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

LaMarr Hoyt, minus a belly and, thus, an identity, walked into the San Diego Padre 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 better vibes about the Hoyt trade, which he instigated after Padre starters had embarrassed themselves in the World Series against Detroit.

Still, there were those who laughed at the deal since Hoyt, in 1984, weighed more than 270 pounds and belonged on “Save the Whale” posters. When it was proposed that he could save the Padre pitching staff, most people said (pardon the pun): Fat chance.

Of course, he now weighs just 230 pounds and will be the National League starter in tonight’s All-Star Game, which more or less means that less is more. He comes in having won 10 straight (he’s 12-4 overall), which is reminiscent of his days with the Chicago White Sox, where he had 14- and 15-game winning streaks. But he says he’s even better now, since he’s lighter, stronger and has worked on this new “funky” changeup.

In many ways, he 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, tossing a six-hit shutout.

He said it was easy because the Pirates were paranoid about his uncanny control. Hoyt has the ability to throw a baseball over the corner of the plate at a multitude of speeds.

If players wait for a pitch in a certain area or wait for a particular type of pitch, they may sometimes get lucky and hit him hard. But if they’re waiting to hit a strike, as the Pirates did, 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 anything.

Days after that game, Dave Dravecky, another Padre pitcher, walked up to Hoyt in Chicago and congratulated him, for no apparent reason.

Dravecky: “Congratulations, LaMarr.”

Hoyt: “For what?”

Dravecky: “I don’t know.”

Everybody likes Hoyt. Padre Manager Dick Williams, who saw him pitch for the first time and said: “My gosh! He throws just like Catfish Hunter,” likes Hoyt’s calm and quiet outlook on life.

“You hardly know he’s here,” Williams has said. “I like that.”

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

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,” White

Sox first baseman Greg Walker said. “The new LaMarr Hoyt, I guess.”

And if there is one consistent theme in Hoyt’s life, it’s that people always expected one thing and got something entirely different.

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

Joe Sparks, a former minor league manager in the White Sox organization, is probably one of the few men LaMarr Hoyt dislikes. But Hoyt hasn’t told Sparks. Sparks, who sells cars in Phoenix, saw Hoyt this March during spring training, and they had a brief, pleasant conversation in the sun, which only goes to show that Hoyt has class.

“He’s a most courteous guy,” said Sparks, who managed Hoyt in Triple-A Iowa in 1977, and, little did he know, made an enemy for life. “He looks like he came from a family that had real good upbringings. Everything was ‘Yes Sir. No Sir.’ ”

Dewey LaMarr Hoyt’s childhood was not typical. 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, with what little money he had, to California. Norma, however, would not relent and told Dewey to get lost. LaMarr was hidden in a back bedroom.

Months later, Dewey quit his job to once and for all get LaMarr back, and he did this time, stealing him just as his wife had done. Dewey, not exactly the parental type, dropped LaMarr off with his older sister, Margaret Hiller, who had a husband and three sons.

Said Margaret: “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.”

Still, more tragedy followed. Margaret’s husband, Heyward, had been cleaning his rifle one day when it accidentally fired, killing their oldest son. Later, Heyward died, leaving her alone with two other sons and LaMarr. In the meantime, LaMarr was calling his aunt “Mama.” It seemed like the right thing to do.

From time to time, he’d see his parents, who’d drop by every second, third or fourth month. He knew who they were, but never did he treat them as parents since they never treated him as their son.

“LaMarr was really smart,” Margaret said. “No one had to tell him anything. When he came to live with me, his mommy and daddy didn’t come. When he started talking, he called me mama, and I didn’t stop it. I wouldn’t say ‘I’m not your mama.’ We decided not to say anything and just to bring him up as our own. His parents were never mentioned. We didn’t want to get him confused and saying: ‘Why are my mommy and daddy somewhere else?’

“Every month or so, they’d come. He wouldn’t say: ‘Here’s Mama.’ He’d say: ‘Here’s Norma.’ He knew who they were . . . But their names were never mentioned. If they did come, I wouldn’t encourage them on him or discourage them. I don’t know if that’s right, but if they loved him, they’d have showed up more than every few months.”

By the time Hoyt reached high school, he was quarterback and middle linebacker of the football team (“An odd combination,” Hoyt said,) and a decent shortstop and center fielder. He hit over .400, which few people would believe today, considering he only has four hits in this, his first season of batting in the major leagues.

