Elliott: Dodgers have their World Series legends in Hershiser, Valenzuela and Yeager
Orel Hershiser, left, and Steve Yeager, former Los Angeles Dodgers World Series MVPs honor the late Fernando Valenzuela before Game 1 of the World Series.
October 27, 2024
By Bob Elliott
Canadian Baseball Network
One old saying in post-season play is that no team -- repeat no team -- does a pre-game ceremony better than the New York Yankees.
Whether it was Joe DiMaggio or Mickey Mantle throwing out the first pitch years ago, Robert Merrill singing the anthem or Yankee Doodle Dandy Jimmy Cagney throwing out the first pitch.
Or president George Bush wearing a flak jacket and throwing a strike weeks after 9/11. The stadium erupted with pride. At the back of the press box were firemen and policemen who had lost their brothers standing ramrod straight at attention. The only thing moving was tears streaming down their cheeks.
Well, for Game 1, the Los Angeles Dodgers came close. Real close.
Former Dodgers World Series MVPs -- RHP Orel Hershiser, 1988 and C Steve Yeager, co-MVP with Ron Cey and Pedro Guerrero, 1981 -- were introduced.
Yet, instead of Hershiser throwing the ceremonial first pitch to Yeager, the two Dodger legends strode to the mound ... and then headed to the back of the mound where the blue and white No. 34 was emblazoned in memory of the late Fernando Valenzuela, who died Oct. 22.
Eventually, Hershiser placed the game ball below the No. 34. Touching. The Valenzuela family watched through tears.
In his rookie 1981 season, Valenzuela went 13-7 with a 2.48 ERA in 25 starts -- as he pitched 192 1/3 innings, including 11 complete games and eight shutouts, with 180 strikeouts.
He lost Game 2 of the National League Championship Series to Ray Burris, who pitched a complete-game five hit 3-0 win as the Expos scored when Warren Cromartie doubled in a run, while Tim Raines and Gary Carter each singled home runs against Valenzuela.
Game 5 in Montreal was rained out on Sunday and on Monday, Blue Monday, Rick Monday went deep off Steve Rogers with two out in the top of the ninth. While Burris pitched 109 pitches, he needed 113 to get through eight innings.
As the legendary Montreal scribe Michael Farber pointed out: Monday got all the credit but Valenzuela was in trouble in the first inning. Manager Tommy Lasorda had the bullpen warming down the left field line as Raines led off with a double and the Dodgers failed to retire Rodney Scott on a bunt.
Dawson bounced into a double play as Montreal scored. Yet, the Expos didn’t collect any other hits with the exception of Carter’s fourth-inning single and Larry Parrish’s double in the seventh. With two out in the ninth the Dodger ace walked both Carter and Parrish. Jerry White, who won Game 3 with a home run, faced Bob Welch and bounced out on the first pitch to end it.
Orel Hershiser and C Rick Dempsey celebrate after the final out of the 1988 World Series.
Hershiser picked up the save in Game 4 of the NL Championship Series against the New York Mets -- getting Kevin McReynolds to pop up with the bases loaded -- and then shut out the Mets on five hits 6-0 in Game 7.
In the World Series, he blanked the Oakland A’s 6-0 in Game 2 with a three-hitter and then tossed a four-hit complete game in the Dodgers’ 5-2 victory in Game 5 to secure the championship.
And in his afterlife Hershiser, with the Toronto background, visited the city wearing a Cleveland uniform.
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Originally posted May 29, 1995
By Bob Elliott
The best player this weekend at the SkyDome to ever live in Toronto wore a Cleveland uniform.
Paul Molitor, who had one pinch-hit appearance against the Indians and had Hershiser beat in service time in T.O. and total number of line drives, since Molitor lived in Toronto year-round from 1993-to-95 (the first American to do so since Rick Bosetti in 1981). Remember, the job of Orel Leonard Hershiser IV is to prevent them. He was the winning pitcher Friday.
The former Dodger - well actually he was a future Dodger at the time - lived near Leslie and York Mills in Willowdale on Elliottwood Court.
“It was either number 1241 or 1281,” said Hershiser, “or maybe 1221.”
Or whatever ... Hershiser and his family lived here from June 1973 to March of 1975 which included his 13th birthday.
He was born in Buffalo and a few years later, his family moved to Toronto after also living in Detroit.
The family had a brass American eagle hanging over its garage on Elliottwood Court. One day it was missing.
“A few days later we found it wrapped in a blanket on our front step,” said Hershiser. “A family found it under their 16-year-old’s bed. He had stolen it as a prank.”
Unlike a stranded Blue Jays runner, the eagle had landed.
“My parents didn’t hang the eagle because we were big-shot, show-off Americans,” said Hershiser, whose last name in Slavic translates to eagle. “They liked Colonial furniture and I think that fit the motif.”
“We always had eagles hanging over our garage. I hadn’t thought of that story in years and I was retelling it this afternoon to one of the (security) guards.”
When the Hershisers left Toronto and moved to Cherry Hill, N.J., their North York neighbors presented Orel III with a wooden carving of a Canadian beaver which, years later, was on papa Hershiser’s mantle when he retired from his printing business to Vero Beach.
Nicknamed the Bulldog by Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, Hershiser had a typical winter as an 11-year-old young pup. Well, normal for the fall of 1969. Nowadays kids play hockey all summer.
“My dad took me to the Canadian Tire store for my first set of skates and a set of equipment,” said Hershiser. “We’d get up at 4:30 and 5:30 in the morning for practices at the North York Centennial Arena. I learned a lot about hockey.
“So much that when we moved to Cherry Hill (a Philadelphia suburb, which wasn’t named after Don) I was ahead of the local kids and good enough to play for the Junior Flyers.”
Three years later, the Cherry Hill team was in a hockey tournament in Toronto. The Hershisers drove up because mom Mildred and Orel III wanted to visit friends. The bus carrying the team became snowbound and Orel wound up playing for his old North York team.
Hershiser IV has two sons, Jordon Douglas and Orel Leonard Hershiser V. At age XXXVI, the right-hander signed a free-agent contract with the contending Indians and now the career Dodger is seeing the AL for the first time.
In 1988, he broke Don Drysdale’s consecutive scoreless innings streak at 59, won 23 games, beat the Mets in the NLCS, upset the A’s in the World Series and was named Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year.
He pitched that post-season - five earned runs in 42 2/3 innings 1.05 ERA - with a computer printout in his back pocket. He had printed strengths, weaknesses and tendencies of hitters he would face.
“Here’s what I have on Toronto so far -- not much,” he said, quickly showing a piece of paper with scribbles on it. That’s about what the Jays scored Friday night against Hershiser: not much.
Three runs in seven innings, all on Shawn Green’s three-run blast to right.
“There was so little I was able to remember it,” said Hershiser. “I faced Robbie Alomar in and Joe Carter when they were with San Diego. I played with Molitor on a tour of Japan. He doesn’t have any weaknesses.”
One ‘homeboy’ sticking up for another.