And He May Find Even Fewer As Yanks Skipper

This wasn’t the ending Davey Johnson envisioned to the mess that Marge Schott created. He still has that John Wayne swagger and he wanted desperately to ride off into the sunset with a world championship, and make the Reds’ owner look even dumber than usual.

Instead he was huddled in the corner of a quiet locker room Saturday night, showing the same kind of hurt he showed when the Mets lost Game 7 to the Dodgers in 1988. Only then he still had a job.

Now the Reds are Ray Knight’s team. The next game Davey Johnson manages may well be for the Yankees next Opening Day, if the signs from George Steinbrenner are as ominous as they appear.

Davey didn’t really want to talk about the Yankees. Five minutes earlier he’d said an emotional goodbye to his ballclub, after the Braves completed the sweep of the Reds, and you could see the lump in his throat. But he is unemployed now, so Johnson didn’t walk away without reiterating his belief that he could co-exist with Boss George.

“I know he’s very clear about what he wants done with the club,” Johnson said, “but I think he just wants to win. I’m not good at being a yes-man, but I’m really a pretty easy-going guy.

“I’m known for being a little hardheaded, but in this game you have to have opinions. I’ve never felt like there’s anybody I couldn’t work with.”

There wasn’t much else Johnson wanted to say. He answered a couple of more questions quickly, excused himself and closed the door to the manager’s office behind him.

This series had turned out all wrong for him, and for the Reds, from start to finish. Shut out 6-0 Saturday night, the Reds were powerless at the plate yet again, and for one more night Reggie Sanders was the focal point.

People who watched the Reds all year say the guy was a legitimate MVP candidate for a long time, but this week he was the worst news in Cincinnati since the feds gang-tackled Pete Rose.

He wasn’t the only Red who went into the tank in this NLCS. He just became the symbol for a most embarrassed ballclub, the first ever to be swept in the National League since the seven-game format was adopted in 1985.

Apparently Reds fans, the ones who left the upper deck empty, knew something. You want to ask how this team won the NL Central, but then, what does that say about the Dodgers, who were pounded in three straight by these same Reds?

Maybe this series should simply be a tribute to the Braves. They seem to have been merely biding their time for two years until they got another shot at the world championship that has barely eluded them since 1991.

Still, that doesn’t excuse the Reds from disappearing altogether. They scored a total of five runs. They were 3-for-29 with runners in scoring position. And they didn’t hit a home run in the series.

No one was more helpless than the clean-up hitter. Obviously Johnson kept thinking Sanders would break out because he kept penciling him in that No. 4 spot, as stubbornly as he once kept putting Gregg Jefferies in the lineup at second base with the Mets.

In the end, the results were about the same. And it was too bad, because Sanders was all grace and class in the way he handled himself through this ordeal. Saturday night, after striking out twice more to run his whiff total to 10 for the series, he was there to take on all the questions one more time.

“I’ve never had such a humbling experience,” he said. “I’ve just got to believe it’s going to make me a better hitter next year. I never thought something like this could happen.”

He wound up going 2-for-16 in this series, 4-for-29 for the post-season. No one in NL playoff history had ever struck out more than seven times in a series of five games or less, never mind 10 times.

From start to finish, he seemed to come up at the most crucial times. He grounded into a game-ending double play in Game 1, when a fly ball would have scored a runner from third and tied it up. He struck out with the bases loaded and two outs against Greg Maddux when Game 3 was still scoreless.

Saturday night he hit into a rally-killing double play in the third inning, and finally, in an ending that was as fitting as it was cruel, he struck out against Mark Wohlers to end the series.

For Sanders the misery was over, at least. For Johnson, well, there are a few ex-Yankee managers who would say it may just be starting.