PAUL MOLITOR WALKS out of the Pfister Hotel in downtown Milwaukee, stops to sign a few autographs, then slides into a cab for the short ride to County Stadium. He’s made the trip to the Brewers home field more than a thousand times, but never from the visiting team’s hotel. And never with the sense of anxiety now rattling around in the pit of his stomach.
It’s Friday, June 25, a date Molitor circled more than six months ago. “I looked at Toronto’s schedule right away and saw that was the first time we come to Milwaukee,” Molitor told a Brewers beat writer a few days ago. Batting third for the defending-champion Blue Jays before 50,000 fans every home game is easy. But leaving the place he’d spent his entire adult life, where he played ball for 15 years and built a good life for his wife Linda and their eight-year-old daughter Blaire, had been a lot harder than anyone knew.
Molitor thinks about his new life as the cabbie turns onto I-94, County Stadium now just two miles away. He was relieved to face the Brewers for the first time in Toronto back in late May, when he rapped out seven hits, scored three runs, and knocked in two. By the end of the four-game series, Molitor was hitting .340 with seven home runs and 34 RBI.
He’d taken a few hard swings at Brewers management, too. Molitor wondered aloud why Selig waited five weeks to make him an offer last fall and why the offer was almost a million dollars less than he earned the season before. “I just felt they were prepared for me to leave,” Molitor told Milwaukee writers.
He swung even harder a week later. “When there’s talk that your club’s future is in jeopardy and you have a six-year stadium controversy, it doesn’t breed confidence,” Molitor said. “I don’t miss that uncertainty of the future.”
Molitor knew his words would only increase the finger-pointing going on in Milwaukee. Disappointed with a team that quickly fell to the bottom of the AL East, Brewers fans are regularly ripping Bud, Wendy, and GM Sal Bando. The normally laid back Bando has been criticizing fans and the business community for not supporting their team, warning that Milwaukee might even lose its baseball team again.
Molitor’s harsh words stung Selig, who is in his office now, waiting for his former star. The two men, who haven’t spoken since Molitor left town, agreed to meet before tonight’s game. It’s 2:30 p.m. when Paul strolls through the players’ gate and up the ramp to the executive offices on the main level.
“Come on in, Paul,” says Selig when he sees Molitor enter secretary Lori Keck’s tiny adjacent office. Molitor closes the door as he steps into Selig’s office.
“How are you, Paul?” asks Bud.
“I’m doing well, very well,” Molitor says as he sits down in one of the two chairs in front of Selig’s desk and nervously looks around the cramped, cluttered room. Not much has changed. Bud’s desk is still covered with newspapers and half-opened envelopes.
There were many angry letters from Brewers fans when Molitor left for the Blue Jays, some blaming Selig for letting their hero leave, others calling Paul just another greedy ballplayer. And it’s no secret there were hard feelings on both sides.
But the two men have always respected one another. That certainly was the case when Molitor acted as the go-between for Selig and Don Fehr during the 1990 lockout. The Brewers even ran a picture of both men on the cover of their monthly magazine headlined PEACEMAKERS—as the labor battle neared an end. Paul has always liked Bud. That’s part of what made last fall so painful.
Now it’s time to clear the air.
They agree that maybe they said things out of anger they really didn’t mean. They talk about the strategy—or lack of strategy—on both sides that probably made the situation worse. But most of all, they agree that the growing wealth gap between the small and big market teams is too often driving the decision making. Especially when a star player in a small market wants to stay but the team just doesn’t have the money the big market teams have to pay him. “I miss a lot of things about Milwaukee and playing with the Brewers,” Molitor says.
“In many ways it was more difficult for me to let you go than it was for you to leave,” Selig says.
“Maybe we could have changed some things,” Molitor says, “but there was little any of us could do to prevent what happened.”
Both Selig and Molitor are relieved to be talking instead of arguing, and soon they are trading ideas about how to solve the small market problems. They talk about how the television deals for the big market teams dwarf those the small market teams are looking at. They agree that revenue sharing is inevitable. Selig raises the idea of a salary cap, Molitor talks about the players having a say in business decisions if the compensation system is changed.
