Word: hitters
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...lead-off batter is Brandon Tartikoff, a sharp-fielding spray hitter in his sixth season as president of NBC Entertainment and third baseman on the company softball team. As Tartikoff steps to the plate against the Warner Bros. squad, a giant radio in the bleachers begins to blast out the driving theme song from Miami Vice. Inspired, Tartikoff slaps a double, leading NBC to a four-run inning. The team's "music manager" puckishly announces that all who have not hit safely must henceforth bat to the somewhat less blood- quickening theme from Punky Brewster...
Joaquin Andujar, pitching ace of the St. Louis Cardinal staff who last week became the season's first 20-game winner, was sitting in Dodger Stadium watching Los Angeles Outfielder Pedro Guerrero taking batting practice. Andujar's thoughts about the perennial .300 hitter went beyond the manicured Los Angeles diamond back to the rocky fields of San Pedro de Macoris, a hardscrabble town in the Dominican Republic where, as a teenager, he had first hurled fastballs and curves to Guerrero. Both Andujar, 32, and Guerrero, 29, are the sons of sugarmill workers, and there was little money. But, the pitcher...
Coming to bat for Los Angeles is Catcher Mike Scioscia, a contact hitter. "The bases are still drunk," Catcher Gary Carter calls out a reminder. "Let's get the double play," barks Third Baseman Ray Knight. Joey Amalfitano, the Dodger coach at third base, wigwags some semaphore to Scioscia, who flicks his helmet to signal message received. Gooden looks at Knight and mouths, "Squeeze bunt?" Knight looks at Amalfitano and says, "Too obvious." At first base, Keith Hernandez gives thought to visiting Gooden, but reconsiders. "What am I going to tell him? Bear down?" Bearing down, Gooden makes Scioscia foul...
...next Dodger, Terry Whitfield, is a pinch hitter customarily, pressed into the lineup by injuries. Maybe because he spent three seasons in Japan, his hitting theories are serenely uncomplicated. "A lot of players think at the plate," he says. "I just hack. I go up there, I see the ball, I hit it." What he will see from Gooden, if he can see them, are all fast balls, and all strikes. Catcher Carter stopped proposing anything else after Gooden shook off two curves. "If he wants to throw something you don't want him to throw," Manager Johnson has advised...
...offense," muses Hernandez afterward. He refers to Gooden's pitching, not his hitting. "Oh, I love to hit," Gooden says. "When the Mets drafted me as a pitcher, I was upset. The Pirates had timed me running the bases, the Angels too. Why couldn't I be a hitter?" That cinches it. He's Babe Ruth...