Game 6 Throws Together Two Opposites : Cardinals' Joaquin Andujar Is Profane, Not Profound

By RICHARD HOFFER

Oct. 16, 1985 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

Joaquin Andujar, one profane Dominican, was holding court in front of his locker, confounding the reporters as usual. “You’ve got to be angry,” he was explaining. “You have to have some guts, some temper.”

And then he said, as matter-of-factly as possible, “If you’re a (bleep), you can’t play this game.”

A reporter, there to correct all those negative columns by the out-of-towners and even some in-towners, said helpfully, “Joaquin, I can’t write that.”

Now Andujar looked puzzled. A big-time reporter, can’t write (bleep)? So Andujar, more naive than anyone would have guessed, spelled it for the reporter--now he could surely write it--and moved on to other issues.

So it goes with the mysterious Andujar, one misunderstood Dominican, the man who aims to please but never can, the man, more to the point, who the Cardinals will send to the mound today in the sixth game of the playoffs.

He is one of the strangest players today, sometimes macho and sometimes childlike, apparently torn between the need to be loved and the need to be hated, as if that is what fuels his 90-m.p.h. fastball and his will to win. As we shall learn from the following impromptu harangue, Andujar is far from deciding which.

If he is the man everybody has loved to hate, he is also the man, most recently, everybody loves to hit. A strange bird, this Cardinal, he has proven as vulnerable on the mound as he must be off it.

Andujar’s free-floating anger, which manifests itself in the way of either long silences or long and obscene soliloquies--which he doesn’t seem to mean anything particular by--is well chronicled and even accepted by some, especially since he wins games.

Teammate Terry Pendleton said: “Joaquin has his ways about him, but his attitude and approach to winning never varies.”

As for the rest of his teammates, they either ignore him or tease him, more the former than the latter, it seems.

Andujar’s troubles on the mound, almost always overshadowed by his wackiness off it, are fairly new, though, and, to the Cardinals at least, are the greatest and least pardonable obscenities of all. They are not to be ignored.

Consider that Andujar, who led the Cardinals with a 21-12 record, has won just one game since Aug. 23, the date he became the National League’s first 20-game winner. In his 10 starts since then, he has compiled an earned-run average of 6.70.

An ERA of 6.70, Manager Whitey Herzog has observed, with a sprinkling of his own profanity, “Is not conducive to winning.”

So the man who likes to be called “one tough Dominican” has been one hittable Dominican besides, especially in the playoffs. In the second game against the Dodgers, Andujar lasted fewer than five innings, giving up six runs and just generally lousing up.

The enduring picture of his ineptitude that night is of him sitting down at home plate after bunting into a double play. He was one sad Dominican.

Andujar has been going so bad, in fact, that there was some question as to whether he would start this game, or any other in the playoffs. There was never any question in Andujar’s mind.

It was only Monday, though, after the Cardinals had gone ahead in the playoffs, that Herzog officially announced that Andujar would start. And the reason for that, Herzog said, with no discernible happiness, was Danny Cox’s tender elbow.

Andujar, evidently, had been scheduled to be skipped altogether, which presumably would have been conducive to winning.

None of this was according to Andujar, though, who presumes the greatest confidence of his manager. Andujar, perhaps stung by a failure he will not admit, was off and running on the subject of Andujar, one abused and unappreciated Dominican.

“Whitey, he cannot give up on me,” said Andujar, waving the whole issue aside.

Then, sounding a theme that came up with almost hilarious regularity, he added: “I have won 41 games in two years. How many guys have done that? How many pitchers win 20 games twice? How can you get down on a guy who did that? The last guy to do that here, was 17, 18 years ago.”

Case closed. As far as Andujar was concerned, his name was inked into today’s lineup from the beginning. Might as well have been chiseled in stone. He said that Herzog told him last week he’d be pitching this game. No question. “ ‘You have Game 6,’ he told me.”

For better or worse, he does now have Game 6 and, anyway, those other games are all behind him and, anyway, there’s a reason for those, too. “I’m only human,” is the explanation for all that goes awry in his 32-year-old life, even the hanging slider that Orel Hershiser, the opposing pitcher, hit off him in game two.

