Small Delights and a Big Chill

By Tom Callahan

In the age before television, Ring Lardner's World Serious was never as somber as baseball's capitalists made it seem for the longest time last week. Late- night games on weekends are crimes against nature. When venality becomes a ground rule, a dreariness seeps into the cool night air, and the Red Sox and Mets seemed only alternately able to shake it. "Here's the windup and the pitch," in the modern form, means The Cosby Show is ending, the Merrill Lynch commercials know no boundaries, and it is getting on to 9 p.m. EDT -- cue the pitchers.

While commerce of this kind stood to profit them by $80,000 apiece, even the participants were disposed to grump and spit. "It's unfair to the schoolkids, the eight-year-olds," said Mets First Baseman Keith Hernandez, 33. "They can't stay up all night." Red Sox Manager John McNamara, a pragmatist in most things, was heard to mutter, "I suppose I'll get somebody mad by saying it, but I did notice that today was a beautiful day. I thought about what a beautiful day it would be to play baseball."

Eventually, a bountiful, if not precisely beautiful, 6-5 game came along, leaving one for the title promising everything to everyone. Two runs ahead with an out to victory in the tenth inning, Boston mined 68 years of unthinkable disaster in the shape of infinite singles and First Baseman Bill Buckner's all-time error. For their part, having fallen behind 2-0 and 3-2 in games, the Mets lost some of their hauteur and most of their breath. "I don't care anymore," Third Baseman Ray Knight said, "if we're compared with the 1927 New York Yankees."

When Boston took the opening pair of games in New York City's Shea Stadium -- 1-0 on a ball that skittered through the western legs of Second Baseman Tim Teufel, and 9-3 on the first of two dark episodes for Mets Ace Dwight Gooden -- McNamara said pointedly, "We probably aren't the greatest ball club in the world." The Mets smiled weakly. In 13 big league years at a rash of stands, this manager has been a man of rare civility and rotten luck. His 1981 Cincinnati Reds won more games than any other team but were gerrymandered right out of the play-offs by a labor strike and a split season. "I will never forget that until the day I die," said the hatchet-faced former minor league catcher, whose memory came into play.

Depending on the park, nine- or ten-man baseball was observed, and the lack of a designated hitter brought out the finest stuff in McNamara. "I knew where my neck was," he said, after surviving an especially second-guessable decision, "and my body might have been in the Charles River." When New York won games three and four in Boston, dispiriting 7-1 and 6-2 games with still not a single change of lead, the home advantage started to seem a curse, though not to Ron Darling. The unlucky loser of the series' first decision ran his streak of unearned runs to 14 innings in the fourth game, better than any daydream he could have invented as a Fenway bleacher child. Hawaiian born, he said, "I've never quite understood why my parents moved from Hawaii to Massachusetts anyway." Referring to homegrown Boston Catcher Rich Gedman, Darling was particularly proud that "two guys from a place where players aren't supposed to come from are together in the World Series -- and he's hitting ropes off me!"

Other small delights dropped into the series like a bunch of Boston balloons or a New York fan floating in out of the sky. Also: Hernandez flinging his bat at a pitchout to save a run and maybe a game; Red Sox Batting Champion Wade Boggs compensating with his glove at third base until his bat finally stirred; Mets Leftfielder Mookie Wilson reeling under fly balls in the shadow of the great wall but always catching them at the last; and poor Buckner teetering everywhere. "When you got two feet killing you," said Buckner, bracing his wobbly ankles in high black boots, "you don't know which way to limp." In the exquisite moment of game five, Buckner mounted just enough head-first slide to beach himself on home plate. It was hard to call that run unearned, but Mets errors had started again. Even though Red Sox Lefthander Bruce Hurst won his second sterling game, the first home crowd with anything to shout about gave its fullest voice to ridicul- ing the feeble bat and careless glove of New York's young outfielder Darryl Strawberry. He may answer for a while to raspberry.

The series had appeared to turn on McNamara's calm deployment of his starting pitchers; once he was behind 0-2, Davey Johnson had less opportunity to be serene. But even with a full parcel of rest against worn Third-Game Winner Bob Ojeda, Cy Young-elect Roger Clemens' near best was just not quite enough. Darling could test his dream one final time against Dennis ("Oil Can") Boyd. Dave Henderson and Lenny Dykstra, Boston's and New York's respective symbols of play-off miracles, kept it up through six games, until Hurst began sending Dykstra back to earth swinging and stamping his feet. Several centuries ago, the Sox were down to Henderson's last swing in California, and in the sixth game the Mets' turnaround wasted his tenth-inning homer that might have won. "I'm not going to stop and think about it," he had said. "I'm going to keep riding the train." Somebody was bound for glory.