'85 I-70 Series: Blame it on Balboni

It’s Royals-Cardinals time again. Or Cardinals-Royals. Time to talk about Don Denkinger.

You know, the guy who cost the St. Louis Cardinals in the I-70 World Series of 1985, the guy who blew the call in the ninth inning of the sixth game, allowing the Kansas City Royals to steal the game on their way to their first and only Series title. His name always seems to pop up this time of year.

Well, as a nearly lifelong Kansan who grew up with the Royals, I’m here to tell you that Don Denkinger didn’t cost the Cardinals the 1985 World Series. Steve Balboni did.

Let me explain. The call Denkinger clearly blew was on Jorge Orta’s nubber between the pitcher’s mound and first base on an 0-2 count to start the inning. Orta was called safe at first on a bang-bang play that wasn’t so bang-bang when you looked at the replays.

But there’s no clock in baseball so the Cardinals, with a 1-0 lead, had all the time in the world, or at least three outs — which can be an eternity in baseball — to make Denkinger’s transgression forgettable.

They failed miserably. Starting with the next batter, Balboni. He should have been out when Jack Clark muffed his foul fly. And he probably should have been out when the count went to 0-2.

I can clearly remember sitting at a dive in Leavenworth, Kan., at that time, just getting off work, and turning to the geezer next to me and saying, “He’s gonna strike out.”

Balboni led the American League in strikeouts that year, so that wasn’t exactly a bold prediction.
So what does “Bonesy” do? He reaches down and golfs a single to left field, a nifty bit of hitting I’d never expected out of a hit-or-miss guy like Balboni.

Looking back on what transpired after that, lo these many years, I feel fairly confident that if Todd Worrell could have put Balboni away in that at-bat, or better yet, coaxed a double-play ball (St. Louis was third in the major leagues in doubles turned that season), the Cardinals would have kept the Royals off the scoreboard and walked off with the Series title.

But it didn’t happen, and three batters later Jim Sundberg was crossing the plate with the winning run on a single by Dane Iorg (ironically, somewhat of a Series hero for the Cardinals in 1982), giving the Royals a 2-1 victory.The Cardinals had an 89-0 record with a lead going into the ninth inning entering this game.

And let the whining begin. Cardinals manager White Herzog (known as “The White Rat,” but I prefer “The White Waaah,” as in the big crybaby) much as said after the game that his team didn’t have a chance in the seventh game after the horrible way they’d been wronged by that dastardly Denkinger.

And then the Cardinals went out and proved their skipper right with a horrible, embarrassing performance in Game 7, losing 11-0. Both Herzog and Joaquin Andujar got booted from the game and ace pitcher John Tudor, on his way into the locker room after being punched out by the Royals, cut his pitching hand while trying to punch out an electrical fan.

The last two games were pretty typical of the Cards’ performance throughout the Series. This team had a 2-0 lead coming into three games at home and blew it. Mainly because they couldn’t ever, ever hit against the Royals’ pitching.

The Cardinals had a .185 batting average in the Series. As Jed Clampett would say, “Pitiful, just pitiful.”

And don’t tell me that Vince Coleman, the freshman phenom on the basepaths for the Cardinals who got ate up by a tarp before the Series started, would have made a difference. As the saying goes, you can’t steal first base.

I could go on and on. But suffice it to say, the Royals deserved to win that season. A great franchise (before Ewing Kauffman had to give up the ghost) that had always come up short in the late 1970s and early ’80s, this was a team of destiny.

So enough about Don Denkinger already, Cardinals fans. Get over it.

Oh, and one more thing. Give Jorge Orta some credit. With an 0-2 count on him he did what every ballplayer from little league on is told to do in that situation: get your bat on the ball and stay alive. He reached out and flicked Worrell’s pitch between the pitcher and first, hustled his butt on down to first and made the play just close enough for Don Denkinger to live in infamy.