In Arlington, Texas, where the Yankees needed only to win a game finally to pass the faltering Toronto Blue Jays, a sawed-off swing from the Rangers’ Julio Franco not only sent the shaft of his bat sailing near the head of the Yankees’ owner George Steinbrenner (seated behind his team’s dugout) but sent the ball sailing into center field near the Yankees’ Bernie Williams. Uh oh, double trouble. Both the bat and the ball missed the New Yorkers, Texas scored two runs and the Yankees lost another chance to gain first place alone in September for the first time in 13 years.
In Atlanta the Braves, chasing the San Francisco Giants, watched, only a trifle more bemused than the rest of the world, when Ron Gant smashed a finer directly off Giants pitcher Dave Burba’s-uh, how should we put this-butt?-to score Otis Nixon with the winning run. The come-from-behind victory not only gave the Braves their fifth victory over the once-10-games-ahead Giants in the teams’ last six games, but confirmed what San Francisco’s Barry Bonds said several hours earlier: “What this seems like is that we’re chasing them.”
With apologies to Abbott–not Jim, the Yankees’ onehanded pitcher who fired a no-hitter against Cleveland on Sept. 4, but Bud, the straight man who used to get lines fired at him by Lou Costello–Who’s In First? Well, at the end of last week the Braves and Giants were still trying to figure out who was catching whom in the NL West. Meanwhile, the Yankees and the Baltimore Orioles were in a near dead heat for the top spot in the AL East with none other than the defending world champion Blow Jays…pardon, Blue Jays, who had bluewn…pardon, blown, a three-garne margin while letting such pretenders as the Boston Red Sox and Detroit Tigers in the race as well.
We’d better enjoy all of this because–with the empty suits who run baseball having decreed that next year each league will split into three divisions, and even secondplace teams can make the playoffs as “wild cards”-baseball is marching perilously close in lock step with, ugh, hockey. Making these–inevitably, sort of–history’s Last Pennant Races.
If they are, isn’t it ironic that the Yankees, the hated yesteryear bullies of Ruth, DiMaggio, Reggie and Boss Steinbrenner, have been turned into sentimental underdogs? A one-handed pitcher. A bunch of no-names. One wonderful name, rookie Domingo Jean, who says things like “Pressure? Baseball is my dream!” And a more kind and gentle George. In fact, the Yanks have escaped their usual throne in Turmoil Hell most probably because Steinbrenner has kept his profile low and his yap shut. After Williams absolutely muffed that broken-bat liner in Texas, Steinbrenner consoled him in the clubhouse instead of shipping him out to Alaska.
Alas, give the edge in this race to the Orioles, who will play their final 10 games against the Tigers, Yanks and Jays in their Rockwellian postcard of a ballpark hard by Camden Yards. That’s if Baltimore’s Ironshortstop Cal Ripken-baseball’s answer to the Energizer Bunny–doesn’t miss a game for the first time this century and the Yards fall into Chesapeake Bay.
In the National League, the Braves play their last six at home against Houston and the pitiful Colorado, teams against whom they have won 17 of 20 games. The Giants close with four games against the despised Dodgers (who have beaten ‘Frisco six of nine) in Los Angeles. With Steve Avery, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz and Greg Maddux (“He’s so good it’s sickening,” says San Diego Padre outfielder Phil Plantier), Atlanta has one of the best pitching staffs ever assembled. Asked to discuss his own next day’s pitching plans recently, Giants manager Dusty Baker shrugged, “Tomorrow’s a long way away.”
But true baseball believers surely beg to differ; the ‘morrow of these long, lost and Last Pennant Races will come way too soon.
