This Scent of Payback Smells Like Team Spirit

By BILL PLASCHKE

July 26, 2000 12 AM PT

The Colorado Rockies can’t stand the heat, so they hit Gary Sheffield.

Now Kevin Brown can’t stand the Rockies, so he hits one of them.

Monday night, right?

Try May 31, 1997.

What we witnessed at the start of this Dodger trip has been seen before.

It was the year Brown and Sheffield played for the Florida Marlins.

Six times that season, Sheffield was hit by a pitch in the same game that Brown hit a batter.

Twice, including once against the Rockies, Brown hit someone in immediate retaliation for Sheffield’s bruise.

Together, they struck. Together they struck back.

It was not a coincidence that together, they led the Marlins to a World Series championship.

It’s happening again.

Not necessarily the championship--let’s not get loony here--but the feeling that leads to it. The culture that causes it. The togetherness that defines it.

The last time the Dodgers sniffed the playoffs, they held a two-game lead over the San Francisco Giants in the final two weeks of 1997.

They traveled to San Francisco for a two-game series.

Barry Bonds homered in the first inning of the first game.

As the ball left the park, he did a little pirouette in front of home plate.

And another Dodger winter began.

No Dodger pitcher had the inclination to make Bonds pay for his showboating that day. No Dodger pitcher has made him pay since.

On Monday night, Kevin Brown made somebody pay.

He will deny it and Davey Johnson will deny it and everybody in the Dodger clubhouse will chuckle and shrug, same as they do after spray-painting a teammate’s loafers.

But that fastball Brown buried in heavy-hitting Todd Helton’s back in the seventh inning--after letting Jeff Cirillo pass untouched--was more than mound graffiti.

It was a 60-foot declaration.

“You are not going to intimidate us,” Johnson said Tuesday in a phone interview. “We’re going to stand our ground.”

It was not a declaration of war.

It was a declaration of inner peace.

Sheffield needs to know that as he completes his season of flight, he will be able to stand firmly at home plate without worrying about hitting the dirt.

His fellow hitters need that same peace. His fellow pitchers need to be at peace with protecting their teammates.

Championship teams have that feeling. The Dodgers are only now starting to understand what it’s like.

“I know that when I’m up there, I get a lot of messages delivered to me,” Sheffield said Tuesday. “It’s important that there are messages sent.”

Despite what critics may say, when done right, these are not dangerous messages.

This is not about the heinous beanballs of insecure cheap-shot artists, the sort of headhunting done by Roger Clemens on Mike Piazza.

This is about a pitch thrown behind the hitter’s back. His natural instinct is to back away, so the ball hits him on the meaty part of the back or shoulders, leaving him with nothing more than a bruise.

Heck, considering the armor worn by today’s hitter--they are covered with so many pads, it takes them five minutes to undress at first base--it’s a miracle that a hitter ever feels any pitch to the body.

The safety brushback is a pitch that everyone knows how to throw.

To aim it higher is unconscionable.

But to not throw it when a hitter is crowding the plate, or when an opponent’s pitcher is crowding your hitters, is chicken.

Part of the Dodgers’ clubhouse unrest of recent years was caused by their pitchers’ refusal to back their hitters.

That fear is finally being knocked off the plate.

Can the fear of success be far behind?

“When we were in Florida, every player felt comfortable coming to the plate, we respected every pitcher and they respected us,” Sheffield said. “It’s slowly coming together like that here. You can see that we are starting to believe in one another.”

Oddly enough, the foolish charge into the Wrigley Field stands two months ago started it.

“It was a terrible thing, I would never want it to happen again, but that day, you could see something,” Johnson said. “Today when you talk about makeup and chemistry and all that stuff . . . this club has it.”

Even newcomers can tell.

“All I ever heard about the Dodgers was that they had nine different cliques and nobody talked,” said Jim Leyritz, acquired from the New York Yankees in June. “But I get here, and everybody talks.”

On Monday, with one simple pitch, Kevin Brown screamed.

The Dodgers are a team again.

Watch your back.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: [email protected].