Candidates Catch L.A.’s Baseball Fever

The men of the hour coped with the pressures of the moment by acting like . . . boys.

Both Michael S. Dukakis and George Bush spent their sunny Southern California autumn Wednesday, the day before their great debate, thinking of baseball, what else?

Bush pared down his entourage to a bare minimum and motorcaded out to Dodger Stadium in the afternoon where he watched some batting practice and then the final playoff game from the owner’s box. A college first baseman, Bush now and again relaxes on the campaign trail by taking in a ballgame.

To further limber up, Bush jogged for about 20 minutes with a group of about 10 UCLA students at Rancho Park in West Los Angeles.

By coincidence, Dukakis, wearing a white UCLA sweat shirt, maroon sweat pants and a new-looking fielder’s glove, stepped out onto a grassy patch of deck off the fourth floor of the Bonaventure Hotel with a baseball in his hand at midday. He played catch for 22 minutes with his press secretary, Dayton Duncan.

Best Pitch?

What will you pitch to Bush? Dukakis was asked.

“A fastball, curve, slider. Maybe a knuckler,” he replied.

What do you have to do against Bush? another reporter asked.

“We’re already 2 and 0. We’re going to make it a clean sweep.”

Meanwhile out on the Westside, Bush operatives were proving that Dukakis did not have a lock on baseball metaphors.

Bush Press Secretary Sheila Tate said the vice president devoted a couple of hours Wednesday to debate preparations with his top advisers.

“A little political batting practice. Some pepper drill,” is how she described Bush’s pre-debate workout at the Four Seasons Hotel near Beverly Hills.

Besides whatever honest relaxing the two men were able to make of their public appearances Wednesday, both were clearly trying to show their cool under fire, even as they pondered their moves.

What, Dukakis was asked, do you have to do tonight?

“That’s what you guys have to say,” he replied. “...I like debates. I enjoy them.”

The reporters around Dukakis joined in the lighthearted spirit. They teased him about how his UCLA sweat shirt was really an ACLU sweat shirt with the letters scrambled. He laughed.

Cheery Mood

Dukakis aides were in evidence around town during the day, talking up their chances and fortifying the cheery mood of the Democrats.

Around Bush, the pictures showed an easygoing candidate. But the mood was not so contagious out of the eye of the camera.

Bush aides, as if under orders, refused interviews, comment and even social contact with journalists. And as has become his habit lately, Bush himself stayed carefully remote, responding only briefly to a couple of casual questions when he posed for pictures with Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates.

Bush and Gates had breakfast together after the vice president’s campaign cancelled a larger campaign event that was to involve several other police chiefs. Likewise, Dukakis called off a planned trip to the McDonnell-Douglas plant in Huntington Beach.

Both men, it seemed, had something else on their minds.