BASEBALL / ROSS NEWHAN : Dykstra Goes Hitless, but Still a Hero

PHILADELPHIA — It was one of the big performances in World Series history, but it was lost amid the midnight madness of Game 4, a footnote as the Toronto Blue Jays thundered back to beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 15-14, Wednesday.

Lenny Dykstra homered twice, doubled, walked, drove in four runs and scored a record tying four.

Some footnote, but nothing compared to what he did Thursday night when he went hitless in Game 5.

Hitless in two official at-bats, that is, but determined to get Curt Schilling a run early and lift the shroud of the Game 4 defeat.

“Lenny has set a tone all year and he did it again tonight,” Larry Andersen said. “He goes out in the first inning and says, ‘Hey, we can beat these guys; hey, we’re not conceding; hey, we still have a chance.’

“The fact he goes out and leads the way is walking your talk. No one does it better.”

The Phillies came back to beat the Blue Jays, 2-0, behind the grit of Schilling’s five-hitter, sending the Series back to Toronto.

The Blue Jays still lead, 3-2, but who can predict the unpredictable?

After the record-tying 32 hits of Game 4, the only run that mattered in Game 5 scored on a groundout.

Dykstra scored it.

He scored it in the first inning after he worked Juan Guzman for a seven-pitch walk and stole second, drawing a wild throw from catcher Pat Borders that allowed him to take third.

One out later, John Kruk hit the infield-back grounder to second baseman Roberto Alomar, scoring Dykstra.

“I said to myself,” the catalytic leadoff hitter said later, “that if Curt put a zero up in the top of that inning I was going to try and get him a quick run to take the pressure off.”

Dykstra led the National League in runs, hits, walks and at bats during his MVP-caliber season.

He is a situational hitter who plays the mental game as well as anyone. It is not surprising there were other things he said to himself.

Among them: With a chill wind blowing in on a damp night, this wouldn’t be the hitters’ game that Game 4 was.

A walk might be as good as a double, because Guzman’s delivery to the plate spans 1.4 seconds, making him vulnerable to the steal.

“Instead of standing up there trying to smoke the ball, I was looking for the walk because I knew I could run,” he said. “I knew Curt would come up big because he’s a big-game pitcher, and the conditions favored the pitchers.

“I wanted to get that run for him early.”

It was a modest footnote compared to Game 4, but Dykstra said: “I’ll trade in last night for tonight any day of the week. There could never be a worse feeling than last night’s, but in some ways it was as if the pressure was off.

“We could never have a tougher loss. . . . I mean, Darren (Daulton) and I sat here for a long time after that game and the bottom line was that he looked at me and I looked at him and we both seemed to say, ‘Hey, before you know it we’ll be back out there again tomorrow.’

“I mean, everybody, the media, the fans, the people watching on television, may have felt the Series was over and Toronto had it won, but we didn’t, and we didn’t want them celebrating on our turf.”

Still alive, the Phillies hauled out all those us-against-them, back-to-the wall cliches, but in the context of the Game 4 defeat they seemed appropriate, or as Andersen noted:

“If through divine intervention we win three in a row, as we have before, people still won’t believe us.”

Said Dykstra: “You can’t predict this team. I reminded Schilling before the game that it’s the same game we played as 8-year-olds, that it comes down to catching and throwing, that it’s that simple. I didn’t want him trying to do more than he’s capable.”

There seems to be no limit to Dykstra, who may not be Mr. October, but is now muscling on to the postseason stage.

Consider:

--He is batting .350 in the five games of this Series with three home runs, five RBIs and eight runs. In the 11 games of the postseason he is hitting .311 with five homers, 13 runs and seven RBIs.

--He also has a .321 average for 32 postseason games with the Phillies and New York Mets. He has nine home runs, 21 RBIs, 26 runs and 18 walks in the 32 games.

“I love the pressure,” he said. “I want to be up there in those situations. I feel like I have nothing to lose.

“If I do nothing, no one remembers. If I deliver, I’m a hero.”

A hero again in Game 5, he seems to have become . . . well, in his own jargon, the Dude of Winter. Why not?