Hampton looks strong in latest comeback bid

Mike Hampton is 32-20 since joining the Braves in 2003. Rich Pilling/Getty Images

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LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- Rock bottom for Mike Hampton came early last April, on an emergency plane trip to New York. He knew then -- somehow, in his bones, he just knew -- that the doctor he was about to see for his aching elbow wasn't going to give him good news. The left-hander was correct.

The anticipation of the news and the accompanying funk, though, ended up being a lot worse than the news itself. Once the doctor told Hampton that he'd need another elbow surgery and that he'd miss another whole season -- old news for Hampton by that time -- he did what he has always done -- he got to work.

Which brings us to the eternal hope of another spring training in Florida and another comeback by the indomitable Hampton. Fifteen years after breaking into the big leagues as a 20-year-old with the Mariners, and more than two full seasons after he threw his last pitch as a major leaguer with the Braves, Hampton's at it again.

He looks awfully good this spring. He feels good. His stuff, electrifying when he was healthy, is diving around like it did in 1999. His curve is curving the way it never did in Denver. He has his velocity. His location is coming along.

Everyone with the Braves is cautiously, nervously, don't-want-to-say-it, knock-on-wood optimistic. Again.

"We are hopeful of Mike being able to make our starting rotation," says John Schuerholz, the Braves' president, picking his words carefully. And when he says this he leans forward to tap his knuckles on the desk in his office at Disney's Wide World of Sports complex, the Braves' spring training home.

"But," Schuerholz adds -- and this, he points out, isn't being pessimistic, merely realistic -- "we can't plan on it."

What Hampton is attempting this season is nearly historic. You can count on a couple of hands the number of veteran players since World War II who have attempted to return to a starting role after two consecutive seasons lost to injury. A lot of guys come back in relief. Some, such as Jim Bouton and Jose Rijo, have tried to return in a last-ditch late-career longshot. The attempts almost never work out successfully.

But if Hampton is somehow able to do this -- if he can come close to the form he had early in 2005, when he made his last good starts, or back in the late '90s, when he was with the Astros, or in 2000 with the Mets -- and if he can do it all season ... well, that would be historic. No one with as many career starts as Hampton (321), or as many innings (more than 2,000) has ever missed two full seasons back-to-back and returned to a starting role with any real success.

Hampton, for one, knows what he's up against. He is 35 years old. He hasn't thrown a pitch in a real game since Aug. 19, 2005. He's had a couple of elbow surgeries since then, some back problems and a pulled hamstring last November in a one-inning start in a Mexican league game.

The odds of a successful comeback are long, but Hampton isn't thinking about that.

"I guess maybe I'm stupid in that way that I don't think about stuff like that. Maybe I'm naïve enough to think that that doesn't matter, and that I'll pick up right where I left off and won't skip a beat," says Hampton. "That's the way I approach it. I've been around for two years. I haven't been pitching, but I've been around the guys. I feel like I haven't left. I'm looking forward to the challenge."

Hampton's return to form, if he gets that far, would be of huge importance to the Braves, who are already an afterthought in the National League East. With Johan Santana remaking the Mets the favorite in the division, and with the defending division champion Phillies probably at least as good as they were last year, the Braves need the old Hampton to muscle in on the competition.

When he was good, Hampton was really good. He won 22 games with the Astros in 1999, finishing second in the Cy Young voting that year to Randy Johnson, and in 2000, Hampton won 15 games with a 3.14 ERA, helping the Mets into the World Series. (He was the MVP of the NL Championship Series that year, throwing 16 innings against the Cardinals without allowing a run.)

The big season earned Hampton a record $121 million contract with the Rockies, but his stuff never took in Coors Field. After two rough years there, Schuerholz -- who had long had his eye on Hampton, even making a trip to Houston late in 2000 to try to recruit him -- made a three-way trade with the Marlins to bring Hampton to Atlanta.

Hampton had a couple of good, but far from great years with the Braves until, at the beginning of 2005, things finally clicked. In his first seven starts that year, he won four games and was dominant, with a 2.05 ERA. Opponents hit just .219 off him. On May 8, he threw a complete-game, two-hit shutout -- and hit a home run -- in a win over the Astros.

In the third inning of his next start in Los Angeles against the Dodgers, though, Hampton felt a twinge in his forearm and had to leave the game. His elbow had started to come undone, and after a couple trips to the disabled list and four more painful starts, he underwent Tommy John surgery. After a year of sometimes grueling rehab, his comeback last season unraveled when he learned, on the trip to New York, that the surgery had to be done again.

"He was on top of his game when he was hurt," says the Braves' pitching coach, Roger McDowell, who wasn't with the team at the time but remembers well the Hampton of that year. "You don't go through this without the desire to get back there again."

Now, in the last season of his one-time historic contract, Hampton has a last chance to make good with the Braves. The question is, after two elbow surgeries and two seasons away from the game, are the Braves getting their hopes too high? Is Hampton?

"In my heart, I feel like that's what I'm supposed to do. I feel like I'm gonna be healthy, I'm gonna make 30 or so starts, and I'm gonna be a guy they can count on," Hampton says. "I just want what I had before. Give me what I had before, give me the movement on my pitches, and I'll win you games. That's all I want."

With everything that Hampton has been through in the past couple of years, that really doesn't seem like that much to ask.