It’s Bottom of the Ninth for These Big League Hopefuls

Gino Minutelli never pitched before this summer, but one hot August evening, the strapping Tri-Cities Triplet left-hander, his fast ball blazing, struck out 15 batters in slightly over seven innings.

Because, overall, he struck out 78 batters in only 56 innings for the Class A minor league baseball team, the hurler from National City near San Diego will probably be sold to a more advanced team before next season.

Meanwhile, Bruce Young, 23, a 6-3, 195-pound pitcher from Cal State Long Beach, probably ended his career when he posted a 2-2 record for the same team.

“This year was pretty emotionally and physically draining,” he said after the Triplets finished with a 33-41 record to tie for third place among four teams in the Washington Division of the Northwest League.

“It took the wind out of my sails. I’m basically looking forward to completing my college education and settling down with my girl.

“I can pitch, but I don’t feel I have stuff to make it to the majors. I don’t see myself withering away in the minor leagues.”

Minutelli and Young were among 25 players who pursued their version of the American dream on an independent minor league team this summer. It was also a living fantasy for four Los Angeles men, who bought the team last winter.

When attorney Dick Leavitt and partners Jerry Salzman, Sam Goldstein and Marvin Levine purchased the team, however, they were unable to get many players from the usual source: major league teams.

Holding tryouts across the country, they filled the team roster with athletes who had been released by other organizations or who had never been drafted.

Like their manager, who wanted to manage again in a major league organization, and like Leavitt, a lifetime fan who wanted to affiliate with a big league team, Triplets players clung to the hope that an organization would see them play, buy their contracts and give them one last chance at the major leagues.

Late last week, several days after the close of the season, none of the Triplets’ players had been sold. However, scouts who watched the team during the season had filed favorable reports and Leavitt had received offers for at least three athletes. He expected to conduct some business soon.

How far they would go is another matter. Players who reach the major leagues from independent teams are as rare as unflawed pearls.

Bill Schweppe, vice president of minor league operations for the Los Angeles Dodgers, said the use of about 500 full-time and many part-time scouts by major league teams makes it almost impossible for a major talent to remain undiscovered for long.

Larker an Example

But, Schweppe said, they do appear. He recalled that Dodger first-baseman/outfielder Norm Larker, acquired from an unaffiliated team in Hazleton, Pa., hit .289 in 1959 and helped the Dodgers win the World Series. The next year, he batted .323.

The would-be Larkers on the Triplets played every day or evening for 11 weeks, with only two nights off, representing the 114,000 residents of Richland, Kennewick and Pasco in southeastern Washington.

They routinely took afternoon batting practice in 100-degree heat, often using cracked bats that they had nailed and wrapped with tape in a money-saving effort typical of minor league baseball.

They worked for as little as $400 a month and $11-a-day meal money. On one occasion, players said, their uniforms were not cleaned for a week.

Memorable Moments

The summer had its memorable moments. Before one game, players frolicked in the outfield teaching a dog to jump over a bat in front of a dog food sign on the stadium wall.

Once, the team bus reached Bellingham, Wash., before players realized that a teammate had been left in a roadside restroom hours earlier.

But most Triplets played nervously, looking over their shoulders for the major league inquiry that did not come.

“The pressure on most of them has got to be great,” owner Leavitt said over lunch during the final week of the season.

“Their whole career is on the line. If they don’t do well here they probably won’t be able to play anymore and what that leaves them is questionable in many cases.

“Especially right now, they’re worried. They’re tired, worn out and emotionally troubled because they don’t know (what’s going to happen). They keep coming to me all the time and asking, ‘Is there any interest?’ ”

“You get anxious, especially at this time of the season,” said Matt Butcher, a Los Angeles infielder who hit .250 for the Triplets after being released by the Minnesota Twins and Seattle Mariners organizations in 1984. “You start to wonder if you haven’t heard and you start to think of your options.

“Do you want to come back and play on an independent team? Do you want to go back and finish school?” said Butcher, who played at Loyola High School, West Los Angeles College and the University of Nebraska. “Or do you just want to get a 9-to-5 job and put the cleats in the closet?”