Almost 30 minutes have passed, and so has much of the tension between them. Molitor reminds Selig that he has a media conference with local writers. “You know, I have a much better understanding now of what you went through last fall,” Molitor says as he gets up to leave.
“Paul, I want you to know the door is still open for you to come back and work here when you are finished playing,” Selig says as the two men part ways.
A crowd of 39,308, the largest since Opening Day, has filed into County Stadium, eager to see their former star play ball. Many are wearing Molitor’s old No. 4 Brewers jersey. Others hold up signs that say things like PAUL, YOU’RE STILL A BREWER IN OUR HEARTS. Some are not as forgiving, including one fan who carries a sign that says SEASON’S GREEDINGS, TRAITOR on one side and MONEY OVER LOYALTY IS THE ONLY REASON on the other.
Molitor is having nothing short of a career year, batting .332 with nine home runs and 49 RBI in 72 games as the team’s primary designated hitter. He’s stolen 13 bases in 15 tries, stealing the hearts of Blue Jays fans as well. “The calls we get about Paul are overwhelmingly positive,” Toronto sports talk show host Dan Shulman tells the Milwaukee Journal.
There’s a runner on second with one out in the 1st inning when Molitor finally steps into the batter’s box. A huge roar washes over the stadium, forcing Molitor to step back out. Clearly moved, he taps his heart and points to the crowd, then up toward Selig’s box, and finally into the Brewers dugout.
A full minute later, Molitor digs back in against Milwaukee’s Jaime Navarro. The Brewers right-hander gets ahead in the count, 1–2, then fires a pitch that Molitor rifles back up the middle for a run-scoring single. The crowd erupts once again, and Molitor cannot hold back a smile as he stands on first, his heart pumping hard.
The Brewers spoil Molitor’s return when pinch hitter Dickie Thon singles in a run with two out in the 9th for a 6–5 win. The ovation for Thon is the loudest of the night. Still, “It’s a night I’m always going to remember,” Molitor says in the crowded postgame locker room.
More than 45,000 fans are on hand for each of the next two games and watch both Molitor and the Brewers struggle. Molitor manages just a pair of hits, but his offense is barely missed. Joe Carter slams a game-winning home run in the 9th inning on Saturday that moves the Blue Jays into sole possession of first place.
Carter homers again in the Blue Jays’ 5–4 victory on Sunday. It’s Toronto’s 10th win in its last 12 games, lifting the Jays to a season-high 16 games over .500.
The loss is the Brewers’ 13th in their last 18 games, leaving them in sole possession of last place in the AL East, and it’s the off-the-field games that are most important to Selig now. Watching his former star playing for one of the game’s richest teams before huge crowds reminds Selig of what he needs most to keep baseball alive in Milwaukee: other people’s money.
And lots of it.
There is help on the horizon. Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson has privately told Selig he’ll give him what he needs, pledging to use taxpayer money to finance most of a new $207 million stadium. But the help won’t come until after the ’94 elections. Using public funds for stadiums is never popular with voters, and the constant squabbling between baseball’s owners and players has made the idea toxic.
So all Selig can do is tell fans that everything’s on hold until the owners agree to his plan for a salary cap and revenue sharing. None of this will be an easy sell. Selig has already summoned the game’s owners to the small, upscale town of Kohler, 60 miles north of Milwaukee, to make his next pitch. He has been working the phones nonstop to win over the dissenters—and there are many.
And all Selig has to do is pick up his local paper before the Brewers’ final game against Toronto to see Don Fehr already lobbying against his plan. If the owners insist on a salary cap, Fehr warns, the players will walk. Given the wealth and war chests on both sides, he says, the next break in play could last a very long time.
Many Milwaukee fans might not mind if this season came to an early end. The Brewers stumble into July’s All-Star break at 37–49, last in the division standings and league attendance. When Milwaukee opens the second half losing four straight to Chicago, it’s clear Selig’s team will remain in the basement for the rest of the season.
Less clear is what the future holds.
