It’s Not the Same When Game Is Tame

PHILADELPHIA —  Well, it figured. It was the day after the dance. The morning after Mardi Gras. Time to clean up the mess from the night before. Everybody acted pooped. Turn off the music. Take down the streamers. Everybody’s head hurt. Stomach was sore.

It was as proper as a cotillion. John McGraw baseball. Bunts, hit-and-run, pitchouts.

B-o-o-r-i-n-g!

It was Republican to the core. Conservative as Calvin Coolidge. Three up, three down. Hangover baseball.

The excesses of the night before, the wildest game in World Series history, had worn them out. They were on their best behavior, going through the motions, sleepwalking. None of the wild antics of the previous evening, no lampshades on the head, no dancing on tables.

It was a shutout, for cryin’ out loud! Two to bloody nothing.

What do you write about that sucker? They went from 29 runs to 2 in 24 hours.

The fat bellies beat the flat bellies. The guys who drink up beat the guys who work out. Another setback for clean living.

They went from a he’s-up-he’s-down slugfest to a clinch. The Philadelphias jabbed them to death.

Don’t bet the Phillies won’t win it all now. You got to like fighters who get off the floor. Philadelphia looks a little like Rocky to me. Nose broken, eyes bleeding, legs wobbly after Wednesday night, but he’s out there looking to land the haymaker. Coming out fighting.

As someone said to Philadelphia Manager Jim Fregosi after the game, “A game of baseball broke out tonight.”

Maybe so. But the annals of World Series are full of 2-0 games. There’s only one 15-14 game. Wednesday’s game was like two wildcats locked in a phone booth. Thursday’s was more like bridge at the country club.

Baseball is not a momentum game. But blowing a 12-7 lead and a 14-9 lead with one out in the eighth inning has to have anyone trying to look over both shoulders at once and flinching at shadows.

Not the Phillies. A team that had just found out 14 runs were not enough, they were called upon to make do with two. They were like a guy trying to win with two treys after losing the rent with a straight flush.

To give you an idea of the turnaround, Toronto had to go from 15 runs, 18 hits, five doubles and a triple to no runs, five hits, all singles and as meek a procession to the plate as a congress of praying mantises.

It allayed fears (or hopes!) that this Series was going to deteriorate into baseball’s version of World War III and break every seat and every heart in Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium.

But order was restored.

Chief credit should go to an unflappable pitcher named Curt Schilling, who had given up seven runs and eight hits in Game 1 and righted the ship anyway, but a big share of it goes to the man who in many ways is, if not the heart and soul of the Phillies, at least their conscience.

The Phillies are a ribald bunch who look like a whole bunch of Butch Cassidys and Sundance Kids. But they are actually a disciplined bunch on the field, and much of that is due to the catcher.

Darren (Dutch) Daulton is the steadying influence on this pack of coyotes. He’s clean-shaven, his hair is only moderately long, he wears a vest and carries a briefcase on the road and he anchors the Phillies. When Dalton speaks, the team listens.

This is a team that has pitchers nicknamed Wild Thing and some outfielders who should be.

Daulton is not exactly a preacher running a wild animal act, but he is a professorial presence in the locker room. Lenny Dykstra is as untamed as a lobo wolf, but it is interesting Daulton was in the passenger seat and injured when Dykstra crashed his car in a Philadelphia suburb one rainy night. Kruk marches to his own drummer, but sometimes Daulton seems to the one beating it.

He is as important to the Phillies as their tobacco chaws. He also anchors the lineup.

All baseball asks of most catchers is that they keep the pitchers out of triple A and stop the curves in the dirt and call a good game and know every batter in the league’s weakness. They can hit .227 if they do all that.

He’s not Gabby Hartnett, maybe, but Daulton is as dangerous with a bat in his hands as he is with the baseball daring a runner to steal second.

He has batted in 214 runs in the last two seasons. He not only leads the Phillies in that category annually, he led the whole league in 1992. He has hit 51 home runs in two years, led the Phillies in 1992 and tied teammate Pete Incaviglia (with 24) this year.

It was his home run that capped a big five-run explosion which put the Phillies ahead, 12-7, in Wednesday’s wild game.

And, in the 2-0 game Thursday night, Daulton led off the second inning with a massive double to left center that missed by a foot being a home run. He scored on Kevin Stocker’s double to put the Phillies ahead, 2-0, an important edge that changed strategy for the enemy Blue Jays the rest of the game. They hit into double plays because they could never resort to moving a runner into scoring position--which they might have done if they had a 1-0 game to contend with.

It is typical of the contributions of Daulton. Important, too, are the inning-by-inning visits you will see him make to the mound to steady and inform his hurlers. Pitching is a partnership with Daulton in the mask and mitt.

The Phillies are a swashbuckling lot. They may be the only club in baseball that could survive that devastating loss of a five-run lead and a 14-run score. Daulton sometimes acts like the pastor of a mobster parish. He could even see the humor in the Game 4 debacle. When someone wanted to know what words he had for his pitcher, Schilling, before Thursday night’s game, Daulton’s answer was: “I just told him to keep ‘em under 14 runs.” Schilling--and Daulton--kept them 14 under.