Cliburn Grinds to a Start : Angel Rookie, 28, Uses His Perseverance as ‘In’ Pitch to Majors

With his dark, wavy hair, manicured mustache and chiseled features, Stewart Cliburn has the looks of a matinee idol.

There is something of a Hollywood touch to his career, too:

--Eight struggling seasons in the minors.

--Released by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1982 with no assurance he would find employment again in baseball.

--Never invited to a major league spring training camp until 1984.

--Reassigned by the Angels to their Edmonton farm team in March, 1985 after only a cursory look during the early exhibition season.

Now, at the comparatively advanced age of 28, Stewart Cliburn has emerged as a candidate for the American League’s Rookie Pitcher of the Year award.

“Stew is a grinder,” Angel pitching coach Marcel Lachemann was saying the other day. “He deserves a lot of credit for his perseverance. It’s an insight into his character.”

Said Cliburn:

“What’s happened this year is unbelievable, but I never lost hope.

“As long as people kept giving me an opportunity, I knew there was a chance. I wasn’t going to give up until someone said, ‘Stew, you just can’t pitch in the majors, go on home.’

“I mean, as long as I had a job, I looked on it as my responsibility to stay motivated until someone gave me that chance. The Angels did that this year, and it’s a dream come true.

“The struggle paid off, but remembering it keeps all this in perspective.”

All of this includes:

--A retroactive settlement in the player strike, increasing the minimum salary for rookies from $40,000 to $60,000, meaning Cliburn’s 1985 income will be about three times his top salary in the minors.

--Thirty appearances for a team that leads its division, Cliburn’s contribution being a record of 7-2 with three saves and a 1.88 earned-run average.

Donnie Moore and his 22 saves still represent the foundation of the rebuilt Angel bullpen, but Cliburn has enhanced the stability, performing in two key capacities--as a middle man setting up Moore, and as a late-inning stopper.

Very late.

The Angels are 9-2 in extra innings, and four of Cliburn’s wins have come in games that went 12 innings or more, games in which one mistake is usually fatal. Cliburn’s survival rate has led to his nickname, The Marathon Man.

Angel Manager Gene Mauch said Cliburn “thrives on” extra-inning pressure.

Stewart Walker Cliburn was born, reared and still lives in Jackson, Miss., where he was one-half of one of the city’s most famous athletic teams. The other half was his twin brother, Stan, who was a catcher in the Angel farm system for six years, appeared briefly in Anaheim in 1980 and is still active with Hawaii of the Pacific Coast League.

The Cliburn brothers were All-Everything at Forest Hill High School. The No. 1 baseball battery, starting guards in basketball and the starting quarterback (Stan) and wide receiver (Stewart) in football.

“It was always our goal to play professional sports,” Stewart Cliburn said at lunch the other day. “We just didn’t know which sport.”

At a similar 6 feet and 185 pounds, it came down to baseball. The Cliburns led Forest Hill to the 1974 state championship as seniors. Stan then signed with the Angels as a fifth-round draft pick. Stewart was selected on the 16th round by San Francisco but chose to attend Delta State University because he didn’t think he was ready to pitch professionally, wasn’t impressed by the low selection and felt that the Delta State coach, former major league pitcher Boo Ferriss, could assist his development.

Two years later, selected on the fourth round by Pittsburgh and offered twice the signing bonus San Francisco had offered, Cliburn signed and was sent to Class-A Salem.

His statistics over the next eight years were mediocre. In fact, 8-5 at Salem was about the best.

An arm injury in his second year and his inability to consistently go a distance as a starter because of the lack of a quality pitch beyond a fastball and a slider ultimately caused the Pirates to lose interest.

He was released in the spring of ‘82, his sixth season. He had never made a Triple-A team out of spring training and never been invited to the Pirate camp as either a roster or non-roster player. He returned to Jackson without a job and uncertain of finding one, but positive that he was better off out of the Pittsburgh organization.

“I had spun my wheels long enough,” he said. “I knew I needed a change of scenery. The Pirates began to lose interest when I hurt my arm. I never had a good enough year to change their thinking.”

Cliburn was home only a week when Mike Port, now the Angel general manager but then the assistant to Buzzie Bavasi, called to offer him a job with Double-A Holyoke.

Cliburn accepted, which was one turning point. Another came a year later when he began a transition to relief pitching, where he only had to go as hard as he could for as long as he could, using basically the fastball and slider.

There were no miracles statistically, but Cliburn’s tenacity began to impress then minor league pitching instructor Lachemann, as it did Lachemann’s successors, Joe Coleman and Frank Reberger.

Eligible for minor-league free agency after the 1983 season, Cliburn told the Angels he would re-sign only if invited to spring training with the parent club in ‘84, which he was.

“I was 26 and had never been to a big-league camp,” he said.

“I wanted to see if I could impress someone--even if it was covering first base or fielding my position.”

He is the best on the Angels at both, which is a measure of how hard he works. Another is that he didn’t give up when his spring trials in ’84 and ’85 only led to reassignment in Edmonton.

“I was discouraged in the sense that I didn’t get a longer look,” he said, “but not to the point of going back and not trying. I still believed in myself and I still had people like Joe Coleman and Frank Reberger who believed in me. I felt I was finally at the point where if something happened, I’d be the first to be called up.”

What happened in April was that the Angels returned Bob Kipper to the minors and put Luis Sanchez on the disabled list. The call went to Cliburn and Urbano Lugo.

The latter is now back at Edmonton, but the call has continued to go to Cliburn, who said: “My stuff is pretty much the same as it has always been, but my arm is stronger, my mechanics are better and I know how to pitch, now. I learn a little more, in fact, every time I go out.”

Said Lachemann: “He’s always had good enough velocity and a good enough slider, but he didn’t have command of the strike zone. Coleman and Reberger deserve a lot of the credit. Gene (Mauch) told him in spring training that he could pitch in the majors if he kept the ball down.”

So far this season, Cliburn has produced numbers he never did in the minors (he has allowed only 2 home runs, 24 walks and 63 hits in 72 innings, while striking out 31 and walking 24), including those with a dollar sign in front of them.

Cliburn smiled and said: “Maybe some players no longer think $60,000 is a lot of money, but I sure do.”