FOR TOMMY JOHN . . . The Pressure Is Really On : Bottom Line, He Says, Is That He Wants to Pitch and Believes He Still Can

T.J. knows what’s happening. When you’ve won only 18 of your last 44 decisions, the picture should be clear. --Angel Manager GENE MAUCH Now, soon to be 41 and coming off 11-13 and 7-13 seasons, some of it is very clear to Tommy John.

He knows that to extend his career with the Angels, to spend the last two years of his guaranteed contract in Anaheim, he must do the type of spring proving usually asked of a pitcher searching for his first win rather than his 256th.

He knows that this is now an organization that has tightened purse strings in favor of its farm system, jeopardizing older players of questionable ability.

That much he can see. The rest is hazy.

Manager Gene Mauch, he believes, will provide him with a legitimate chance.

But, he says, General Manager Mike Port has told him the opposite, implying that John really doesn’t fit into the Angels’ plans.

John said he is confused by that, but not about his ability to pitch. His confidence has returned, he said, replacing the frustration with which he ended the 1984 season and which ultimately sent him to a doctor. Two doctors, in fact.

He consulted Dr. Bob Rotella, a University of Virginia sports psychologist who was recommended to John by friends. They talked on the phone soon after a season that was both the best and worst of John.

Rotella changed John’s thinking, providing insights into the mental strains of his strange summer and positive reinforcements for the future.

He also saw Dr. Mike Marshall, the former relief star for the Dodgers and other clubs. Marshall has a Ph.D. in kinesiology, the science of muscle movement, and now coaches baseball at Florida’s St. Leo College.

John spent a week with his former Dodger teammate in October, has talked with him frequently since, and even put him on a six-month retainer. John would not say what Marshall charges, but he said that Marshall didn’t come cheap.

Referring to his conversations with Rotella, John said: “I could have sat back and left it at that but I felt that I still needed help. I decided to go to a doctor of the arm.”

Among those he considered were such medical men as Frank Jobe and Lewis Yocum, the Dodger and Angel team physicians, respectively, and such baseball men as Tom Morgan, Red Adams and Johnny Sain, pitching coaches who had played influential roles in his long career.

“Then, I thought about Mike, who combines both worlds,” John said. “He knows physiology and he knows pitching. I took an armload of tapes with me and pitched batting practice to his team every day.

“He analyzed what I was doing wrong and right, said he didn’t see any major problems, gave me some things to work on and said I had as much flexibility in my arm as any of his kids. He said to disbelieve anyone who tried to tell me that I was physically finished.”

The recharged John is taking Marshall at his word.

“If I thought I couldn’t pitch anymore, I’d find some way not to embarrass myself,” John said. “I’d be the first to admit it, and go join Al Conin and Ron Fairly in the broadcasting booth.

“The bottom line is that I want to pitch and still think I can. I threw too many good games too many times last year to say I can’t pitch anymore. You can’t throw as well as I did in the first half and then just lose it without a reason. You just don’t end a career that fast.”

Plagued by poor support, John had only a 3-3 record through his first 11 starts. His 2.48 earned-run average through that span was one of the league’s lowest, though, and a measurement of his effectiveness. John then allowed 69 earned runs in his last 101 innings for a 6.19 ERA and a 4-10 record.

Then-general manager Buzzie Bavasi ultimately second-guessed then-manager John McNamara for continuing to start John, who was finally shuttled to the bullpen in late August. He made only three relief appearances as the Angels battled Kansas City and Minnesota for a division title, then made a futile start in Texas during the season’s last series.

John believes his problems started during a brilliant spring in which he and pitching coach Marcel Lachemann agreed on the need to add a new pitch. They came up with a sharp-breaking slider, designed to keep right-handed hitters off the plate and making it harder for them to lean in and hit his sinker to right field.

The pitch, John said, contributed somewhat to his consistency during the first half of the season. He now believes, though, that it also caused him to start delivering that renowned sinker with a flawed motion, a fact he did not discover until much later.

“At the time, I didn’t know what was happening,” he said. “I was so screwed up mechanically that it just kept snowballing. The next game kept getting bigger and bigger. I was putting a death grip on the ball, digging the hole deeper and deeper. The decision to put me in the bullpen was the right one. They probably should have done it sooner.

“The problem was that when they finally did do it, it was as if they were writing me off, rather than giving me the chance to do the work that might have gotten me started again. I didn’t understand it then and still don’t.

“I mean, I heard all kinds of comments from Angel people who thought my problems came from running too much and throwing too much at my age. It was as if they sent me to the bullpen with the idea that rest alone would do me good.”

