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Posted: Tuesday March 16, 1999 05:28 PM

Still Jackin'  

Amid heavy-duty spring hoopla, a focused McGwire has picked up where he left off

By Jeff Pearlman

For a man considered to be baseball's bastion of truth and integrity, Mark McGwire is one hell of a liar. "Nothing at all," was his reply to the simple, somewhat silly question, What about this year's spring training is different from last year's? "It's the same as always." This was roughly 30 seconds after McGwire, en route to the visitors' clubhouse at Dodgertown in Vero Beach, Fla., was greeted by a throng of 100 or more fans -- including one woman who'd waited six hours for an autograph -- pushing and shoving one another against a metal fence. McGwire played 4 1/2 innings in Sunday's game against L.A. When he didn't jog out to first base for the bottom of the fifth, half the 6,694 in attendance seemed to suddenly blow away.

Amid heavy-duty spring hoopla, a focused McGwire has picked up where he left off. Jamie Squire/Allsport

Nothing at all?

"I still don't know how he deals with it so well," says outfielder J.D. Drew, the Cardinals' rookie phenom. "Everywhere Mark goes, people are yelling his name, asking for a minute. You'd think spring would be more laid back. Not for him."

McGwire insists he doesn't mind. Really. "This is all part of my job," he says, "and I love my job." However, McGwire cannot go to a mall, take a stroll, catch a movie -- even in the sleepy town of Jupiter, Fla., where the Cardinals are based. "I'm not into swimming or fishing," he says. "I don't do much here."

One thing he does do is hit home runs. In seven games he had five dingers in only 14 at bats, including two blasts on Sunday against Dodgers lefty Carlos Perez. His first-inning homer barely cleared the leftfield fence. His second, a shot worthy of the Apollo program, smacked off the scoreboard in right center and fell to a grassy knoll. A dozen kids swarmed to the ball like pigeons after a bread crumb. Keith Barrett, a skinny 17-year-old, pushed two tykes out of the way, threw an elbow, dived headfirst and came up a winner.

"No way I'm sellin' this baby!" Barrett screamed.

One hundred dollars? someone suggested.

"No way."

Five hundred?

"Uh-uh."

Ten thousand?

"I'll never sell this ball. Never."

Same as always. Right, Mark?

Joe Torre's Cancer
Yankees Hope And Cope  

On his first full day as the third baseman on a Yankees team without a manager, Scott Brosius assured himself that things would be O.K. Then, just to be certain, he prayed.

Last week's announcement that Joe Torre was suffering from prostate cancer and would miss at least the rest of spring training jolted the New York clubhouse. (Don Zimmer, 68, Torre's close friend and bench coach, will run the club while Torre is away.) Will Torre's absence have an impact on the Yankees' performance? Unlikely. The team that won an American League- record 114 regular-season games last year possesses a remarkable self-sufficiency, a by-product of Torre's hands-off, trust-the-players approach. As catcher Joe Girardi says, "Once you're on the field, you focus on the game. That's how it works."

Perhaps no Yankee took the news of Torre's illness harder than Brosius, a sensitive man whose mother died of lymphoma in 1989 and whose father, Maury, was treated recently for colon cancer. While many on the team were numbed by Torre's situation, Brosius speaks of cancer like a human Merck Manual. He knows the ins and outs, the good days and bad days, the victories and, in his mother's case, the defeats.

"My first reaction to Joe's news was shock, but my second thought is, No matter what people say, this is not a baseball story," Brosius says. "This is about a man with decisions that have to be made about life. Joe Torre is a husband, he's a father, he's a person before he's the manager of the Yankees."

Brosius spent part of his off-season visiting with seriously ill children. He recalls one girl, just nine years old, with tumors throughout her body. There was a boy, 16, dying of brain cancer. "You can't try and figure cancer out," he says. "Why does a nine-year-old girl have it, and some 80-year-olds who've smoked their whole lives don't? It's not a predictable disease."

The Yankees say they will not use Torre's cancer as a rallying cry for the season. The players consider this a situation that will pass, an illness, not an ending. "Joe's a very strong person," says reliever Darren Holmes. "Every day we'd see him lifting weights, working on the stair climber. He's in good shape, and they caught it early. We expect the best."

Piercing Talent
Marlins' Odd Man In?  

