Fast And Loose

There he is, Calvin Reese Jr., sitting on a metal folding chair in front of his locker in the visitors' clubhouse at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, shirtless, watching Ken Griffey Jr. play cards. He is 26, at once skinny and muscular, with tattoos on his chest and arms, two diamond studs in his navel and one in each earlobe, his hair in cornrows. Hanging off his neck is an enormous silver cross. He is in his fourth season in the majors but already a legend of sorts. In the off-season his team, the Cincinnati Reds, had declared Reese—known as Pokey, a sweet infielder with a career .264 batting average—an untouchable. The Reds had a chance to get Griffey, in baseball, and Junior desperately wanted to play for them, but they wouldn't give up Pokey to get him.

For Cincinnati the point was to have Reese and Griffey on the same team, and in the end the Reds pulled it off. They must have had a direct connection to the Psychic Friends Network. Five weeks into the season, on May 2, Reese is batting .366, is second in the National League in stolen bases (eight), fielding nearly everything hit at him at second base and a great many balls that are not.

Pokey's right hand is wrapped around a Styrofoam cup, which he is using as a spittoon. You introduce yourself, and he grabs your outstretched right hand with his left and says, in a voice that is friendly and nonchalant, "Hey, how you doin'?" Good write-up, bad, whatever, it's not going to change his life. He has dark skin, good teeth, high cheekbones and a silver ball sticking out of his pierced tongue. He spits into his cup, a thick brown stream.

He talks about baseball casually, happily. He reminds you that the Reds have always been high on him, even if the rest of the world found out only during the Griffey trade talks last winter. Reese, who turns 27 on June 10, was the Reds' first-round pick in the June 1991 draft, just a couple of weeks after he'd graduated from Lower Richland High, on the outskirts of Columbia, S.C. All through high school Pokey was a deft shortstop, blazingly fast, with a solid bat. Teams were interested in him, the Pittsburgh Pirates in particular. It so happens that his father, Calvin Reese Sr., had played a year of Class A ball on a Pirates farm team in Gastonia, N.C., in 1969. For years after that Calvin Sr. was also a legend of sorts in Columbia's amateur baseball leagues. He got to every ball and made it look easy. That's why they called him Slick.

One day in his senior year of high school, Pokey's life changed, and Slick's life with it. In May 1991, 15 or so scouts congregated at Lower Richland to watch a couple of pitchers from visiting Lancaster High. Early in the game one of the Lancaster kids hit a wicked shot in the hole between short and third. Pokey sprinted after the ball, snagged it and, with all his momentum taking him toward the third base line, spun around and unleashed a missile that sailed five feet over the first baseman's head and 50 feet past him. It was not a play schoolboy ballplayers make. The scouts saw quickness, instincts, tenacity. They saw a great arm. Pokey's only response to the play was to apologize for his throwing error. The scouts loved him even more for that. On that day Pokey became, within baseball's innermost circles, a hot prospect.

When Reds scout Paul Faulk came to the Reeses' cramped house in Columbia after the draft to negotiate a signing bonus, Slick ran the show. A baseball acquaintance had advised him to hold out for $400,000. (Slick's own signing bonus had been $1,500.) After all, the Reds were the reigning world champions, and Pokey was the 20th pick in the nation. But when Faulk finally inched his way to $200,000, Slick could contain his excitement no more. Invoking the name of his son and his wife, Slick said, "I say before Pokey and I say before Clara, that's a fair deal." Pokey, nicknamed in his roly-poly youth, remembers the day as if it were yesterday.

For most of the '90s the Reds figured Reese would succeed Barry Larkin at short. But Larkin, 36, a Cincinnati icon and a potential Hall of Famer, has defied the aging process—and he has told the club he will play only short. Meanwhile, over the past four years Cincinnati has been developing another spectacular shortstop talent, Gookie Dawkins, 21, who is also from South Carolina. Three frontline shortstops are two too many. Pokey has made things easy for Cincinnati, telling his bosses he doesn't care where he plays, as long as he plays.

The Reds knew he could make the move because Reese is a remarkable and nimble athlete. He was the quarterback on his high school football team as a senior and was recruited by several schools, especially Arizona State, to be a wide receiver. Learning the double play pivot from a new side of the bag? Took him part of a day. He came into this year with a .978 career fielding percentage, playing a mishmash of third, short and second, but as a second baseman his fielding percentage through Sunday was .971, an amazing number when you consider that in high school and during his seven seasons in the minors he played virtually nothing but shortstop. "I've got to go with Pokey as the best defensive second baseman in the National League," says Jose Vidro, who plays the same position for the Montreal Expos.

As for his bat, nobody is expecting Reese to hit .366 this year. Pokey himself does not expect to bat .300. But the Reds know he can hit .285. That's what he hit last year, in 585 at bats. He is a righthanded leadoff hitter who has the green light to steal. He's working on being more selective at the plate and walking more than he did last year, when he had only 35 bases on balls. Opposing pitchers now have to worry about walking Reese from their first pitch of the game. A formidable bat—Larkin or Dmitri Young—follows him. Junior bats third. Reese is seeing a lot of pitches around the plate in every at bat. At week's end he was still hitting .294 and was fifth in the league with 15 steals. " Pokey Reese is one of the best young players in the game," says eight-time batting champ Tony Gwynn of the San Diego Padres. "You watch him play, and you can see why they didn't want to give him up. You build franchises around young guys like him."

A long road trip is coming to an end, and the bar at the Sheraton Society Hill in Philadelphia is crowded with Reds, along with a few groupies and some businessmen. Pokey's drink is Hennessy. You ask him about his family, his parents, his siblings, his boyhood. He's a natural storyteller.