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 Forever a kid Robin Yount has MVP talents worth millions but revels in high-risk fun with very big toys
Posted: Wednesday July 21, 1999 07:43 PM
By Peter Gammons
To the left sits his go-kart, covered with a plastic tarp. Lined up on the other side is the family fleet: a Honda CR500R dirt bike, two smaller dirt bikes and three all-terrain cycles (ATCs), ranging in size from a big Honda 200X to a child-sized model. On a worktable is a go-kart engine Yount is rebuilding. Helmets, gloves and tools line the shelves; pictures of race cars decorate the walls. "This is me, the typical California kid," says Yount, who grew up a typical California kid in the San Fernando Valley. While he pokes at the go-kart engine on the table, Yount's 19-month-old daughter, Jenna , toddles into the garage and climbs onto the smallest of the ATCs. "This family starts out young," he says. "We go to the dunes near Yuma. My two older daughters ( Melisa , 10, and Amy , 8) and my son, Dustin (age 7), ride these ATCs all over the place. Dustin rides his dirt bike around the desert, using the clutch and everything. Jenna gets up and rides with me." At the back of the garage, perched on a shelf, is another shiny toy, a remote-controlled model helicopter. "A Christmas present," says Yount. "I'm building it, but I haven't had time to play with it -- yet. So far, all my flying's been on the ground." Yount wheels his dirt bike and the 200X ATC into the driveway. After a few tries, he gets the big three-wheeler running and then speeds back and forth on the U-shaped dirt course in his backyard. Satisfied after a few minutes that the ATC is running well, he puts it aside and turns to the dirt bike. The engine won't turn over. He goes into the garage, returns with a spark plug and a handful of tools, and begins tinkering. Ten minutes later, he climbs aboard the bike and kicks down the starter. Success. He zigs across the driveway and into the empty streets of the secluded Phoenix suburb of Paradise Valley. A few minutes later he is back, and he concludes his spin through the neighborhood with a hi-yo-Silver wheelie at the garage. "I can't start an engine without running it somewhere," he says. He then hoists the bike into the back of his pickup truck. Time to head for the desert. Yount, the 34-year-old centerfielder for the Milwaukee Brewers and last year's American League MVP, is a near-certain Hall of Famer. He earns more than $3 million a year and, thanks in large part to his 40-year-old brother, Larry , who acts as his agent and runs a real estate development company in Scottsdale, Ariz., the brothers' net worth is believed to be around $100 million. Last fall Robin tested the free-agent market, and at the outset of the discussions with each of the six teams he talked to, he laid down one ground rule: "I told them, 'I'm going to ride my bike in the desert, and I'm going to race cars and go-karts, and if you have a problem with that, then | there's no use talking about money.' If they wanted me, they had to accept me." Yount is in his 17th season with Milwaukee. He is, in team owner Bud Selig 's words, "the Brewers' franchise." Teammates, however, simply call him Kid. It is one of the game's most fitting nicknames ... "There hasn't been anyone like Robin Yount in the 20 years of the Milwaukee Brewers," Selig says, "and I doubt there will be another one in the next 50 years." At the outset of this season, Yount had 2,602 hits. Only three other players -- Ty Cobb , Rogers Hornsby and Hank Aaron -- had that many by age 34. Until he suffered career-threatening shoulder injuries in 1984 and '85, Yount was on his way to becoming perhaps the greatest shortstop of all time. Because of the injuries, he ultimately moved to centerfield, where he has become a superb defensive player. Yount and Stan Musial and Hank Greenberg (who were outfielders and first basemen) are the only players ever to win the MVP award at two positions. Yount's statistics -- he's a .292 lifetime hitter with 208 home runs and 1,124 RBIs -- don't begin to reflect his value to the Brewers. In Men at Work , a new book on baseball by George F. Will , Milwaukee manager Tom Trebelhorn describes what would be a perfect offensive sequence for him: " Paul Molitor bunting for a base hit. A steal of second. A Jimmy Gantner take-it-with-you (a drag bunt for a base hit) to the right side, getting Molitor over to third. A Robin Yount hard ground ball to the backhand side of the second baseman, whose only play is to first, (Molitor) scores." Yount may be the best player Trebelhorn will ever manage, and in his fondest fantasy, the Kid goes 0 for 1. On the first day the Brewers worked out this spring, Trebelhorn pointed to a group of players completing their wind sprints at the end of a four-hour practice. Yount was leading the pack, and he was laughing when he crossed the finish line. "Robin Yount is close to a fictional player, something out of Kevin Costner 's dreams," said