LaMarr Hoyt : He Found Himself Again When He Lost That Belly

LaMarr Hoyt, minus a belly and thus an identity, walked into the San Diego Padres’ offices last winter completely unrecognized, telling the receptionist once, twice, three times that, yes, he was the fat man they’d traded four players for.

Finally, Jack McKeon, the Padre general manager, was paged and told to enter the lobby, whereupon he “went into shock,” according to Hoyt’s agent and close friend, Ron Shapiro.

At that precise moment, McKeon suddenly had a better feeling about the Hoyt trade, a trade he had made to save the staff because Padre starting pitchers had embarrassed themselves in the World Series.

Still, there were those who laughed at the deal since Hoyt, in 1984, had weighed more than 270 pounds.

He now weighs just 230 pounds and will be the National League starter in tonight’s All-Star game at Minneapolis, which more or less means that less is more. He comes in having won 10 straight games--he is 12-4 overall--which is reminiscent of his days with the Chicago White Sox, with whom he had 14- and 15-game winning streaks. But he says he’s even better now.

And in many ways, he indeed has saved the staff, which has been slumping lately. San Diego had lost two straight to last-place Pittsburgh recently, but Hoyt stopped the losing streak, throwing a six-hit shutout.

Hoyt has a unique ability to put a baseball on the corner of the plate at a multitude of speeds. If players are waiting for the ball to come into a certain area, or are waiting for a certain pitch, they may sometimes get lucky and hit him hard.

But if they’re waiting to hit a strike, as the Pirates were, forget it. He’ll just move the ball in and out to the corners, and they’ll be so concerned about taking called strikes, they’ll swing at almost anything.

Back in Chicago, White Sox people say they knew that Hoyt was a better pitcher than 1984’s 13-18 record and that they’re happy for him now. But 21-year-old Ozzie Guillen, a shortstop the White Sox really wanted in the deal, is reminding Chicagoans of Luis Aparicio, and so Hoyt is basically history.

“From what I’ve seen of Ozzie Guillen, I’d have made that deal straight up,” said White Sox Manager Tony LaRussa, a close friend of Hoyt. “I’ve been that impressed.”

Still, earlier this season, a bunch of White Sox players were watching TV in the clubhouse and saw Hoyt pitching for the Padres. Where was the beard? The belly? Didn’t he used to win ugly? Where did he get that tan?

“Yeah, I saw him on TV,” said Hoyt’s ex-teammate Greg Walker. “The new LaMarr Hoyt, I guess.”

If there is one consistent theme in Hoyt’s life, it’s that people always expected one thing and generally got something else.

“Yeah, it’s been a pretty weird life, I guess,” Hoyt said.

It certainly started out that way. Just after he was born in Columbia, S.C., his parents divorced. Norma Hoyt, his mother, kidnaped him from her ex-husband, Dewey Sr., taking 6-month-old LaMarr to Santa Barbara.

Dewey, who worked for the city of Columbia, took a leave of absence and drove to California. Norma, however, would not relent and told her former husband to get lost. LaMarr was hidden in a back bedroom.

Months later, Dewey quit his job to try to get LaMarr back, once and for all. He did it, too, stealing him just as his wife had done.

Dewey then dropped LaMarr off with his older sister, Margaret Hiller, who had a husband and three boys.

Dewey hasn’t worked since, and he’s had a drinking problem ever since.

Said Hoyt recently: “The thing I don’t understand is that after he got me, he quit living. And he was still a young person.”

Said Margaret Hiller: “They (his parents) just left him with me. Neither showed any concern or love for him. They just left him with me because they knew I’d take care of him.

“I did it out of love. I raised him and tried to give him love and a home and a security that his parents didn’t. I didn’t do it for roses, I did it because I loved him. He was our own flesh and blood. We loved him as one of ours. I just don’t think of him as somebody else’s. I see him as mine.”

From time to time, Hoyt saw his parents. He knew who they were, but never did he treat them as parents for never did they treat him as a son.

