Talking With: Rick Monday, Part II

AK: How difficult was it for you to occupy your time as the strike continued?

RM: Every day was more and more difficult. To begin with, everybody worked out at USC. And mysteriously, baseballs and bats were delivered. And then, the next week, maybe there was one less guy. And then the following week, there were two less guys. It got to where it was an extreme burden to motivate yourself. But I will say this. I think, as a club, and I don't know about all the other clubs, when we finally got back and had that workout period to get ready for the season to begin again, most of us were just about ready physically. The mental part of the competition still had to be worked on. But some guys, when they came back, you could tell who had been working out and who had not been working out recently.

I think, at that time, what wasn't talked about with the strike is the anger. Because the strike was the only way to combat against what we thought was wrong [free agency compensation proposed by the owners]. The only way to combat it from happening. If we did not go on strike, it was automatically put into motion. I had been involved in other labor disputes. We were in New Orleans with the Chicago Cubs, an exhibition game in spring training. And we knew after that game was over, that we were going home to wait it out. It didn't last as long.

AK: Moving into the playoffs, you guys immediately found yourselves down 0-2 to Houston [in the Western Division playoffs]. You mentioned earlier about not listening to the "pundits?" But how else did you guys go about collectively keeping yourselves mentally alive? There's a funny part in the book where you talk about Steve Garvey imitating Bill Murray's "It Just doesn't matter!" speech from "Meatballs." Was that a moment you remember in particular?

RM: No, not really. That was one of those things of motivation. I think most professional athletes probably spend a great deal of time in denial. Denial from the standpoint of "forget what the odds are. The game is what it is. The game is what you are going to make it." You're always trying to say, "but hey, if we get hot. If we make a play. If we get this guy out." And when you get down, you don't have to win three in a row. The mindset has to be different, just like when we lost the first two in New York. It's not that you have to win X number of games in a row. You have to win one. And then if you win that one, you have the right to come back the following day and say, "We only have to win one." And even if you win, it comes down to the fifth and final game. It still comes down to the same mentality. You have to win one.

AK: And so does the other team, for that matter.

RM: Exactly. And when we went into Montreal and we played that fifth game, there were two planes at the airport, waiting to go. Is ours going to go south to New York or is it going to go west to L.A.? And will the Montreal Expos plane take off [at all]?

AK: Dusty Baker ended up breaking his hand fighting with some Expos fans. As a teammate, are you mad at him for the timing or proud that he's representing Dodger Blue?

RM: (Long pause) He stood up for someone's wife.

AK: Really? So it wasn't about the team?

RM: It was about the team. It was about friends.

AK: But I mean, it wasn't specifically about "the Dodgers suck!"

RM: That's all I'm going to say. OK? He stood up for someone's wife. I will say this. At the moment and physically. If Dusty were to stand up today for my wife as he did right there in that moment, Dusty is a friend for life, but he would even be a bigger friend. Someone was attempting to accost another player's wife. In fact, when I talked to Dusty, he was blown away. He goes, "How did you know my hand was broken? We tried to keep it quiet." I said, "I know what's going on. I knew what was going on then." We just tried to keep it quiet.

AK: I gotta ask about your game-winning (and ultimately series-winning) home run against Montreal during the League Championship Series. Game 5. Ninth inning. 1-1. What is it like stepping up to the plate with that much at stake?

RM: You don't worry about what's at stake. You worry about your job. You worry about that particular moment, because I thought Ron Cey had started the inning off with a home run hit to left field. And yet Tim Raines didn't even get back to the warning track to catch it. We had to keep in mind, it was 30-something degrees during that game. It was before the roof was up. The game before was officially rained out, but I figure anytime you see rain and there's also snow flakes involved, I go for the most extreme, being from Southern California. It was snowing. And then to see snow on the ground when you look out the hotel window. But you have a job to do. You can't get carried away with, "Oh my goodness! Everybody's watching." You're past that stage.

Fernando knocked in the first run. He knocked me in from third base with a ground ball up the middle. I scored. And even after (my) home run was hit, we as a ball club began to settle down in the third base dugout and realize that we still had one more out that we could work with ourselves offensively. But we [also] had three huge outs to get against an extremely talented team that could beat you in a lot of different ways. Power. Speed. And just contact. It was not going to be an easy task. It was not an easy task. We had to get back down to business. There was not time to celebrate, because there was nothing to celebrate yet.

AK: Did you even get an opportunity to take in what just happened as you rounded the bases? Even for a second?

RM: No. It's just another run. We had the lead. Now whether or not we hold onto that lead, time will tell. But we had an opportunity now, at least. In the back of all of our minds, what was gnawing away at most of us, is that we found out on Saturday that the New York Yankees were already in the World Series. We had, in our minds, an extra incentive to get to New York.

AK: You talk in the book about basically hating the Yankees from childhood on. Why?

RM: As a kid growing up, when people would talk about the Yankees, when there was a broadcast about the Yankees, when you read about the Yankees, who was the other team they were playing against? There was another team on that field and I got tired of hearing about the Yankees. There were other teams that were playing on that field. And even when I signed, the first game I played at the major league level, at the ripe old age of 20 years old, against the New York Yankees, I was in awe of their tradition. But I didn't like the pinstripes. I respected the heck out of the people that were there, but as a kid growing up, the only current Yankee at that time that got my interest was Mickey Mantle. As far as I was concerned, Mickey Mantle could walk into a phone booth, take off his shirt and there would be an "S" underneath. And when I got to play in major leagues against Mickey Mantle and finally, at one point in time, had Mickey Mantle call me by my name, you go full circle. You go back to that 8-year old, 9-year-old kid that dressed in his little league uniform at the L.A. Coliseum, watching people your perceived as gods on the baseball field. When Mickey Mantle said "Rick," I was spoken to by a god, in my mind.

AK: Are you almost looking around for another "Rick," you're so taken aback?

RM: Yeah. And my second year in the major leagues, I was on the All-Star team in the American League. And to be in a locker room with Mickey Mantle, to see how much he had to go through to physically get ready for a game, this was at the end of his career in 1968, to see him wrapped from ankle up to his hips, you're in awe. You become that child that used to be in the stands watching him.

AK: When the World Series was all said and done, you beat the Yankees in six games, the last of which was a 9-2 rout. What is that feeling like, with everything that's happening in front of you and everything that happened along the way? The losses to the Yanks in '77 and '78. The immense battle just reaching that point. Is it even possible to take it all in?

RM: The last few innings could not go slowly enough. You could not drink in as much as you wanted to. From my standpoint, I was trying to drink in from years before. We had watched the celebration of the New York Yankees. And we were not that far from being able to celebrate in the Yankees' front yard.

AK: Are you happier that you got to do it in their front yard or would you have rather have done it in yours?

RM: For me, (their backyard) was fitting, because we had been turned away by them and there was going to be an ample opportunity to celebrate (in Los Angeles). That's the selfish version, but that's what I had been living with, just kind of on "simmer" for a lot of years. In that particular series, that "simmer" had been turned up and at that particular time, you get to the seventh, eighth and ninth inning, it was no longer on "simmer." It was on a high boil.

But if you look at that celebration, we didn't spend a lot of time celebrating. And for a lot of reasons. One, it's hostile ground and we weren't trying to show anybody up. But I really felt, and I think I said it in the book, that celebration belonged to us. In our locker room. Together. And not there, because had we been at home, we would have celebrated on the field.

AK: Do the memories feel just as vivid now?

RM: Oh, they're even more vivid now, because we've had the embellishment period of years and years. It was in living color then. Now it's just in overly exaggerated Technicolor.