Men of Steal

By BILL PLASCHKE

Sept. 22, 2002 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

It is the middle of a game, but the old hustler has always known when to make his move, and it is now.

He walks through the stands, down a stairwell, through the Dodger clubhouse, up a tunnel, toward their dugout.

Just before he reaches the bench and bat rack and glare of the cameras, he stops.

Deep enough to hide. Close enough to whisper.

“Can you get him for me?” he asks a batboy.

The batboy knows who he means. Everybody knows why he is here.

The old hustler is looking for the face he sees in the mirror each morning, the voice he hears on his cell phone at night.

The old hustler is looking for the new kid.

There is a clatter of cleats, a parting of players, a dusty Dodger uniform entering the shadows.

“What’s up?” says the new kid.

“You can bunt on these guys,” says the old hustler.

“But I tried, and I can’t.”

“Try it again, but try it this way ...”

Moments later, the old hustler disappears into the darkness while the new kid steps into the sunshine, a big fastball, a pretty bunt attempt, a slide into first base, a standing ovation.

After a baseball lifetime of searching for a home, new kid Dave Roberts has finally found one.

Come to think of it, so has old hustler Maury Wills.

They meet a couple of times a week, on the Dodger Stadium field, the first ones.

While teammates are dressing or eating, Maury Wills and Dave Roberts are working.

“Stay in there!” Wills says.

“Like this?” Roberts says.

A batting practice pitcher is throwing fastballs. Roberts is bunting them.

Left, right, straight, third base, first base, again, again.

The only spectators are birds that have settled curiously upon the outfield grass. The only sounds are the plunk of a bat, the music of a lesson.

“Come out of the box on that,” Wills says.

“Like this?” Roberts says.

It is a dance they have been doing for nine months now, alone, at odd hours, the dance of the desperate.

Roberts had spent most of the previous eight seasons in a minor league uniform, from Akron to Visalia, from unhappy to unwanted.

He joined the Dodgers last winter from Cleveland in a trade that cost the team only two non-prospects. He was looking only to belong.

Maury Wills, arguably the most exciting player in Los Angeles history, had spent much of the last 30 years bouncing around in the same manner, looking for the same place.

He tried drugs, alcohol, contemplated suicide, failed as a major league manager, struggled as an instructor. Two years ago, he rejoined the Dodgers for one last try.

Says Roberts: “I wanted somebody who would give me a chance.”

Says Wills: “I wanted somebody who would listen.”

The dance started in January, at the winter workouts at Dodger Stadium. Even though he was new to the team, Roberts was easy to spot.

On most days, he was the only major leaguer who showed up.

Three times a week, he would make the two-hour drive from his home in north San Diego County.

Says Roberts: “I’m the kind of person who can’t take anything for granted.”

Says Wills: “When I saw he was the only major leaguer around, I knew he wanted to do something.”

Roberts was 29, Wills was 69, but they were striking in their similarities, even down to their stature and smiles.

As Roberts had struggled in the minor leagues, so had Wills, for nearly nine years before getting his chance.

As Roberts had difficulty convincing people he could win games with his legs, so did Wills, who didn’t even bat leadoff until his second year with the Dodgers.

Nobody expected Roberts to be with the team on opening day.

Nobody expected Wills to last parts of 14 seasons, lead the league in steals six times, break Ty Cobb’s 47-year-old record for stolen bases in a season, revolutionize baseball’s running game.

Roberts had been stuck in Cleveland behind the quirky Kenny Lofton.

Wills had been stuck in Los Angeles trying to teach the quirky Tom Goodwin.

Says Roberts: “Getting a chance to work with Maury was like a dream come true.”

Says Wills: “I finally had a protege.”

Throughout the winter they worked, and then again in the spring.

Wills would hold a general bunting and baserunning session in the morning, and Roberts would show up before everyone else.

Wills would hold another session after the workouts, and Roberts would stay until everyone left.

Says Roberts: “No offense to anyone else, but Maury was teaching my game, and I had to hear him.”

Says Wills: “It was so funny how everyone would leave, then Dave would double back for more.”

Roberts slowly worked his way up the depth chart, passing McKay Christensen, Marquis Grissom and, finally, Goodwin.

By opening day, the Dodgers were so impressed that they were willing to release Goodwin even though they owed him $3.75 million.

Goodwin never really listened to Wills. Roberts never listened to anyone else.

“The way he responded to Maury, it was very gratifying,” General Manager Dan Evans said.

“From that first winter workout, we knew we had something.”

The season started, and the Dodgers learned even more.

Roberts was stealing bases and starting fires and behaving like the Dodgers’ best leadoff hitter since Brett Butler.

Turns out, he had picked up not only Wills’ techniques, but his brashness.

“I kept telling him, ‘There’s no bunt you can’t get down, there’s no hit you can’t score from,’ ” Wills says.

“And now I believe it,” Roberts says.

They not only work together at Dodger Stadium before the games, and talk during the games, but they talk on the phone after the game.

Even when Roberts is on the East Coast. And even when Wills is calling late.

Says Roberts: “My phone will ring in my room at 1:30 in the morning. Maury can be a real worrywart.”

Says Wills: “He always wants to know if I watched him that night. I better say yes.”

Six months later, even though he doesn’t start against left-handers, Roberts--who hit a home run in the first inning Saturday night at San Diego before leaving the game with a strained oblique muscle--has stolen 45 bases and has a chance to become the first Dodger to lead the league in that category in 26 years.

