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Posted: Tuesday August 31, 1999 03:08 PM

The Hits Parade  

Vladimir Guerrero's streak ended at 31 games, but there's more to come

By Jeff Pearlman

Reds lefthander Ron Villone was walking up from the Metro to Olympic Stadium, tomb of the Expos, last Saturday when he was accosted by three Montreal fans. "They said, 'What did you do that for? We had nothing else to look forward to,'" says Villone, who had stopped Expos rightfielder Vladimir Guerrero's hitting streak at 31 games the previous night by retiring him on a grounder in the second, issuing him an intentional walk in the fourth and teasing him with high inside stuff leading off the seventh. In what proved be his last at bat of the game, Guerrero got ahead in the count 3 and 0, then chased two balls out of the strike zone, fouling out on the second.

With his long, level swing, Guerrero, only 23, is a rarity: a power hitter who makes contact. Chuck Solomon

Although Guerrero is a prodigy at 23, he is still refining his skills, maybe still learning how to count. If he had taken one more pitch and walked, he would have guaranteed himself -- barring a double play -- another plate appearance. The hitting streak, the longest in the major leagues since Benito Santiago's 34 games in 1987, ended with Guerrero in the on-deck circle.

Guerrero's impatience wasn't atypical. He's a first-ball, bad-ball hitter. Until Saturday he never needed a hit in his final at bat to preserve the streak. Only three times did his first hit come later than the sixth inning. In five of the last seven games of the streak, with Delino DeShields's old team record of 21 fading in the rearview mirror and Pete Rose's National League mark of 44 appearing on the horizon, Guerrero settled his daily affair with hits in his first at bats. When he singled against St. Louis on Aug. 24, running the streak to 29, Mark McGwire urged him to tip his cap to the Olympic Stadium crowd. In the next two games, without any prompting, the shy Guerrero took curtain calls after his 31st and 32nd home runs.

Guerrero is the rarest of hitting hybrids, a power hitter who makes contact. Through Sunday he had struck out only 49 times, an average of once every 10.2 at bats, best among the 19 major league hitters who had at least 30 homers. "He has a long swing, but it's a level swing, a base-hit swing," says Montreal manager Felipe Alou. Guerrero also has extraordinary plate coverage; Phillies ace Curt Schilling has called it the best he has ever seen. National League pitchers have been mostly working him inside, with scant success of late: From July 27 through Sunday his average jumped from .279 to .303.

Guerrero began the season as a potential 40-40 man -- 40 homers, 40 errors. He had nine miscues in the field by the end of April, and his 16 through Sunday still led big league outfielders. Instead he enrolled in a select 30-30 club. Last week Guerrero joined Rogers Hornsby (1922), Joe DiMaggio (1941) and Nomar Garciaparra (1997) as the only players ever to have a hitting streak of at least 30 games and to have hit at least 30 home runs in the same year.

Last Saturday, just hours after Villone had been scolded by the fans, Guerrero hit a two-strike, two-out, two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth, a 445-foot rainbow over the leftfield bleachers, to beat the Reds 8-6. The new streak stood at one. With Guerrero, there's always something to look forward to.

—Michael Farber

Hustling in Kansas City:  
The Royals' Triple Threat

The Kauffman Stadium fence is an outfielder's big green nightmare. The padding is so pillowy that balls nearly sink into it. The corners, curved like a roller rink's, make chasing a caroming ball a game of luck. Some players claim the warning track is extra spongy, making balls bounce higher than usual. There's a good reason for all this: The Royals traditionally have been built around speed and hustle; Kansas City has never developed a big, slow home run hitter. (John Mayberry, Steve Balboni and Dean Palmer were all acquired in trades.) The Royals' weapon of choice is the triple.

In its first 30 seasons Kansas City ranked among the American League's top three teams in triples 26 times. This season, the Royals' 31st, the club through Sunday led the majors with 43 triples and had four players among the league's top seven: Rookie Carlos Febles ranked second with nine, followed by Jermaine Dye and Joe Randa (eight apiece) and Johnny Damon (seven). No team has had four players ranked among a league's top 10 in triples since the 1966 Pirates. Kansas City appears certain to match that.

