One flap down: Remembering Jeffrey Leonard's incredible, unusual 1987 NLCS

Graham Womack

One flap down: Remembering Jeffrey Leonard's incredible, unusual 1987 NLCS image

St. Louis, Oct. 6, 1987

Jeffrey Leonard snatched the lineup off the wall of the visiting clubhouse at Busch Stadium.

It was shortly before Game 1 of the 1987 National League Championship Series, with Leonard’s San Francisco Giants due to face the St. Louis Cardinals. And Leonard, a veteran embroiled in a 2-for-21 slump to close the regular season, wasn’t in the starting lineup, with a part-timer named Mike Aldrete in his place.

“Boy, you crazy,” Leonard said to no one in particular. Then he went in manager Roger Craig’s office and closed the door.

Seven years prior, while a member of the Houston Astros, Leonard had missed most of the 1980 NLCS after another part-timer, Gary Woods, shined in a September call-up and took his spot. Leonard vowed if he got another chance at the playoffs, he’d go off.

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Through an up-and-down career, through injuries and through an appearance in the Pittsburgh drug trials of 1985 for cocaine use, Leonard finally found himself on the verge of the postseason once more — and not about to let the moment slip by.

In Craig’s office, as Leonard recently recounted to Sporting News, he made his case.

“I just basically told him, I said, ‘You know, I have to play. I don’t care about my slump. That’s regular season. This is a whole another thing right here,’” Leonard said.

Craig looked at Leonard and said what he had to say. Then he let Leonard go tell Aldrete he wouldn’t be in the starting lineup.

And so began one of the great losing efforts in MLB postseason history.

'Like an airplane'

Leonard's line on Baseball-Reference.com will show that he hit four home runs with a 1.417 OPS in the 1987 NLCS. His performance enraged Cardinals fans, it nearly carried the Giants to victory and nothing like it has been replicated in the MLB playoffs since.

It wasn’t so much that Leonard put up gaudy numbers for a losing team. Barry Bonds would go on to do the same thing for the Giants in the 2002 World Series, hitting .471 to boot. Others have shined for losing teams as well.

It was the manner in which Leonard hit those home runs, cranking moon shots and then lumbering around the bases deliberately slowly with his left arm straight down at his side as he ran. By the time Leonard gave an interview prior to Game 3, NBC announcer Joe Garagiola Sr. had given a name to Leonard’s home run trot.

“He goes, ‘Flap, flap. One Flap Down. Like an airplane, the flap is down,’” Leonard said.

One Flap Down. The phrase had been used locally, with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat writing after Leonard’s Game 1 home run that he “made his usual 'one-flap down' tour of the bases.” But Garagiola might have been the first to give the nickname national exposure.

Thirty years later, it’s the nickname for Leonard that lives on, supplanting HacMan, Penitentiary Face and — as newspaper columnist Art Spander noted after Leonard complained — Correctional Institute Face.

Leonard said the trot was accidental the first time he did it — on May 3, 1986 — when Cubs starter Scott Sanderson hung a curve ball that Leonard smacked into the stands.

Leonard began his trot to first base. Rookie first base coach Jose Morales, uncharacteristically far from the bag to mess with Leonard as a joke, didn’t grab his hand to congratulate him until after he’d rounded first base. Morales caught Leonard’s arm down, and down it stayed as Leonard rounded the bases.

The next day, Cubs players Ryne Sandberg and Thad Bosley approached Leonard. Their exchange, Leonard said, went something like this:

“Hac, how’s your arm?”

“My arm, what are you talking about?”

“You had your arm down. Did you get hurt?”

“Ohhh … No, no, no, no, no, no.”

The hidden game

The 1980s were an era in which players such as Leonard, Pedro Guerrero and Dave Parker ran the bases slowly on home run trots, in a sort of competition with one another.

“We already had like a little, I don’t know what you want to call it, game within a game which some of the hitters around the league — which nobody knew about — we just had fun,” Leonard said. “Who had the slowest trot, blah, blah, blah. You know, Guerrero, Parker, all these guys. It was just a fun thing.

