Carved Down to A Play-Off

By Tom Callahan

What with corked bats and cut balls, and even a minor league potato thrown into one game, baseball has been caught up in equipment this year. But when everything was finally sanded off and boiled away, after the New York Mets were ground into powder and Reggie Jackson evaporated entirely, the Minnesota Twins, the San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals awaited either Toronto or Detroit and this week's play-offs.

In similar division races, they all faced a singular moment of truth, when the Twins, Giants, Cardinals and Tigers looked the A's, Reds, Mets and Blue Jays square in the eyes. The Twins' and Giants' courses were set with August sweeps, while the Cardinals' and Tigers' seasons turned on a last out in New York and teetered on a final weekend in Detroit. Impeccable Tiger Pitcher Doyle Alexander (9-0) made sure the race would at least go the natural limit, if not to a 163rd game, while the Twins stood by.

Gary Gaetti, Minnesota's powerful third baseman, imagines there will be five characters in these play-offs, counting the Homerdome. "The dome is home, man," he says slyly. "We use it." As discombobulating to strangers as Fenway's great Wall, the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome has seen 56 Twins victories this championship season, their first in 17 years. "There are tricky little things about it," reports Gaetti, one of three Twins with 30 homers (and Outfielder Kirby Puckett has 28). "Balls bounce funny in certain spots. They get lost in the ceiling and die in the rightfield corner. For us, it's almost worth a run or two a game."

On the flip side of novelty, the St. Louis Cardinals of Musial, Medwick, Marion and Martin, of Gibson and Brock, lately of Whitey Herzog and Ozzie Smith, are back in the play-offs for the second time in three years and the third in six. The Mets may do most of the talking (and publishing), but the Cardinals clearly do most of the winning, and outdrew New York to boot, 3 million plus a little to 3 million plus less. "If we win, just say we win, that's all we ask," says Smith, who remains galled by last year's champions, particularly his old teammate Keith Hernandez. "He did his drugs here, but he apologized to New York. To me, that was backward. I think that's the problem with the Mets. They're a little backward."

Like the Giants, the Cardinals fought off injuries all season, curing their pitching rotation just in time to parry a secondary assault from Montreal. First Baseman Jack Clark, the only St. Louis slugger, has missed 24 games with a sprained ankle, and is a doubtful participant this week. An old discard, Danny Driessen, 36, has been cracking doubles in his place. Devoured by a man- eating tarpaulin in 1985, whirlwind Leftfielder Vince Coleman resolves to stay clear of the machinery this year. "I don't go anywhere anymore," he shudders, "without my tarp detector."

Champions again after 15 bleak Octobers, the Giants felt safe in Los Angeles last week until they were all thrown out of bed by the earthquake. "Oh jeez, this is it," Infielder Chris Speier thought, lifting himself off the floor. "The Reds are going to make the play-offs after all." Taking to the street barefoot, huddling away from the hotel in their underwear, the San Francisco players contemplated the fates. In August, after four straight games lost in the opponent's last at-bat, the Giants were five behind Cincinnati and facing a four-game Reds series and maybe the end. But Pitcher Mike LaCoss, a Reds reject, shut Cincinnati down in the first game, and Atlee Hammaker, Mike Krukow and Kelly Downs followed suit. Adding the old sinker baller Rick Reuschel for seasoning, the Giants pulled away.

A rookie on that starry '71 team of Bobby Bonds and the Willies, McCovey and Mays, Speier has been a utility player on this new Giant club that seems to feature them. He and Candy Maldonado's outfield understudy, Mike Aldrete, have been particularly handy. "Sometimes," says Speier, 37, "I think I take more pride in this job than I did playing every day. Roger Craig has penciled in over 120 different lineups this year. One thing's for sure, we certainly feel like a team."

Craig, 57, has had a lively life in baseball since leaving a North Carolina farm for Brooklyn in 1955 to pitch in the first big league game he ever saw. He was a 20-game loser (twice) for Casey Stengel's fledgling Mets. Recently he coached Sparky Anderson's pitchers to a World Series championship in Detroit and revolutionized that staff and others with his proliferating invention, the split-finger fastball. Late in a summer of 100 losses, the Giants summoned Craig from retirement in 1985. "I've known many kinds of fun," he remembered last week, "but nothing like this." When the earth moved, Craig instinctively reached for his Tiger ring. "They're not so easy to come by," he said. As his friend Anderson told him some weeks ago, "You guys are a cinch, but pray for us." Sparky must have known something. ,