1968 to win 26 games in a season.
Try hitting a grounder through the A's stingy infield. And if
you hope to rally, ponder the presence of ace reliever Dennis
Eckersley, who has issued only seven bases on balls in two
years. You can run but you can't walk.

    Brawny, brainy and wondrously balanced, Oakland is a team
for all seasons: spring, summer and post. The A's motored
through summer 1990 as if it were one long exhibition series;
at one point down the stretch, they were a full 10 games ahead
of the next best team in either league. With the brute precision
of Caesar's army, the A's secured a third consecutive A.L. West
title and are odds-on favorites to win their second straight
World Series. Make way for the Harvard Business School of sports
teams: Dynasty Inc. "If, as seems likely, the A's win the
play-offs and World Series," says baseball historian Bill James,
"it will be appropriate to consider them among the best of all
time. They're not there yet, but they're close."

    How close are they now? And how far have they come? Anyone
who watched the past two World Series knows the answer. In 1988
the A's, a new power in championship ball but prohibitive
favorites even then, got psyched out by the crippled Dodgers.
Like a rock 'n' roller when Elvis died, every A's fan remembers
where he was at that fateful moment in Game 1 -- bottom of the
ninth, Oakland leading 4-3 on a Canseco grand slam -- when Kirk
Gibson hobbled to the plate and gritted a game-winning home run
off Eckersley. Sobbing was heard among the faithful; choking was
displayed by the players. It was Gibson's only appearance of the
pageant, but the A's never shook off his back-from-the-dead
blow. They faded in five games.

    Fade in to the 1989 Series: four floggings of the San
Francisco Giants, punctuated and upstaged by an earthquake. This
time the A's produced the most numbing demolition in a fall
classic since Babe Ruth's Yankees gelded the St. Louis Cardinals
in 1928. In both epochs the winning team hit five home runs in
one game; in both, no contest was decided by fewer than three
runs. Canseco twitched off the Dodgers jinx and launched one of
his ho-hum homers into the 900 area code. Eckersley, accused
during the Toronto play-offs of doctoring the ball, hardly
needed to suit up, let alone sand up, as the A's performed what
amounted to surgery without anesthesia. At the end, in the
champagneless locker room, the satisfied heart of A's manager
Tony La Russa could be seen beating beneath a T shirt that
promoted The Ballet School. The Bash Brethren had pirouetted
through disaster.

    It was the disaster, though, that shrouded the series. Both
the A's and the Giants donated part of the take to earthquake
relief, but the charity seemed inadequate. To many the very
phrase Play ball! sounded irresponsible. And how do you
celebrate in a Bay Area sapped by mourning? Through no fault of
the winners, their victory was tainted. The A's owed their fans
one season, beginning to end, of efficient ecstasy. That was the
vow, and in 1990 they are a long way toward achieving it.

    In 1980, when the Haas family of San Francisco bought the
franchise from Charles O. Finley, the A's were ailing. Finley
had goaded the team to three consecutive world championships in
1972-74, but by 1979 the A's were attracting fewer than 4,000
visitors a game. In one pathetic match-up on April 17 of that
year, only 653 souls attended. The following year Finley
unloaded the team for $12.75 million.

    Walter Haas had plenty to spend; he is an heir to the Levi
Strauss jeans fortune. He also had a resilient young pitching
staff and a local rabbit named Rickey Henderson. To nurture the
team to respectability, though, he needed a quick fix and a long
view. He already had the first in Billy Martin, a brilliant,
volatile field manager. Before he wore out both his welcome and
the arms of his starting pitchers (all were shortly out of the
majors), Martin hustled the A's to the play-offs in 1981 and,
with his run-and-gun style of "Billy Ball," boosted their
attendance to 1.7 million a year later.

    The long view -- the ability to spot burgeoning talent and
swing a trade for the right veteran -- came from a less expected
source. Sandy Alderson was a San Francisco lawyer who began as
the team's general counsel and is now, at 42, general manager
of the sport's dominant franchise. Says Alderson: "We needed to
build up a scouting system, develop quality players in our farm
system and expand it." From the farm came a bumper crop:
Canseco, McGwire and wizard shortstop Walt Weiss, who would be
voted American League Rookies of the Year in 1986, '87 and '88.

    By mid-decade the A's were both promising and floundering.
The kids were all right, but the team had not played .500 ball
since 1981. Enter La Russa, just fired as manager of the Chicago
White Sox. Says Alderson: "We had to persuade Tony that our
player-development system was going to pay off in the near
future. Tony was astute enough to realize that we were right."