“Everybody’s wondering if we are going to be playing here next year,” says center fielder Darryl Hamilton, the team’s union rep. “And I hate to say it, but if we leave, Milwaukee will never have another baseball team.”
Selig has few reasons to be optimistic about getting his revenue sharing and salary cap deal in the days leading up to the owners’ August 11–12 meetings at Kohler’s plush American Club resort. There have been constant phone calls from George Steinbrenner tearing into Bud’s labor negotiator Dick Ravitch, shouting about socialism, and threatening to sue. Steinbrenner is always threatening to sue, but there are whispers about others mounting legal challenges as well.
The truth is, none of the 10 big market teams are interested in sharing more of their local revenues, leaving Selig at least three votes shy of the 21 he needs for an agreement. Bud’s good friend Fred Wilpon, co-owner of the Mets, is one of the fiercest opponents. Peter Angelos, the lead investor of the group that paid $173 million for the Orioles, has also argued loudly against revenue sharing. Colorado owner Jerry McMorris, whose Rockies haven’t even completed one full season yet, is worrying about creating a welfare state.
“People tend to lose incentive and pride when you make it easy for them to survive,” McMorris says.
Fehr, of course, is doing his best to kill Selig’s efforts to unite the owners. In late July, the union leader sent a letter to every player, proposing a strike on Labor Day if the owners emerge from what he calls their “evangelical retreat” in Kohler with a salary cap plan. The players rallied around the threat, putting the owners’ $260 million postseason payday from CBS in jeopardy. “The only time you can get them to negotiate seriously,” Molitor says, “is to have the possibility of a work stoppage this fall.”
Selig pushes all this from his mind as he walks up to the podium to open the meetings. “This is an historic occasion,” says Selig, repeating his oft-used opening line. Dressed in a somber dark blue suit, Selig keeps his brief remarks focused on the Darwinian choice he says small market teams face every season: do they lose their best players and pile up big losses on the field or pay them and pile up big losses off the field?
The system is broken, he says again. And it must be fixed to give baseball fans what they deserve: hope and faith that their teams can compete. Or even survive. “Change is never easy,” Selig says, “but we have to do this for the good of the game. The purpose of coming to this off-site is to put aside our differences and find common ground.”
Selig turns the meeting over to Dick Ravitch, who ambles to the podium clutching the notes for his presentation. Ravitch and his staff have spent the last two months compiling baseball’s financial data and sending out a series of proposals. The owners, lawyers, and financial experts now sitting in this amphitheater have all had ample opportunity to weigh in.
“This is just a starting point,” Ravitch tells his audience.
But a few minutes later, many in the group make their position abundantly clear. Ravitch is barely past his introductory remarks when the owners of the big market teams stand, as if on cue, and walk toward the amphitheater’s exit, their clusters of lawyers and financial experts trailing closely behind.
Steinbrenner, gone.
Wilpon, gone.
McMorris, gone.
George Bush, gone.
Paul Beeston, gone.
Selig can only watch in stunned silence as the others file out, one after the next, his hopes for an agreement fading fast.
Common ground?
These people can’t even share a common room.
Selig can’t help but feel betrayed. Have they listened to anything he’s been saying since he took over for Vincent? Isn’t this why they keep losing to the union at the bargaining table? All Fehr has to do is hold his players together and wait for the owners’ differences to pull them apart. That strategy has worked every time.
But Selig is convinced the players won’t risk losing the big salaries they now make by staging a long strike. This is our chance to change the system, he keeps saying. All we have to do is stand together.
Evidently, Selig still has a lot more persuading to do.
Just how much more is clear once the large market owners settle into their own conference room and take turns bashing their small market brethren. Why should these franchises be guaranteed a profit? If they can’t run their businesses properly, why should we have to bail them out? Most of them are taking the money we’re already giving them and stuffing it in their pockets instead of improving their teams. Why should we give them more?
To no one’s surprise, Steinbrenner speaks up loudly and often. And with good reason—it’s George who stands to lose the most under any version of Ravitch’s plan. The Yankees owner will soon be putting his shipbuilding company up for sale, making his baseball team his family’s main business. And Steinbrenner is determined to protect his interests.
