“What are you doing here?”

Dodger second baseman Steve Sax asked me that question many years ago, when I was 23.  Ninety minutes earlier, Sax and Orel Hershiser and the rest of the Dodgers had polished off the New York Mets in Game 7 of the 1988 National League Championship Series.

And my theory had proven true.  After the game, I said to my best friend, Don Silverman, “Let’s go into the clubhouse.  I want to celebrate with the team.”

“What?” he asked incredulously.  “What about the security guards?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I told him.  “Listen -- just act like you know where you’re going, act like you’re supposed to be there.  Say a confident, ‘How ya doin’?’ as you walk by, just like you know ’em.  They won’t stop us.”

And that’s exactly the way it happened.  We strolled by two uniformed guards, guessed correctly and took a left turn -- uncertainty or a wrong turn could have exposed us -- and we found ourselves at the main door.  We passed two clubhouse attendants wearing ridiculous-looking carnival-style straw hats, and there we were:

Inside the Dodger clubhouse.  The nerve-center of our fervent Dodger fandom.

It appeared that most of the celebrating was done, and that some players had gone -- but some were still there.  To our left sat outfielder Mike Marshall.  And there was John Shelby.  And Mike Davis.  And beleaguered reliever Jay Howell.  And -- yes -- there was Steve Sax.

He was Don’s favorite player, and I too liked his style of play.  We had met him a few times, so he knew who we were.  And when we approached him at his cubicle, he was surprised to see us in the clubhouse.  That’s when he asked how we had gotten in.

“We just walked in,” I answered.  “We wanted to congratulate you.”

He thanked us.  We shook hands with him and chatted a moment about the game.  Don was clearly nervous -- nervous to be somewhere we shouldn’t have been, and nervous to be talking to Sax, his hero.  Interestingly, Sax appeared tense too, looking around the room warily.  We soon found out why.

“You guys better get out of here,” Sax said.  “If Lasorda catches you in here, he’ll throw you out.”

We could hear manager Tommy Lasorda talking with someone in another room—probably in his office.  Sax’s counsel sounded like solid advice. (“Sax was looking out for us!” Don remarked later.)  We’d gotten into the clubhouse, and that was great, but I didn’t want to push our luck.

As we walked out, I shook Marshall’s hand.

“Great job,” I said to him.  “Go get ’em in the World Series.”

“Thanks,” Marshall said.  “We’re gonna try.”

   Don and I left the clubhouse, content that we had been a part of things in a way no other fans had.  (We found out the next day that two fans had an experience that went beyond even ours.  It turned out that Sax’s warning was legitimate.  A note in the newspaper reported that Lasorda had physically thrown two party-crashers out of the postgame celebration.)