This Nice Guy Deserves to Play for Winning Team

For a ballplayer, making a World Series is like being commissioned lieutenant, getting your name on the door. You’re part of the firm, in the fraternity. It’s your bar mitzvah, confirmation. You are a man.

It makes a difference. It’s the difference between getting a good table at a restaurant and being asked, “Oh, and which team was it you played for in the big leagues?”

If you are good, the supposition has it, you will lead your team into the World Series. I mean, Babe Ruth did, right? Over and over. Willie Mays did, Mickey Mantle did, the great Roberto Clemente. Pete Rose got in a lot of them (six).

People who don’t follow baseball follow the World Series. You figure in office pools, you preempt prime time for a week. You’re a star, baby. It’s the Palace, the Old Vic. Everything else is Bridgeport, as George M. Cohan used to say. The World Series is Broadway. Hollywood.

Ted Williams made only one. But Ted was in a Marine plane over the Pacific in his prime time. Some players seem to get the hang of it when they first come up and then drift over into individual achievement. Henry Aaron comes to mind.

Some people never make it. An extraordinary event occurred at Cooperstown this year when three players were inducted who never played in a World Series game. Ferguson Jenkins and Gaylord Perry won 598 games between them but nary a one in what Tom Lasorda delights in calling the Fall Classic. Rod Carew got 3,053 hits, but none of them in a World Series.

Another Hall of Famer, Ernie Banks, is one of only 14 players in big league history to hit more than 500 home runs (512) but Ernie never put one in the seats (or anywhere else) in a World Series. He and the Cubs never got there.

Ever notice how many players from New York seem to dominate the nostalgia market? Popular notion has it, some players never got the recognition due them because they didn’t do what they did in New York. But what happened was, out of 87 World Series, 45 of them involved New York (and 14 of them were all-New York or Subway Series).

And if you count teams that formerly were in New York, the total comes to 55 (not counting Series the West Coast teams played against the Yankees.).

What brings this to mind is the sad case of yet another player whose achievements rated a higher stage, brighter lights.

Sometime this year, the likelihood is great that Dale Bryan Murphy will become only the 22nd or 23rd player in big league history to hit 400 or more home runs. He has 390 as of this writing.

He has already become the 75th major leaguer in the game’s history to drive in more than 1,200 runs. He has scored 1,162. He has 758 extra-base hits. Only 55 players have more than 800.

But this Murphy’s Law is, when you do a thing well, you will do it in Atlanta.

True, Dale Murphy does not hit for average (.268). But neither did Reggie Jackson (.262).

But Reggie Jackson is Mr. October (10 World Series home runs) Dale is not Mr. Anything--except, possibly, Mr. Murphy.

Reggie hit 144 of his 563 home runs in New York. They named a candy bar after him. Dale crashed 371 of his homers in Atlanta. He eats Hersheys like everybody else.

Baseball, like life, is not fair. Years ago, a player locked into an ineffectual franchise had to stay there. You know Ted Williams, but did you ever hear of Ken Williams? Ken Williams played for the old St. Louis Browns, a blueprint in futility. In 1922, he hit more home runs than Babe Ruth, 39 of them. In one five-year period in the early 1920s, he hit 135 home runs. If you don’t think that was remarkable for those times, consider that when Ruth hit 54 home runs in 1920, that was more than 15% of all the home runs hit in the American League that year.

But Ken Williams never got in a World Series. Chances are, this is the first time you ever heard about him.

A player such as Walter Johnson, locked into the old Washington Senators, didn’t get in a World Series until he was in his (baseball) dotage, his arm was shot and he was pitching from memory.

But a player has movement today. He can get off Devil’s Island, swim to the mainland.

Why doesn’t Dale Murphy take his home run trot over to, if not New York or Los Angeles or Oakland--winners’ circles, in other words--at least to an up-and-coming contender? Why doesn’t he try for the Palace?

Dale Murphy listens politely. Dale Murphy does everything politely. It’s hard to believe he’s a superstar, at times.

“It’s not that easy,” he explains. “I would have gone to a team like Pittsburgh, which looks like it’s on the way, but look at it this way: They had an outfield of (Bobby) Bonilla, (Andy) Van Slyke and Barry Bonds. I wasn’t going to get to play. Other teams were building. I decided I wanted to get out of Atlanta. I had done as much as I could there. It was time to move on.”

Murphy had a 44-homer year in Atlanta, a National League-leading 37-homer year another time. He had driven in a league-leading 121 runs one year, scored 131 runs one year. He is Atlanta’s all-time leader in hits, homers, doubles, runs batted in, extra-base hits and walks.

And, as Red Buttons would say, he can’t get a dinner. Fourteen years of impeccable baseball, irreproachable behavior, civic charitable work. He doesn’t even have a nickname. At least, Aaron was the Hammer, Bad Henry. Murph is just Dependable Dale.

And now, he goes to--a little traveling music, professor!--Philadelphia! Ta-da!

Why Philadelphia, Dale? “Well, they wanted me,” Dale shrugs. “I was going to be a free agent, and other teams shied away. Philadelphia signed me to a two-year contract.”

Philadelphia, when last seen, was disappearing through the league cellar with a record of 40-57.

The poet said it best: “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen/And waste its sweetness on the desert air.” And some waste their sweetness on Atlanta and Philadelphia. Or the Chicago Cubs.