They’re Barry’d in a Hole

Shortstops, as a class, like downstairs maids and rookies in boot camp, are supposed to know their place. They’re not necessarily supposed to take their hats off at the door, wipe their feet before coming in or act as if they’ve come to do the windows or get the luggage. But they’re supposed to bat .250 or less, bunt a lot, hit the ball no farther than the warning track. Be seen and not heard.

They don’t keep them around for their bat but their glove. Just get the double play, Sonny, and leave the hitting to us. That’s probably why there are so few of them in the Hall of Fame. Then, you come to Barry Larkin and you want to ask, “Who does he think he is? Where does he come off putting on all these airs?”

First of all, there are those .300 seasons--five in a row at one point. Then, there are those home runs--20 one year. How’s that for gall? Chutzpah is what it is.

Maybe Barry Larkin doesn’t know he’s a shortstop.

Well, Barry Larkin knows he’s a shortstop, all right. That’s all he ever wanted to be since growing up in Cincinnati and watching Dave Concepcion and Leo Cardenas.

It’s just that, like a Spencer Tracy or a Robert De Niro, he’s found a new way to play the part.

I mean, where does it say a shortstop has to be a banjo hitter? A hit-behind-the-runner, try-to-draw-a-walk kind of ballplayer?

It’s not that Barry’s glove is lacking. He makes an error only every other eclipse of the moon. He starts the double play, all right. He’d make Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance look clumsy. He has a great arm. He could get to live ammunition before it could get through the hole. He’s the best shortstop in the league, and the only reason he isn’t the best in the game is because Cal Ripken Jr. is in it.

He has been a star since he was on the infield of the University of Michigan where his team went to the College World Series twice without winning it. He has been a star on every team he has played on.

Except one.

In 1984, he was on the U.S. Olympic team that had Will Clark, Mark McGwire, Bill Swift, and B.J. Surhoff, to name only a few of the future big leaguers.

It also had Barry Larkin on it. But you wouldn’t know it. “I didn’t play hardly at all,” he remembered as he stood by the batting cage at Dodger Stadium on Wednesday night. “Why? You’d have to ask somebody else, not me. “

Did it hurt? Larkin looks sideways at you. “It was humiliating,” he explains.

He paused a minute. “But you know something? It drove me. I don’t think I would have played as hard as I did after that if it weren’t for that. A little humility is good for you.”

It also hardened Larkins’ attitude. He, in his own recollection, became more of a take-charge guy, assertive, conscious of himself.

Of course, nobody had the idea to put Barry Larkin on a bench since. If he hasn’t got a bat or a glove in his hands, the team has made a huge mistake.

A case could be made he is a major reason the Cincinnati Reds are now 2-0 up on the Dodgers after Wednesday’s 5-4 victory in the divisional playoff.

Larkin came to bat in the eighth inning Wednesday night. The score was tied, there were two out and utility infielder Mariano Duncan had just singled and stolen second.

The Reds had just the guy they wanted up there. The shortstop--emphasis on the . No banjo strummer, no guy looking to work the pitcher for a walk. The threat.

Larkin worked the count to 3 and 2. Then, he picked out a nice Antonio Osuna fastball and drilled it into right field. Duncan scored. And the Reds took a lead they would never relinquish.

How important was that hit? Well, look at it this way: The Reds got only six hits all night. The Dodgers got 14. But they left the world on base. They left the bases loaded in the sixth and seventh innings without scoring. It was a textbook case on how to squander a) two Eric Karros home runs; b) one Karros double; and c) 11 other hits.

Unless Barry Larkin starts acting like a shortstop, the Dodgers--and maybe the rest of the league--will be in your basic “Wait till next year” mode.

Larkin, you see, is the de facto captain of the Reds, and that tells you all you have to know about him. I mean no shortstop could ever be the President of the United States--until Barry Larkin redefined the position. It’s now as OK to be shortstop as it is to be Secretary of State. And they can eat with the family. Larkin, the shortstop, is the CEO of the Reds. One shortstop who will be in the Hall of Fame. And, incidentally, maybe the World Series.