The Right Situation for Rookie Clements

A dozen or so reporters squeezed their way into Gene Mauch’s office, ready to fire away with a few questions, but the Angel manager beat them to the punch.

“Don’t you know where Clements is?” Mauch asked, surveying the throng.

Mauch owns no degree in journalism, but he knows a good story when he sees one. And rookie Pat Clements, the winning pitcher in the Angels’ 10-4 victory over the Baltimore Orioles Sunday, certainly qualified as one.

At any rate, he was definitely better-suited to discuss the afternoon’s proceedings than Mauch, who lasted all of four batters before getting ejected while arguing with home plate umpire Tim Welke.

Clements saw a bit more of the game--up close and personal, too. Turning in the longest stint of his spanking-new major league career, Clements threw 6 innings of two-hit relief, buying the Angel offense enough time to rally from a 4-0 deficit.

In these days of specialization in baseball, all pitchers now come with special designation attached. Long Reliever. Short Reliever. Spot Starter. Mop-Up Man.

Clements, in the modern parlance, is known as the Angels’ “Situation Guy,” meaning that he’s versatile--capable of pitching in any situation that can possibly surface in a game.

And for the Angels, the situation was fairly bleak when Clements was summoned from the bullpen with one out in the Orioles’ half of the third inning.

Starter Kirk McCaskill was still reeling from a rock ‘n’ roll first inning, his pitches getting slammed and pogoed all over Anaheim Stadium. Eddie Murray and Larry Sheets both homered in a four-run first and when McCaskill got the third inning off to shaky start--walking Murray and surrendering a one-out single to Sheets--Clements’ time was at hand.

The Orioles tried to immediately unsettle the rookie, pinch-hitting Fritz Connally for Wayne Gross. But Clements got Connally to fly out to left and Lenn Sakata to fly to right, and the Baltimore threat was over.

Clements also got the next seven Orioles in succession before Connally singled in the sixth inning. An out later, he gave up another single to Rick Dempsey--and then proceeded to retire 9 of the last 11 batters he faced.

Here is what Big Bad Baltimore, the major league leader in home runs, managed against the 23-year-old Clements, a veteran of 20 big league innings before Sunday:

Two singles. One base on balls. One error.

Only one Oriole advanced as far at second base.

“Clements was superb,” Mauch said. “You have no right to expect him to shut out that team for that long. But that’s the second time he’s done that against a good-hitting club.”

The first was a six-inning performance on April 29 against Boston. There, he shut down Tony Armas, Jim Rice, Dwight Evans, Wade Boggs, Bill Buckner and Mike Easler long enough to earn a 7-6 triumph.

Clements is 3-0, two of his victories coming against two of the most formidable lineups in the game.

Next, they’ll be coming up with a nickname for the kid--maybe something like Giant Killer.

“I don’t know if there’s anything to all that,” said Clements, smiling bashfully. “Right now, all these teams are the same to me. I get excited every game I get into.”

Clements may not be pitching like a rookie with barely two years experience in professional baseball, only months removed from Double-A. But he talks like one.

First of all, he’s humble.

“This game was similar to Boston, in that we also got a lot of runs in that game,” he said. “I just tried to throw as hard as I could for as long as I could. I was fortunate we were able to hit a lot of balls hard.”

Second, he’s mindful of his elders.

“I haven’t seen any of the hitters before,” he said, “so I just stick to what Boonie (catcher Bob Boone) tells me. He called a majority of fastballs, only a few breaking balls. I did what he said. He’s been around for a long time.”

And, thirdly, he’s eager to please.

“I think their (the Angels’) plan for me, the rest of my life, is to be a reliever,” he said. “It makes no difference to me. They can use me wherever--long, short, anything’s fine. I’m just happy to be here.”

That seems to be the overriding motivation for Clements: Being here . . . and staying here.

“When you’re a rookie,” he said, “you always realize that you may not be up here all year. You just want to do enough to give them confidence that you can do the job.”

For Pat Clements in 1985, so far, so good. With more outings like Sunday’s, he could stick around here for quite a while.