Last-gasp KC must cope with Carlton

By Ray Finocchiaro, Staff Correspondent

PHILADELPHIA – If things weren't bad enough for the Kansas City Royals, who are one World Series loss from elimination, they find themselves backed into a corner they've feared since the outset – facing Steve Carlton in a must-win situation.

It's Cy Young Award shoo-in Carlton vs. KC's Rich Gale tonight at Veterans Stadium in Game Six of a World Series that has, as usual, captured the imagination of the nation. But the Royals don't need much imagination to realize their work is cut out for them from the outset of the 8:20 p.m. game.

"I said before that we were going to have to beat Steve Carlton to win this thing," said Gale, who started Game Three in Royals Stadium last Friday night but wasn't involved in the decision. "Now we're at that point. We either beat Carlton or lose it in six."

Gale, a hard-throwing right-hander who's been plagued by tendinitis, lasted 4.1 innings and allowed two runs on seven hits, walking three and striking out three.

"I was a little too strong the last time because I hadn't pitched in almost two weeks," Gale admitted. "But I think I'll be more relaxed this time – and the whole team will be, too."

Hardly sounds like a team being issued blindfolds before facing a 24-game winner in the regular season who's already beaten them once in the Series.

"The game's not on my back," Gale said. "I've got 24 other guys to help out there, too. There's no question I'm going to be pumped up but, if I lose, I think the sun still will come up on Wednesday."

But Gale may have to see it through the rubble of what once was Philadelphia if the town goes wild, as expected, with a World Series winner on its hands for the first time since the Athletics did the trick. For the Phillies, it would be a novelty few expected they'd live to see.

The problem, if there is one, is whether Carlton's tired arm can stand the strain. It's no secret that Lefty has been less than overpowering in postseason play but Phillies' Manager Dallas Green isn't surprised.

He resisted a temptation to start Carlton in Game Five in Kansas City Sunday, letting rookie Marty Bystrom start instead.

"Lefty would've pitched any time we asked him, but I felt he needed the extra time with the 300-odd innings he's pitched this season," Green said at yesterday's Vet workout. "It'll do him a world of good. Plus, this puts him back in Veterans Stadium and he pitches pretty good here."

Green concedes that Carlton has been less than "Super Steve" the last month of the season, and thereafter.

"Over his last 10 games, I'd say about six were pretty close to the Cy Young guy we watched all year," the manager said. "But even in the four where he had less than his usual stuff, he kept us in the game. That's the sign of a champion and a winner."

Green pointed to Carlton's start in Game Two, when the Phillies rallied for a 6-4 victory.

"He didn't pitch that well against Kansas City, but he still struck out 10 of them," Green said with a shrug of his broad shoulders. "Lefty's been in. a lot of pressure situations in 300 innings. He's won something like 16 games after we lost the previous game."

Green said the season has taken its toll, mainly in Carlton's arm speed.

"When that happens, you don't have the extra pop on your fastball and slider," said Green, an ex-pitcher who never was blessed with Carlton's talent but knows the tricks of the trade. "When Steve was fresh early in the season, he had good arm speed and everything was cracking. It's not cracking as many times now, but it's cracking enough to get the job done. And that's all he and I care about."

Green refused to discuss his managerial future, which is reportedly a short one, saying he'll talk with club president Ruly Carpenter when the Series was over.

"We've got to win one-of-two and when we do that and march down Broad Street, we'll see what happens," Green said, adding that he and the team are raring to go for Game Six.

"We don't like off-days," he said. "There's only a couple days to go. One, hopefully. We want to get it over."

•       •       •

All is not merry in the Royals' court, now that KC's Cinderella team is one game short of elimination. Several players have been taking pot shots at Manager Jim Frey – and each other – since Sunday's 4-3 loss to the Phillies.

Left-hander Paul Splittorff, angry that he's been left out of Frey's World Series plans against the predominantly right-handed-hitting Phils, says he wants out next season.

