Streaking Hard for the Top

By RICHARD CORLISS

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.

With reporting by Lee Griggs/Oakland