CAN HE DO IT AGAIN? : Saberhagen Isn’t Sure, but He’ll Give It a Try : A Storybook Year May Be Out of Question, but Royal Pitcher Is Looking for 20 Wins

FORT MYERS, Fla. — It wasn’t for a lack of originality that they ended fairy tales with, “And they lived happily ever after.”

With a line such as that, they knew they wouldn’t have to worry about what to do for an encore. After all, you can stretch imaginations only so far, then it’s time to go on to the next incredible adventure and leave yesterday’s hero alone.

For some reason, that didn’t occur to the guy who came up with this story idea: Take a Valley kid whose parents divorced when he was 5, give him a paper route but send him away summers to play ball for his grandfather in Chicago, have him pitch a no-hitter in his high school championship game at Dodger Stadium, promote him to the majors before his 20th birthday, and then, in one spectacular burst of creativity, have him win the seventh game of the World Series, become a father and have his name inscribed on the Cy Young Award, all at the age of 21.

At that point, it should have been: Thank you, Bret Saberhagen, we especially loved the part where you pretended to be rocking a baby in the dugout to let your pregnant wife, Janeane, know you were thinking about her. And gee, it sure was nice to see such a sweet kid with that little wisp of a mustache triumph over a sour-faced John Tudor and the rest of those carping Cardinals.

A terrific story, the kind that makes you feel good inside, and we wish you all the best, Bret, and you, too, Janeane and little Drew William.

But leave it at that? In fairy tales, sure. In baseball, not a chance.

Saberhagen has his World Series ring, his $925,000 contract, his trophy and his diaper bag. Now, he is here in the training camp of the Kansas City Royals, hard by the Caloosahatchee River on the west coast of Florida, just beginning to frame his answer to the loaded question that will dog him from February to October:

When you’ve done it all, what do you do now?

“You really can’t encore the season that I had,” Saberhagen said in the trailer-clubhouse that serves as the Royals’ home at Park T. Pigott Memorial Stadium. “It was kind of a storybook year for me.

“I want to try and do the best that Bret Saberhagen can do, and if he can do the best he can every time out there, I should win, you know, around 20 games again.”

In a sense, Saberhagen already has started repeating history. Janeane is pregnant again. His timing may be a little shaky, though.

“The baby’s due Sept. 13,” Saberhagen said. That news is sure to disappoint those network executives hoping to have the nation watch the birth of another Series baby.

“It’s kind of quick, I know,” he said. “I think my wife is a little more upset than I was. She said, ‘I just got done being pregnant.’ With me, it was, ‘Hey, that’s great.’ ”

It’s rarely any other way for Saberhagen, though he professes to having some of the same concerns of any new parent.

“I like to think I’m secure,” he said, referring to the arbitration award he got partly through the efforts of agent Dennis Gilbert and attorney Steve Schneider. “I still have to go out and do the same things I did last year or I’ll be getting a pay cut.

“With another baby coming, I’d like to be financially set. I’d like to get them through college, make sure they always have food on the table--breakfast, lunch and dinner--and clothes to wear with no holes in ‘em.”

Out of the mouth of any other near-millionaire those words would sound ludicrous. From Saberhagen, they sound almost quaint, because they’re delivered with the same kind of charm that endeared him to millions last October.

Saberhagen’s kids wearing patches on their knees? That’s about as likely as Saberhagen getting undressed by the Cardinals in Game 7 last season, although Saberhagen says that unthinkable notion did pop into his head.

“I visualized losing the seventh game, which was the whole season--nothing else would have mattered,” Saberhagen said.

“As a person, you can’t put that kind of pressure on yourself. That was the most nervous I’ve ever been before a game.”

Saberhagen’s anxiety attack didn’t escape the notice of Royal Manager Dick Howser, who was used to such Saberhagen feats as shutting out the Angels on 89 pitches, as he did in a critical September game in ‘84, then saying: “I should pitch good against ‘em. I’ve watched ‘em on television enough.”

Cocky? Sure. “But he’s the type of person who has always been successful,” said Royal pitcher Mark Gubicza, Saberhagen’s best friend on the team who also is engaged to be married to Janeane’s best friend in November. “He expects to do well.”

On that October Sunday, though, Howser feared that Saberhagen expected something less.

Said Howser: “My pitching coach, Gary Blaylock, came to me and said, ‘Dick, Saberhagen’s not acting like he usually acts.’ He was different, antsier, not quite as talkative. He just didn’t appear as confident.