Finally, Hoyt was drafted as a pitcher by the Yankees in 1973. He was to report to rookie camp in Johnson City, Tenn., but arrived a day early. He found no one around, sat alone in his hotel room for hours and picked up the phone.

He called Margaret.

“Mama, I’m on my way home,” he said.

“LaMarr,” Margaret said. “You didn’t give it a chance. You’re probably just homesick . . . Honey, come on home.”

Later, Margaret talked him into going back, and, this time, three scouts were waiting for him at the hotel. Strangely, while he was there, he received a phone call from Norma. She lived just 30 miles away. But he did not visit her.

In Anaheim, seven years later, he heard from her again. She had called him at the White Sox’s hotel. They had breakfast together, but that’s all. Then, this April, she showed up at the Padre hotel in Atlanta and called him.

“She’s in the lobby, and I have about 10 people up from South Carolina,” Hoyt said. “We were just messing around, and she wanted me to come down and visit. I said: ‘Wow.’ I hadn’t heard from this lady since I was 18 (he had forgotten the Anaheim visit). I didn’t know how to handle it or take it. I excused myself to her and said: ‘I have a lot of people up here.’

“Maybe that’s selfish on my part, but I hadn’t seen her. She was like another person. It would be like a fan calling up for my autograph. My mother is my aunt. She hadn’t bothered to call for 12 years, so I guess another year wouldn’t hurt.

“I told her, ‘Give me an hour or two.’ I didn’t think it’d be nice to leave those people in the room. She acted like if I didn’t come down, it would be too late.”

She left.

He doesn’t know her last name.

“She’s been remarried a couple of times,” he said. “She was a Bozman at one time, and a Hatfield at one time. She may be something else by now.”

It took Hoyt seven years of agony to reach the major leagues. He may be a star now, but the minors left scars.

The Yankees, while they had him on their Triple-A roster in 1977, figured the only addition they needed to win the World Series was a shortstop. And thus the trade of Hoyt to Chicago for Bucky Dent.

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

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

But he met Joe Sparks.

On the day Hoyt arrived, Sparks, the Iowa manager, 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: “Son, I don’t know how you’ve gotten guys out before, but you won’t get guys out here with that.”

From that point, Hoyt truly believed that Sparks and the entire White Sox organization disliked him. He’d throw two balls out of the strike zone in the first inning, look over to Sparks, and Sparks would be on the top dugout step.

One day, Sparks told him to watch a pitcher named Joe Kusick, a lanky kid who threw hard but had virtually no mechanics. Kusick often ended up with his back to the plate upon following through.

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

Said Sparks recently: “I didn’t have any trouble getting along with LaMarr, but every time out, I’d look up in the second inning, and we’d be down 4-0 or 5-0. It happened time and again. He’d get hurt with a slow curve. But I liked him. I thought he was a super person.”

Hoyt hears that today and laughs.

Anyway, Sparks sent Hoyt to Double-A that year, and Hoyt eventually asked for his moving expenses, which is standard procedure. He said they owed him $500, but the White Sox wouldn’t pay. He threatened to quit. They told him the check was in the hands of Roland Hemond, the general manager. So he stayed.

But he never got the check. Paychecks were coming two weeks late, too. He threatened to quit again, and actually boycotted a game. They finally paid him $176 of the $500.

After the season, C.B. Davis, a minor league coordinator, said to Hoyt: “And, son, what can we do to make you a better pitcher?”

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

Davis laughed. “Sure, kid.”

He was sent to Class-A ball.

“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.

“I didn’t think I had a high value in the White Sox organization at that time. I think they thought I was a jerk. There was a lack of communication.”

So he quit and went home to Margaret.

Eventually, and this was in 1978, he reported to the Class-A team and went 18-4 with a 2.90 ERA and 13 complete games. Following 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.

It was in winter baseball where Hoyt became the player he is today, learning how to be a finesse pitcher who could hit corners and change speeds.

He pitched 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.

“I know it,” LaRussa told Veeck. “Please believe me.”

Up he came in June. 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.”

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, in 1980, ’81 and ‘82, he went on to win the Cy Young in 1983, the year the White Sox Won Ugly and made the playoffs. Hoyt was 24-10 with a 3.66 ERA that season. His 24 victories led the league for the second straight season (he won 19 in 1982).

