NOWHERE TO HIDE : Hershiser Wakes Up After Dream Season

The best indication of where Orel Hershiser has found himself one year after being fitted with history is where you can find him before games at Dodger Stadium.

You can’t.

He arrives at the first-floor Dodger clubhouse early--the spacious, aging clubhouse that for five years warmed him like a comforter--and then he leaves it. And he hides.

In tunnels down the left-field line. In stairwells behind home plate. In Manager Tom Lasorda’s office, with the door closed. Tight.

“That’s one of the neat things about Dodger Stadium,” Hershiser says. “There are so many little places you can go. So many places nobody would think to look.”

Anywhere he can be alone, Hershiser will take a cup of water and stir in a million thoughts, sometimes spiking it with a touch of regret.

He understands how success can turn a man into a museum piece. He accepts the notion that a Cy Young Award winner, World Series’ most valuable player and owner of a record 59 consecutive scoreless innings will spend the next year as a monument for all to see and touch and hear.

He understands why, if he stays at his locker, inevitably he’ll be asked to shake hands, pose for pictures, smile for television cameras . . . Say Orel, there are three people outside, buddies of some guy upstairs, really want to meet you. Take just a minute. Swear.

“I’m on display, and I accept that,” he said. “You don’t come here as a rookie and think, ‘Gee, I’ll get to have success and nobody will notice me.’ This is Los Angeles. I knew what I was in for.”

But he also understands that in order to play major league baseball, you have to spend at least a couple of minutes a day thinking about only baseball.

So he hopes people understand it when he hides.

“It’s hard to think about the game when you feel like a target,” he said.

There is just one thing Hershiser, and others, sometimes don’t understand. How on this Dodger blue earth has he been able to pitch through this?

Entering tonight’s start against the San Francisco Giants in Candlestick Park, he is on a pace to nearly equal every statistic from last year but number of wins, an understandable decrease considering the Dodger offense has scored only four runs for him in his last seven starts.

“As far as I’m concerned,” Lasorda said, “he’s had another Cy Young year.”

His earned-run average is 2.35, last year it was 2.26.

He is allowing 7.7 hits per nine innings, last year he allowed 7.0 hits.

He is striking out six and walking two per nine innnings, identical to last year’s figures.

If the Dodger offense had supported him with the four runs per game they averaged last year, he would have turned six losses and three no-decisions to wins, turning his 14-13 mark to 23-7.

His record last year? 23-8.

But, of course, most of last year was accomplished before what Hershiser refers to simply as “the 59 scoreless.” Before he became so popular people would interrupt him in restaurants just as his food was going from his fork to his mouth.

“After all I go through during the day, sometimes I go out there (on the mound) and I’m mentally fatigued,” he admitted. “I find myself having to work to concentrate. I’ve got to say to myself, C’mon, this is important .’ ”

So it has been a great year and an awful year, and Hershiser has been led to draw but one conclusion.

He won’t have another year like it. He’ll make sure he doesn’t.

The man who has spent this summer laughing across your television screen with pizzas and cold cereal and baby shampoo was asked about fun. Orel Hershiser frowned.

“Compared to last year, this year hasn’t been any fun,” he said.

His biggest problem, and one he says he will fix, has been with his time. Although most of the commitments to his numerous endorsements were met during the off-season, he said he never realized how far his signature stretched.

“If we had to do it all over again, we would definitely cut back,” he said of his off-the-field activities. “You don’t realize the first time you go through it just how big a commitment you are making when you sign a contract.

“Take commercials. I just don’t go and shoot it and leave. I go early to meet the makeup artists, talk with the director, understand my role. Then I make sure everybody is having a good time. Then after it ends, I tell everybody that if they ever come to the park, to make sure and say ‘Hi.’ ”

Several months after the completion of his commercials, guess what Hershiser learned?

“Everybody, and I mean everybody, comes back and says ‘Hi,’ ” he said. “And when they show up, I feel I should be there like I said I would. For those people, at that moment, talking to me might be a priority. Maybe not for me, but that doesn’t matter. It’s special to them, and I don’t want to ruin that.”

Endorsements were the easy part. Hershiser kept agreeing to speaking engagements and photo shoots after the start of the season. By mid-May, those also stopped.

“It got so we would have a seven-day home stand, and I would have something to do for three or four of those days,” he said. “Instead of getting up in the morning and relaxing and playing with the kids, I would have to go somewhere, and it wore on me. Just knowing I had something to do wore on me.

“There was times I’d be in the shower and be saying, ‘Oh no, I don’t want to leave the house again.’ It became like a full-time job.”

And once he met people, Hershiser learned something else about fame. Even by being yourself, you can’t be yourself.

“All of a sudden, everything I say is funnier than what it is, or more interesting, or more intelligent,” Hershiser said. “People agree with me even though I may be wrong. They accept what I say no matter what it is.

“I’m not comfortable with that.”

There is one advantage to that status, and Hershiser has used it. He has become a sort of team spokesman, and has addressed everything from the Dodgers problems--”We have no offensive personality”--to a certain Cy Young candidate’s problems--”Mike Scott is a cheater.”

He said that a couple of days before the end of this season, he will talk about what the Dodgers need next year. As usual, it will be an opinion worth hearing.

“We don’t need to alibi about this year,” he said. “Educated people know it’s been a tough year offensively.”

About his season, wary of blaming the offense for his mediocre record, he says simply: “I’m happy that I’ve been more consistent than last year. People who follow baseball know that my record has not meant a mediocre season.”

His teammates respect his opinions, and feel he has not changed--”He’s still the fun, good-natured bulldog,” reliever Jay Howell said.

Even when they can’t find him before games.

“I don’t blame him for not being around,” said catcher Rick Dempsey, who dresses next to Hershiser. “He comes out here, people are hanging on him, just hanging on him. During batting practice before he pitches, I try to protect him, stand around him and help keep people away.

“But it’s got to take its toll on him. He’s got to be mentally drained. A man can only do so much.”

Hershiser is appreciative of his teammates efforts, but said that’s been another disappointment.

“My relationship with them is a little more shallow,” he said.

Just about then, a teammate entered a tiny room where Hershiser was finishing an interview. The teammate was holding some baseball cards, and had some friends waiting in the hall. It would make their day if they could only meet, well, you know who.

Hershiser didn’t even pause.

“Sure,” he said, with a smile as warm as that clubhouse next door used to be. “Be right there.”