The Royals may have been only 51-79, but manager Tony Muser still had his charges running aggressively. "On this team you watch the ball, you watch the outfielder and, if there's a good chance of going from second to third, you go for it hard," says Randa.

Until 1995 Kauffman Stadium's fence was 10 feet farther from home plate than it is now, and the field was a hard, slick artificial turf. Thus, when the front office picked prospects, it went with speed over pop. The present dimensions are a more reachable 375 feet in left center, 400 in center and 375 in right center, and the field is grass, but the personnel strategy remains unchanged. "The idea has always been to get a full roster of guys who hustle," says G.M. Herk Robinson, whose club had hit 917 of its 1,409 alltime three-baggers at home. "That means triples."

Of the five players with the most triples for K.C., the aforementioned quartet plus shortstop Rey Sanchez (five triples), only Damon and Febles, currently on the 15-day disabled list with a dislocated finger, are speedsters. Randa makes up for limited wheels with an explosive first step out of the box. Before a right hamstring injury knocked him out of the lineup last week, Sanchez had surpassed 400 at bats for just the second time in eight-plus big league seasons. Dye, who through Sunday led K.C. with 23 home runs, insists that for him, a triple is a fluke. "I'm a doubles hitter," says Dye, who entered the season with one triple in 769 career at bats. "The triples come when I hit it in a weird space or someone misplays the ball."

At Kauffman Stadium, of course, that's part of the plan.

Bobby Smith Gets His Shot:  
The Devil Rays' Third Man

As this season began, the Devil Rays had a dilemma at third base. On the one hand, Bobby Smith was Tampa Bay's third baseman of the future, a player dubbed by general manager Chuck LaMar during spring training as the Devil Rays' clear No. 1 player at that position. On the other hand, should a fan-deprived expansion club just let Wade Boggs, 78 hits short of 3,000 entering the season, collect dust or make history someplace else? "It was a somewhat difficult situation to handle," says LaMar. "We're a young team, and we want to develop young talent like Robert. But Wade can still play."

On the surface Tampa Bay's solution worked. Smith and Boggs began the season as a righty-lefty platoon, but after Smith, 25, hit .151 in 86 at bats, he was sent to Triple A Durham on May 17. The 41-year-old Boggs marched on to 3,000, batting .294 and reaching the milestone at Tropicana Field on Aug. 7.

Meanwhile, Smith -- who last season hit .276 with 11 home runs and 55 RBIs and made the Topps Major League Rookie All-Star Team while splitting third base duties with Boggs, who went on the disabled list in April '98 for the first time in his career -- waited in Durham, playing well (.333, 14 homers, 47 RBIs in 57 games) but frustrated that those 86 at bats earlier in the season had been enough to determine that he needed more time on the farm. "I knew that it wouldn't make sense to get angry," says Smith, "but I know I would have started hitting if I'd been playing regularly. Timing is everything in hitting. If you don't face major league pitching, it's hard to develop good timing."

While the Devil Rays deny that Boggs's quest for 3,000 was the only reason he played regularly -- "The guy's a .300 hitter," says LaMar -- he was benched as soon as he reached the milestone, and Smith was inserted in the lineup. "All I want is a regular chance to prove that I can hit here consistently," says Smith, who was again benched last week with a .173 average in 24 games since his recall. "Give me the opportunity to start more than 10 games in a row. I can play at this level."

The Devil Rays agree. Boggs is in the last year of his deal with Tampa Bay, and the club probably will not pick up his option for next season. Smith, manager Larry Rothschild insists, is still his third baseman of the future. The future, however, will start a season later than expected.

It sounds -- to a point -- like a list of questions from a September 1998 Mark McGwire press conference: How many home runs can one man hit? By how many can he break a seemingly unbreakable record? Is he the greatest power hitter of all time? And why does he like eating eels?

Lee Seung-yup, 23, the Samsung Lions' first baseman and South Korea's answer to McGwire, has been living in the national spotlight since late June, when he began a serious charge at the Korea Baseball Organization's single-season home run record. Last year Lee and the OB Bears' Tyrone Woods engaged in a historic home run race before Lee finished at 38 and Woods, a native of Florida who spent 10 seasons in the U.S. minor leagues, set the league record of 42.