"I know what he's saying," Splittorff said, "but I've been a front-line pitcher my whole career and pitched against every club in every situation. If he (Frey) doesn't feel that's my role, I'll leave here.

"I've got two years left on my contract but I'll make so many waves, they can't keep me. But I'm not going to do it now – it's too important this week. No, I haven't talked to him (Frey) about it. I don't talk to him. I don't think anybody does. We've kept our distance all year."

The Phillies were 21-17 against left-handers during the regular season and 70-54 against right-handers. And Splittorff has an unexpected ally in Mike Schmidt, the Phils' NL Most Valuable Player candidate with 48 home runs and 121 runs batted in, all from the right side.

"It's a fallacy to think that teams shouldn't throw left-handers at the Phillies," Schmidt said while en route to the batting cage. "That's totally ridiculous. Left-handers all over baseball have beaten the Phillies' brains out. Listen, that's how a left-handed pitcher gets to the majors, being able to get right-handed hitters out."

Listening, Jim?

Other angry Royals include John Watham, who was left to sulk on the bench while Jose Cardenal was striking out with the bases loaded to end Game Five, left-hander Larry Gura, who's been taken out of two games that ace reliever Dan Quisenberry eventually lost, and Clint Hurdle, also unhappy at being taken out for Cardenal.

Watham, who is 0-for-19 in postseason play, just shrugs and says, "I'm still here," certain that Frey has forgotten.

"I remembered what happened to Wathan when he batted against McGraw in Philadelphia," Frey said of a rally-killing double play in Game One and a strikeout that ended Game Two.

Gura, who has been relieved in the middle of two four-hitters with the lead, insisted he wasn't tired when Frey yanked him.

"Boy, would I like to say some stuff," said Gura, who'll have to wait his turn in the disgruntled lefthanders line behind Splittorff. "I wasn't the least bit tired, but I didn't have the chance to argue."

Frey made the motion to the bullpen for Quisenberry as he left the dugout, long before he reached the mound and was caught in Gura's X-ray glare.

"I took him out for the same reason I've taken others out all year," Frey countered. "We have Quisenberry down there and he's done the job all year."

As for Hurdle, who's hitting .417 in the Series, the right fielder was pulled for Cardenal with Tug McGraw on the mound in the seventh inning Sunday. Hurdle angrily hurled away the rubber donut that's used to add weight to the bat for practice swings when he was called back to the dugout.

"It broke my heart," Hurdle said after the game. "Everybody wants a chance to win the game in a situation like that.”

Even George Brett, the Royals golden boy, had a few ill words for teammate Willie Aikens, who went from hero to goat in little more than a day when his error led to one Phillies' run and his meek wave at Del Unser's double sparked the Phils' two-run rally in the ninth.

"You have to make those plays," said Brett, whose three-pitch strikeout against McGraw left him in no mood to excuse Aikens' reflexive lapses on Unser shots down the line, not to mention the throwing error charged to Brett several innings earlier on a ball Aikens should've scooped. "He's the reason we get errors."

Temper, temper, fellas. A little more of this and you'll be so riled up that not even not-so-Super Steve Carlton will be able to hold your thunder. Or is that the idea?

•       •       •

With the nation's baseball writers circled around, Larry Bowa rehashed the amphetamine scandal that rocked the Phillies' clubhouse after the All-Star break and put a gag in the normally talkative shortstop's mouth until the playoffs began.

That dispensed with, Bowa addressed the trade rumors that swirled around his head once his batting average began to dip and his fielding slacked off to near-human proportions. As a veteran with 10 years in the majors and five years with the same team, Bowa can't be traded without his permission.

"But if I know an organization doesn't want me, I won't tie their hands," Bowa said yesterday. "But I won't go anywhere where I have to start at the bottom. I've had enough good years here that, if I get traded, I'll tell them where I want to go.

