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Modern maturity Alomar's concern for elderly exemplifies new attitude
Updated: Monday March 05, 2001 2:43 PM
The woman who raised Roberto Alomar's mother, the one the Alomar kids called Abuela Toni, or Grandma Toni, even though she was not a blood relative, spent the last three years of her life in a bed, weakened by a broken hip. She died in 1997. The image that remains with Alomar is of his mother, who became Abuela Toni's primary caregiver, giving her daily sponge baths. He can still see how Abuela Toni's skin would peel and flake away under the sponge. It made him wonder, How many other elderly people are spending their last days in a bed, and what kind of care are they getting? "Everyone [in baseball] is helping the young people, the little kids, or a group with certain diseases," Alomar says. "And that's great. But nobody's helping the elderly people. I talked to my mom about it. I thought, Wouldn't it be great to help the old people? If they had a place to go, to get care, wouldn't that be easier for the family? That is my dream." If you're tired of hearing this spring's vintage of whine among multi-millionaire ballplayers and are looking for an antidote, Alomar is a good place to start. Once a poster boy himself for bad behavior -- thanks to his split-second loss of cool and rational thinking when he spat in an umpire's face in 1996 -- Alomar has put his energy into a project that is more in keeping with his personality. He is setting up the Roberto Alomar Foundation, which is scheduled to launch next month in Cleveland. The foundation will provide scholarships to needy children, but its primary mission will be to contribute to the construction and improvement of elder-care facilities. Alomar intends to fund his foundation with corporate gifts and his own contributions and fund-raisers, which may include celebrity tennis matches he plays with or against his fiancée, tennis pro Mary Pierce. Meanwhile, Alomar has impressed the Indians this spring with his improved conditioning and focus, areas of his game which, in the past, frequently served as sources of ammunition for his critics. Alomar spent this past December at the Athletes' Performance Institute Tempe, Ariz., where he worked with trainer Mark Vestergen. Alomar, who skipped much of the same intense training prior to last season, is noticeably stronger this spring. He hit .310 for Cleveland with 19 home runs and 89 RBIs last year, down from .323 and career highs in homers (24) and RBIs (120) in 1999. ``It's not how much you work but how you work,'' Alomar said. "Mark taught me how to work while getting the best results.'' Alomar, 33, is a career .304 hitter and has 2,196 total hits. STATS Inc.'s Bill James rates Alomar as having the best chance of any active player to reach 3,000 hits -- a 64 percent likelihood, which means which means he has a much better chance than the next closest candidate, Rafael Palmeiro (39 percent). Alomar's more immediate goal, however, is to begin helping the elderly. "It's something that I hadn't heard any other athletes getting involved in,'' Alomar said. "And it's something that I feel very strongly about. If I can leave something when I'm gone that made a difference for people, then I'll be considered a success.'' Split decisionsRoger Craig returned to baseball to help out one of his former players, Arizona manager Bob Brenly, and the Diamondbacks already are seeing the benefits of having the pitching master in camp as a special instructor. Craig is spreading the gospel of the split-fingered fastball, and two of his pupils are Russ Springer and Byung-Hyun Kim. Springer's ERA jumped from 3.42 in 1999 to 5.08 in 2000. Craig says the right-hander has the overhand delivery and hard fastball suited for the splitter and should be much more effective this season. Kim would seem to be a less likely candidate to throw the pitch because of his sidearm, slingshot style. But Craig is teaching him to throw the pitch with his wrist bent upward so his fingers stay on top of the ball, not on the side of it, even while throwing sidearm. The results have been remarkable. "The first time he threw it I said, 'Whoa!'" Craig says. "He's got a real, real good one. I don't know how anybody hits the guy. He's tough on right-handers and he's got that pitch that rides up on left-handers. An old-fashioned upshoot. Most pitchers who drop down like that don't have a pitch to get out lefties. He's got two of them now.'' Speaking of the D'backs, one American League veteran scout predicts Arizona "will win the West by eight games -- as long as the Diamondbacks stay healthy. They're in trouble if their veterans go down, but right now they're the best team in the division and should win that division fairly easy.'' Batting practice will never be the sameOne of the early impressive rookies in spring training is a machine -- a pitching machine that can simulate any kind of pitch from any pitcher and place it consistently within a six-inch target. The ball is released through a video screen in which the batter sees a life-size pitcher going through his delivery. The ball comes out of the pitcher's normal release point. The company that makes the machine, Fastball Development Corporation of Seattle, has set up the machine in the Cleveland Indians' camp. It will move the apparatus to the St. Louis Cardinals' camp for the final two weeks of spring training. "It's awesome," says Indians first baseman Jim Thome. "The best part about it is it gives you exact game conditions. Other machines or a coach can't do that. Say we haven't seen a lefty in two or three days. Now Eddie Guardado [of the Twins] is warming up to come in. You can go in the cage and punch up curveballs from Guardado. Even if you just track the pitches, you're getting yourself familiar with the size of the break. Will it make you get a hit in the eighth inning? No. But it makes you more familiar with a pitcher's stuff, and that makes you more comfortable, and that has to help.'' Fastball uses ultra-slow motion capture devices to count the revolutions on say, Aaron Sele's curveball. The machine can then be programmed to replicate the pitch. The machine can load more than 300 baseballs at a time and "knows'' how to load and throw two- or four-seam fastballs. Fastball is in negotiations to sell a machine to the Seattle Mariners. Indians manager Charlie Manuel and several players have expressed enthusiasm about the machine. "I might get one for home,'' Thome says. "I have a cage, but I have a regular pitching machine or have somebody throw to me. This would be great.'' The cost of the machine: $175,000, or about two percent of the annual salary of your typical $8 million-a-year player. The tale of two pitchersOakland's Tim Hudson is generally considered one of the great young aces in the game. Freddy Garcia of Seattle, while still highly regarded, is described less often in that manner. That may because of the aura associated with the 20-win mark, which Hudson attained last year. But the early careers of the two pitchers have been remarkably similar, as the following numbers suggest.
Hudson has the slight edge over Garcia in the statistical battle. But remember this, too -- Garcia, 24, is 15 months younger than Hudson, 25. Here's hoping the unbalanced schedule gives us plenty of AL West matchups between two of the finest young pitchers in the game. Sports Illustrated senior writer Tom Verducci covers baseball for the
magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com.
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