Classic Falls and Fall Classics

By Tom Callahan

As the games dwindle down to a precious few, the baseball season already seems to have touched most of its lyrical bases. In last week's play-offs, catcher Gary Carter of the Mets actually referred to the Dodgers' Orel Hershiser "twirling a gem." Los Angeles manager Tommy Lasorda has been crooning about "the fall classic." Gonfalons have been copped, the World Series is afoot, and aging veterans and hopeful rookies are in full confluence.

To Los Angeles this year, the old catcher Rick Dempsey brought lessons and morals from two consecutive basement jobs at Baltimore and Cleveland. With a double here and there, in the dugout, anywhere, Dempsey has been a triumph. "My child, my baby," he says of the rookie pitcher Tim Belcher (his particular protege), the famous player-to-be-named-later from so many months ago, when Oakland took reliever Rick Honeycutt in the fabled trade that benefited both sides. The Dodgers and A's appear to have fundamentally rebuilt from each other: seven men have served both.

On the subject of tidy journeys, Oakland is the third straight team after Boston and Minnesota that Don Baylor has accompanied to nirvana. "It took me 15 years to get to the first Series," says America's designated hitter. "Now I wouldn't know what else to do in October." Still, he admits to feeling just a twinge of sorrow. "Especially in a championship year, you get close to the guys on your club. It's tough to move on." Not as tough as moving out, of course. And it helps to leave behind a little bit of yourself in a few of the younger players.

Carter and Keith Hernandez saw their old selves this season, or at least the last month of it, in the Met apprentice Gregg Jefferies. "He reminds me of me when I was young," sighs first baseman Hernandez, 34. "If he goes one game without a hit, he wants to stick his head in the oven." Scampering up from the minors during the last days of August, wide-eyed, 21 and charitably listed at 5 ft. 10 in., Jefferies showed the team that thought it had everything what had been missing for a while: boyishness and wonder. As Steve Sax, the Dodger second baseman, said after the Mets dissolved, "Hey, don't ever forget to have fun."

The play-off snapshots are of Hernandez swimming to third base and drowning a foot from shore, of Los Angeles outfielder Kirk Gibson limping out the grand home runs on a frayed leg injected with cortisone (in the spirit of the times, a steroid; "It's amazing what drugs can do," he said), or of National League president A. Bartlett Giamatti sniffing Dodger relief pitcher Jay Howell's glove for pine tar or caramel ("I felt there could be some amelioration by me," said Giamatti, sounding like Casey Stengel). But the memory is of Jefferies botching a bunt, booting a double play, running into a ball on the base paths, hitting .333 and looking like he wanted to stick his head in the oven.

Usually, the Series sparks a rhubarb about the best team in baseball, but this year only the A's have designs on history. The Dodgers have been very forthright about that. "We definitely are not a dominant team," Hershiser says. "The Mets have a better team," says rightfielder Mike Marshall. "There's no doubt in my mind," Lasorda says, "that we beat the best team in the National League."

Defining Oakland as the team that beat the Red Sox would be a trifle meager. After a 104-wins season, the A's squashed Boston in four straight and spun even Wade Boggs when they felt like it. It would please them to be likened to those pitching-heavy A's teams that strung triple titles in the '70s, though they are commonly thought of, and occasionally even think of themselves, in terms of a single Bunyanesque figure in rightfield. After Oakland scored ten runs against the Red Sox in Game 3, first baseman Mark McGwire added for shuddering emphasis, "And Jose was 0 for 4."

Jose Canseco, 24, the 6-ft. 3-in., 230-lb. Cuban (who, Detroit wordsmith Sparky Anderson says, "is built like a Greek goddess") homered in all the other games and persisted in stealing bases too. His 40-40 distinction in those cross categories ought to combine with Hershiser's record 59 zeroes to make quite a noise. In these anabolic times, a Washington reporter with only the evidence of his eyes has been able to incite chants of "ster-oids, ster- oids" in the bleacher sections around Canseco. But Jose has the grace to grin and make a muscle. "The fans don't mean any harm," he shucks.

The expert on sticky situations, the Athletic-turned-Dodger Howell, says of his ex-teammates, "They're all pretty calm that way, studied, directed, prepared -- they're real prepared." His obvious reference is to Tony La Russa, 44, a thoughtful manager whose unusual breadth has never required him to let out his pants. Over eight seasons with the Chicago White Sox and three in Oakland, La Russa has grown increasingly sensitive to the nagging charge of being an attorney-at-law. Branch Rickey and Miller Huggins were good baseball men and members of the bar, but the A's skipper has had trouble finding comfortable acceptance among his tobacco-splattered peers. In his THE BALLET SCHOOL T shirt, under his NO CIGAR SMOKING PLEASE sign, La Russa sometimes yearns to be a little more like Lasorda, who sometimes yearns to be a little less like Lou Costello. One playing chess and the other checkers: it could be a surprising match.

On La Russa's side, routinely the last piece in the game is Dennis Eckersley (although there is a more onomatopoetic reliever named Plunk). Eckersley stands for both the dream of the fall classic and the reality of winter. After wandering 13 years as a starter, he settled into the Oakland bullpen and commenced saving what has seemed to be every game. When the World Series is over, though, another appearance awaits. He is due in Colorado to testify for an older brother facing trial for kidnaping and attempted murder. The case was postponed in part for the games.