"If they don't want me here, I won't stay here. But I won't go to no Toronto." At which point a writer who covers the Blue Jays yelped.

"Sorry," Bowa laughed. "Ask me again in five years."

Believe it or not, Series has been wild as playoffs

By Rod Beaton, Staff Correspondent

PHILADELPHIA – It was hard to imagine, last week at this time, that the World Series could possibly approach the level of drama of the National League Championship Series. That playoff had great plays, rotten plays, disputed plays and its final four games decided in extra innings.

There must have been a run on tranquilizers.

Through five games of the World Series, the thrill has not abated. In fact, the quality of play has been so high, the wealth of heroes and vil-lians so extensive this Series can be compared to the 1975 Boston-Cincinnati thriller without embarrassment.

It took the Reds seven games to win that one. At 8:20 tonight, with Steve Carlton on the mound, the Phillies will try to win this one in six.

This World Series has not been like many in the past, anticlimactic pageants following real October classics, the playoffs. Football's Super Bowl, too, rarely lives up to the eliminations preceding it.

This Series has offered the juxtaposition of the game's finest hitter, George Brett, and its lustiest slugger, Mike Schmidt. Just as Frank White makes a play at second base you don't think can be equalled, Manny Trillo makes a flaming relay to throw a man out at home. Dan Quisenberry and Tug McGraw trade relief appearances and quips. Willie Aikens and Amos Otis deliver long balls. Del Unser rips key pinch hits. One speedster, Willie Wilson, is a washout. Another, Larry Bowa, sparkles.

And the bottom line is clear and clean. The Phils lead three games to two and need one victory, either tonight or tomorrow night.

They got that edge by sweeping at the Vet and, after the Series was squared at 2-2 in Kansas City, winning pivotal Game 5.

GAME 1: Everyone expected the hitters to dominate. They did as the Phils won 7-6.

His pitching staff burned out from the five games with Houston, Phils Manager Dallas Green started rookie Bob Walk against 20-game winner Dennis Leonard.

The ball jumped beyond the Veterans Stadium playing field early and often. Otis and Aikens had two-run homers in the second and third innings, respectively. The Phils rebounded with five in the third in a rally capped by Bake McBride's three-run blast. They added single runs in the fourth and fifth and survived Kansas City's two-run eighth with relief from McGraw.

GAME 2: The Phillies repeated a now-familiar formula to sweep the first two games at the Vet. A four-run eighth inning routed Quisenberry as the Phils overcame a one-run deficit and won 6-4.

Carlton started against Larry Gura. While the Phils left-hander kept stranding runners and piling up strikeouts (10 in eight innings), Gura was not yielding a hit.

The Phils broke through for the first hit, and runs, in the fifth. They lost the 2-0 lead when KC scored a run in the sixth and three in the seventh. It was all for naught as Unser, McBride, Schmidt and Keith Moreland delivered in the eighth. Ron Reed threw a scoreless ninth in relief for a save.

GAME 3: McGraw failed in the 10th inning as the Royals scratched out a run to win 4-3 in the first game at Royals Stadium. Aikens' smash to the wall in left-center field scored Wilson with the game-winner.

Brett, heroically playing a day after minor surgery on hemorrhoids, and Schmidt traded solo homers earlier in the game. Dick Ruthven, the Phils' starter if they must play tomorrow, pitched well through nine innings. Rich Gale, the Roylas' starter tonight, struggled and was replaced by Renie Martin of Dover, Del., who finished up with winner Quisenberry.

GAME 4: The Royals didn't waste an inning storming to a Series deadlock. Before Phils' starter Larry Christenson stomped to the showers, KC had four runs. The highlights were a Brett triple, still another Aikens home run and doubles by Hal McRae and Otis.

Kansas City coasted in from there, with starter Leonard getting two innings of relief from Quisenberry.

GAME 5: The Phillies were led by Mike Schmidt as they got the one victory they needed in Kansas City to set up today's potential championship. Schmidt socked a two-run homer and started a two-run, ninth-inning rally with a single as the Phils won 4-3.

