HoJo’s Corking Season Is Driving Some Rivals Batty

Howard Johnson is a sweet kid with a funny name whose success is a sight for sore eyes. It is just great to see HoJo ripping homers for the New York Mets. Let’s just hope he gets through the season without getting thrown out of the league.

They say Howard Johnson is using an illegal bat.

Who says?

Whitey Herzog says, for one. “He’s using a corked bat, and we proved it,” the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals said recently, despite evidence to the contrary. He insists that Johnson is carrying a weapon with something concealed in it.

The first thought is: Apparently, Johnson’s success is also a sight for sore heads. No Cardinal ever did say nice things about a Met, and vice versa. Yet, Herzog is not that unreasonable a man, and is smart enough not to accuse somebody of something so dastardly were he not convinced of some sort of monkey business.

HoJo just laughs, and then stops laughing and says: “You know, this was funny at first, but I’m getting fed up with it. I don’t cheat. I don’t need to cheat. I’ve been a hitter my whole life. Let them talk. I’ve stopped listening.”

They are talking, all right. A St. Louis coach anonymously supported his manager by relating how the Cardinals smuggled one of Johnson’s bats from the New York clubhouse in July and had it X-rayed. There was something inside the bat all right, the X-ray showed, something about five inches long. Cork, perhaps?

We will never know, because the curious but stupid Cardinals did not slice the bat open. Or, if they did, the surgery must have revealed nothing, because they were silent about it. Instead, what they did was have one of Johnson’s bats confiscated by an umpire the next night, so the National League office could be certain whose property Exhibit A was.

Well, they lit into that bat the way Casper Gutman scraped into the Maltese Falcon. Do you know what they found in Howard Johnson’s bat? Wood. Lots and lots of wood. The stuff dreams are made of.

In HoJo’s case, the dream has become this: The Mets’ 26-year-old third baseman, known mostly throughout his major league career for being able to juggle ground balls like W.C. Fields, is closing in on the National League’s long-standing record for home runs in one season by a switch-hitter, which was 35 by Rip Collins in 1934. And, Johnson already has broken the Mets’ club record for homers by a third baseman.

“I’m not doing it with mirrors,” he said.

No, nor with cork, he swears. And we want to believe him. We watched him come up through the Detroit organization, heard about his prowess with a bat, registered his homer counts of 22 at Birmingham in 1981 and 23 at Evansville in 1982, then met him when he and outfielder Glenn Wilson joined the club as rookies with advance billing as sort of the Jim Rice and Fred Lynn of Motown.

HoJo was always a hitter. From the time he filled scrapbooks with his Little League feats in Clearwater, Fla., to his days at St. Petersburg Junior College, he had always packed a wallop. When he joined the Tigers, he made it clear periodically that he could clear the left-field screen or dent the right-field porch at a moment’s notice. Nobody ever accused him of not being a hitter.

However, nobody ever accused him of being a third baseman. He had a glove like a garbage-can lid. Balls clanked off it. And, as often happens in baseball, the guy’s fielding problems affected his batting. Before long, Sparky Anderson, the manager, became convinced that not only did HoJo’s defense give him a migraine, but that the kid could not perform under pressure.

So, when the 1984 Tigers came down the home stretch, and went into the playoffs and World Series, Johnson took a seat in the dugout and stayed there. One thing you should know about Sparky Anderson: When you get into his doghouse, you might as well install an air conditioner because you are going to stay there forever.

The Tigers went with Marty Castillo at third base during the World Series. Castillo was the club’s utility man and clubhouse cutup whose career never had it so good, before or since. Two months later, the Tigers traded Johnson to the Mets, who had been looking for a third baseman for as long as HoJo had been alive.

The Mets, too, found that he couldn’t field, so they went with Ray Knight. And Knight, just as Castillo was, was a World Series hero. And Johnson was forgotten. Except, Knight took a powder, parting ways with the team and joining Baltimore instead. “Nice break for me,” HoJo said.

He got a chance, this 81st third baseman in Met history, and didn’t waste it. Finally feeling the comfort of being in the lineup every day, even if he did have to fill in at shortstop a few times, Johnson started lacing the ball to all fields. Sparky had scarcely let him look at a pitch right-handed; he already has 13 homers that way this season.

What’s the secret formula? Maybe it’s the two gallons of iced tea Johnson drinks in the dugout during every game, his own strength-giving substitute for spinach.

“Or maybe that it’s just having somebody finally believe in me,” he said. “I know I’ll never be Ozzie Smith in the field, but if a team gives me a chance, I’ll hit homers for them, my average won’t be too bad, I’ll steal 30 bases, and I absolutely guarantee that my error total will go down with every year I play. I am a lot better fielder than the numbers indicate, believe me.”

He doesn’t have to convince this party. We have seen Howard Johnson on days when he makes some great stops, makes some rocket throws to first base, plays a fine third base. Believe him? We do.

Others don’t. The Cardinals swear there’s something wrong with that stick. And Herzog was so insistent about it, Montreal Manager Buck Rodgers said, that he must have had a reason. Lots of guys have used corked bats, you know, Rodgers said. Lots of ‘em.

But twice now, Johnson’s bats have been checked, and twice nothing has been found. “How much more proof do people need?” he asked.

Forget it, HoJo.

Tell ‘em to get corked.