Sport: Two Paths to Glory

The Dodger farm boys challenge those Yankee dandies

It was a duel that will be remembered in baseball lore. Two men, symbols of two very different baseball philosophies, fought a ninth-inning battle for the second game of the 1978 World Series. One was the best pressure hitter that money could buy, the New York Yankees' Mr. October, Reggie Jackson. The other was the finest young fastballer that the sport's best farm system could produce, the Los Angeles Dodgers' new Mr. Koufax, 21-year-old Rookie Bob Welch. For seven minutes of exquisite tension, nine sizzling pitches and six whooshing swings of the bat, the man who has known great autumns and the boy who will know rare summers struggled while the tying and go-ahead Yankee runs waited on base.

From his vantage point in center field, the Dodgers' Bill North gloried in the drama: "That was the best show I've ever seen. The game's best fastball hitter up against a kid who throws as hard as anybody in baseball. It was like the 15th round of a heavyweight championship fight and you knew both guys had won seven rounds. Bob just aired it out and said, 'Hey Reggie, here it comes. If you can handle it, you deserve it.' It had to end in a home run or a strikeout."

It ended in a strikeout, and suddenly the Dodgers led their rematch with the Yankees, two games to zip. Young Welch's achievement vindicated the old-fashioned Dodger way of baseball: scout the hinterlands for raw talent, groom it carefully down on the farm, then bring young players up to the parent club to fill the gaps that age and injury inevitably open during the long, hot summer. Of a 25-man roster, 13 are onetime Dodger farm boys. In contrast, the Yankees built their team by spending big bucks on the free-agent market and have only six home-grown players on their squad. The Yankees can field the most devastating starting nine in baseball but have few reserves to call upon when trouble strikes.

Both teams had their troubles over the course of the season, and their separate solutions to the problems of tenacious foes, injured heroes and warring locker-room egos outline equally separate paths to the World Series showdown. This year the one-big-happy-family of Dodger Manager Tommy Lasorda was not quite so happy. Unlike last season, Los Angeles struggled through the early months, swapping the lead with the Cincinnati Reds, then falling behind the San Francisco Giants. It wasn't until the last week of August that the Dodgers entered first place to stay, and that after an air-clearing fistfight in the clubhouse between Top Pitcher and Resident Flake Don Sutton and the Dodgers' Mr. Clean, First Baseman Steve Garvey.