It was the World Series in which the sweepers became the sweepees.
And it was the World Series in which the ”best player in the history of baseball” managed to get only one more hit than the Cincinnati Reds` most famous St. Bernard.
It was the World Series in which it was a lot better to be a Nasty Boy than a Bash Brother.
And it was the World Series in which the biggest stories were about who wasn`t introduced, which fly ball wasn`t caught and which pitcher wasn`t in the ballpark when the manager went looking for him.
It was the World Series in which the mighty Oakland A`s turned into the 1954 Indians, and the highly underrated Cincinnati Reds stirred up memories of men named Bench and Morgan and (yep) Rose.
It took a World Series no one could have envisioned to provide a fitting finish to a season no one could have imagined. But they`re both over now. So let`s look back one last time on the people who made this World Series especially memorable:
-Jose Rijo: When this World Series began, we were told that Jose Rijo would not be doing any talking. Ho-ho-ho.
To ask Jose Rijo not to talk would be like asking Hemingway not to write, like asking Bob Hope not to tell jokes. So Jose Rijo began to talk before Game 1, and it seemed as if he would never stop.
He talked of his old team, the Oakland A`s, and how he dreamed of coming back someday to beat them when it mattered most.
He talked of his new team, the Reds, and how they helped him become a dominating pitcher merely by letting him be himself.
He talked of his father-in-law, the great Juan Marichal, and how this special man transformed him from a fireballing flake who thought baseball was his playground to an overpowering ace who carried his team to a sweep of the World Series.
He talked and he talked and he talked. But for once, Jose Rijo did not talk himself into trouble.
He did that in the playoffs, when he announced that the series with the Pirates was already over at a time when the National League and the Pirates were pretty sure the Reds still had a game left to win.
But there would be no Jose Rijo predictions for the A`s to put on their bulletin board in this World Series. His teammates made sure of that.
They made sure the hard way after the Reds had won their third straight game Friday night and the reporters stampeded over to Jose Rijo`s locker.
”Is it over yet, Jose?” someone asked.
But Rijo never got a chance to answer. Before he could utter that first syllable, his next-door neighbor in the locker room, Norm Charlton, lurched into action.
Charlton ripped off a strip of adhesive tape and slapped that tape over Jose Rijo`s mouth. Little noises still came out of that mouth. But none of them sounded like, ”It`s over.”
So it wasn`t until one night later, after Jose Rijo had made the powerful Oakland A`s look like a tee-ball team, that anyone would ask him again,”Is it over, Jose?”
”It`s over,” Rijo answered this time. ”Big time.”
But it wasn`t over because he said it was over. It was over because Jose Rijo spent his World Series throwing baseballs that nobody could hit.
He had a 0.59 ERA for this World Series, lowest by any Series pitcher since Bret Saberhagen (0.50) in 1985. He became just the fifth National League starter in the last 19 years to win two games in a World Series, joining only Orel Hershiser, Steve Carlton, John Tudor, and his buddy, Joaquin Andujar.
He beat his friend and hero, Dave Stewart, twice. And over the last two months, he hitched the Reds to his bumper and towed them to the top of baseball`s mountain.
”He became our ace,” catcher Joe Oliver said. ”You could see it in his eyes. You could almost see a glow come over his whole body. It was like he said, `I`m not going to lose.”`
And as the Oakland A`s found out, Jose Rijo meant it.
-Chris Sabo: He is the strangest guy on the Cincinnati Reds. He might be the strangest guy in all of baseball.
He is the guy with the goofy goggles. He is the guy who wins the Spuds MacKenzie look-alike contest.
He is the guy who hits World Series home runs, tears around the bases like it`s the Olympic 400-meter final and then tries to dodge the usual high- five parade because it keeps him from getting back to the dugout.
”I know it`s a cliche to say, `I`ve never met anyone like him,` ” said his teammate, Paul O`Neill. ”But I`ve never met anyone like him.”
”He definitely walks to the beat of a different drummer,” Rob Dibble said. ”He`s like a Ty Cobb, a guy from another era. He listens to Benny Goodman, big bands, all that stuff. He`s not your normal player who gets motivated by the big money. He just wants to play.”
They tell Sabo stories by the hundreds in his clubhouse. There is one, for instance, about him jumping out of a cab in the middle of downtown Pittsburgh because the cabdriver lit a cigarette.
There is another about him overhearing O`Neill and Todd Benzinger discussing buying a house, and asking, ”What do you do in a house? You just sleep in it.”
But he knows what to do on a baseball field. And in this World Series, Chris Sabo did everything you could do-he hit .563, turned into Brooks Robinson at third base and crashed home runs in back-to-back innings of Game 3.
He may be the first player in history to get mentioned in the same breath as Ty Cobb and Spuds MacKenzie. But when you think back on the World Series of 1990, you will never stop thinking of that strange guy in the goggles, playing the heck out of the game he loves.
-Jose Canseco: Who symbolized the plight of the no-longer-omnipotent A`s more than their matinee-idol right-fielder?
Not very long ago, he seemed to be the most unstoppable force in baseball. By October, he might as well have been Roger Freed.
When the World Series started, he was bragging about all the outrageous things he does and says. When the World Series ended, he wasn`t even in the lineup.
In between, he ignited the biggest controversy of the series-by not catching a ball he had to catch, and then by not understanding why his manager and his teammates didn`t worship the ground he didn`t cover.
All year long, you thought of the A`s as some modern incarnation of the
`27 Yankees. And then there they were in the World Series, bringing Joe Klink out of the bullpen, hauling Jamie Quirk out of mothballs and benching a man they had once suggested might be the best player in the history of baseball.
Of all the crazy plot twists in World Series history, maybe none will ever top this one.
-Tom Browning: It is still tough to imagine this scene happened . . .
A World Series game heading toward extra innings. A manager looking down his bench for one of his pitchers and realizing the guy wasn`t there.
A radio play-by-play man issuing an all-points bulletin for Tom Browning, telling him, ”Come back to the park if you hear this.”
And meanwhile, in St. Elizabeth`s Hospital in Cincinnati, there is Debbie Browning, about to give birth, as the World Series game plays in the background on TV. And beside her is her husband, wearing a baseball uniform, turf shoes and scrubs.
”But no chewing tobacco,” Tom Browning said. ”They didn`t want any bacteria in the room.”
He watched his son come into the world. Then two days later, he won a game in the World Series. You might say he had a pretty good week.
”What can I say?” Tom Browning gushed. ”This has been the best few days of my whole life.”
-Supporting cast: There was Billy Hatcher, the man who went from a fifth wheel in the Pittsburgh outfield to the name atop the list of highest World Series batting averages ever (.750).
There was Eric Davis, who started this World Series with a lightning bolt over the center-field fence and ended it in a hospital, getting a CAT scan on his bruised kidney.
There was Dennis Eckersley, who gave up the three improbable Game 2 hits that all but finished the A`s and then muttered, ”Billy Bates. My God. Billy Bates.”
There was Tony La Russa, a brilliant manager for the long haul but a man who managed the World Series as if it were still the 17th of May.
And finally, there were those Nasty Boys-Dibble and Randy Myers. They hung over the A`s like a time bomb that went off in the eighth inning every night.
There was no defusing them. And there was no hitting them. Their postseason ERA was 0.00. And when they were through, they almost hated to see it end.
”What this means,” Dibble said, ”is that I`m sad. I`m sad because the season`s over.”
Even special seasons have to end sometime. But thanks to Juan Marichal`s son-in-law and Spuds MacKenzie`s double and Tom Browning`s bouncing baby slider, this is one we will never forget.