Leonard didn’t have the slowest trot. He said he came in second twice, with Parker a hard man to beat. Don Robinson, who played with both men, could attest, watching Parker homer off Rod Scurry in 1985 after he’d become a member of the Cincinnati Reds.

“It must have took him two or three or four minutes to get around the bases,” Robinson said.

After that blast against the Cubs in May, Leonard only hit one more home run the remainder of the 1986 season, with injuries limiting him to 89 games and keeping him homerless the final 2 1/2 months he played.

Then came a spring training game in 1987 and a request from a teammate.

“Candy Maldonado, he goes, ‘Hey man, you remember last year when you hit that pinch-hit home run and you had your arm down by your side?’” Leonard said. “I had to think about it. I said, ‘Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember.’ Everybody laughing. I go, ‘Well, if I hit one today, I’ll do it.’ Whap, I hit one in spring training.”

Players roared in laughter. Giants’ general manager Al Rosen, decades removed from his days as an elite player for the Cleveland Indians, was less amused.

“Al Rosen comes down, man, he’s all mad — ‘What are you doing? You’re going to get hit. You’re going to get somebody hit,’” Leonard said. “I go, ‘Al, we just having some fun, dawg, come on.’”

A week later, Leonard said if he homered that day, he’d do the trot again. He did, and he did — and he got another visit from Rosen.

“He starts chirping,” Leonard said. “I go, ‘Al, it’ll be all right. I’m never worried about getting hit. I’ve been hit a lot of times already, so it isn’t going to matter.’”

‘A different kind of ballplayer’

Leonard could be difficult, intimidating and recalcitrant, and Craig sometimes struggled to connect with him. Once, before a game, Craig tried to get Leonard to stop wearing his hat backwards. Leonard protested that it was his trademark. Craig replied that he’d appreciate it if Leonard took his suggestion.

"He got ready to hit in the batting cage and he started to walk in and he turned around and looked at me and took his hat and put it on frontwards and all,” Craig, now 87 and long-retired, told Sporting News in a recent interview.

Leonard did things his own way, as evidenced in the interview he’d give before Game 6 of the NLCS with NBC reporter Marv Albert.

“He asked me about something — who do I dislike or something on the Cardinals," Leonard said. “I’m thinking it’s all fun. I have nothing against Tommy Herr. I liked his play. I just grabbed a name right out of the air. I went, ‘I don’t like Tommy Herr.’ That’s it.”

Leonard's unique personality went beyond baseball. 

“If I went over to my grandmother’s house and she baked me a cake and I did not like the cake and she asked me, “Ohhhh honey, how’s the cake?” I’m not going to be bulls— her and tell her it was great,’” he told SN, paraphrasing one of his more colorful quotes from his playing days.

“Grandma,” Leonard said, dissolving into laughter. “This cake sucks.”

Until the beginning of the 1987 season, Leonard had struggled to have consistent success. When he was on, he could be among the best hitters in baseball, such as 1981 when the Astros traded him to the Giants. Liberated from Houston, he boosted his miserable .167/.158/.333 slash to start the season to .290/.346/.510 for the year.

There was his 1983 season, when he hit 21 homers and stole 26 bases, or the following year when he slashed .302/.357/.484 with 21 homers and 86 RBIs. Not coincidentally, Leonard had the two highest games-played totals of his career during those two seasons. Health was often an issue for him, with Leonard averaging 105 games from 1979 through 1986.

When he faltered, however, things could get bad in a hurry. Take the Giants' infamous 1985 season, when San Francisco lost 100 games. Leonard toppled to .241/.272/.393. His -2.8 Wins Above Average were worst on the team by a healthy margin (though his -0.9 WAR just missed Brad Wellman's -1.0 WAR.)

A youth movement commenced in 1986, with Will Clark and Robby Thompson debuting. The Giants needed veterans like Leonard to step up.

“Jeffrey was a different kind of a ballplayer,” Craig said. “He was a born leader and he was a leader on the ball club, but he didn’t really realize that he was. But the players looked up to him a lot.”

Clark agreed with Craig's assessment.

“He was a mentor to some of the players, especially some of the younger players,” he said.

