Slam-bang Series

What the hell. Why not? Carpe diem. It is a lesson Jay first baseman John Olerud (page 28) surely learned after surgery for a brain aneurysm four years ago. His wrists-only solo home run in the sixth inning of the opener gave the Jays a 5-4 lead, before which the two teams had played Ping-Pong off each other's starting pitchers, Juan Guzman of Toronto and Curt Schilling of Philadelphia. "It's going to continue this way throughout the Series," vowed Blue Jay rightfielder Joe Carter. "We played these games in spring training. Whoever batted last usually won."

The Jays would not have to bat last on Saturday. After Olerud's dinger, reliever Al Leiter shut down the Phillies for the next 2⅔ innings, striking out Kruk with the bases loaded to end the sixth. Yet another admirable man in this Series, Leiter threw a career-high 105 innings and won nine games for Toronto this season after overcoming shoulder and elbow injuries that limited him to 42⅔ innings in the four previous seasons combined. After that career setback, it's no wonder he takes Penn State correspondence courses by day, pitches in the bigs by night, in piecemeal pursuit of a liberal-arts degree that is at least three years away.

But back to baseball: They say of great athletes, "He was in the zone." They were saying of star-crossed Phil reliever David (Wild Wild) West on Saturday, "He was up in the zone." This is not a good place for a pitcher to be. West, a Minnesota Twin in 1991, has now faced eight batters in two World Series, getting zero outs, issuing four walks and allowing four hits. He gave up doubles to the only two hitters he faced on Saturday, as three more Blue Jays crossed the plate to give Toronto an 8-4 lead. The final was 8-5 only because Eisenreich singled in a run off Jay closer Duane Ward in the ninth inning.

He can't help himself. You don't think Eisenreich seizes his days? He learned to in nearly four full years away from the major leagues, from 1983 to '86. A man carpes his diems when he has only 40 amateur baseball games to play annually between northern Minnesota winters. Which is about the only kind of baseball Eisenreich played in those years.

After making the roster of his home-state Twins in '82 and '83, he missed most of both seasons with the mysterious disorder he had lived with since symptoms began to appear at age five. Doctors had told him he would grow out of it. But it wasn't until he turned 23 as a Twin rookie that what was thought to be acute stage fright was properly diagnosed as Tourette's. So he went home and won a state amateur championship for the boys at Beaudreau's bar while experimenting with different medications. "I could have just as much fun playing amateur ball in St. Cloud as I'm having here," Eisenreich says. "But this is where the best players are, and I love being part of a great team."

The best play the best in the World Series, and on Sunday night the Phillies were up against baseball's finest October pitcher. Dave Stewart was 10-3 with a 2.24 ERA in six postseasons going into the game and was the MVP of this year's American League Championship Series. The second of his two playoff wins against the Chicago White Sox came in the Game 6 clincher on Oct. 12. While the rest of the Blue Jays flew to Chicago on the travel day before that game, Stewart stayed in Toronto, where he had quietly sprung for a banquet in a homeless shelter on what was Thanksgiving Day in Canada.

Sometimes a hero is nothing but a man with a sandwich. As a member of the Oakland A's from 1986 to '92, Stewart, the son of a longshoreman, fed the hungry in his native Bay Area. Why should anything have changed last winter, when he signed as a free agent to play in mythically pristine Toronto? "Ever since he's been here he's been asking, 'Where's the ghetto?' " said Blue Jay manager Cito Gaston. "I tried to tell him, there is no ghetto here."

Alas, Stew would not go unpeppered on Sunday night, already trailing 2-0 when he found himself with runners at second and third and Eisenreich at the plate in the third inning. In singling off Ward the night before, Eisenreich felt oddly "locked in," unusually so. Uncharacteristically—for he had only seven home runs in the regular season—Eisenreich told Schilling before Game 2 that he felt like he could hit a home run on this night.

"Hit one for your daughter," Schilling said. "I'll tell everyone you called it."

A father thinks of his daughter at the World Series. Two-year-old Lauren Eisenreich will one day hear her dad's preposterous story: How he decided in 1987 to return from Beaudreau's bar to the minor leagues, how he secured his release from a Twin organization that had no more interest in him, how he was acquired on waivers for a dollar by the Kansas City Royals. Eisenreich hit .301 for the Royals in '91 and .269 in '92. Then he signed with the Phils as a free agent, and hit .318 and started against righthanders for the pennant winners in '93. Until this season, says Eisenreich, his biggest thrill in baseball was the '83 Minnesota amateur championship. "Because I got to play with my younger brother, Charlie, which was a dream," he says.