When all the Cheering Stopped

The next few days, Mike Schmidt says, will be devoted to the family.

He'll hang around the house, watching TV with wife Donna and playing Space Invaders with daughter Jessica, 4, and son Jonathon, 3.

"The kids are too young to understand all this," Schmidt said last night, smiling wanly in his World Series epilogue. "They'll just be happy to have Daddy home for a change. "

Next week, he might get out and play a little golf. "I'll probably need a par to break 80 and I'll make triple-bogey," Schmidt said. "Then I'll be disappointed all over again. "

Somewhere down the line, maybe next month or the month after, Mike Schmidt will be able to close his eyes without seeing the third strike Scott McGregor threw past him in the sixth inning yesterday.

He'll be able to flip on the TV and not see the Baltimore Orioles celebrating in the Veterans Stadium infield. He'll be able to turn on the stereo and not hear the boos that followed him to the dugout last night.

Maybe someday Schmidt will put this purgatory week behind him. He'll square his shoulders and look ahead to the '84 season and the promise that it holds. Yeah, maybe someday. But not for a while.

"Nobody in this city is more disappointed than I am right now," Schmidt was saying yesterday after the Orioles stuffed the Phillies, 5-0, to win this 80th World Series, 4 games to 1.

"Nobody likes to lose. I don't care if I'm playing gin with my wife; I hate to lose. I'm sure the next couple days will be gut-wrenching. I'll spend hours reflecting on what went wrong and why it went wrong.

"People are going to say this was a dull World Series," Schmidt said, ''and I was one of the main reasons why it was dull . . . I knew what I had to do and I didn't do it, simple as that. "

The statistics are as ugly as they are revealing.

Mike Schmidt went to the plate 20 times in the Series and had one hit, a broken-bat flare off rookie Storm Davis in Game 4. That's an .050 average.

He had no walks, no runs scored, no RBI. He struck out six times, more than any player on either team. He left two runners on base yesterday; that makes eight in the five games.

The Baltimore pitchers handled the entire Phillies' lineup, but it was their cool disarming of the home run champion that will endure as the storyline of this fall classic.

"Do you feel responsible for the Phillies losing this Series?" a TV man asked.

Schmidt stared evenly into the camera. (To his credit, the third baseman did not hide after the game. He stayed at his locker for 30 minutes and answered every question, even the tough ones like this. )

"People would like me to feel that," he said. "The people who are getting in their cars now would like me to feel that. I don't know . . . that's a hard question.

"If I had eight RBI in the Series, we might still be playing. The fact is I didn't. I probably tried too hard. I was pressing at the end, but that's nothing new. I just wasn't a good hitter this week. Period.

"Yeah, I'm down. I'm feeling down for the team, for the city, for the whole National League. We didn't represent the league very well. We tried, we just couldn't get it together. "

"Are you embarrassed?" someone asked.

"Obviously, the ultimate in sports is to come through under pressure," Schmidt said with a shrug. "It looks like people don't remember I hit almost .500 (.466 to be exact) in the playoffs against the Dodgers.

"I guess I won't look too good in the World Series highlight film. I don't think I'll get a print this year . . . I went 1-for-20 before, but it was in June and I had the rest of the year to make up for it. Here, it's the World Series. Everyone's watching.

"I'll be written up in the papers and I'll be talked about on the radio," Schmidt said. "People will cite all the individual failures in this Series and, certainly, I'll be among them. There's nothing I can do about it now. "

Before Game 5, the best subplot in the Series was the dueling slumps of Schmidt and Baltimore's Eddie Murray, the two superstars who were a combined 3-for-32.

Yesterday, Murray broke loose with two mammoth home runs off Charles Hudson. Later, someone asked Schmidt what he was thinking as he watched Murray prance past him at third.

"I thought, 'That could have been me,' " Schmidt said, "but it wasn't."

The irony in all this, of course, is Mike Schmidt was the Most Valuable Player in the 1980 World Series when the Phillies defeated Kansas City.

He hit .381 with two homers and seven RBI that year. Yesterday, Schmidt

went 0-for-4 and catcher Rick Dempsey, a .231 hitter in the regular season, was named the '83 MVP.

"He'll probably get a car," Schmidt said, grumbling. "When I won it, I got a watch.

"Dempsey's an OK choice, I guess. I would've picked (pitcher) Sammy Stewart. He relieved in three close games and shut us down. "

"At a time like this," a radio man asked, "can you take any consolation

from past accomplishments, like your '80 World Series? "

"What I did in the past," Schmidt said, "doesn't mean diddily. It all falls under the heading of 'What have you done lately? ' "

"Did the booing hurt?" an out-of-town writer asked.

"Yeah, it hurt," Schmidt said. "It always hurts. I should be used to it by now, but I'm not. I'm probably too sensitive.

"All I know is Eddie Murray could be 1-for-20 and he'd come up in Baltimore and the people would all be chanting, 'Ed-die, Ed-die'. Here, I get booed.

"But Philadelphia is a different type town, always has been. This is a town where they put roses on your mailbox when you win and they pull it down when you lose. It's one extreme or the other.

"I just hope once they get over this (initial) disappointment they will sit back and realize we did accomplish something. There are signs on the roads out there saying, 'World Series, This Way. ' They don't come along too often.

"We had a season that was going nowhere a month ago; we turned it around and won the National League pennant. I mean, they could have had the Eagles playing the Cowboys here today. Instead, they had the World Series. Maybe in a few days they'll look back and say, 'That was kind of neat. '

"I've got to take my hat off to the Orioles," Schmidt said. "There wasn't a team in the National League that beat us two in a row the last month of the season. The Orioles beat us four in a row, three in our own park. They deserve to be world champs.

"Their pitching was excellent. They don't run four Nolan Ryans out there, but they have four guys who know how to pitch.

"They never make a mistake. I can only remember one glaring mistake and that was the fastball McGregor threw Garry (Maddox) in the opener. One mistake in five games is pretty darn good.

"They pitched me real tough. After the first two games, I never got my poise at the plate. I was swinging at bad pitches. I would adjust to what they were doing, then they'd come back and put the ball in a different place entirely. "

Then someone asked Schmidt if he thought the Pete Rose era had ended in Philadelphia?

"I hope not," Schmidt said. "Pete is a good friend and a real pro. He's made a great contribution. Joe Morgan, the same way.

"But times change and people move on. I'll be in that boat myself someday. "

Schmidt smiled. "There are probably some people," he said, "who wish I was in that boat now."