The magic and mystery of K-Rod

Francisco Rodriguez points up at his late grandfather after each of his saves. John W. McDonough/SI Arash Markazi's Mailbag Submit a comment or question for Arash. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND Follow Arash Markazi on Twitter

LOS ANGELES -- The five-year-old kid, or "nene" as his family called him, just wanted to throw the ball as far and as hard as he could. He massaged it in his tiny hands, looking at his uncle standing some 60 feet away, as if he was waiting for some greater power to take control of his right arm. There was no way he was going to get the baseball into his uncle's glove but like most boys holding a ball in a park anything seems possible. You always hit the last second shot, the walk-off home run and the game winning goal. So he gripped the ball, raised his left leg and threw the ball as hard as he could, his momentum spinning him around and causing him to fall as the ball flew then dipped, nearly reaching its intended target.

It wasn't a life-changing moment for Francisco Jose Rodriguez -- there aren't many eureka moments for kids more concerned with push-pops than pro prospects -- but looking back on it now he admits it was the first time he knew he had a gift. "That's when I first started to notice I was throwing differently than the other kids," he says. "After that I used to play with older kids because I would throw so hard that the kids in my league wouldn't play with me."

When he steps onto the mound now, far from the dirt fields he first played on in Barrio Kennedy, a slum in the hillside Macarao section of downtown Caracas, Venezuela, Rodriguez still throws each pitch like he did his first -- hard, fast and with a quirky rotation of his body that leaves him facing first base when he lets go of the ball. And if that pitch just happens to be the last out of the game, he'll slap his glove and scream as he points towards the sky like a kid who still can't believe he's pitching in a big league park.

Those final seconds of each one of Rodriguez's saves, from his unorthodox motion to his obnoxious celebration, says more about him than any modest sound byte you might get from him afterwards or any angry quote you might read from an opponent he rubs the wrong way. Through it all, Rodriguez stays the same, offering little analysis for his behavior and leaving the scrutiny and psyychiatry to others. Meanwhile, he just keeps contorting, throwing and celebrating just like "Nene" always has.

"I've been doing this since I was a little kid. I used to always have sore shoulders, arms and elbows because I would twist my body to throw it hard," says Rodriguez, who earned the nickname "K-Rod" after he joined the Angels in September 2002 and plowed down helpless batters who'd never seen him before during the Angels' run to their first World Series title. "I was really small and skinny but I wanted to throw the ball as hard as I could and the motion just came naturally to me. It's not something that I just learned a couple years ago, it's something I've been doing for the past 24 years or so."

It's odd hearing a 26-year-old player with a baby face that still elicit chants of "Nene Fran" from friends and family when he returns to Venezuela, explain something he's done for the past "24 years," but Rodriguez can't recall a moment when he wasn't throwing a ball, or whatever you'd call wadded up newspapers held together by electrical tape. He would watch his baseball-crazed uncles play as a kid, watching from a distance before getting a chance to throw as well when he was about three years old. "They didn't have anyone to baby sit me so they used to take me to all their games," he says. "They never treated me like a kid."

Baseball was the one thing that would never leave Rodriguez. Would never tell him he didn't matter. That it wanted nothing to do with him. If anything, it embraced him and made him feel special. It was a feeling that Rodriguez, the 14th child of Isabel Mayorca and Francisco Rodriguez Sr., never got from his parents, who were in the midst of a separation when he was born. When he was two months old he was left with his father's parents, Isabel and Juan Rodriguez. Despite living about 30 minutes away from him, Rodriguez parents rarely if every saw him and he grew up calling his grandparents "mom" and "dad."

"It was a real difficult time," says Rodriguez, who points up at his grandfather, who passed away in 1999 during his first spring training, after every save. "That's one of the reasons I always thank god that I'm able to be where I am now because I went through so many things growing up. It's really difficult to think about where I am compared to where I came from. I really had a difficult childhood and grew up in a rough neighborhood back home, I wasn't raised by my parents but my grandparents and it was a lot of ups and downs."

The one constant through those ups and downs was baseball, which might explain why Rodriguez won't change his style for anyone. He simply smiles when asked if he might modify the mechanics of his delivery to prolong his career and prevent injury or if he would consider curbing his enthusiasm on the mound after every routine save. "I've been playing this game the same way since I played T-ball when I was three and half," he says. "I love it but it's also my job now. I want to enjoy myself but I want to play the game the way I know how because if I don't do my job they're going to find someone else to do it."