Wherever Fate May Lead, Let Us Follow
Marshall Garvey on the odyssey that he and Tito Landrum took to reach new heights
By: Marshall Garvey
For Terry Lee “Tito” Landrum, the road to his finest hour was made possible by a macabre twist of fate.
It was Sunday, October 13, 1985. The St. Louis Cardinals and Los Angeles Dodgers were gearing up to play Game 4 of the National League Championship Series at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. After two resounding Dodger victories in Los Angeles to start the series, the Cardinals rebounded with a sound 4-2 win in Game 3 at home. It wasn’t a particularly dramatic or memorable game. Rather, it was a textbook display of the “Whiteyball” philosophy that netted an MLB-best 101 wins during the regular season. The catalyst of it all was rookie sensation Vince Coleman, who followed his rookie record 110 stolen bases with an early swipe and two runs, setting the tone for the Game 3 Redbird victory.
In one instant, though, Coleman, the very embodiment of the 1985 Cardinals’ philosophy - and perhaps their championship hopes - was felled. Not by a headhunting fastball from a Dodger pitcher. Not by an awkward slide on one of his ritual steal attempts that dazzled St. Louis fans all season. Not even by reckless behavior off the field (which he would make headlines for later in his career). Rather, it was the machinery of Busch Stadium itself that cast a pall - or, more accurately, a tarp - over hopes for a 10th St. Louis title.
A light drizzle near the start of batting practice prior to Game 4 of the NLCS forced the stadium grounds crew to unspool a massive green tarpaulin across the infield. Coleman, caught up in conversation and tossing a glove to someone in the dugout, was oblivious to the incoming canvas. Suddenly, he slipped on the wet turf and found his leg ensnared by the tarp, whose 1,200-pound weight bore down on him. As Coleman hollered in pain, Ozzie Smith and other teammates quickly ran to the tarp’s controller and begged them to shut it off. However, the tarp had to reverse course over Coleman’s leg. While Coleman thankfully wasn’t crushed, the cumulative toll left the rookie with a bruised left ankle that negated any hopes of playing that night.
With Coleman carted off the field on a stretcher just hours before Game 4 was set to begin, Tito Landrum suddenly stepped from the shadows into the spotlight as the Cardinals’ starting left fielder. It was an opportunity presaged with irony, as Landrum’s own injury back in April facilitated Coleman’s MLB debut.
Granted, it wouldn’t be entirely accurate to call Landrum a complete unknown to fans. For one, his handsome countenance (whose resemblance to Tito Jackson earned him his nickname) was plastered all over a modeling poster that he allowed to be sold for a missing children charity, including at Busch Stadium concession stands.
Furthermore, he had already played his part in forging a Cardinal championship, having served as a backup on the 1982 squad. However, he saw no action in the postseason against Atlanta and Milwaukee (although he still received a ring). Now, he didn’t have a spare minute to process his role in the biggest game of the season yet. As it turned out, he wouldn’t need one.
In his very first at-bat in the bottom of the 2nd, Landrum laced a single to left for the first run of a 12-2 Cardinal romp to even the NLCS at two games apiece. He even tied two NLCS records by collecting four hits, with two of them coming in the same inning.
The Cardinals followed the blowout with Ozzie Smith’s and Jack Clark’s stunning home runs off Dodgers closer Tom Niedenfuer in Games 5 and 6 to claim the National League pennant.
While Smith making Busch Stadium “go crazy” and Clark silencing Dodger Stadium would live on in Cardinal highlight reels for generations, it’s reasonable to consider the unheralded Tito Landrum the fulcrum of the NLCS for his Game 4 heroics. Yet Landrum’s surprise opportunity did more than just facilitate a trip to the World Series. It helped lay the groundwork for the moment that changed the course of my life.