John and his rebuilt left arm have always thrived on work.

“Historically, when I fall out of a groove I have to keep going to the mound just like a golfer goes to the driving range,” he said. “I have to keep throwing to hitters, be it an hour a day or an hour every other day.

“I consistently asked for a chance to throw batting practice, and they wouldn’t give it to me. They kept saying that they might need me in the eighth or ninth innings, but I never got that chance either. Here we were, in a pennant race, and they seemed to be saying I couldn’t help them.”

John’s frustration during that span drove him out of the organization for the first time.

“I like Lach a lot,” John said of the Angel pitching coach. “I respect his opinions and agree with many of them. But Lach was quoted at the time as saying he couldn’t figure out how to help me, and neither could anyone else in the organization. I had to find someone who could, someone who had seen me throw before.”

John called Morgan, a former Angel pitching coach, and was invited to Morgan’s Palos Verdes’ home. They went to a local field, where Morgan told John that he had detected flaws in John’s grip and delivery while watching a televised game. John tested the theory by throwing to Morgan. He said he saw the sinker’s spin and drop return immediately.

“But you don’t just fall back into good habits, particularly when you’re not getting the chance to test them regularly throwing to hitters,” John said. “It takes work, and they didn’t give it to me. I told Mac at one point that I’d continue to do my best, but that if he didn’t let me throw batting practice, it would be like sending me out to hunt elephants with a .22 caliber rifle.”

John pitched reasonably well in his last start at Texas, working 6 innings of a loss that eliminated the Angels from the division race. He ended the season believing that Morgan had found the key but that he still required the positive reinforcements ultimately provided by Rotella and Marshall.

Now John requires a positive spring. Mike Witt, Ron Romanick and Geoff Zahn are assured starting jobs. Ken Forsch will get the fourth if he continues his comeback from a dislocated shoulder. John is battling an impressive array of young pitchers for the fifth and last berth in the rotation.

He is guaranteed his salary, estimated at $700,000 a year, through 1986. The contract also has a no-trade clause, but John indicated that he would consider a trade, depending on the club involved. This, too, might be expensive for the Angels, requiring a buy-out of the no-trade clause.

“I’ve got to have all good games in spring training,” John recently told the New York Times. “The way our owner is looking at us now, especially the older players, it’s on a day-to-day basis. I think her idea of a good ballclub is to have a lot of young players making $60,000.”

That was a shot at Gene Autry’s wife, Jackie, a former banker who has an acknowledged influence on the club’s financial direction.

Asked about it later, John said:

“David Stockman can’t balance a budget, but maybe the Angels can. I’m doing what I always do in the spring, preparing to open the season. The good thing is that Gene’s managing again, and he’s the reason I’m here in the first place. He brought me over (from New York) in ’82.

“I played golf with him during the winter and asked him what he has in mind for me. He said, ‘I think you can still pitch. I think there are still a lot of wins in you and I intend to get them out of you.’ I told him that I’m willing to start or relieve but that I have to do it on a regular basis.

“I feel I have a chance with Gene, but I’m getting a different reading from Port. He told me before the winter meetings in December that I don’t really fit in the club’s plans. I’m still getting that basic message from him. I appreciate his frankness, but it’s confusing. I’m trying to believe in what Mauch says for my own sanity.”

Said Port: “We have a job to do on the field. We want the 10 best pitchers. Tommy’s in a position to be master of his own fate. We have respect for his 250 or so wins, but we’re existing in the here and now and we’ll do what must be done to win in ’85.

“It’s a competitive situation, but knowing Tommy’s nature I don’t think he’d want it any other way. Credentials carry you only so far. The burden of proof is on the individual.”

John will try to do it without the slider. Last year, he said, was a mechanical nightmare that age had nothing to do with. He hopes to pitch even beyond the two years of his current contract, he said.

Lachemann, who was romanced by several clubs during the winter and finally got a two-year contract from the Angels, implied that John is making a mistake by dropping the slider. He was asked about John’s decision to see Morgan.

“It didn’t bother me,” he said. “I tried to do everything I could for Tommy, but I don’t pretend to have all the answers. The bottom line is that we’re trying to find a way to win.

“Tommy can still make the ball sink, but the thing he got away from in the second half was keeping right-handed hitters off the plate. I don’t care whether he does it with a fastball or slider, but he’s got to do it.”

Said Mauch: “T.J’s problems seemed to start when he gave up the slider. No one is invulnerable to frustration, and he was like a rookie with it in the second half. A rookie says, ‘Can I do it?’ A veteran says, ‘Can I still do it?’ I’m pulling like hell for him, but he has to show me.”