By the time, he reached high school, Hoyt had discovered athletics. He was quarterback and middle linebacker of the football team, and a decent shortstop and center fielder. He hit over .400, which sounds strange today, considering that he only has four hits in this, his first season of batting in the major leagues.

Eventually, Hoyt became a pitcher, and it was as a pitcher that he was drafted by the Yankees in 1973. He was to report to rookie camp in Johnson City, Tenn., but he arrived a day early, found no one around, sat alone in his hotel room for hours, then called Margaret.

“Mama, I’m on my way home,” he said.

Later, Margaret talked him into going back, and this time, three scouts were waiting for him at the hotel. It took Hoyt seven years to reach the major leagues, seven years of absolute agony. He may be a star now, but the minor leagues left scars.

The Yankees, while they had him on their triple-A roster in 1977, figured their only need for a World Series title was a shortstop. And thus the trade with the White Sox for Bucky Dent, a deal that included Hoyt.

The Yankees called Hoyt to tell him the bad news, but they did say the White Sox might be putting him on their major league roster.

Bad news? Hoyt reported to Chicago’s triple-A affiliate in Iowa, thinking it was “the break of my life.”

Then he met Joe Sparks. Nowadays, Sparks is selling cars but then he was the Iowa manager.

On the day Hoyt arrived, Sparks said: “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Hoyt, who had pitched seven innings the day before, said: “You guys scouted me. You ought to know how I throw.”

Sparks thought he was joking. He ordered Hoyt to throw, and Hoyt, his arm tired, threw at half speed. After five minutes, he glanced at Sparks and said: “That’s it.”

Sparks said: “Son, I don’t know how you’ve gotten guys out before, but you won’t get guys out here with that (manure).”

From that point on, Hoyt believed that Sparks and the entire White Sox organization disliked him.

One day, Sparks told him to watch a pitcher named Joe Kusick, a lanky kid who threw hard but had poor mechanics, often ending up with his back to the plate upon following through.

“When they asked me to get tips from him, that was it,” Hoyt said.

Eventually, Sparks sent him to double-A, and after the season, C.V. Davis, a minor league coordinator, said to Hoyt: “Son, what can we do to make you a better pitcher?”

Hoyt answered: “If you put me in the big leagues and leave me alone, I think I’ll be OK.”

Davis laughed. “Sure, kid,” he said, and sent Hoyt to Class A.

“I don’t know if they were messing with me or if they were like that with everybody,” Hoyt said. “I said: ‘What the heck?’ If these guys are determining my career, there’s no sense in staying. Things were going in reverse. I’d been within one or two pitchers of the major leagues with the Yankees, and now I was at A ball.”

With Appleton in the Class A Midwest League in 1978, he went 18-4 with a 2.90 ERA and 13 complete games. After the season, they ordered him to the instructional league where, he said, “anyone with a breaking ball could pitch.”

That winter, Tony LaRussa, who was working in the minor leagues at the time, had an opening for a Class A player in the Dominican Republic. Hoyt, figuring he’d make some pretty good money, went.

“Tony rescued me,” he said.

Hoyt became the pitcher he is today in winter baseball, learning to be a finesse pitcher who could hit corners and mix speeds.

He threw well. LaRussa took him to double-A with him, and then to triple-A. In 1979, LaRussa became Chicago manager and called up Hoyt late in the season. In 1980, Hoyt was sent to triple-A early, but LaRussa convinced owner Bill Veeck that Hoyt was worth bringing up.

He was given a uniform and the baseball on his first day. Against the Cleveland Indians with runners on first and third with one out, LaRussa said: “Here you go.”

Said Hoyt: “I said to myself: ‘This is what you wanted to do. Do it.’ The guy (at bat) didn’t have a chance.”

He struck out Cliff Johnson and Toby Harrah to end the inning.