Damn it, George says, league rules already give AL teams 25 percent of his cable money for every game they play in New York. They all get big crowds when the Yankees come to town. The AL rules give visiting teams 20 percent of the gate for every game (as opposed to 46 cents for every ticket sold in the NL). Isn’t that revenue sharing? Yankees merchandise is always a big seller, and they all share in those profits, too.
“I’m a charitable guy, but I don’t like the idea of a socialist state,” George shouts. “The Yankees shouldn’t be punished for their success.”
Every one of the big market owners agrees with Steinbrenner. We’re the ones developing new ways to market our teams, they tell each other. We’re the ones out there taking all the risks. Where is this sense of entitlement coming from?
Just about the only time the warring factions see each other the rest of the day is when they get hungry and head for the buffet tables set up in the main hall. And when that happens, insults fly and shouting matches begin.
“Remember, it takes two teams to play a baseball game,” Montreal’s Claude Brochu says loudly enough for everyone grabbing food to hear.
“Maybe we’ll just start our own damn league,” Boston’s John Harrington shoots back.
“When you’re walking down the street and someone asks you for money and you give him a dollar,” Beeston yells, “he doesn’t turn around and then ask you for five dollars.”
Harrington and Beeston are considered the reasonable men among the big market group, which now includes the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, Cardinals, Marlins, Rockies, Orioles, Blue Jays, Dodgers, and Rangers. Some are surprised to see Texas aligned with the big market teams, but Bush and Rusty Rose, the Harvard-trained brain behind the Rangers, expect a big surge in revenues when the Rangers’ new stadium opens next year. And they plan to keep as much of that revenue as they can.
Not every team making money stands with the big market teams. The Cubs and Braves side with the small market caucus, a strategic decision they hope will persuade those owners to hold down the royalties their superstations pay for broadcasting their games across the country in return. Then there’s Jerry Reinsdorf, whose White Sox turn a nice profit. Reinsdorf, the hardest of the hard-liners, loves the cost certainty the NBA cap provides for his Bulls. He wants a salary cap in baseball so badly he’s publicly stated his willingness to shut down the game for a year—even two—to get it.
It’s late the first night when Selig, Reinsdorf, and Ravitch head over to the large market conference room, leaving a trail of reporters at the door as they walk inside. Selig lets Ravitch do the talking, and the result is not pretty. Ravitch can barely get a sentence out before one or another of the owners shouts an angry retort. None of them are buying his ideas.
A half hour later the three men emerge, silent and downcast. They push past the reporters, who watch Ravitch put his arm around Selig’s shoulders as they walk back to the small market caucus room empty handed. The reporters soon hear laughter from the room the three men have just left.
Both sides continue their internal discussions well into the early morning hours. At midmorning the next day there is some movement. Each big market team agrees to write down an amount it is willing to put into a revenue sharing pool. The total comes to $43 million—only half of what the small market teams want—and the offer is quickly rejected.
It’s late that afternoon when Beeston and Bush walk over to the small market room with another offer: $54 million. The kicker: the $11 million increase from their first offer would be paid by three teams—the White Sox, Braves, and Cubs. All 18 owners in the small market caucus quickly vote it down.
As the last few hours of the meeting slip away, a half dozen black vans pull up to the side entrance of the American Club and leave their motors running. It’s 11 p.m., and a handful of local folks have gathered outside the resort hoping to see the famous men who run America’s National Pastime. A glimpse is all they get. The owners slip through the double doors and jump into the vans, leaving Selig and Ravitch to explain what went wrong.
“When you’re changing established patterns of life, a certain amount of trauma and a certain amount of time are needed to effect those changes,” Selig tells reporters before ducking into his car.
Ravitch delivers the only news: the owners will make no attempt to unilaterally impose new contract terms this winter, nor will they lock out the players next spring. Both are empty gestures. A lockout has little support. And management can’t change contract terms without first bargaining in good faith—and the two sides have not held a single bargaining session. A court challenge by the union would be a slam dunk.
