Joy Is Back in Budville

By Tom Callahan

A middle-of-the-country jamboree that was unclassic but fun

No New York, no Los Angeles. This year the World Series came around to St. Louis and Milwaukee, interchangeably dreary, cold and beery cities in the Central time zone, not without style, just without cynicism. At games in St. Louis, August A. Busch Jr., the octogenarian brewer who owns the Cardinals, was delivered to his box seat each day aboard a beer wagon pulled by eight clomping Clydesdales. Able to be thrilled by a buckboard, the people of St. Louis were also not too sophisticated to sing Hello, Redbirds, Well Hello, Redbirds along with Carol Channing or clap in rhythm every time the organist struck up the Budweiser jingle, incessantly.

Brewer Centerfielder Gorman Thomas set a similarly down-home tone for Milwaukee when he solemnly called the World Series "the Grand Ole Opry of baseball," a middle-of-the-country jamboree. It started out as a tale of two catchers. Ted Simmons, whom Cardinal Manager Whitey Herzog had bravely traded to Milwaukee in 1980, homered in each of the first two games that the teams split in St. Louis. Darrell Porter, Herzog's former catcher at Kansas City whom he had signed to a fiveyear, $3.5 million contract as a free agent, had the decisive hit in Game 2, a home run in Game 6 and a single of some importance in Game 7. "Every time I got another hit," Porter noticed as he went along, "a few more folks quit booing." Eight for 28, Porter batted .286 in the series, and when the Cardinals won, four games to three, he was declared Most Valuable Player.

At the end there was small doubt that St. Louis was the better team, not because its speed was more important than Milwaukee's power, but because pitching is always most important of all. Critically, the splendid St. Louis reliever, Bruce Sutter, was sound, and his

Milwaukee equivalent, Rollie Fingers, was not. But which of these teams was more appealing is a tougher call. There has often been more glory in a World Series, but seldom so little guile. Both teams seemed to enjoy themselves hugely and, except for the quiet man, Cardinal Rightfielder George Hendrick, said so. The series was unclassic but fun, distinguished for more than a bunch of infield hits and a 2-hr. 15-min. rain delay.

Said Keith Hernandez, the St. Louis first baseman, as he came off the field after that interminable sixth game: "I'll tell you how long the game was. I was 28 when it started, and I'm 29 now." It was after midnight, his birthday. When Hernandez opened the series batting 0 for 15, it put people in mind of another forceful first baseman, the late Gil Hodges, who went 0 for 21 for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1952 series. But Hernandez stoically declared, "You have to have a strong mind to play baseball." He got seven hits in the last three games.

Seeing the final game through child's eyes, the Cardinals' somersaulting shortstop, Ozzie Smith, said happily, "As a kid, you know how your pressure dream is always the seventh game of the World Series? The bases are loaded, two out, here's the pitch..." Maybe creaking a little from new age, Hernandez picked up Smith's thought and went on less cheerfully: "As a kid, that's right. But then you mature and start thinking like a man, and boyish dreams go away. Big-league ballplayers are mostly men, normal men with insecurities, doubts and weaknesses, not the gods you thought "they were. The last two years, I didn't even watch the World Series."

The seventh game of the World Series, the bases loaded, one out, here's the pitch . . . Keith Hernandez knocked in two sixth-inning runs (one in the person of Ozzie Smith) to tie 3-3, and Hendrick followed eloquently with the winning hit. After the 6-3 victory, fans engulfed the players, security guards and dogs. Inside, the winners all hopped about joyously and splashed in the champagne like children. But Hernandez's point about adult frailties was not completely gone. Porter's "champagne" was grape juice. "I'm still coming back," Porter said, from the alcohol and drug dependency that hospitalized him two years ago. "I'm on the right track."

After a time, the Brewers began to drift, as the hardest and softest losers invariably do, to the other clubhouse to commend the winners. "Step aside men," one of the Cardinal coaches said. "Here comes Mr. Kuenn." Six weeks after the Milwaukee manager had a prosthesis fitted for his right leg, amputated below the knee because of a circulation crisis in 1980, he was already on a golf course, playing, and he is eager to be there again. "After these last three weeks," Kuenn said, "you can scream while I'm putting and I won't mind a bit. It's going to take a while to get used to quiet again. This has been one of the greatest thrills of my life. I told my players that, as far as I'm concerned, they're world champions."

The Hall of Fame curator collected the black bat that Brewer Third Baseman Paul Molitor used to lash a record five hits in Game 1. Milwaukee's marvelous Shortstop Robin Yount, the only player in the 79-year history of the World Series ever to have two four-hit games, was glad to chip in. He does not save things. When a Milwaukee fan caught his home run in Game 5 and tried to give the baseball back, Yount told him, "Why don't you keep it? I'll sign it for you." As the man floated away, Yount murmured: "He'll get more of a thrill out of it than I will."

Someone suggested to Gorman Thomas that he might offer the Hall his glove, the one that caught the sacrifice fly that scored tagging runners from both third and second bases in Game 4. Thomas started to scowl but burst out grinning. In fact there was almost no ugliness to this show at all, except for a profane few minutes in the final game when hefty Home Plate Umpire Lee Weyer had to dance the Cardinals' sore-shinned pitcher Joaquin Andujar away from Brewer Second Baseman Jim Gantner, who had said something about a hot dog. During the playoffs, the Cardinals' rookie centerfielder, Willie McGee, was slurred on television as resembling the movie creature E.T. But McGee, who hit two home runs in one World Series game, had his revenge, and his say:

"I would appreciate it if people would call me by my name," said Willie, a sweet vague man and a beautiful athlete. "Nobody should be able to change your name. That's almost like changing your life." Had his been changed so much by the World Series? "I'm still feeling like a ballplayer and a human being, but all this," he said, motioning toward the throng by his locker, "day in and day out, it could kill you." And so, for now, he was pleased it was over. --By Tom Callahan

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.