“I don’t want to take much credit for this, but we got the word to him. I told him, ‘There’s only two people in the world who feel like you do right now--John Tudor in the other clubhouse and yourself right now, pitching the seventh game of the World Series. I understand that. But the other guy feels the same way you do.’

“I don’t care how much experience you have, it’s the seventh game, and you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders.”

It was a weight that Saberhagen eventually shrugged off with ease, not to mention a wink and a smile for Janeane and Drew. Bob Saberhagen, Bret’s father, once said he always suspected that his son had no fear, from the time he took him for flying lessons at age 11 and the kid never flinched.

Howser said: “I feel he was born with it. I just think he was blessed. He had that confidence and poise, even as a young guy. Some guys have it, some never do.”

It’s what has made Saberhagen the No. 1 pitcher on a staff that Howser considers the best in baseball, with the oldest starter, Charlie Liebrandt, only 29.

“They’re young in age, but after what they’ve been through in ’84 and ‘85, the inexperience isn’t there anymore,” Howser said.

“Bret has never acted like a 20-, 21-year-old when he gets the ball and goes out there. He’s a free spirit of a young guy, but you see him out there, he’s in charge. He’s in control. Things don’t upset him.

“He reminds me of Mel Stottlemyre and Catfish Hunter, of the guys on ballclubs I’ve played with. He looks more like Stottlemyre and throws more like Catfish.

“He’s got the same makeup. Just in control. The situations just didn’t bother them. They could do it. They could respond, and so does he.”

Howser mentions how Saberhagen pitched 10 games last season in which he did not walk a man, and how he never walked more than three batters in one game. Saberhagen also allowed three runs or fewer in 24 of his 32 starts.

So what do you do when you’ve done it all?

“The ultimate goal is making the World Series,” Saberhagen said. “And after being in the playoffs my first year, then being in the playoffs and winning the World Series, we’re getting to where we’re spoiled and will expect it every year.

“A lot of guys I played ball with back in high school (Cleveland High in Reseda) still say that winning that championship was probably their biggest experience and thrill. If I hadn’t made the World Series, that probably would still be my biggest in sports.”

Neither the seventh game of the Series or the city playoff in Los Angeles, however, can compare to the day he spent in a Kansas City delivery room, the day the Royals won Game 6 of the Series to make all the world a stage for the Saberhagen clan.

“It was an experience beyond all dreams,” he said. “Just unbelievable.”

Asked what he would wish for Drew that he never had himself, Saberhagen paused for a long moment.

“I really don’t know . . . I’d say being more of a family,” he said finally. “When I was 5, my parents got divorced. It wasn’t really difficult for me, it wasn’t a traumatic thing for me.

“Still, having both of my parents raising me would have been an ideal situation, instead of living with my mom and seeing my dad once a week until I got older, when I could see him a little more. Having two parents, that would be ideal.”

For Howser, nothing could be better than having Saberhagen on his staff. The Royal manager doesn’t worry about encores. He figures Saberhagen will be taking curtain calls for years to come, just like another free-spirited Southern Californian on the Kansas City roster, George Brett.

Six years ago, when Brett hit .390, he went through the same thing.

“It’s not easy to repeat--not for an individual, not for a club,” Howser said. “But some people do it better, like George Brett.

“What he looked for was consistency. Maybe he didn’t hit .390, but what’s wrong with .360. And he wouldn’t be satisfied with .310.

“Saberhagen has the same makeup. He won’t be satisfied. Twenty wins are not out of reach, 17, 18 would be good, 23 would be great.

“Like George, he has consistency on and off the field. Good, bad, Saberhagen never makes excuses. He doesn’t blame the umpire, the ballpark, the weather being too cold--you don’t hear that BS. Like George, he’s the first one to come to the ballpark and the last to leave.”

Saberhagen also is one of the last to say no to those asking for a piece of his time, which has Howser more concerned than whether he is capable of duplicating his 20-win season.

“What I want to do, without too much scrutiny--I don’t want him thinking I’m watching his every move,” Howser said. “I know he’s a free spirit, but I also know he can take care of business when he’s out there.

“But I don’t want him to lose the thing he does best--the concentration and all those things. That’s the thing that concerns me--he’s such a nice guy to the media and fans, that can be distracting. Somewhere along the line, he’s going to have to back away from some of that.”

What do you do when you’ve done it all?

“He’s going to be concerned, ‘Am I going to be able to duplicate last season?’ People are going to expect him to be as good or better,” Howser said.

“But he doesn’t have to worry about that. If he gets a regular turn on a good ballclub, which we expect to be, things will fall in place for him.”