“Though I’m obviously disappointed that we didn’t achieve closure on a plan today, I believe an enormous amount of progress has been made,” says Ravitch, looking weary. “Baseball will be played, and I hope everyone enjoys the rest of the season.”
Selig has already made calls to several owners by the time he sits down for breakfast with his wife the next day and sifts through the fallout from the disaster in Kohler. He’s also spoken with local reporters asking about Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist, who says he’s willing to use taxpayer money to build a new stadium. The disaster at Kohler, the mayor says, makes it obvious that Selig won’t have the money to build one himself.
Norquist and Selig have clashed for years, and the mayor’s offer is nothing new. Norquist wants the stadium built downtown as part of his efforts to revitalize the city. Bud wants it right next to County Stadium, in an empty valley three miles outside the center of town, where food sales and parking fees maximize his profits.
Tell the mayor thanks but no thanks, Bud says to reporters. We’ll take care of the stadium ourselves.
“You wouldn’t believe how nasty things got in Kohler,” Selig tells his wife. But there is a glimmer of hope. The big market teams hate the very idea of revenue sharing, but their meager offer gave Selig at least a toehold, something to work with. And the owners still support him. Indeed, at baseball’s quarterly meeting next month in Boston, the Executive Council will tell ownership they’ve awarded Selig $1 million for his work as Acting Commissioner—more than double what he’s earning as president of the Brewers.
And why not? Selig may be preaching gloom and doom, but business this season has never been better. Toronto and Colorado are on pace to draw 4 million fans; five teams will draw more than 3 million, and no team will fail to attract at least a million paying customers. Revenues should approach an all-time high of $2 billion, and the record sale price of the Orioles has raised the value of all their teams. And as long as Bud is in charge, there is no risk of a Commissioner siding with the union in contract talks.
Still, the rebuke at Kohler stings. For the first time Selig can remember, he hadn’t locked up the votes before opening a meeting. He won’t make that mistake again, certainly not next month in Boston. It’s clear Ravitch has a lot more work to do and less clear that he can handle it, so there will be no revenue sharing vote on the agenda. Instead Bud will celebrate his first full year as Acting Commissioner by announcing a new format for 1994: three divisions and a wild-card team to expand the playoffs by another round.
Selig knows he has the votes for that. Even the union is saying it will approve the changes, though why the owners need the union’s consent to make changes to their game is something Selig still can’t understand.
There is nothing subtle about Lenny Dykstra.
Not the big chaw of tobacco in his cheek, the one he uses to spit streams of brown liquid everywhere he goes. Not the red Mercedes he wrapped around a tree after a night of drinking two summers ago, a crash that kept him out of the Phillies lineup for nine weeks with a broken cheekbone and collarbone and several broken ribs. Not the high-stakes poker games that forced Vincent to investigate the center fielder’s after-hours activities.
And certainly not the extra 15 pounds of muscle layered onto his five-foot-ten frame when he walked into spring training this season. Whoa—what did you do in the offseason? the writers all asked when they first saw Lenny in February. Took a lot of good vitamins, he told them, and that was the end of the discussion. Everyone knows that what you see with Dykstra is what you get.
Except for Dykstra.
“I’m a lot different than I appear to be,” he’s told writers in every city as his performance gets better and better over the course of the season. The writers know how much Lenny loves to entertain, and the line is always good for a laugh.
Who knew Dykstra was also telling the truth?
Kirk Radomski does. Dykstra told the Mets clubhouse man he was using steroids back when Lenny was still playing in New York in the late ’80s.
So does Darren Daulton. The Phillies All-Star catcher and Dykstra’s after-hours running mate is also on the juice.
And Jeff Scott certainly knows. The weight lifter has been shooting up Lenny with the anabolic steroid Deca-Durabolin since 1991, when the two men met at a bar near the Phillies’ spring training camp and became fast friends. Scott partied hard with Dykstra from January through March, charged the ballplayer $100 for each Deca injection, then gave him enough of the steroid to last the season when the Phillies headed north.
But this past winter, Dykstra—now 30 and entering the last year of his contract—told Scott he wanted something stronger. “I want size, dude,” Dykstra told him. So Scott gave the Phillies outfielder a new cocktail—two oral steroids and three injectables—monitored Lenny’s diet, and pushed him hard in the weight room. Then Scott sat back and watched the buddy he called his “science experiment” blow up.
