Having A Monster Of A Season

Alan Trammell's right shoulder felt tender last Wednesday in Detroit—"an old eating injury," according to a teammate. The Tiger shortstop asked his manager if he could take the day off from throwing, and Sparky Anderson responded by putting Trammell's name in its usual second slot on his scorecard...but with a large DH beside it. A three-time Gold Glove winner, Trammell had never been a designated hitter but he responded with a first-inning RBI triple that ignited the Tigers 10-1 rout of Seattle. The win was the 29th in Detroit's torrid 32-and-5 start.

In his office afterward, Anderson puffed on his pipe and smiled the smile of a manager whose every move has been beyond the reach of second-guessers. "Trammell asked me, if he were batting .250 would he have been the DH?" Anderson said. "I told him, 'No chance.' "

Anderson laughed, because Trammell's average at game time was actually 108 points above .250, and he had driven in 10 runs in his last 10 games. "I remember when we used to wait for somebody to get on so Trammell could bunt him over. That's how he got to be such a good bunter."

Trammell isn't asked to bunt much anymore. His .319 average last season was the best by a righthanded hitter in the American League, putting him in the clouds with the league's two other "super shortstops," Milwaukee's Robin Yount and Baltimore's Cal Ripken Jr. "The oldtimers will give me a lot of static for this," said Kansas City Royals manager Dick Howser last week, "but there are three shortstops in this league who are probably as good as any who've ever played the game—Yount, Trammell and Ripken. And as great as Ripken was last year, this could be Trammell's year. If he doesn't get hurt, he has got a chance to be one of the greatest ever to play the position."

It's small wonder that Howser seems in awe of Trammell. Two weeks ago the Tigers swept a three-game series from the Royals in Kansas City, and Game 2 was a Trammell showcase. With the bases loaded for Kansas City and one out in the fourth, Trammell started what one Royal called "a Hall of Fame double play," lunging to his right for a grounder and throwing while on his back to second baseman Lou Whitaker, who took the ball off his shoe tops and then submarined a throw to a stretching Barbara Garbey at first. The ball was handled at ankle height by all three of the fielders, which had Howser shaking his head and muttering, "They turned the thing."

Trammell wasn't finished with the Royals. With two out in the top of the seventh and the Tigers trailing 2-1, he came to the plate with the bases loaded and ace reliever Dan Quisenberry on the mound. Quisenberry is known for his sinker, but he threw a should-have-sunk instead. Trammell drove the ball over the leftfield wall for a game-winning grand slam, the first grand slam ever off Quiz. "I was amazed," Trammell said later. "I wasn't looking to hit the ball out of the park. You don't expect a game-winner like that off a premier relief pitcher." Quisenberry, who said he was shocked at "how loud the hit sounded," nonetheless insisted he was happy for Trammell. "I'm not going to give him another pitch to hit the rest of his life, but, no, I don't hold grudges."

Through Sunday's game, a 4-3 defeat of the A's, the usually slow-starting Trammell was hitting .342. His brilliant getaway has fueled conjecture that he could be the third straight shortstop to win the MVP award in the American League (Ripken won last year, Yount in '82). Trammell, a cheerful 26-year-old with seven years of major league experience behind him, says warily, "That's very premature. Anytime you start popping off like that or get too high, you get burned." Maybe so, but Trammell's manager has found a way to put Trammell and MVP into the same sentence without sounding imprudent. Says Anderson, "I don't think that baseball has ever seen three shortstops who every year will be in the Top 10 in the MVP balloting."

That he has started so well this season is gratifying to Trammell, who got the scare of his baseball career last fall in a mystery-shrouded Halloween accident. For months the details were sketchy because the normally talkative Trammell refused to discuss the mishap. All the Tigers would reveal was that in late November Trammell had undergone arthroscopic surgery on his left knee to repair damaged cartilage. "No one really knew what happened," Trammell said last week. "I didn't want to announce I had gotten hurt doing something stupid."

Trammell needn't have been bashful—there is a glorious history of baseball players maiming themselves in freak accidents. Toby Harrah badly sprained both wrists falling off a ladder; Larry Christenson broke his collarbone bicycling; Bert Blyleven dislocated his left elbow when he fell off his roof hosing down the shingles during a brush fire; and last year, of course, George Brett broke a toe doing his laundry.

But then, those fellows were all conventionally dressed when they got hurt. Alan Trammell is the first baseball star to cripple himself while wearing a Frankenstein's monster costume.