Wouldn’t Blame Himself

Butcher said he’d hate go to through life thinking he wasn’t good enough to play professionally, but his roommate in a modern, furnished, $350-a-month apartment said he wouldn’t blame himself if he got released.

Alby Silvera, an outfielder who hit .248 for the Triplets, said ability was sometimes less important than who else was available in an organization.

Silvera, who played at Beverly Hills High, West Los Angeles College and USC, said his uncle, Al, played briefly for the Cincinnati Reds but was beaten out by a young prospect.

The prospect turned out to be Frank Robinson, who hit 586 home runs and was elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame. Had the competition been anyone else, he said, Al Silvera might have had a long career.

One player who could accept that logic was Ken Koske, a San Diego realtor completing his first season in professional baseball at age 35.

Koske pitched California Western University in Point Loma near San Diego to a national small college baseball championship in 1973.

Refused Twins’ Offer

He was told he would be taken in the upcoming baseball draft, but he wasn’t. Perhaps it was because he didn’t throw hard enough.

The Minnesota Twins offered to sign him and send him to a rookie league, but Koske thought he should go to a higher classification and refused.

“It was inexperience,” he said, “but I had no one to turn to.”

He has regretted the decision ever since, so at age 34 when he heard about a Triplets tryout in Los Angeles last winter, he attended.

The Triplets called on a Friday afternoon last spring and told him to be in the Tri Cities on Sunday. Koske said goodby to his wife, 6-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter and drove 21 straight hours to get there.

Early in the season he felt terrible pain in his side beneath his pitching shoulder.

But teammates began calling him “The Unnatural,” an affectionate reference to slugger Roy Hobbs in the film “The Natural,” and on the night of Aug. 17, nine weeks into the season, Koske pitched 2 innings in relief to earn his first professional baseball victory.

A few nights later he pitched 3 innings to save a game. He finished the season with a 1-4 record.

Prone to Reflection

“If I could satisfy my financial responsibilities to my family, it would be very easy to do this again,” he said in the locker room after a late-season appearance.

“It’s hard because I think back about woulda, shoulda, coulda. . . . All I know is at 35 I’ve lost velocity on my fastball and flexibility in my legs and I still throw the ball presentably. If I have to throw two or three innings, I do a pretty good job.

“I’ve been called ‘old man’ everywhere I go. Sometimes I go, ‘Holy smokes.’ I’m only 35. I tell these guys when they get to be 35 . . . I want them to go out and do something where they extend themselves and think of me.”

Koske and his teammates were managed on the field by powerfully built, 6-foot-1 1/2, 220-pound Ed Olsen, 51.

The baseball coach at Grossmont Community College in San Diego, Olsen played 10 years in the minor leagues and managed minor league teams for the New York Mets in 1982 and the San Diego Padres in 1983. He would like to manage for an organization again.

Walking Encyclopedia

If he is denied, it will not be for a lack of knowledge. Olsen can name every major league batting champion and home run champion, stretching back to the 19th Century, and every member of the baseball Hall of Fame.

The furniture in his home is largely made of baseball bats connected by wrought iron. Bases serve as cushions. Four walls of one room are covered with autographed pictures.

He owns 1,000 hard-cover baseball books, 400 autographed baseballs and baseball literature dating to 1877. It was a purchase of an 1878 baseball publication, he said, that caused his divorce.

Olsen wrote a check for $75 to pay for the newspaper when he didn’t have money in the bank to cover it. He got the money, he said, but his wife left.

“She was a nice woman,” he said. “I just drove her up the wall with baseball.”

Olsen shared his mania for baseball easily with Leavitt, a lifetime fan whose Brentwood doorbell plays “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and whose backyard contains a pitching machine and batting cage.

Enjoyed Himself

Leavitt’s thoroughly enjoyable summer included lots of pre-game batting and fielding practice with his team.

He ate hot dogs and drank beer during games and discussed strategy and personnel with the manager afterward.

Toward the end of the season he talked to the Dodgers about supplying the Triplets with players next season.

Schweppe, the vice president of minor league operations, said the Dodgers operate Class A teams in Bradenton, Fla., and Great Falls, Mont., and the chances of working with Leavitt in 1986 would be remote.

But he added, “Down the road, who knows?”