***
Thirty five years after 1985, the gears of fate for me were also set in motion, not by injury, but the COVID-19 pandemic. As I sheltered in place, quarantined with my thoughts, I took off for a run in the late afternoon of April 15. An idea began to percolate from my train of thought: the 1985 World Series. The oft-forgotten all-Missouri clash between the Royals and Cardinals, usually only dredged out of the memory hole for the sake of rehashing Don Denkinger’s infamous blown call in Game 6. Despite being a lifelong Californian and Dodgers fan, the ‘85 Fall Classic had occupied a strangely unique presence in my mind for as long as I had been into baseball. As if there was an innate suspicion that there was far more to it than just one errant call.
As I ran laps around a nearby park, the premise for a new, exhaustive 1985 World Series book rapidly took shape. I envisioned a tome that would go beyond Denkinger’s blunder and reveal a plethora of overlooked stories. I even conceived the book’s title, Interstate ‘85 (a portmanteau of Missouri’s Interstate 70 and 1985), while listening to “Thunder Road” by Bruce Springsteen. Yes, it’s hardly audacious for a baseball scribe to draw inspiration from the Boss, but the invitational opener for Born to Run aptly foreshadowed the all-or-nothing road I was about to travel.
Luckily for us, Landrum and I had some experience going down these sudden paths of fate.
***
In 1983, as a member of the Baltimore Orioles, Landrum stepped into the spotlight in ALCS October when right fielder Dan Ford was injured. With Game 4 of the ALCS a scoreless tie in the bottom of the 10th, and the Orioles desperately needing a win to seal the pennant and avoid facing LaMarr Hoyt in a winner-take-all Game 5, Landrum vaulted a Britt Burns fastball into the upper deck of Comiskey Park to ensure the clinch. 1985, however, would be far more demanding. While Ford returned as a starter for the ‘83 World Series, relegating Landrum to a late-inning defensive replacement against Philadelphia, Vince Coleman was permanently sidelined for the Cardinals’ “I-70 Series” showdown against the Kansas City Royals. This meant Terry Lee Landrum would start all seven games in left. Even more, he garnered further attention in the all-Missouri battle given he was born in Joplin. However, as a military brat, he grew up more around the globe in places like Thailand and the Philippines, even honing his baseball skills on rice paddy fields. Landrum even joked that he spent “about as much time in Joplin as it took to be born and get out of the hospital.”
Likewise, writing a baseball history book wasn’t alien territory for me, as I was only months removed from self-publishing my first ever book, The Hidden History of Sacramento Baseball, in November 2019. But that was a local history book with modest expectations. Interstate ‘85 was going to be a project on a far grander scale: an “A-list” chronicle of a crucial, albeit overlooked, chapter in baseball history. One that would require unprecedented levels of research, writing acumen, personal sacrifice, and most of all, networking. I knew that in order for the book to reach its full potential, I would have to interview as many of its participants as possible.
As the spring of 2020 turned into summer, the book became more than just an ambitious dream: it became a stabilizing force in a chaotic time. The 1985 Royals, Cardinals, and Don Denkinger became the Boys of COVID Summer, their highlight reels filling the void as Major League Baseball’s 2020 season teetered on the edge of full on cancellation. In-between digesting the latest grisly headlines from the real world, developing Interstate ‘85 was both a relief in the present and a promise for the future.
Running became, quite literally, my escape. Each morning or afternoon jaunt allowed me to brainstorm continuously, meditating on whatever obscure name from the Royals and Cardinals occupied my mind at the moment. As my research deepened, Tito Landrum was one of the names that fascinated me the most. Not just because his name is one of those delicious baseball monikers that rattles around the brain in a fun manner, but because he stood out as one of the lesser-known stories overshadowed by “The Call” that deserved greater appreciation.
One reason for this is simple: he became a stabilizing force for the Cardinals in what could have been a chaotic time with Coleman’s injury. Playing in all seven games, Landrum excelled both offensively and defensively. A double in Game 1 set up the go-ahead run for a 3-1 win. A throw home to nab Buddy Biancalana kept Game 2 in reach for a shocking 9th inning Cardinal comeback, one he contributed to with a double and a run scored. In Game 4, he rocketed a Bud Black pitch for an opposite field home run that shook Busch Stadium to its core and set up a victory that put the Cards up 3-1 in the Series. After the game, the man many people in St. Louis (and certainly everywhere else) might not have recognized mere weeks ago navigated a sea of TV interviews as fans chanted for him to be crowned World Series MVP.
