Dodgers’ Guerrero, Usually the Hammer, Chisels Cardinals Away

Watching Pedro Guerrero steal bases must be much the same as hearing Pavarotti sing Be-Bop. You don’t doubt that he can do it, and do it well. Yet, you nevertheless marvel at his condescension to do it, at all.

But there he was Wednesday night, the Dodger Big Man doing the Dodger Little Things. Two not-so-majestic singles, two stolen bases (from a man who hasn’t gotten a steal sign since the All-Star break) and a run scored on a squeeze bunt when even he was thinking bombs away.

They were little things in baseball’s large scheme, but if one team does enough of them, that team wins. The Dodgers won the series opener with the Cardinals because of just those little things. They certainly didn’t do the big ones. There were two extra-base hits out of the Dodgers and one of those (this is another story) was a double to the shortstop--a Whizzer to Oz.

Well, nobody’s been shelling the Cardinals’ John Tudor this year; a lifetime .500 pitcher who apparently sold his soul to the devil, Tudor came into this game with a 21-8 record, stopper de la stopper. So it was that the Dodgers shelved their boom-ball attack and reverted to a kind of hepped-up miniature golf. The balls didn’t go far, just in all the holes there were.

So we come to Guerrero, Dodger Big Bat, the man with 33 home runs this season, as many as any Dodger to play in Los Angeles. It was his power drive in June, when he put the Dodgers on a homer-a-day diet, that has made this playoff series possible. Mightily muscled, with a swing that causes palms as distant as Duarte to sway, Guerrero is suddenly putting the ball under the windmill.

“A bloop single,” he said of his RBI hit off Tudor in the third. “But that will do it.”

Guerrero, who had driven in 87 runs this season, but most of them on longer balls than that, was hardly apologetic. “Tudor had good stuff, moved the ball around hitters,” he insisted. “I mean, he won 21 games.”

Anyway, Guerrero’s problems with the long ball, or lack thereof, go beyond Tudor. His left wrist, badly sprained last month, has been a constant irritation, a hitch in his magnificent swing, sand in his gears. He claims he is favoring it, using his body to compensate. For whatever reason, he has not been the Guerrero of old for some time. He had homer No. 33 well before the end of the season. So he’ll take a bloop single in the meantime.

If his single surprised anybody in the third, or even in the eighth when he got one more, think how astonished were the Cardinals to see him emulating Vince Coleman on the base paths. The widespread intelligence in the National League is that Guerrero doesn’t steal bases. As it turned out, he can and will. Wednesday night, he stole two. To put this in perspective, consider that he stole twice as many bases as the St. Louis Jackrabbits, a most feared assemblage afoot.

Another way to look at it is that Guerrero stole one sixth as many bases Wednesday night as he had all year.

The first, he had neither a green light nor a red light nor, as in the case of even slower Dodgers, a full-blown railroad crossing, complete with bells and lights. He had a yellow light. It was up to him. The last time he got one of those, he said, was before the All-Star game.

So he got a nice jump and made second; Cardinal catcher Darrell Porter’s throw was wide. That one didn’t count for much, except to indicate that the Dodgers were capable of absolutely anything. He did it once more in the eighth, getting a good jump and going on his own, and even later getting third on a wild pitch. Evidently, the Dodgers would do anything.

Guerrero said none of this should have been a surprise.

“I can steal bases,” he said. “I like to run.”

But he said he had been given orders, walking orders actually, by Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda. Because he had hurt himself earlier in the season stealing, Lasorda had recommended that he not jeopardize what was then the entire Dodger offense by making like the Dukes of Hazard on the base paths. “That’s the way I hurt my shoulder before,” he said.

So it certainly didn’t make sense for him to run, “especially the way I was hitting. I don’t think I had to steal. Mariano Duncan and Steve Sax, they could do the stealing. But right now, it’s different. I have to go out and do the best I can.”

Guerrero did well in one more respect, scoring run No. 3 on one of baseball’s weirdest plays yet. With Guerrero standing on third, minding his own business, Candy Maldonado slapped a bunt down to him. What to do? “That,” he said, “kinda surprised me.”

Kinda surprised everybody. Cardinal third baseman Terry Pendleton insisted he was ready for it and had even come in a bit. Yet he was surprised enough when his pitcher, Tudor, got between him and his throwing target, catcher Porter. The throw plunked Tudor on the right elbow while Guerrero chugged across home plate.

Had Pendleton ever done that in baseball? Said Pendleton: “I’ve never even seen it in baseball.”