1987 Revisited? Braves Say No

ATLANTA —  Bang the drum slowly?

You kidding?

Not here, not now.

Outside Atlanta Fulton County Stadium, the drum is banged incessantly, 24 hours a day, as part of a promotion by local radio station WSB. Every hour on the hour, the drumstick is passed, baton-like, to another lucky listener, who gets to lead the Braves’ tom-tom club for 60 highly annoying minutes.

Thursday night, Atlanta’s baseball team finally found a rhythm to match the rabid rabble. Bang, bang, bang. Seventeen hits, three home runs, three triples, a 14-5 victory and a 3-2 World Series advantage over the previously undefeated leaders of this Series, the Minnesota Twins.

Four days ago, the Twins landed in Atlanta on top of the World Series. Two-and-oh, they were Middle America’s Team--and Native America’s Team, the special force commissioned to put a stop to the Tomahawk Chop once and for all.

But once in Atlanta, the Twins were abandoned. Night by night, one by one, the Minnesota bandwagon began to empty.

In Game 3, their luck abandoned them.

In Game 4, their hitting abandoned them.

In Game 5, their pitching abandoned them.

By the time they were issued boarding passes for Minneapolis, the Twins had little more than history on their side and the memory of 1987 to comfort them through the night.

“We were walking up the tunnel, and I turned to Puckett and said, ‘Looks like it’s gonna have to be deja vu,” said Al Newman, Tom Kelly’s main utility man. “It’s got to be like ‘87, if we’re going to be champions of the world.”

So far, 1991 has played out precisely like 1987. The Twins win Games 1 and 2 inside their home-sweet-Metrodome, the Twins lose Games 3, 4 and 5 on the road. Games 6 and 7 are back under fiberglass, back where the Twins outscored the St. Louis Cardinals, 15-7, to wrap up their first World Series title.

But this isn’t 1987. Double-check the calendar.

And these aren’t the ’87 Cardinals. Double-check the National League champions’ roster.

The ’87 Cardinals might have been the worst team ever to win the NL pennant. At least until the ’88 Dodgers. The ’87 Cardinals gimped into the World Series with no Jack Clark, sidelined by a bad ankle, and half a Terry Pendleton, who was limited to a part-time role because of a sore rib cage. In Game 1 of that Series, St. Louis Manager Whitey Herzog was forced to start Tom Lawless at third base, Jose Oquendo in right field, Tom Pagnozzi at designated hitter and bat Jim Lindeman in the cleanup position.

The ’91 Braves still have their customary cleanup hitter, David Justice, whose two home runs against the Twins’ equaled the Cardinals’ total in 1987. The ’91 Braves have all of Terry Pendleton, batting an even .300 after five games. They also have Lonnie Smith, the first player since Reggie Jackson to hit home runs in three consecutive World Series games; Ron Gant, a .381-hitting center fielder with power, and the improbable Mark Lemke, who had three triples in Games 4 and 5 after managing two in 136 regular-season games.

Then there’s pitching. As Newman was quick to concede, “Atlanta’s pitching staff is definitely better than the ’87 Cardinals. Atlanta’s going to throw Avery and Smoltz at us in Minnesota. That’s a little tougher than what the ’87 St. Louis Cardinal staff had.”

A little? Newman’s a veteran; he knows better than to incite the opposition with such inflammable bulletin-board material.

That Cardinal pitching staff was running on fumes by the time it returned to Minnesota. John Tudor started Game 6 on short rest and was hammered for six runs and 11 hits in four-plus innings. A nerve-racked rookie named Joe Magrane started Game 7 and lasted 4 1/3 innings before Danny Cox came on to yield the decisive runs in a 4-2 Twins triumph.

Atlanta will counter with Steve Avery in Game 6 and, if required, John Smoltz in Game 7. At this late moment in the 1991 baseball season, Avery is the best pitcher in the sport, having beaten the Pittsburgh Pirates twice by 1-0 scores in the NL playoffs and retiring 15 consecutive Twins en route to a no-decision in the Braves’ 5-4, 12-inning victory in Game 3. Smoltz is two for two in Atlanta clinchings--he defeated Houston to win the NL West, he defeated Pittsburgh to win the pennant--and he could be in place again if the World Series makes it to Sunday.

Minnesota, meanwhile, will throw Scott Erickson into the fray and pray on Saturday night. Erickson is not the same pitcher who took a 12-3 record and a 1.83 ERA into the All-Star break. Since straining his elbow in July, everything else has been a strain. His ERA in his past 16 regular-season starts was 5.20. His ERA after two postseason starts against Toronto and Atlanta is 5.19. In Game 3 Tuesday night, Erickson’s fastest fastball was clocked no faster than 84 m.p.h.

Erickson insists this is no problem. “(The coaches) were all worried about me pitching too hard,” he explained with his usual nonchalance, “so I took a little off.”

Some good things do await the Twins inside their incubator of a home stadium. They’ll have their fans, who will have their Homer Hankies. They’ll have Chili Davis where he belongs, at DH, and not in right field, where he was cast adrift by a sweating Kelly Thursday night. They’ll have American League rules, which means Minnesota pitchers won’t have to embarrass themselves in the early innings and Kelly won’t have to embarrass himself in the late innings by running out of pinch-hitters.

Asked about the carbon copy the Twins are attempting to trace, four years later, Kelly scratched his head and said, “I don’t know if there are any similarities. I’m not that smart.

“All I know is that the same scenario is there. Hopefully it will play out the same way. If it did, that’d be something.”

You can go home again. Of that much, the Twins are certain.

But go back in time? The Twins only wish. Once upon a time, the opposition was Lawless. Now they’re fighting Justice.