Dodger Players Try Hand at Off-Season Game

The Tommyknockers are speechless. Tom Lasorda is manager of the championship club of major league baseball. He held it together with glue, spit and tomato paste. He was the manager of the year, in a class by himself, even if the Sporting News did insist on giving Pittsburgh’s Jim Leyland half the honor. Nobody in 1988 did it better than the Dodger codger. Top of the world, Tom.

So, how long has he had to savor it? Eighteen days. That’s it. That’s how many days there have been since the night the Dodgers rubbed out the Oakland A’s, since the World Series in which they made dreck of Dennis Eck, ignored the ignoble sentiments of Don Baylor and somehow left Jose Canseco with fewer hits than Jose Feliciano.

The Dodgers had themselves a parade, whereupon dance-fevered Tommy the Tummy got up on the City Hall steps and did his imitation of Chubby Checker, looking down at hundreds of thousands of true-blue believers and invited them to twist again next summer. Lasorda did everything but promise back-to-back championships, Pat Riley style--which, as it turns out, was a wise omission on the manager’s part. Because the Dodgers, baseball’s new kings of diamonds, could be coming apart at the seams.

In the measly 2 1/2 weeks that have expired since The Mickey Hatchkateeer Club said goodby to all its friends, here are some things that have happened: Orel Hershiser has dropped hints, in suspect seriousness, that he might like to try a year in Japan when his current contract is up. Jesse Orosco has been relieved of further relieving duties, and sent packing. And now, two nice guys who finished first, leadoff man Steve Sax and cleanup hitter Mike Marshall, have filed for free agency, threatening to send themselves packing.

Do the Dodgers need Hershiser?

Yes.

Do the Dodgers need Orosco?

No.

Do the Dodgers need Sax?

Maybe.

Do the Dodgers need Marshall?

Maybe not.

What a shame, more than anything else, that the champs have had to step into this quicksand so quickly. They hardly had a chance to celebrate Halloween, and might or might not be thankful come Thanksgiving. Depends. Seems a dirty trick to have a World Series championship club, 18 days after the fact, find itself beginning a program of rebuilding.

When Lasorda went to spring training last seems-like-years-ago February, he felt fairly confident. He felt confident because he had Fernando Valenzuela, and he had a murderers’ row of sluggers he referred to as his “Awesome Fivesome,” and he had a ferocious free agent named Kirk Gibson who acted as though he would murder the first person who suggested that the Dodgers wouldn’t win the pennant.

Well, by the time the World Series rolled around, Lasorda did not have Valenzuela on his roster, he did not have Gibson on his lineup card, and his awesome fivesome was down to an almost gruesome twosome. All he had left was Marshall, who removed himself from a game--a tradition with him--with an injury, and John Shelby, who plays a mean center field and belts an occasional home run, but otherwise strikes out a lot. Gibson was on the bench hurt, Mike Davis was on the bench because he earned a seat there, and Pedro Guerrero was shedding all his old blue clothes and shopping for red.

We all know by now how the Dodgers won the World Series. They did it with grit. They did it with hustle and desire and spirit and a bunch of hand-me-down ballplayers who truly resented it whenever anybody was presumptuous enough to insinuate that they were hardly good enough to be in the championship game at Omaha, much less Oakland. With help from that old Bible-slinging, hymn-singing Hershiser, the Dodgers prevailed. And Southern California partied till it be morrow.

Then, this.

Desertion. Defection. Ingratitude. (On whose part, we leave it to you.) Gratitude was gone, loyalty an illusion. Teamwork was a word to be used only from February through October. From November through Super Bowl Sunday, business was business. Ballplayers were employees again, and not favorite sons of wealthy fathers. They were not to be spoiled. They were to expect and understand that just because the ballclub won a lot of games and drew a lot of customers, Dodger dollars did not grow on Chavez Ravine trees.

While Hershiser probably was just indulging a bit of whimsy, he also undoubtedly felt a responsibility to his family and his accountant to keep the Dodgers on the edge of their seats, anxious at the thought of his ever leaving them. As Orel himself often says, he may be a Christian, but that does not make him a wimp. The man plays hardball for a living, remember. He knows that the left arms of John Tudor, Valenzuela and Orosco are going, going, gone. He knows that the Tims, Belcher and Leary, are young and eccentric. Hershiser knows he is not only L.A.’s Most Valuable Player, but its Most Invaluable Player.

Orosco? He goes off to that special Bermuda Triangle of Southpaw Relievers, the one that swallowed Steve Howe, Carlos Diaz, Ed VandeBerg and Matt Young whole and left us with hardly a memory. Orosco made little impact in Los Angeles, and if the Dodgers need a lefty to face one or two left-handed batters next season, there’s always Ricky Horton.

Steve Sax is a special case, because he is still young, still successful, hits, runs, hustles to the point of overhustling, throws and fields better than he ever did before, and plays a position at which the Dodgers are not deep. Still, there are a lot of second basemen out there, and, as Gibson proved, free agents can be found as well as lost. The Dodgers owe Sax a solid offer, but not the store.

As for Mike Marshall, what should be done about this guy? He obviously thinks he has the Dodgers in a vice, what with Guerrero gone and Gibson chronically hurt. Yet, Marshall’s personal health chart looks like an auto racer’s. He is injured perpetually, yet demands a long-term contract. The Dodgers accommodated him by not trading him when Gibson and Davis arrived and by moving him back from first base to right field when they needed a first baseman more than they did another outfielder. He, though, thinks they’re short-changing him.

Maybe the Dodgers will have to make do without him. Without all of them. But Fred Claire has earned the right, for a couple of seasons anyway, to claim that he knows what he is doing. And Tom Lasorda, well, let’s just say that present developments will not make him too unhappy to eat. Lasorda will tell the world next spring that the Dodgers are in great shape, no matter how few of last season’s Dodgers are left. And you know what? We will have to agree with him, just in case he’s right.