After the 1980 World Series I felt so bad and so down for letting the team down, the city down, myself down, my family down. So all through 1981 I was trying to make up for it.
For the first two months of the season we weren’t doing such a hot job of it. We were 10 games under .500 and we were 12 games behind the Oakland A’s when the players went on strike on June 9. As bad as that was for baseball it probably was the only thing that saved our season. That was the year that baseball had first-half and second-half champions. And they met in the playoffs.
Rounding third and heading home was when I needed the fans to help me through that last 90 feet. Late in my career I would end up playing with the A’s.
We caught fire the second half that summer, winning the AL West. We were one of only two teams in the AL West to have a winning record the second half of the season. We made the five-game playoff against the A’s, who had won the first half.
For me the season was another step in trying to be consistent. That was my whole focus in ’79, ’80 and ’81. I was just trying to have consistent years. It was really gratifying for the Royals to give me Player of the Year in 1981, but I think they were just thinking, “Maybe we should give it to him to make him feel better.” (Laughter.)
A lot of stuff went on that year with the strike. I wanted to go out there and do the best I could and then maybe the fans wouldn’t be quite as mad at us. You know we were never a really good early-season team. We were always a late-season team. It was almost like we would play the first half, then figure out how far you were away and know how much you had to put it in gear.
Standings mean a lot to the fans, and they do to players, too. But with us we were a veteran enough team that we knew it wasn’t what you did at the start of the season but what you did toward the end, where you finished.
When we came back from the strike I think I hit .331 and helped lead us through the second half of the season. At the start of September we won 12 of 16 games to put us in position to win the second-half championship.
I might have been in the best shape of my life then because of what I did during the strike. We didn’t really know when it was going to end because it would look like the strike was about to be over, and then some player would say something that made the owners mad, and then an owner would say something about breaking the union. So it went on.
During the strike I started doing tae kwon do with Larry Gura and Willie Aikens. I think that was something that the Guru did all the time, so I was doing it with him. So, I was working every day, stretching every day – and if you have ever done tae kwon do, you know what kind of shape you have to be in to do it.
Some of that depends on the teacher you have. We had Ri Kon Ko. He was really a good guy, but he was intimidating as far as a teacher goes. He would walk up to you and say something in broken English, look at you, and you would go, “OK, I’ll do it” and bow down and do something, so I really kept myself in shape.
George Brett knocked me in for an RBI more than 300 times in my career, but this time I got home before he could get to the plate.
The other thing we did during the strike was we would drive to KU to take batting practice. We were locked out of the cages at Royals Stadium because of the strike. At the time that was the closest place we could go to, so we’d make arrangements to have an hour or two and go in and use their batting cages up there.
I guess it worked for me because I hit pretty well after the season resumed. You know it’s harder for hitters to be ready after a break than pitchers because a pitcher can keep his arm in shape just by throwing. He can go out and simulate pitching, then, do his running to keep his legs in shape.
But for the hitters, you aren’t doing all the stopping and starting, the swinging the bat every single day. So you have to get your hands back in shape, your eyes have to get back in shape. When you start spring training – and none of us really wore batting gloves back then like they do now – your hands would get blisters, then they would break, and they are going to heal and form into calluses. When you first come back that’s what you deal with if you haven’t been picking up a bat.
The A’s really had the best team in the AL West that year. They won the first half championship with a 37-23 record and finished second in the second half with a 27-22 mark. We got into the playoffs even though we had the fourth best record overall that summer. We were 11 games behind the A’s.
And the playoffs weren’t very competitive. The A’s were really good – even though the guys on those A’s teams weren’t as well known as the ’70, ’71 and ’72 teams or the late ‘80s teams with (Mark) McGwire and (Jose) Canseco. But that was the start of Billy Ball out there, and we all know how good they were. Oakland had a really good pitching staff.
Getting to the playoffs was really good, but you know losing 3-0 in the five-game series was another disappointment.