The playoffs beckon

On Sept. 28, 1987, in San Diego, the Giants clinched the National League West, riding a late home run by Robinson to a 5-4 victory.

Innings before, Leonard hit a home run to tie the game. As he jogged around the bases, Leonard said, San Diego shortstop Garry Templeton said something to encourage Leonard.

“It just kicked in and my arm went ‘Poof!’” Leonard said.

Padres players were laughing, including Tony Gwynn in right field, Leonard said.

“You crazy, you crazy,” Templeton said with a laugh, according to Leonard.

“It was nothing planned,” Leonard said. “No. Not until I got to St. Louis. It wasn’t even planned there either, actually.”

It’s not completely clear what led to Leonard’s first One Flap Down trot in the 1987 NLCS, when he homered to center against Greg Mathews to lead off the fourth inning in Game 1. But Busch Stadium fans immediately reacted with hostility toward Leonard’s display.

“I hadn’t even reached second base yet and they were going off,” Leonard said. “They were lighting me up. I was like, ‘Really? Y’all still winning the game. This is ridiculous.’ So by the time I hit third, I was like, ‘Ah, it’s on now.’ So then I just started walking.”

Cardinals fans would boo lustily upon Leonard’s first plate appearance in Game 2 and yell “Jeffffrrreeey” when he took his position in left field. Before the game, teammate Kevin Mitchell kidded with him. 

“It ain’t that bad,” Mitchell said. So Mitchell and Leonard switched jackets to run up the steps before batting practice

“As soon as they saw ‘HacMan’ on the back of that jacket, they were all over Kevin,” Leonard said.

Mitchell wound up chasing Leonard, saying, “Give me back my jacket.”

“F------ cow town,” Davis told reporters after the game. “They’ve been yelling at Jeffrey Leonard. Well, they’re going to do that to anybody. But Jeffrey will stick it right in their ear.”

In Game 2, Clark hit a home run off John Tudor and circled the bases, remarking about how far back Giants fans were sitting in Busch Stadium.

“I went, ‘Oh man, that’s bull—. Look at how far they’re sitting up there,’” Leonard said. “I go, ‘Man, if I hit a home run today, I’ll remember to take my sweet ass time. I’m just gonna pimp this thing.’”

Leonard delivered, hitting another home run to center to lead off the fourth.

“I have five home-run trots,” Leonard told media after the game. “I do it because I don’t hit that many home runs. And because it may make a player mad and mess him up. Tudor was hollering at me from the mound. If these type of things affect a pitcher, I’ll do them any day.”

The next game, Cardinals pitcher Joe Magrane was more stoic when Leonard connected against him in the third inning back at Candlestick Park.

“When I was between the lines, I was taught to believe that you’re not going to give any poker tells and to not be rattled by it and to go after the next guy,” said Magrane, now an MLB Network analyst. “That’s where your focus has to be.”

Innings later, though, the series would symbolically shift.

St. Louis strikes back

Craig and Robinson each said in interviews for this piece that they took no issue with Leonard’s slow trots. Clark wouldn’t say one way or the other.

'“I’m glad I didn’t get drilled because of it,” he said.

Bob Forsch, however, made his thoughts known when he relieved Magrane in Game 3, drilling Leonard just below the shoulders.

“There was a lot of, ‘Take that and your One Flap Down stuff’ coming from our dugout,” Magrane said.

Hurlers of past eras, in general, sometimes had no tolerance for antics from opposing hitters.

“Mays would tell the stories all the time,” Leonard said. “You couldn’t even swing the bat on deck hard if Bob Gibson was pitching.”

Leonard denied that Forsch's beaning affected him, noting that he hit his fourth home run the next day, off Danny Cox.

“I don’t know what kind of message he thought he was sending because I wasn’t that type of ballplayer,” Leonard said. “I always expected to get hit or thrown at. That’s the way it was.”

He even made a curtain call for Giants fans after his home run against Cox, earning some notoriety for making people wait. Leonard said it was the Cardinals he wanted to wait.

“I know Cox is still on the mound so it’s throwing his timing off,” Leonard said.