This season, however, while Woods has been plagued by injuries, Lee has soared. On Aug. 2, in a game against the Lotte Giants, he blasted his 43rd homer of the season, a 410-foot shot over the rightfield fence that set off a national frenzy. Lee's blasts are front-page news throughout South Korea. In addition to publicizing Lee's taste for eel, the media have revealed such personal tidbits as the fact that his face turns red when he consumes alcohol, which he does rarely, and that he turns his salary, equivalent to $93,000 this season, over to his mother, who then gives him a monthly allowance. Also, when Lee wanted to buy a car, his father told him an automobile could be misconstrued as a sign of self-importance. Said Dad, "When you need a car, I will buy you one."

In some ways the six-foot, 194-pound Lee is more Babe Ruth than Big Mac. Like the Bambino, he began as a highly touted pitcher. He signed with Samsung out of high school four years ago, but the lefthanded Lee needed surgery on his pitching elbow in January 1995. During his rehab the team worked with him on his hitting and then kept him in the lineup all season. Lee did so well at the plate (13 homers in '95) that he was turned into a full-time hitter. Although he has struggled of late -- he recently went 12 games without a homer -- Lee had 49 through Sunday and needed seven more in his remaining 12 games to break Sadaharu Oh's Asian single-season record of 55.

Though his contract ends after the 2001 season, he brushes off talk of bringing his bat to America. "I dream of playing in the United States," he says, "but I still have a long way to go."

Two seasons ago an injury-prone longtime member of the A's refused to entertain Oakland's offer to discuss a contract extension. He went on to make it clear that when the A's traded him, he wanted to be dealt to the Angels or, if that wasn't possible, to another winning franchise.

Through Sunday, Mark McGwire and the Cardinals were 63-68 this season. Anaheim was 51-78.

Oakland was 71-59.

Because he refused to sign a lucrative contract extension earlier this year, second baseman Mickey Morandini (.249, three home runs, 34 RBIs through Sunday) has been benched by the Cubs in favor of rookie Chad Meyers. "It's not just the fact that Chad Meyers is here," says manager Jim Riggleman, "but the fact that Mickey didn't sign the contract that would've made him a Cub for the future." Morandini will be a free agent in the off-season, and not all that attractive a one. ... After allowing two hits and then getting Albert Belle to ground out to earn his 300th career save in an 8-6 win over the Orioles on Aug. 25, 37-year-old Royals closer Jeff Montgomery said that he expects to retire at season's end. "I'm not as reliable as I used to be," said Montgomery (1-4, 6.95, eight saves), "and when you don't have that confidence to close out a game, you're not useful." ...

After watching eight first basemen combine to hit .241 with 10 homers, Padres general manager Kevin Towers has had enough. One of his first priorities in the off-season will be to find a full-timer at first; the Tigers' Tony Clark and the Dodgers' Eric Karros are on his list. ... Orioles rookie third baseman Ryan Minor has struggled (.179, two homers, four RBIs in 27 games) in his stint replacing the injured Cal Ripken Jr. (back spasms), but not enough to contemplate a return to basketball. "The only time I think about it is at the end of an 0-for-4 game, when I'm walking back to the dugout after striking out," he says. "But every day here is a fresh start." The 6'7" Minor, sixth on Oklahoma's alltime scoring list, played one season in the CBA after being a second-round pick of the 76ers in 1996....

Before acquiring closer Matt Mantei from the Marlins, the Diamondbacks -- using an assortment of relievers to finish games -- had lost 14 of 21 games. Arizona was 31-13 since Mantei's arrival. Says outfielder Luis Gonzalez, "He's made even the fans calm down." ... Arizona rookie outfielder Rob Ryan received an odd memento from his first major league at bat: the cracked helmet of Pirates catcher Joe Oliver. As he followed through on his first swing, Ryan connected with Oliver's headgear. Oliver signed it, "First big league hit."

Issue date: September 6, 1999

 

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