Mark Fidrych talked to the ball. Al Hrabosky talked to himself. Bill (Spaceman) Lee was known to wear a propeller beanie onto the field. A.J. Burnett has ... nipple rings. "Hurt like you wouldn't believe," the 22-year-old Arkansan says of having his accessories installed. "I once had knee surgery, and it didn't compare. The nipples were five seconds of torturous pain."

That also pretty much describes an at bat against the Marlins righthander, whose reputation -- for his 97-mph fastball as well as his wackiness -- is spreading through the Grapefruit League. In addition to the nipple rings, Burnett sports silver hoops in both ears and an abstract blue tattoo on his left biceps. His favorite band is Marilyn Manson. His favorite baseball team? "I'm not quite sure," he says earnestly.

"He's a little different," says Florida pitching coach Rich Dubee. "But the kid has an arm."

Oh, yeah -- pitching. At Class A Kane County (Ill.) last season, Burnett went 10-4 with 186 strikeouts in 119 innings. His fastball has, in the words of catcher Jorge Fabregas, "a whole lot of pop to it." Burnett also throws a knuckle curve in the high 80s and a well-developed changeup. Marlins manager John Boles invited Burnett to spring training with the idea of sending him to Double A or Triple A. But with each impressive performance this spring, Burnett has made Boles's decision -- Devil Rays refugee Dennis Springer or Burnett as his fifth starter -- more difficult. Burnett struck out four of the seven University of Miami batters he faced in his first appearance, and he went 2 2/3 innings without allowing a run against Montreal on March 10. "He'll have to have an absolutely knockout spring training to stay with us," says Boles. "But so far ..."

Growing up in North Little Rock, Burnett played catcher, third base -- everything, it seemed, but pitcher. Even in high school, at Central Arkansas Christian, although, Burnett says, he could throw in the low 90s, coaches didn't use him on the mound. Then, in 1995, at the end of his senior year, he pitched four games. At one of those, a seven-inning shutout against Russellville High, a Mets scout happened to be in the stands. That June, New York picked Burnett, a pitcher for all of three weeks, in the eighth round of the draft. Burnett went to Florida in February 1998 in the Al Leiter deal.

"I dreamed of playing baseball, but as a position player," he says. "I could always throw pretty hard, but I never thought this would happen. It's weird, isn't it." Weird is the word.

End of the Road
Listach's Broken Promise  

Not long after he hit .290, stole 54 bases and was named the 1992 American League Rookie of the Year, infielder Pat Listach was offered some wisdom by a Brewers teammate. "That was the worst thing you could do," said third baseman Kevin Seitzer, who as a rookie in '87 had stroked 207 hits. "You've put the bar at a high level. From now on you either reach it every year, or you're a disappointment."

At the time Listach thought Seitzer was kidding. Listach was 25 years old with a sparkling future -- Milwaukee's shortstop of the '90s. Nearly seven years later Seitzer's look on the dark side seems all too accurate. "I wouldn't flat out say that having that rookie season hurt my career," says Listach. "But sometimes I'm not so sure." He is 31 now, and last Thursday, after spending the first few weeks of spring training as a nonroster invitee with the Reds, he was released. Listach may have come to the end of his baseball road after playing for seven organizations, having two knee operations and missing out on one World Series.

At Milwaukee's home opener in '93, Listach received a resounding ovation from the County Stadium crowd his first time up, but he suffered hamstring injuries in June and September and missed 64 games. The next season he appeared in the first 16 games, went on the disabled list with tendinitis in his left knee and didn't play again. Although he came back to appear in 101 games in '95, Listach batted just .219. "You know, I never hit .290 before I was a rookie," he says. "I didn't expect to hit that high every year. But everyone else expected me to."

On Aug. 23, 1996, Listach was traded with reliever Graeme Lloyd to the Yankees. When an MRI a few days later revealed that he had a broken right foot, Listach immediately went on the disabled list. He was issued Yankees pinstripes but never played an inning for New York. On Oct. 2, Listach was sent back to Milwaukee, and the Yankees went on to win the World Series. From that point on, Listach's life has been a whirlwind of buses and planes as he has bounced around the minors and the big leagues as the property of the Astros, Indians, Mariners, Phillies and Reds.