In the opening American League Championship Series game against Baltimore, Hoyt had felt strong. There had been a rain delay, and he had sat in the clubhouse wishing the rain would stop.

“Don’t let it rain,” he was saying aloud. “I’ve got these guys.”

Final: White Sox 2, Orioles 1.

Yet, through it all, he had gotten heavier and heavier. He ate before he left for the ballpark. He ate after the game. And he would eat a sandwich after that. His wife, Sylvia, whom he met in high school, used to cook only cheeseburgers, and he proclaimed her a great cook, considering he preferred burgers at every meal.

In 1983, he weighed 250.

In 1984, he weighed 265, and 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 poor record was blamed on the weight, and after the season, he and LaRussa had chatted about it. Hoyt agreed he’d change. Meanwhile, LaRussa asked if he wouldn’t mind moving to the bullpen if the White Sox couldn’t find a short reliever.

“Anything for you, Tony,” he said.

In November, Hoyt left on the annual team cruise, which would start in San Francisco and take them to Acapulco. He and teammate Greg Luzinski were absolutely obese, and word got back to Hemond, even though Hoyt 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.”

Hemond previously had called Shapiro, Hoyt’s agent, and asked that Hoyt attend a fat farm in North Carolina, which, in other words, meant he’d be on a rice diet. Shapiro, a chronic dieter himself, asked if they’d leave the diet to him. Owner Jerry Reinsdorf agreed.

Yet, just days later, after he’d already lost about five pounds, Hoyt was traded to the Padres with two minor league pitchers for Guillen, pitcher Tim Lollar, infielder-outfielder Luis Salazar and reliever Bill Long.

Meanwhile, Hoyt’s wife, Sylvia, had thrown out the hamburger rolls and bought a chicken cookbook. She had become an expert at a low-calorie dish called Chicken Teriyaki, Hoyt’s new passion. Also, Hoyt thought swordfish, cooked correctly by Sylvia, tasted like steak, another former favorite. They no longer cooked fried foods, and he terrorized salads.

He reported to the Padres’ camp at 235. He has been as low as 230.

“I feel like a teen-ager,” he said.

This is the new LaMarr Hoyt. He has a pool at his home in Rancho Bernardo, and he has the team’s best tan.

“I learned how to get a tan in winter ball,” he said. “You can’t watch TV there anyway, because you don’t know what they’re saying. Have to lay out.”

On April 15, Hoyt was 2-4 after the St. Louis Cardinals knocked him out with six runs in the first inning. 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, Shapiro called Hoyt, thinking he’d have to console him.

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

Hoyt knows he can pitch. To explain it precisely, he says to imagine that the strike zone is a globe. He can throw strikes any time he pleases at the far east corner, the far west corner, the far north and the far south.

What makes him successful is that he throws each pitch with the same motion and release point. However, he moves the ball around in his hand, and batters can’t detect this. He uses finger pressure to change his pitches.

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

He hasn’t walked a batter in his last 30 innings and has given up just two in his last 40. Sylvia, who watches every game she can, said: “He throws one ball, and I say ‘Oh my gosh!’ ”

He throws a lot of complete games (he has eight) because he’s smart. When he’s ahead by two runs late in a game, he knows the batters will be taking the first or second pitch, so he simply has to throw a couple of pitches on the corners and he’s ahead on the count, 0 and 2. 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 set up pitch.

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

Hoyt has an uncanny memory. Once, LaRussa came up to him, saying he should pitch a certain batter with breaking balls. But Hoyt remembered the player’s old stance and noticed that the batter had adjusted it in order to hit the breaking ball. So Hoyt threw fastballs.

He also remembers hitters’ preferences, where they swing the bat and where their strengths are. If a hitter likes inside pitches, he’ll throw it just a tad more inside, so the batter thinks he’s getting a pitch he likes, but finds he has been jammed. On a two-strike pitch, he’ll come inside, which would set up an outside pitch. But he’s in so many 0-and-2 situations, that he mixes it up, coming inside again on the 1-and-2 pitch, fooling the hitter.

Even though he was 2-4 this year, Hoyt never worried or altered 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 ground ball and threw to the plate. Catcher Terry Kennedy threw to first for the double play.

The next batter, George Foster, flied to left to end the inning.

Hoyt went on to win, 2-0.

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