Trebelhorn. "He is the pure baseball player. He knows nothing about stats. Reporters ask him about his numbers, and when they leave, he'll tell (rightfielder) Rob Deer , 'I don't know stats.' He doesn't know his average, how many homers he has. He plays simply to win. My perfect inning tells you all you have to know about Yount's attitude." Yount's teammates never mention his contract or his off-season liberties. They speak instead of why he deserves such things. "No one plays like Robin," says B.J. Surhoff . "He runs out every ground ball to the pitcher as hard as he can. He is the best base runner in baseball, he plays hitters perfectly, he's an incredible clutch hitter, he gives himself for the team at all personal costs. When you play with him, you realize that he plays the game on the edge. Nothing he does in a race car or on a motorcycle would surprise me, not after watching him 162 games a year." Bob McClure claims to have statistical proof of Yount's consistently high level of play. "There's a scout in Oakland who's been timing Robin from home plate to first base for a dozen years," he says. "The fastest he's ever gotten Robin is 4.1 seconds (extremely quick for a righthanded batter). The slowest is 4.2 seconds." During batting practice on the fifth day of spring training, Yount belted a line drive up the middle. The ball hit the screen in front of the pitcher and caromed back toward the plate. Yount hit the ball again, sending it soaring toward leftfield. "Yessss!" he shouted, thinking he had knocked it over the fence. Alas, the ball hit the bottom of the leftfield wall. As Yount stepped out of the cage, he told hitting coach Don Baylor , "The one thing I want to do in baseball is to hit a line drive up the middle, have it come back off the screen on the fly, then hit it out of the park." Baylor looked at Yount quizzically. "Why?" he asked. "Because I've never seen it done. It's the thing that's kept me concentrating on batting practice all these years." ... In September 1982, the Brewers were fighting for their first division championship -- or, more accurately, were staggering to the finish line. With ace reliever Rollie Fingers disabled and ace starter Pete Vuckovich bothered by a shoulder injury, Milwaukee's lead in the American League East had dwindled to three games over the Baltimore Orioles entering the final series of the regular season -- a four-game set in Baltimore. The Birds won the first three games to tie for the division lead, and on the final day, Jim Palmer was their starting pitcher. In the top of the first, Yount hit a home run to right center to give the Brewers the lead. He hit another homer in the third, and Milwaukee won the division. In the World Series, which the St. Louis Cardinals won in seven games, Yount batted .414. "That race, the playoffs and the World Series were all that makes playing fun," says Yount. The '82 Brewers were a smalltown, closely knit team that had risen together in the standings. "It was a 'we' experience, the way it should be," says Yount. "Nineteen eighty-two was the best time I've ever had in baseball." The last couple of seasons have not been fun for Yount. "At the end of the (1989) season I was disappointed in the way we'd handled the last three years," he says. "It was an emotional thing -- this wasn't the type of team I've been used to playing for my whole career." Whereas the Brewers were once like a bunch of old high school buddies -- Vuckovich, Gantner, Stormin' Gorman Thomas , Jim Slaton , Charlie Moore , all pedal-to-the-metal characters -- the Brewers of 1988 and '89 were an enigmatic mixture of pitchers who blamed catchers, relievers who computed their earned run averages in the clubhouse, rookies who criticized the manager, and youngsters who demanded trades. "It drove Robin crazy that guys didn't care about winning, first and foremost," says Gantner. Says Yount, "I've tried to be more of a vocal leader. But I find it hard to tell someone else how to live his life. I tried talking to some kids, but who am I to presume that I know better. If they want help, fine. Maybe I'm not helping the club enough that way." "Baloney," says Surhoff. "The game is doing, not talking. Robin's the greatest leader there is. Someday some of the guys will wake up and realize that they played with the perfect baseball player -- the ultimate warrior -- and didn't appreciate it." Unhappy with the state of the Brewers, Yount did some hard thinking in the off-season. "I had the chance to be a free agent," he says, "and I weighed several questions, like: How many changes need to be made (for Milwaukee to win the pennant), and can we make them while I can still play? I'm forever asked about goals. Like Rose's hit record -- I don't even know what it is. I have only one goal: a World Series ring. I really want to get back to the World Series and experience at least one more season the way baseball should be experienced." Issue date: April 30,
1990
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