It was a hair-raising ninth inning that started with the rally against Quisenberry, who has pitched in every game of the Series. Schmidt singled and scored on a double by Unser. Manny Trillo caromed a single off Quisenberry to score Unser with the game-winning run.

Vet ready for fan fun

By Rod Beaton, Staff Correspondent

PHILADELPHIA – The Phillies are making preparations for the possibility that festive fans will tear down the city in celebration of a World Series championship that could be Philadelphia's tonight or tomorrow night.

The Phils and the city can't lose. If Kansas City wins two straight, the same fans might tear down the city – in anger.

Either way, the Phils will be ready for anything with an augmented security force, more ushers and a bolstered police presence at Veterans Stadium for Games 6 and, if necessary, 7.

"I increased security by one-third," said Patrick J. Cassidy, the Phils' director of stadium operations. "We have 100 more ushers. There'll be more police.

"There's total cooperation from the city. Everything I ask for they've given. I can't ask them for enough."

NBC reportedly decided all that wasn't enough. Cassidy was not aware of reports the television network had attack dogs lined up to protect its equipment from unruly post-game fans.

The stadium security force will be all male and considerably larger than the one regular-season fans saw breaking up brawls, evicting pot smokers and dealing with the other seamy aspects of life in a multi-purpose stadium.

“We had 60 to 70," said Cassidy. "Then we went with 90 for the first part of this (World Series Games 1-2). Now we're over 100. I can't say exactly how many."

It is well-chronicled that the Phillies have not given Cassidy and his staff occasion to deal with this sweet problem before. He was working in similar capacity in September, 1970 when rampaging fans disrupted the Phils' final game ever in Connie Mack Stadium (nee Shibe Park).

 "If you remember, we were going to have a helicopter take home plate (to plant at the under-construction Vet)," Cassidy recalled. "It didn't pan out. The fans didn't let it. They were breaking seats, running on the field. They weren't average baseball fans."

Not every one of the 65,000 or more on hand tonight will be "average baseball fans." Cassidy has worked diligently to insure that the lunatic fringe doesn't boil over onto the field.

"I want to enjoy it," he said. "I ewant everyone to enjoy it. But we'll be prepared.

"We hope we don't have more than a couple of nuts around. This field is worth a lot of money and we're here to protect it."

The players, Royals and Phillies, don't come cheaply, either.

Cassidy has been preparing for this moment for some time.

"I've been here for all 10 years," said Cassidy. "I started at Shibe Park as a part-time usher in 1952. I like crowd control., It's my bread and butter.

"We have a meeting once a year of stadium operators. We compare notes. Next year I want to be able to say 'Here's how we did it.'

"Last year we had three million people here. We must be doing something right."

Rose didn’t get Royal treatment in KC

By Will Grimsley, Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA – Pete Rose is relieved to be back in friendly territory after being hit in the head with a plastic cup, taunted by hostile fans and needing a police escort in the weekend World Series games in Kansas City.

"They were pretty rough," acknowledged the tough little battler of the Phillies. "I'm used to being booed and belted. If I were there in a white uniform, they would love me.

"I consider it a compliment to my aggressiveness."

Pete's 10-year-old son, Petey, also was hooted and twice hit with debris by aroused Royal fans.

“I didn't mind most of the signs, like the one that said 'The Aqua Velva Man Stinks,"' the combative 39-year-old first baseman said. "But some of the signs were really raw. They didn't bother me but I thought about the John Doe sitting there with his 10-year-old daughter."

Royal fans hung effigies of Rose and exhibited signs which said: "Hey, Peter, we never promised you a Rose garden," "A Rose by any name is ugly," "Pete Rose is a hot dog – let's roast him."

A Philadelphia newspaper polling the fans in Game Five of the Series, won by the Phillies 4-3 Sunday, produced the finding that Rose has replaced the New York Yankees' Reggie Jackson as No. 1 on the Royal hate list.