Andujar at times aspires to something greater, it seems, and during his unexpected harangue the other day, lay claims to what seemed to be various forms of baseball immortality. No human, he indicated most especially, can win 41 games in two seasons.

“How can you lose confidence in such a pitcher as that,” he said, incredulously. And more to the point, as far as Andujar is concerned, how can you write anything bad about such a pitcher as can win “41 (bleeping) games in two seasons.”

His relationship with the press is comic to the extent, apparently, that reporters do not have to be either harangued or altogether snubbed by him every day. Probably a little of Andujar goes a long way, and the local press, understandably, has published some of its irritation with him from time to time.

In fact, a column advising Andujar to work on his image hung from a nearby locker. The words hot dog were underlined, presumably by a helpful teammate.

“You try to make me look like I have no good season,” he said, sounding a well worn theme on his problems with the press. “But if I not win 21 games, you not be standing here talking to me in St. Louis. You be in Los Angeles.”

Then, pointing to the offensive column, he accused the press of making stuff up, although he got no more specific. “Talking (bleep) about me every day,” he said, shaking his head, and adding, “How many pitchers win 20 twice?”

Then he said he didn’t mind the (bleep) in the papers because “That’s your job, to write (bleep). I don’t mind that. But when you gonna write (bleep) about my personal life, you got no class.”

Asked what specifically he was referring to, so that the record might be set straight, Andujar shrugged and issued his now classic line: “I don’t know. I don’t read the papers.”

This, the essential Andujar, reminded some of the St. Louis writers of the time he complained about a lack of publicity. As it happened, he complained the very day a major feature on him, with pictures, had appeared in the local paper. What about that, the writer asked. “I don’t read no papers,” he said shrugging.

Luckily his teammates do, he said, which is why the players were being particularly cold to the press during the playoffs. “All my teammates got the (bleep) over what (bleep) you write about me, which is why they not talking to you.”

This was pretty much news to the reporters, who had thought they were enjoying the full cooperation of the Cardinals. But then Andujar seems to see things differently. Whereas it is not widely believed that Andujar is well-liked by his teammates--catcher Darrell Porter will not speak of him, for example--Andujar, of course, feels otherwise.

“You can go to every locker,” he said. “They love me. My teammates love me, always play with me. I’m going to die here.”

They may very well love him. Before Monday’s game, his teammates were throwing things at him in the dugout and, in baseball, this is considered a form of affection. Or they may just tolerate him, more amused than maddened by his ways.

For example, when Andujar was belaboring the newspaper people for “talking (bleep),” a neighboring player playfully interjected, “It’s because you’re Dominican.” Andujar, in all seriousness, said, “You got that (bleeping) right.” The other player laughed.

It is hard to know what to make of Andujar. Just when you think he’s merely playful, a baseball whizzes by Steve Sax’s head and you check that thought. Then when you think he’s something out of a George Romero movie, he pleads for acceptance and shows his hurt like a jagged scar.

The gist of his harangue, as much a plea as anything, seemed to be that he wanted to be liked. In fact, in large part he was liked. No fans in St. Louis ever booed him he said, correcting a reporter.

But being hated was good, too. When he was advised that the Los Angeles fans would probably be booing him, he said, that’s wonderful, he loved to be booed. “I wish they could boo me the whole game,” he said. “In Santiago, one game, they boo me for 10 innings, but then in 11th, they clap for me.”

That, evidently, was Andujar’s perfect game. He’d had it both ways.

In the meantime, he can’t decide whether he wants to be loved or hated and only knows for sure that he’s “an exciting pitcher” and has won 41 games in two seasons, and who else has done that?

As the writers left Andujar, after an exhausting 40 minutes, their notebooks full of bleeps, Andujar more or less wished his enemies all good luck and to come back real soon.

“The only time I worry,” he said good-naturedly, surprising them again, “is when you not talking (bleep) about me. Then I be worried because I must be some 5-12 pitcher and not somebody who won 41 games in two seasons.

“How many guys have done that?”

HERSHISER VS.ANDUJAR (19-3, 1-0) (21-12, 0-1) G 36 G 38 IP 239.2 IP 269.2 H 179 H 265 R 72 R 113 BB 68 BB 82 SO 157 SO 112 ERA 2.03 ERA 3.40