When Andre Dawson leaned over the fence at their spring training headquarters three years ago, all but begging the Cubs for a job at vastly reduced wages, you knew that here was a special man who could endure a different sort of pain.
On this shiny Monday in Candlestick Park, the classy outfielder again found himself on the outside looking in, a superstar taking a scrub`s dugout space while Chicago`s very occasional boys of autumn again came up as props for another team`s prom.
But Dawson, true to the uniform he cherishes, took it like a soldier of misfortune. Order had been restored to the baseball world, and so had the Cubs` adorability to the universe, yet he let fly with no tantrums or expletives or bats. The same Dawson who picked the Cubs when nobody else dared, picked them once more, and at the bleakest instant of his career.
”This is my biggest disappointment,” Dawson said, ”and part of the reason is, I still don`t think they`re better than us. I know they aren`t. And I know we`ll be back.”
Eight is enough, you figured. Since 1910, the Cubs had ventured to the postseason eight times, seven World Series and one playoff, losing all. But Monday they made it an uneven nine, extending the statute of limitations on the law of averages to its outer extremities. Yet, here was a venerable of age 35 talking about hope and healing, though he knows next season doesn`t guarantee the Cubs finishing first or his finishing with the Cubs.
Les Lancaster lost track of the count before a crucial gopher ball in the first game here, the squad conspired to drop the series going away 4-1 despite hitting .303 and Dawson left 17 runners standing in place during the abbreviated tournament, but six months of good theater required curtain calls, anyway. The Cubs didn`t hide, least of all Dawson, who contributed among the least of all.
”I was sort of out of sync the whole series,” he said, arms folded before his locker. ”I`m a veteran, a lot is expected of me, and I`m supposedly one of the leaders. I wasn`t there, but I`m not going to let it eat me up. We opened a lot of eyes this season, and can again. We can hold our heads high.”
It would be Dawson`s true blue theory, then, that the Cubs didn`t lose so much as they simply ran out of innings. That`s fudging facts, but remember, here`s a guy who came to them, fulfilling his needs as well as theirs. Both of Dawson`s threadbare knees feature bone on bone, with a cyst on the right one demanding surgery, so we`re dealing with a fellow who finds greater joy in participating and hurting over the results than participating not at all. Somehow, that seems to be the original intent of baseball, which, after all, is a game.
In his condition, a lesser athlete wouldn`t have struggled throughout the summer or the Cubs` second 0-for-California playoff trip in two attempts. Dawson squeezed the bat too tightly in a poor bases-loaded ninth inning exit Sunday night, and he did nothing in three first-and-third situations Monday. A vain swing on a back-door slider in the first, a meek pop to right on a juicier serve in the sixth, a tap to the mound in the eighth after Mark Grace had been passed intentionally, of all indignities.
Monday`s wasn`t the best well-pitched game of the series, though, it was the only one, so Dawson`s .105 problem figured mightily. So did Will Clark`s triple that fell from glove`s web after Dawson`s right leg pushed off weakly in pursuit. And if Dawson wanted confirmation that it wasn`t his week, manager Don Zimmer provided proof with a double-switch that consigned Andre to the bench. Big men pout at these humbling snapshots from a humbling profession, but bigger men say that`s baseball.
”That`s baseball,” said Dawson, as tactful during his worst Cub moment as he was when he amassed 49 homers and 137 RBIs for a pittance with a dog team in 1987. He didn`t complain as an MVP then, he didn`t sulk as a slumping liability now, and there`s no price tag on the impression such conduct leaves among contemporaries. Mark Grace might handle the clubhouse pulse of the future, but Dawson did the honors Monday.
”Do what you can as long as you can and they`ll tell you when to sit down,” he said. ”Time is running out for me, I know, but Chicago is still the best to play baseball.”
Then, Dawson left to put his knees under blocks of ice, where he just knows a pennant is waiting for him, too. He wouldn`t be a real Cub if he thought otherwise.