"It's an honor to be compared with Reggie in any way, considering I'm 3-for-19 and batting .158 in the Series," said Rose, the only man in baseball history to get 200 hits in 10 seasons.

"I've never given anybody any reason not to like me. People don't like me just as they don't like Muhammad Ali and Jimmy Connors. It's because I am so aggressive and also, I think, because I make so much money."

Rose said he was disliked by some fans when he was at Cincinnati because he often held out for more money.

"In St. Petersburg after I signed my big contract with the Phillies ($3.2 million for four years) some guy in the stands called my kid a spoiled bum," he said. "That really burned me up. John Doe is not going to worry about who pays my electric bills."

Kansas City fans became incensed when Rose charged from first base to challenge Manager Jim Frey of the Royals, who had stormed onto the field following the decking of George Brett Saturday on a brush-back pitch by Philadelphia's Dickie Noles.

"Frey was just trying to excite the kid," Rose said. "Dickie is mean. He can fight."

Rose also antagonized the enemy crowd by spiking the baseball – much in the fashion of a football player after a touchdown – on the final out.

"When I was with the Reds, I spiked the ball at third base and they loved it," he said. "Now that I am with the Phillies they boo me when I do it."

Rose appears to take more secret delight than feel resentment at being the black-hatted villain in enemy ball parks.

"They had to quit selling beer in the left-field pavilion at Dodger Stadium when I played left field for the Reds," he said. "The Dodgers once assigned 15 policemen to me.

"At Shea Stadium, in New York, they didn't sell tickets in the left field section when I played there. Also, at Shea, because I was such a target of fans, they quit letting buses stop outside. They went directly to the dugout area.

"In New York once they wouldn't let me out of the hotel room. I had to get room service and they burned my steaks."

Rose's most harrowing experiences have taken place in Chicago's Wrigley Field and in New York's Shea Stadium, he said.

"There were the Bleacher Bums in right field at Wrigley," he recalled. They were deadly. Once I tossed a loose ball to a fan, underhand, just as a favor. I turned my back and he popped me with a B-B gun.

"Another time a guy hit me behind the ear with a paper clip shot with a rubber band. I bled for three innings. Once in Chicago when I was batting against Phil Regan I complained about spitballs.

"He thought he had me struck out when I swung at a spitball for a third strike. But the umpire, realizing it was a spitter, called it a ball. I blasted the next pitch for a hit.

"All hell broke loose. Leo Durocher (then Cubs manager), Ron Santo and Randy Hundley all were kicked out of the game. So was I. Special details were sent out to clear the garbage off the field."

Rose said on another occasion at Wrigley Field he decided to try to placate the right field fans. So he took a dozen baseballs and tossed them to the crowd.

"They threw them right back' he said. "One guy decided he wanted to keep a ball for a souvenir. They beat him up."

The little brawler's problems at Shea Stadium reached their climax in the 1973 Reds-Mets playoffs, triggered by Rose's vicious slide into Bud Harrelson at second base to break up a double play.

Rose and Harrelson went after each other. The fans went wild. They sprayed the outfield with rubbish.

"For the rest of the series we were in fear of our lives. I remember Willie Mays, Tom Seaver and other Mets had to go out to the outfield and plead with the fans to cool it so the game wouldn't be defaulted.

"In the last game, I remember I was on first and Joe Morgan was at bat. I have never been more uneasy. People were hanging over the edge of of the stands ready to spring. (Ed) Kranepool, playing first for the Mets, warned me that as soon as the last out was made he would help me run for shelter.

"It was scary. Morgan made the final out and I scooted into the dugout as fast as my legs would carry me."

Rose considers himself the favorite of the little guy.

"The average working man likes me," he insists. "They say I can't run and I can't throw and don't have much ability. I get what I get on guts. The ordinary guy appreciates that."