He was the last player in the major leagues to hit into a double play, and that didn’t happen until last week.

He also has 17 bunt hits, ranking third in the National League behind two everyday players.

All of which led to Monday night, third inning, runner on first, one out, Dodgers trailing the San Francisco Giants, 3-0.

If they lose this game, their season could end a couple of nights later.

They need something drastic. They need something inspired.

The old hustler and the new kid give them both.

With a 1-and-0 count, Roberts suddenly squares on shaky Jason Schmidt and pops a bunt toward second base.

It is a silly place for a bunt. Except Roberts had studied the Giants and knew that Jeff Kent would be covering first base and J.T. Snow would be charging straight ahead.

It was an awful place for a bunt. Except earlier that afternoon, working with Wills, Roberts had practiced it continuously.

It was a perfect place for a bunt. Snow grabbed it, but there was nobody covering first base and Roberts was safe.

Two batters later, Brian Jordan hit a grand slam that might have saved a season.

“You watched us practice that bunt, right?” Roberts asks a reporter later that night, his voice rising in disbelief. “We knew it would work, didn’t we? Didn’t we?”

When it became obvious Dave Roberts was going to make the team this spring, it became obvious he would have to change his number.

He wore “50” as a projected spring training outcast. He wanted something smaller.

The Dodgers had an idea.

They summoned him into a room and told him that they had a perfect number for him, a number that had been dormant for too long, a number that would revive old memories while building a new bridge.

They wanted him to wear No. 6.

It took Roberts two seconds to say no.

The former San Diego County high school star and UCLA graduate wasn’t going anywhere near the exalted memory of Steve Garvey.

“I grew up listening to my father tell stories about those Dodgers,” Roberts said. “Wearing that number just wouldn’t feel right.”

He asked for another number.

Even today, the request nearly makes Maury Wills cry.

“He wanted to wear my No. 30,” Wills says. “Isn’t that something?”

Watching No. 30 single, steal second and score in the first inning of this season’s first game felt like closure to Wills.

After struggling to earn the Dodgers’ trust since being released in 1972, it was family again.

“The time has arrived that he has been waiting for,” said Mikkie Wills, Maury’s daughter. “He’s always telling me how his work with Dave Roberts has fulfilled him as a person.”

The wait had been long and ugly. You’ve heard the stories. Wills, who has been clean and sober since Aug. 13, 1989, recounts them today as if they happened to someone else.

But every time he realizes he lost his three World Series rings and MVP plaque during drug-induced hazes, he knows it was him.

Perhaps because voters were uncomfortable with his post-career behavior, it will now take a Veterans’ Committee push to induct him into his rightful spot in the Hall of Fame.

Perhaps because he had burned bridges here, his memorabilia is housed in a place he never lived or played, in a museum in a ballpark in Fargo, N.D., the only folks kind enough to make the offer.

“God, how I’ve come back,” Wills says. “But what a price I’ve paid.”

He still remembers the months he spent locked in his Playa del Rey home in the early 1980s, blankets on the windows, trash on the floor, a Doberman named Charmer roaming the front yard.

The Dodgers knew he was on drugs when, in 1983, a rumor spread through the press box that he had died of an overdose.

Fred Claire, then a vice president, became alarmed.

“I thought, this is obviously a man who needs our help, have we really done enough for him?” Claire recalled.

The next day, Claire summoned Don Newcombe, the club’s community relations director, and together they drove to Wills’ house.

“Don was worried about the dog and the boarded-up windows and all that,” Claire said. “But I said, ‘I don’t care, we’re getting him out.’ ”

Once they arrived, Newcombe never made it past Charmer.

“I saw that huge dog and I was seriously afraid,” he recalled. “So I went back to the car. We waited there until Maury saw us through the window.”

Wills emerged from the house with wild hair and dirty clothes. But when Claire and Newcombe grabbed him, he did not resist.

They rushed him to an Orange County treatment center where he registered under the name “Donald Claire.”

It would be six more years before Wills became completely clean. After a dreadful 82-game stint as manager of the Seattle Mariners in 1980, it would be several years before baseball teams would take him seriously.

During that time, Wills blew thousands of dollars of help from former Dodger owner Peter O’Malley, and alienated an organization that tried to love him.

“We always thought of Maury as a liar,” Newcombe said. “But now we trust him.”

The foundation for that trust was poured a couple of years ago, when new chairman Bob Daly saw Wills walk onto the Dodger Stadium field as a Montreal Expo instructor.

As a longtime Dodger fan, Daly was appalled.

“He came over to me and said, ‘What are you doing in that uniform?’ ” Wills recalls. “He said, ‘You should be in a Dodger uniform again.’ ”

The next spring, Wills was hired and given surprisingly free rein by Manager Jim Tracy.

“His relationship with Dave Roberts is one of the most special things I have seen in the clubhouse this year,” Tracy said. “It is like a father-son relationship. It has helped change our team.”

And their clubhouse.

In an era when most ballplayers adorn their lockers with gadgets and freebies, Roberts’ locker features an old-fashioned button.

It is adorned with the face of a different era, a freebie of a different time.

It is a Maury Wills button.

The new kid points to it with a grin. The old hustler looks at it with a sigh.

Says Roberts: “I could not have made it to this point without him.”

Says Wills: “In many ways, neither could I.”