Yet, while Landrum’s October heroics seemed to come out of nowhere, they were actually the culmination of a grueling road to the majors. In another striking parallel to my journey as a writer, Landrum’s path was one of great adversity, having to grind out eight years in the minor leagues before his debut with St. Louis in 1980. During those years, he worked a litany of odd jobs to stay afloat financially, including box boy at a grocery store and a mall security guard. The low point of the latter position came when he was held at knifepoint, prompting him to quit. In this regard, I saw a lot of myself, as I too had to navigate a sea of dead end jobs before becoming a full-time writer in 2019. One that, while not featuring anything as terrifying as being held up with a knife, certainly had a resounding rock bottom of its own in a one-month stint as a virtual grocery shopper.
Landrum wouldn’t get a third World Series ring in 1985, as the Royals completed a 3-1 Series comeback to claim the title. Fortunately, my dream of publishing Interstate ‘85 came true in 2025, albeit after a turbulent journey that is far too long to sufficiently recount here. It would thus be satisfying for this article to reach the denouement of me and Tito Landrum’s roads crossing one another in the form of an interview during that span. Alas, while I ultimately got to talk to 27 people ranging from George Brett to Don Denkinger to Kurt Kepshire, Landrum wasn’t one of them. I managed to procure his email address through extensive networking in 2021, but received no response from either of my inquiries.
Yet, even without getting the chance to talk to him, our paths still manage to mirror one another even now. When his journey of being a baseball player ended in 1991, a new door opened as a result of injury. A back surgery prompted him to design his own water-based rehabilitation program, which gave Landrum the idea to try his hand at becoming a physical therapist. He was originally timid about furthering his education, having been a mediocre student in his youth. Nevertheless, he pushed through to earn his Bachelor of Science from New York University. “I spent eight long years in the minors. Then I made it to three World Series. Not one of them felt as good as it feels to be here today,” Landrum declared in his valedictorian speech in May 1998.
Likewise, my five-year odyssey of bringing Interstate ‘85 to life inadvertently facilitated an exciting new endeavor. When the project hit its most trying phase of development, I turned to the 2018 puzzle video game Return of the Obra Dinn for inspiration that ultimately saved it.
Now, as I enjoy a much-earned hiatus from book authoring, I am hard at work developing a video game with my friend Alex Aguilar that seeks to create a detective experience similar to Obra Dinn. Much like Landrum initially believing he wasn’t suited for completing his education, I had long convinced myself that game development wasn’t something I was cut out for. Now, I relish the challenge ahead.
Looking back on the five-year odyssey of writing Interstate ‘85, I realize with deep gratitude how every person in the I-70 Series ultimately shaped my destiny. Even without connecting with him personally, Tito Landrum stands at the forefront of that appreciation, and not just because he was an impromptu hero in an underrated World Series. To me, he’s something more: an avatar for the improbable paths and opportunities that life can spring on a moment’s notice. Sometimes, those opportunities lead to chances to reach new heights you had only dreamed of.
Furthermore, he shows that even after those heights have been reached, there is always a new road to be traveled, no matter how much you believe it’s not meant to happen.
A writer with more than two decades of experience, Marshall Garvey uses his mesmerizing storytelling and unique prose to chronicle baseball, video games, music, movies, history, and more. His work has been published by The Sacramento Bee, Dodgers Nation, Cygnus X-1, ‘80s Baseball, and many others. His first book is The Hidden History of Sacramento Baseball, followed by the historical fiction novel Ellwood’s Odyssey. His latest book, Interstate ‘85: The Royals, the Cardinals, and the Show-Me World Series, has received widespread acclaim for its vivid retelling of the 1985 World Series. He works as an immigration case writer, and resides in Citrus Heights, CA
Links for buying Interstate ‘85:
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Twitter/X: @MarshallGarvey
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So grateful I got to write this for such a great magazine!