He thought he was a lock to make Seattle's roster last season but was cut during the final week of spring training. "Devastating," he calls it. "I did everything they asked, hit .300 in spring, worked my tail off." He stops. "Sometimes, I wonder if it's all worth it."

Listach hit a combined .219 in two Triple A stops last season. Clearly, he does not have the range or speed he had early in his career. Yet he has still not considered an alternative occupation. "I can still run, I can still hit," he says. "I love baseball too much to stop trying."

Johnson-Dodgers Split
Not-So-Sweet Parting  

Charles Johnson, the four-time National League Gold Glove winner and new Orioles catcher, is a quiet man. In the spring training clubhouse in Fort Lauderdale, he speaks softly and rarely. But bring up his former team, the Dodgers, and the decibel level rises.

That's because Johnson believes he was unfairly ripped by Los Angeles senior vice president Tommy Lasorda during the general managers' meetings in Naples, Fla., last November. Lasorda complained that Johnson had ignored the team's request to play in the Arizona Fall League and work on his hitting. "We wanted him there," Lasorda said. "Charles should be a much better hitter."

The comments stung Johnson. "That never happened, absolutely, positively never did," the catcher says of the request Lasorda cited. "He never called to ask me to go. He never even called to congratulate me when I won the Gold Glove. I try hard to cooperate with the organization and do what's right. They tarnished my reputation. It was a slap in the face."

Why didn't Johnson voice his objections at the time? "Not too many people asked me," he says.

Johnson, 27, who shortly after Lasorda's comments was traded to Baltimore in a five-player, three-team deal that sent catcher Todd Hundley from the Mets to the Dodgers, spent the winter at home in Fort Pierce, Fla., working out and caring for his new son, Brandon. In four-plus major league seasons Johnson has established himself as perhaps the game's finest defensive catcher. However, his offense, which appeared to be on the upswing in '97, when he hit .250 with 19 home runs and 63 RBIs for the Marlins, has regressed.

In addition to hitting just .218 combined for Florida and L.A. last year, Johnson has let his strikeout totals increase each season, whiffing 129 times in '98. He swings wildly and often without much thought. Baltimore hitting coach Terry Crowley says his new pupil needs to focus less on hitting for power, more on going deeper into the count. "If Charles can have tough at bats and make the pitcher work," he says, "it'll be a successful year."

Ever the student, Johnson says he is excited by the challenge of playing in the American League. He's already making mental notes on the tendencies of the Orioles' pitchers. "At first I'll rely a lot on my instincts," he says. "To really know a pitcher, it takes a year of working together. You're always learning. The thing I like here is that it's a veteran staff, so I can follow their lead and feel comfortable. What I worry more about is learning the opposing hitters."

It's good that he doesn't have much time to dwell on the past. Everything that happened to him in '98, including Florida's sending him to L.A. in the blockbuster Mike Piazza deal last May, still rankles. "I thought I'd be with the Marlins for life," says the Florida native and former University of Miami All-America. "It's a reminder that baseball is a business."

The Buzz  

Just how hard up are some teams for lefthanded pitching? Los Angeles asked 38-year-old Fernando Valenzuela to come to Dodgertown and battle for a bullpen gig. Valenzuela, out of baseball last season, declined ... One of Padres general manager Kevin Towers's priorities this winter was to unload reliever Randy Myers and his $6 million salary for 1999. Last August, Towers made the mistake of acquiring Myers, 36, from the Blue Jays. His thought at the time: Don't let the Braves get him. His thought now, after Myers put up a 6.28 ERA in San Diego and closer Trevor Hoffman was just re-signed to a four-year, $32 million extension: Help! ... Copies of Heat, the recently released autobiography of Indians righthander Dwight Gooden , were scattered throughout the Cleveland clubhouse. Don't expect the Tigers' Gregg Jefferies to ask the author for an autographed copy. In the book Gooden recalls his former Mets teammate as "a baby" who'd "been catered to his whole career." ... Third baseman Pete Rose Jr. is in the Dodgers' camp after his father called G.M. Kevin Malone and asked for the favor. Rose Jr., 29, who made his major league debut with the Reds in September 1997 and was cut loose a month later, says he thinks he'll make L.A.'s major league roster. According to team officials, Pete Sr. has a better chance ... Milton Bradley , a 20-year-old outfielder in camp with the Expos, says his favorite game is Scrabble.

Issue date: March 22, 1999

 

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