Eventually, after stints in the bullpen and as a starter, he went on to win the Cy Young award in 1983, the year the White Sox won ugly and made the playoffs. In the opening game of the league championship series against Baltimore, Hoyt won, 2-1, despite a rain delay. In his travels through baseball, though, he had gotten heavier and heavier. In 1983, he weighed 250. In 1984, he started the season weighing 265, then hit the 270s.

“In baseball, it’s easy to come in after a game and sit and drink beers, beers, beers and sit and sit,” he said. “It’s not hard to pick up a couple of pounds.”

His 13-18 record was blamed on his excess weight, naturally, and after the season, he and LaRussa chatted about it. Hoyt agreed to change. In November, Hoyt left on the annual team cruise to Acapulco. He and teammate Greg Luzinski were absolutely obese, and word got back to Roland Hemond, the general manager, even though Hoyt had privately planned to begin his diet after the cruise.

“That worried us,” Hemond said. “We didn’t know what weight he could possibly be up to between December and the start of the season.”

So, just days after Hoyt had lost about five pounds, he was traded to the Padres with two minor league pitchers for Guillen, pitcher Tim Lollar, infielder-outfielder Luis Salazar and relief pitcher Bill Long.

Meanwhile, Hoyt’s wife, Sylvia, had thrown out the hamburger rolls--Hoyt had been a cheeseburger freak--had bought a chicken cookbook, and had become an expert at chicken teriyaki, a low-calorie dish and Hoyt’s new passion.

He reported to camp at 235, and he’s been as low as 230.

“I feel like a teen-ager,” he said.

His move to the National League was not instantly successful, however. On April 15, Hoyt’s record was 2-4, the St. Louis Cardinals having knocked him out with six runs in the first inning.

National League umpires kept calling balks on him, which forced him to slow his delivery, and the Cardinals, who could field a decent track team, kept stealing bases on him.

The next day his agent, Shapiro, called him, thinking he’d have to console Hoyt.

“He spent 20 minutes convincing me he’d be all right,” Shapiro said.

Hoyt knows he can pitch. He can throw strikes any time he pleases at any corner of the plate. What makes him successful, though, is that he throws each pitch with the same motion, release point and delivery. He moves the ball around in his hand, though, and batters can’t detect that. He uses finger pressure to change his pitches.

In all, he has four fastballs, two curves, two sliders and two changeups. He’s also working on a knuckleball. The only problem, he said, is that he sometimes throws his changeup too much.

He hasn’t walked a batter in 30 innings, has given up just two walks in his last 40 innings, and has pitched eight complete games. Ideally, he tries to set up a batter for the out with a 1 and 2 count. The ball out of the strike zone is the setup pitch.

“Most of my outs come with 1 and 2 counts,” he said.

He also has a prodigious memory. Once, LaRussa urged him to pitch a certain batter with breaking balls. But Hoyt remembered the player’s old stance and noticed that the batter had adjusted that stance in order to hit the breaking ball. Hoyt threw him fastballs.

He also remembers hitters’ preferences, where they swing the bat, where their strengths are. If a hitter likes inside pitches, he throws it just a tad more inside, so the batter thinks he’s getting a pitch he likes, but finds he’s been jammed. On 0 and 2 counts, he come inside with a ball, which obviously would be setting up an outside pitch. But he’s in so many 0 and 2 situations that he mixes things up, coming inside again on the 1 and 2 pitch and fooling the hitter.

Even though he was 2-4 this year, Hoyt didn’t worry, didn’t alter his style.

After that nightmarish St. Louis game, he faced Dwight Gooden in New York. The Mets loaded the bases with no outs, and Gary Carter stepped up. The count became 3-0. Then, Hoyt threw a cut fastball, and Carter swung. Hoyt fielded the grounder and threw to the plate, then catcher Terry Kennedy threw to first for the double play.

The next batter, George Foster, flew out to left, the inning ending.

Hoyt won the game, 2-0.

And LaMarr Hoyt, who hasn’t lost since, had fooled ‘em again.