Dodgers Gone, but Not Their Future

I caught Fred Claire by telephone in Albuquerque shortly before he was about to leave for work.

“I’m down here to watch a baseball game,” he said.

“A baseball game,” I said. “Sounds wonderful.”

“Doesn’t it?” he asked.

Baseball withdrawal. Some of us suffer from it. Others don’t care if they ever see a baseball game again.

As of today, there might be no more major league baseball for 1994. Claire, the general manager of the Dodgers, was down New Mexico way to enjoy Game 1 of the best-of-five Pacific Coast League championship series Tuesday night between the Albuquerque Dukes, a Dodger farm club, and their rivals from Vancouver, the Angels’ minor leaguers.

Real, live, meaningful, professional baseball.

Lucky Fred, I thought. He gets to see Billy Ashley, the minor leagues’ player of the year with 37 homers plus three in the playoffs.

But, alas, when it rains it pours. The Albuquerque game was rained out.

Claire has also been to Wichita and to Great Falls and to Helena and to Colorado Springs. He has been on the road more than Charles Kuralt.

Because not all baseball business has been suspended. There’s the San Antonio farm team of the Dodgers, for example. There’s Darren Dreifort and there’s Chan Ho Park, young pitchers who got to keep working all summer because they had the good fortune--or misfortune--not to be in the big leagues when this damnable strike began.

The Dodger GM keeps an eye on his up-and-comers. How come?

“Because in a way it’s symbolic of what this entire episode is about,” Claire said. “Because we will be playing baseball again in Los Angeles. I don’t know when and I don’t know how, but we will be playing again, so you have to proceed with that in mind.

“In 25 years with the Dodgers, I have never seen anything like this. This thing has thrown everybody off stride. None of it makes any sense to me. Clearly there are no winners in this situation and I’m not sure there ever will be. There’s no reason to go into specifics, because there’s more than enough blame to go around.

“All I can say for certain is, there’s a lot of ground to make up, a lot of damage to recover from. Both players and management have a bigger job to do than just end this strike eventually. There’s the rebuilding of the game itself to think about. A great deal of damage has been done to the game of baseball and somehow people’s faith has to be restored.”

Claire gets progress--or lack of progress--updates at regular intervals. He would like nothing better than to find a red light blinking on his hotel phone somewhere in Montana or Kansas, with a message to get back to Chavez Ravine on the first machine leaving town, be it plane, bus or hitchhiking on an 18-wheeler. A message that the Dodgers were back in business. “I checked in before I left for Albuquerque,” Claire said. “There wasn’t much encouragement.”

I told him that I couldn’t help but reflect on what we all were missing. The possibilities. What might have been.

Someone with a kind heart recently gave me a souvenir program from the 1965 World Series. The “Out of This World Series,” as the cover of this (50-cent) program called it, depicting space capsules representing the Dodgers and Minnesota Twins colliding in orbit above Earth.

It carried me away on a wave of nostalgia. The inside cover bore the memorably ungrammatical ad: “Winston Tastes Good Like a Cigarette Should.” Remember, this was back when tobacco was something that a baseball player didn’t spit.

Other pages ran ads for Banana Stix frozen ice milk. . . . “The Ipcress File,” starring Michael Caine (exclusive engagement, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre). . . . The Statler Hilton (“Take Our Helicab from the Airport and Arrive in Just 8 Minutes!”). . . . The brand new 1966 Dodge Coronet 500 two-door hardtop. . . . “Man! Now You’re Really Living, Watchin’ the Champion Dodgers and Munchin’ Morrell All-Meat Franks!” . . . Congratulations, Dodgers, from the All-American Nut Co., Inc., of Downey, Calif.

And:

“Debbie Reynolds, starring in ‘The Singing Nun,’ now in production, says: ‘Artesia Doors are the swinginest!’ ” . . . Lindy ballpoint pens, with the new Tankful of Ink traction-point refill. . . . Jerseymaid Milk (“Couldn’t Be Fresher If You Kept a Cow”). . . . The Sands Hotel, Las Vegas (with a scorecard featuring “all-stars” F. Sinatra, D. Martin, R. Skelton, S. Davis, J. Bishop, C. Burnett, L. Horne and J. Lewis). . . . Nate’s Friendly Liquor Store, 4400 S. Huntington, Los Angeles 32, California. . . . And the new Honda 50 motorbike, “a paragon of economy,” capable of cruising at a comfortable 40 m.p.h., yours for “about $215.”

It made me think about what the 1994 World Series program might have been. About keeping a scorecard for the Dodgers vs. the New York Yankees. Or about a night in Chavez Ravine with the Cleveland Indians in town. Or about a 35th anniversary series with the Chicago White Sox, only this time not at the Coliseum.

I don’t want to go all the way to Albuquerque to be able to watch the Dodgers of tomorrow.

As of today, I might not have much choice.