    You have to believe it took a lot of convincing; La Russa
is a lawyer too (Florida State University, 1978). And, like any
good judge, he had done his share of bench sitting, as a reserve
infielder for the A's, Braves and Chicago Cubs (lifetime batting
average: .199). "During my years on the bench," La Russa
recalls, "I learned that attitude was important: getting the
best out of your players by going one-on-one with them, always
keeping them focused on the goal of winning."

    The first challenge, of course, is to get them winning; the
next is to keep the winners happy. La Russa has done both. He
keeps his team sharp if not humble by being a miser with public
praise and never discounting an opponent. But one-on-one, the
miser is fatherly, encouraging. He gives everyone a role --
spark plug, basher, starter, stopper, setup man, defensive
replacement -- and plays his reserves frequently; nobody will
languish in the dugout the way La Russa once did. He is the
baseball manager as brilliant party host, ensuring that each
guest feels needed. Thus Lansford, the A's resourceful third
baseman, knows that he is as valuable hitting sixth behind
McGwire as he is batting second between Rickey and Jose.

    What a sandwich! Henderson, at 31 a sure-shot Hall of Famer,
is having a career year. He is the runaway leader in stolen
bases, on-base percentage and runs scored, and among the
league's best in home runs, walks and batting and slugging
average. He has scored from second base on routine infield
grounders and from third after the catch of infield pop-ups. Oh,
and he plays graceful, sensational defense. But Rickey doesn't
have to produce to give pleasure. Just watch him step to the
plate: he assumes his doubled-over-in-pain crouch and offers the
teeniest strike zone in baseball. Then he reaches first base and
starts eyeing second, approaching the bag like a dirt-diving
Greg Louganis. Even if he doesn't attempt to steal, he has
distracted the opposition and set up a better pitch for the man
at bat. "I used to steal just for the fun of it," says
Henderson. "Now I do it only when we need runs. Otherwise I'd
be way past Lou Brock by now."

    Canseco's problem is that, with his awesome strength and
speed, fans expect the hunky, hulky rightfielder to be way past
Babe Ruth by now. The Cuban-born star has impeccable stats: most
notably, a $23.5 million contract to play a kid's game for five
years. With his macho strut and mighty swing, he is a modern-day
Casey at the Bat. Ted Williams, the game's greatest living
hitter, has called him "the most electrifying player in baseball
today." His extracurricular antics (arrests for speeding and gun
toting) only add to his dangerous luster. Love him or hate him,
Canseco is the swaggering epitome of the pro athlete.

    Lately, Oakland fans don't love him. Dogged by back
injuries, he has been accused of dogging it on the field. "My
problem right now is that the timing's off," he says. "To get
the big-money, long-ball stats, you have to wait for a pitch you
can drive." At last week's Fan Appreciation Day, Canseco was
driven to sulk. He was the only player booed when he trotted out
to the foul line -- and the only player who didn't applaud when
the A's paid tribute to the crowd. Instead he stood there in his
Brando-stud slouch, proud and defiant, but wondering perhaps why
the fans didn't appreciate the cortisone shot he had taken for
his bad back the day before to help him play in pain.

    Money aside, the A's took a risk signing such a fragile
superstar to a five-year lease. And in doing so, Alderson must
have realized that Rickey Henderson would demand an expensive
extension of his four-year, $12 million contract. If the A's win
the Series again this year, other players will want their share.
Building a strong franchise is tough enough in these days of
free agency and oversize payrolls. Staying at the top is next
to impossible. "Everybody thinks he's underpaid," sighs
Alderson. Owners of other teams, of course, think Alderson is
paying too much -- not just for his stars but for minor
leaguers. This summer the A's signed high school phenom Todd Van
Poppel for $1.2 million.

    The owners are angry at Oakland not because the team spends
freely -- so did California and Kansas City last winter, in
profligate hope of catching the A's -- but because it wins.
Owners don't want other people to have dynasties. They want new
teams emerging each year, with new stars just this side of the
big money. For the past decade or so, that is just what they
got. No team has repeated as world champs since the 1977-'78
Yankees. The A's are the first in a dozen years with a monopoly
on excellence.

    So baseball will come to Oakland again this October. The
fans -- a little jaded but forever immature -- will cheer their
favorites with Bay Area gentility, punctuated by the occasional
"Rip it, dude!" Triumph will satisfy but not surprise them; only
failure will astonish. The A's know this. As they enter the
play-offs, they know their true opponents are not the Blue Jays
or the Red Sox, the Pirates or the Reds, but the great ghost of
baseball history: the '27 Yankees, the Philadelphia A's of
'29-'31, the Yanks of '49-'53, the Oakland A's of the early
'70s. Should today's A's capture their second straight
championship, they will be at dynasty's door. And then, can
they walk through?

    Wait till next year.