The Boys of Spring

By B.J. Phillips

Baseball's bridesmaids open the season with pennant dreams

The call to "Play ball!," the surest and happiest sign of spring, has sounded once again. The crack of the bat has replaced the clack of the auctioneer's gavel selling off free-agent flesh. Players safe in their tax shelters now worry only about being safe at first, and owners prick their ears for the sweetest music they know, the clatter of turnstiles. The baseball season has begun.

President Reagan had planned to throw out the first ball in Cincinnati last week, the first Chief Executive to do so since President Ford in 1976, but since he was still in the hospital, the opening day ritual was skipped altogether. Explained the Reds' p.a. announcer: "There can really be no appropriate relief pitcher for the President of the United States."

How long the season will last is problematical. With a Memorial Day weekend strike deadline drawing near, the owners and players are still locked in a nasty dispute over free-agent compensation. The issue, deferred in an eleventh-hour compromise that prevented a strike last season, seems no closer to settlement than it was a year ago. Under the old agreement, a veteran can play out his option and sell his services on the open market; in compensation for loss of his services, his former team was awarded an amateur draft choice from his new club. The owners want to be able to pick a man from the raiding team's major league roster. In the players' view, such an arrangement would stifle the free-agent market that has made millionaires of home-run hitters and fastball pitchers.

Such concerns were far from the minds of fans last week, for spring and baseball mean but one thing: hope. Hopes were highest, the dreams most poignant in the cities that finished second in 1980. There, stirring pennant races had ended in disappointment and the inevitable promise to wait 'til next year. A look at the bridesmaid teams and their prospects:

Montreal Expos, National League East. In 1979, Montreal finished two games behind the Pittsburgh Pirates, eventual World Series winners over the Baltimore Orioles; last year they lost the title to the World Champion Phillies on the next-to-last day of the season. Over that two-year span, the Expos won more games than any other team in the National League. Now, on the third try, Montreal is ready to challenge again, this time with that most coveted baseball contradiction: a team of young veterans. Only Ace Pitcher Steve Rogers remains from the 1973 roster, and most of the team (average age 27) has undergone its trial by fire in the big leagues, not down on the farm. Says First Baseman Warren Cromartie, the blithe spirit who plays team cheerleader: "Logic tells us that this is supposed to be our year. We've been maturing, just like a wine."

No one can dispute the quality of the grapes. The lineup contains 1977 Rookie-of-the-Year Centerfielder Andre Dawson, 26, two Rookie Pitchers-of-the-Year (Rogers, 31, and Bill Gullickson, 22) and another star in the making, Leftfielder Tim Raines, 21. The team, painstakingly assembled through the farm system and presided over by Manager Dick Williams, a gruff but gifted fundamentalist, has produced a new top-flight player each year since the mid-'70s. Now there are enough in the lineup to perhaps tip the balance in a highly competitive division.

Los Angeles Dodgers, National League West. Tied with the Houston Astros at the end of the 162-game regular season, Los Angeles lost the title in a one-game playoff, then went home to lick its wounds--literally. "Our clubhouse looked like a hospital ward at the end of the season," recalls First Baseman Steve Garvey. "On that final day against Houston, there were only two players in the lineup who had started on opening day."

All-Star Rightfielder Reggie Smith is recovering slowly from shoulder surgery, but the rest of the Dodgers M*A*S*H unit mended over the winter. The core of the team remains from the pennant-winning clubs of 1977 and 1978, and despite a splendid performance by reserve players in 1980, Los Angeles needs its regulars to win in the West.

The lineup has one big gap: Pitcher Don Sutton, the alltime Dodger leader in victories (230, against 175 losses), joined Houston as a free agent during the offseason. Says Garvey: "You hope that the whole staff can combine to take up the slack. And we have some good young pitchers coming along."

Indeed, the Dodgers may have the best young pitcher in baseball in Fernando Valenzuela, 20. He had already mastered the arcane art of throwing a screwball when the Dodgers called him up from the Mexican League to prop up a bullpen crumbling under injuries. Valenzuela pitched ten times, often with the game on the line, and did not give up a single earned run in 17.2 innings. Now a starter, he shut out the Astros on opening day last week, allowing them only five hits.

Baltimore Orioles, American League East. During the 1980 season, only two teams in all of baseball won 100 or more games. Unfortunately, both were in the same division. The New York Yankees won the AL East with 103 victories; with 100 wins, the second-best record in the majors, the Baltimore Orioles were merely also-rans.

While the Yankees dominated the off-season with their ballyhooed signing of free-agent Outfielder Dave Winfield, the Orioles were quietly acquiring less expensive but perhaps equally valuable utility players. Manager Earl Weaver, the man of a million statistics and even more stratagems, gleefully analyzed his new acquisitions: "First we got Jim Dwyer, who can both pinch hit and shore up our late-inning outfield defense. He can play first base too, so that gives us options in the infield as well. Then there's Jose Morales, who batted .303 as a designated hitter with Minnesota last year. He can DH and pinch hit, and he's a catcher to boot, which gives us the luxury of carrying three catchers. Now, if everybody else stays healthy, we've got our three extra games. It's simple."

Considering Baltimore's pitching staff, Weaver's math may be accurate. Last year Steve Stone captured the Cy Young Award with 25 wins and just seven losses, the best record in the big leagues. In the past eight seasons, Baltimore pitchers have won the award five tunes: Mike Flanagan in 1979, Jim Palmer three other years.

The Orioles have big bats as well. Rightfielder Ken Singleton led both leagues in game-winning RBls last season, while pounding 24 home runs and hitting .304. First Baseman Eddie Murray, who hit .300, has emerged as one of baseball's best switch-hitters, with 111 home runs in merely four seasons. The only question mark is Third Baseman Doug DeCinces, who is recovering from a back injury. Says Weaver: "If Doug can hit his usual 15 to 20 home runs, then you can add another three games. Let's see. . . that gives us 106, doesn't it?"

Oakland Athletics, American League West. They call it Billyball in Oakland, after the prodigal son come home, Manager Billy Martin. Billyball requires brains, guts and hustle: using the hit and run, stealing home, putting on the double steal and breaking up the double play. It is the kind of baseball that can turn players of modest talent into winners.

Ask Billy Martin. A journeyman infielder who grew up tough on the streets of Oakland, he parlayed his limited skills and limitless daring into a solid major league career. Ask the Oakland A's. They finished in last place in 1979, 34 games behind California in the AL West. Playing Billyball, they finished second last year, though 14 games behind the league champion Kansas City Royals. Says Pitching Ace Mike Norris, who won Oakland's 1981 opener with a six-hitter: "Billy gave us the confidence that in past years we didn't have."

There is a new owner around to take care of the players as well. Walter J. Haas from Levi Strauss & Co. bought the club for $12.7 million from the mercurial Charles O. Finley last summer. Already he has infused money into the moribund farm system, hired scouts and set about rebuilding the flimsy organization left behind by Finley. Martin is thriving in his role as paterfamilias to his young players: "These kids can be molded. It's a lot easier than taking a person set in his ways. I've had both, and I've won with both. But these kids want to listen."

The A's outfield, with Leftfielder Rickey Henderson (a .303 hitter in 1980), Centerfielder Dwayne Murphy and Rightfielder Tony Armas, is considered the finest young group in the game. Oakland's youthful pitchers led the majors in complete games last year, and Norris (22 wins and nine losses) was runner-up in the Cy Young balloting. If the inventor of Billyball seems outwardly mellow, he has lost none of his fiery will to win. Says Martin: "Everybody tells you, 'Be a good loser.' If that's the case, why do they keep score?" --By B.J. Phillips

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