And Dykstra did just that. After playing fewer than 100 games in each of the last two injury-riddled seasons, the Phillies’ leadoff hitter went to the plate more times this season—773 in 161 games—than anyone in major league history. He led the National League in hits (194), walks (129), and runs (143)—something no NL player had done in 79 years. He batted .305 and set career highs in home runs (19), doubles (44), RBI (66), stolen bases (37), and on-base percentage (.420).
Dykstra is sure he isn’t the only player using. Jose Canseco has been open about his use of steroids since 1988, when he became the first player to hit 40 home runs and steal 40 bases in a single season while playing for the A’s. It was the same year Red Sox fans serenaded Canseco with chants of “Steroids, steroids” after a Washington Post columnist went on CBS’ NewsWatch and claimed the outfielder was using steriods.
Congress made anabolic steroids a controlled substance in 1990. A year later then-Commissioner Fay Vincent put the drug on baseball’s banned substance list and the A’s made Canseco the highest-paid player in the game. Players know that plenty of the new, big bodies they are seeing this summer are on the juice. Their only question is how many.
Pitchers are wondering the same thing. It wasn’t long ago when a pitcher escaped trouble if he could hit the corner down and away. Sure, a hitter might get lucky with an opposite-field flare, but paint that corner and you were usually rewarded with a routine ground out. Now even the little guys like Dykstra are rifling those pitches on a line to the opposite field. And some are taking those pitches deep.
Third base coaches are also marveling at what they see. Why do so many fly balls look like something you see at the driving range, hitting a second gear and taking off instead of settling into an outfielder’s glove? A lot of scouts are wondering, too. Players they thought were washed up a few years ago are now playing better than they did in their prime. Others who couldn’t stay healthy as young players are suddenly iron horses in what used to be the twilight of a baseball career.
(The FBI isn’t wondering, though. Canseco, Mark McGwire, and a handful of other Oakland players turned up as users during a four-year investigation that ended in ’93 with the arrests of 70 steroid dealers. But athletes weren’t targets of their investigation, so the feds saw no reason to talk about steroid use in baseball.)
Home runs are up everywhere this season—33 percent over last year. Bush’s Rangers crushed 181 homers, tops in the majors, with Juan Gonzalez belting a league-leading 46 and Rafael Palmeiro smacking 37. In all, five players hit 40 home runs, and 22 players hit 30 or more home runs—double the number from a year ago. Some baseball execs insist home runs are up because expansion has thinned out pitching, the new parks are smaller, and the baseballs are harder. Or maybe it’s all the protein shakes and creatine the players are taking. Seems like every hitter has a blender in his locker this season.
Popping amphetamines—greenies, as the players and coaches call them—has long been an accepted part of the game, a much-needed pick-me-up to get through a grueling season. Most clubhouses have two pots of coffee for players—“leaded and unleaded”—one with amphetamines, one without. But now there are so many sample boxes from supplement companies lying around that some clubhouses are beginning to look like GNCs.
Whatever the reason, 1993 is a season filled with spectacular hitting performances and tight pennant races. Barry Bonds puts up big numbers—46–123–.336—and earns his second straight MVP. Ken Griffey, all of 23, wallops 45 home runs for Seattle, while 24-year-old Sammy Sosa hits 33 home runs for the Cubs, matching his total for the previous three seasons combined. Reinsdorf, who traded Sosa after ’91, can’t help notice how much bigger Sammy looks in a Cubs uniform. His own 25-year-old star Frank Thomas outperforms both, hitting 41 home runs, knocking in 128, and hitting .317, leading Chicago to its first division title in 10 years.
It is a good season for young and old alike. In Colorado, 32-year-old Andres Galarraga leads the majors in hitting at .370, a full 103 points above his career average, which thrills the 4,483,350 fans—a major league record—who flock to watch the Rockies. Toronto’s Joe Carter, who turned 33 during spring training, has another superb season with 33 home runs and 121 RBI. And Carter’s new teammate Molitor turns in a career year at 37, batting .332 and leading baseball with 211 hits. His 22 home runs and 111 RBI are both career highs.