The Giants would go on to win Games 4 and 5. But the Cardinals rode Forsch’s beaning to a surprise Game 3 victory, ensuring the series would return to St. Louis.

“We as a team thought that that really, really woke us up,” Magrane said. “Because the Giants had us on the run, Candlestick was going crazy and we knew we had two more games there.”

Tensions ran high, with Magrane calling it “kind of like a verbal streetfight, not only between the two teams but between the two cities and the fan bases.”

Back in St. Louis, for Games 6 and 7 of the 1987 NLCS, however, the fire went out of the Giants. Tudor shut San Francisco down first, using a diet of fastballs and changeups to win 1-0 in Game 6.

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Leonard went 1-for-3 with a walk and two strikeouts, telling Albert after the game that Cardinals fans had dumped two cups of beer on him. Leonard told Sporting News that he played the rest of game in his beer-soaked jersey.

Luck wasn't on the Giants' side that day, either.

“There was a tough play at third base, a bang-bang play on a bunt play in the seventh inning,” Robinson said. “Listen, Dave Pallone was the umpire and he got it right. (The runner) was out by about a half an inch. And we hit 2,000 feet of balls against the wall that Willie McGee ran down.”

In Game 7, Craig made a surprise move just before game time, opting to hold Mike Krukow so he could pitch the first game of the World Series.

“We thought that Krukow was going to start the game,” Robinson said. “But evidently (Craig) didn’t.”

Atlee Hammaker got the start instead. He surrendered a three-run homer to Jose Oquendo in the second inning, and the Giants eventually fell 6-0.

Consolation

Robinson thinks the Giants might have beat the eventual World Series champions, the Minnesota Twins.

“I played on the ‘79 World Series team with the Pirates, which we won, and I played on the ‘89 team with the Giants in which we lost. I thought the best team I ever played on was the ‘87 Giants,” Robinson said.

Clark is less certain.

“When you get to the point where you are in the postseason, anybody can win anything,” Clark said. “It’s just whoever gets hot at the right time.”

Craig, who would go on to helm the Giants team that lost in the 1989 World Series and would manage the team through 1992, has no regrets about the ‘87 club.

“As I look back, I just say we had a great run and a great year and that was it,” Craig said. “But I didn’t really feel bad about anything because we played our hearts out.”

In the losing clubhouse after Game 7, Giants players watched victorious Ozzie Smith talking on a television screen. Someone threw a ball and broke the clubhouse set. Asked who threw the ball, Leonard said, “I don’t know. All I know is the TV was gone.”

All Leonard could think at the time: “I can’t believe we f— lost this thing.”

Then he learned that he’d won NLCS MVP, which would earn him a $50,000 bonus.

He became just the third person in league championship series history to have won the series MVP while playing on the losing team, following Fred Lynn in 1982 and Mike Scott in 1986. No one's done it since.

Leonard made the walk down the long hallway toward a postgame press conference. On the way, he saw Cox, the winning pitcher in Game 7. The two men embraced and said good series.

“Nobody even talks about that,” Leonard said of the moment.

Leonard got his trophy, but in the agony of defeat he told NBC's Albert, "The award means nothing to me."

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Leonard would have a few more moments of glory in his career. After wearing out his welcome in San Francisco early in the 1988 season and earning a trade to Milwaukee for Ernest Riles, he signed as a free agent with the Mariners. He was an All Star in 1989 and helped mentor a young Ken Griffey Jr. before retiring after the 1990 season.

Leonard’s also gone on to milk the memories of One Flap Down. At one point, he used it as the name for a non-profit he and his ex-wife started to combat cancer, though the organization has now changed its name to One Fabulous Day Foundation.

In his Roseville, Calif., home, Leonard has an extensive collection of bats from players such as Gwynn, Rickey Henderson and Alex Rodriguez. He has pictures of himself with teammates such as Davis and Griffey, and Giants greats such as Mays, Willie McCovey and Bobby Bonds.

But Leonard doesn’t have his NLCS trophy in the house. He gave it to his stepson. It still means nothing to him.

“It was an achievement, but I always relate it to that loss,” Leonard said. “That loss hurt.”

Graham Womack