He’s Above and Beyond the Call--and the Wall

Forget about the home run. Forget about the stolen base.

The most exciting, electrifying play in baseball these days is the stolen home run, a la Gary Pettis.

Pettis plays center field, and beyond. He is on the disabled list right now with a sprained wrist. But three times this season Pettis has gone airborne, flown above a high center-field fence and snatched a baseball that should have landed in the bleachers.

Each catch helped the Angels win a game.

Baseball doesn’t keep official stats on the SHR (stolen home run), but it’s a good bet that not many outfielders in the game’s history have stolen three in half a season.

How does it feel to pull off baseball’s most exciting play?

“It’s a play you grow up thinking about,” Pettis said Tuesday, and he smiled just thinking about it again. “I have thought about that play several years, and it finally happened. It’s even more exciting than I thought it was going to be. “It gives you a sense of watching yourself on TV,” he said. “You can see it happening, even though you’re performing the feat.

“A diving catch I made last year on (Rickey) Henderson, and the one (SHR) this year on (Toronto’s Jesse) Barfield, they were in slow motion. On Barfield, as I approached the warning track, everything started to slow down. It was so clear, like a picture on TV. It’s like everything has stopped. The ball hangs and floats, like it won’t come down until you get there. It’s just like in a dream.

“Once it’s over, I get chill bumps. That happens when I watch great plays. Last night I got chill bumps on two plays. When Reggie (Jackson) threw the runner out at home--it was perfect. The other one was Ruppert (Jones, filling in for Pettis in center field). He just missed stealing a home run. He said it tipped his glove.”

How does one go about stealing a home run?

You start by being a great outfielder. Pettis, in only his second full season, is being compared with the great outfield glove men of all time.

“I’d compare him to Joe DiMaggio, Paul Blair and Willie Mays,” said Angel coach Jimmie Reese, who has seen most of baseball’s great outfielders, going back to the days of Babe Ruth. “Pettis can go farther for a ball than any of them. And he cuts off extra-base hits. And he catches every ball he gets his hands on. And he gets the best jump on the ball I’ve ever seen.”

But the stolen home runs?

Well, Pettis can jump. The fences over which he has snatched home runs range from 8 to 10 1/2 feet high. He is 6-1 and can dunk a basketball easily, but so can half the high school kids in America.

“I can’t figure out why I’ve done it so often,” said Pettis, who then explained why he has. “I work hard. I know in my heart I work hard, on offense and defense. I work with Jimmie (Reese) before every home game. He hits me ground balls, then flies, then drives over my head. Then we work on balls over the fence. He’ll hit 10 or 12 over the fence, and I’ll try to catch ‘em.”

Pettis studies warning tracks, walls, pitchers, hitters and field conditions. On his home run steals, he seems to kiss the walls, not crunch them. Clumsy guys don’t steal home runs.

Stealing a homer from Harold Baines in Chicago’s Comiskey Park, Pettis battled a fierce sun and a stiff breeze, made a 180-degree turn in midair, hit the wall and made the steal. He didn’t realize until later that he had caught the ball well above the top of the wall.

Does Pettis watch replays of his great catches?

“Yes,” he said. “My roommate tapes the news, and I watch it later, to see if I can get the same excitement the fans do. I’ll run it (a great catch) back and forth, at least 15 times.”

Does Pettis ever amaze himself?

“I do,” he said, smiling. “There are times I don’t even believe some of the things I do out here. Growing up in Oakland, I always watched the news, and it seemed like every night, there was Willie Mays doing something on the ball field. Now it seems like every Saturday, here’s Gary Pettis on ‘This Week in Baseball.’ ”

Pettis doesn’t just steal homers. He also guns down baserunners (nine assists already this season), steals bases (24 in a row at one point this season) and steals games.

With the Angels, he is a hare among tortoises.

Pettis has a chance to be baseball’s unofficial most electrifying player, especially if he can trim his strikeout ratio and increase his times on base, where he worries teams to death, causing panic and chaos. Other candidates for the MEP award are Vince Coleman, Rickey Henderson and Dwight Gooden.

These are all men who deal in raw speed. But when you need someone to go over the wall, Pettis is your guy.