Selig is still searching for revenue sharing votes as the regular season melts into the playoffs and the Phillies and Blue Jays advance to the World Series. The business of baseball is broken, the Acting Commissioner says. But there is nothing wrong with the game once the beefed-up players take the field.
Molitor and Dykstra are the most compelling players on two World Series teams that could not be more different. The Phillies, who finished last in the NL East a year ago, are a bunch of rough-and-tumble players who revel in their image as the game’s so-called Wild Bunch. The defending-champion Blue Jays are the quintessential professionals, as polite and wholesome as the country they call home.
But pennants are not won on style points, and both teams have strong rotations, star closers, and tough lineups that outscored opponents by more than 100 runs. As for Selig’s competitive balance concern, it’s a toss-up: the Jays have the sport’s highest payroll at $47.2 million; the Phillies have the tenth lowest at $28.5 million—just $4.7 million more than the Brewers.
The teams split the first two games, and with the Series shifting to Philadelphia, Toronto manager Cito Gaston opts to play Molitor at first and bench John Olerud, the AL’s leading hitter. Molitor rewards Gaston with a triple, a home run, and three RBI in a 10–3 Toronto rout. Dykstra belts a double and a pair of home runs to give the Phillies a 14–9 lead through seven innings in Game 4, but a run-scoring double by Molitor brings in Mitch Williams. The Phillies closer faces six batters and coughs up five runs, the lead, and the game, leaving Toronto one win shy of a repeat.
Curt Schilling shuts down Toronto, 2–0, in Game 5, moving the Series back to Toronto and Molitor back to DH. The former Brewer smacks an RBI triple in the 1st and a solo home run in the 5th as Toronto jumps to a 5–1 lead. But Dykstra blasts a three-run homer in a five-run 7th to put the Phillies up, 6–5. And that’s where the game stands in the 9th when Molitor steps in against Williams with one out and Rickey Henderson on first.
Molitor singles on Williams’ third pitch, bringing up Joe Carter, who’s been quiet all Series. But there is nothing quiet about this at bat. Williams unleashes a fastball down and in, and Carter rips the ball deep down the left-field line. Carter is racing to first when the ball sails just to the right of the foul pole and into the stands, and 52,195 fans erupt. Their Blue Jays are champions again.
Dykstra walks slowly off the field, his four home runs, eight RBI, and .348 batting average reduced to a footnote. But he’ll get his reward soon enough. The Phillies are already discussing a four-year, $24.9 million contract extension, which will make Dykstra the highest-paid leadoff hitter in the game’s history.
Molitor’s reward is more immediate. He got exactly what he wanted—the chance to play on the big stage—and no player came up bigger. The ex-Brewer hit .500, scored 10 runs, and drove in eight. There is little suspense when the MVP is announced: who else could it be?
Molitor is just about to enter the Toronto clubhouse when he’s met by Selig, and the two men embrace. “I know how much you wanted to experience this,” Selig whispers into Molitor’s ear. “I’m happy for you.”
“Thank you, Bud,” is all Molitor can get out before the tears begin to flow. He thanks Selig once more, then walks into the clubhouse, where Champagne is being sprayed everywhere.
Molitor is still sitting in his uniform at 2 a.m., soaked with sweat and Champagne, the celebration now going on in venues outside the stadium. A reporter who covered Molitor for many years in Milwaukee is one of the few still working the room. “I was overcome by my emotions,” Molitor tells the writer, his voice a raspy whisper. “I’m not embarrassed to admit it. A lot of guys went out of their way to tell me how much it meant to them to see me win.”
The two men talk about Molitor’s life with the Brewers, the good times and the bad. They talk about what it would have been like to win it all in Milwaukee and how unlikely that would have been.
“I didn’t want to say anything before, but now that we’ve won it I can say it’s the best year I’ve ever had,” Molitor says. “I can’t explain why at 37 that happened, but my timing was good.
“It just all worked out.”