Volume 28, Number 13 · August 13, 1981
Striking Out
By James Wolcott
Even before the players packed up their gloves and blow-dryers and trooped morosely home, the 1981 baseball season had turned into a punishing scrape of ill feeling and bad nerves. Despite a spirited bolt from the gate by Billy Martin's Oakland A's, despite the phenomenal pitching of Dodger rookie Fernando Valenzuela and the dirt-flying hustle of veteran Pete Rose (who the day before the strike tied Stan Musial's National League hit record at 3630), a cloud of gnats seemed to hover in the air, buzzing with irritation. On the field, managers went to operatic extremes to show up umpires, their tempers bursting like sewer pipes. Billy Martin, a low-flying baseball genius who always looks as if a host of demons were nipping at his ulcers, flipped out so angrily in one game that he hurled scoops of dirt at an ump's backside—a gesture that belonged more to a school playground than a major league ballpark.
Feature, 1368 words
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