Whenever He’s Down, Angels’ Doug Corbett Knows Where to Turn

Doug Corbett has been high and mighty. Doug Corbett has been down and out.

He once was so mighty that during his first two seasons in the majors, 1980 and 1981, he appeared in more major league games than any other pitcher, and saved 40 of them.

The man who had managed him as a rookie, Gene Mauch, wanted him back so badly that in 1982 he and the California Angels were willing to part with Tom Brunansky, a strapping outfielder who would hit 107 home runs for the Minnesota Twins in the four years to come.

In those same four years, Corbett saved only 15 games for the Angels, 11 of them in his first season with the club. He suffered failure and demotion, endured injuries, turned often to Scripture for comfort and prayed for the well-being of the son he nearly lost less than a month after birth.

He was up. He was down. Up with the Angels. Down to Spokane and Edmonton. Feeling good. Feeling bad.

And so it goes. In 1985, Corbett did not have a save on any level, something that had never happened in the 11 years he had pitched professionally. But, in 1986, he already has five saves and has succeeded the injured Donnie Moore as the closest thing the Angels have to a closer, a pitcher who can finish what another pitcher starts.

Up and down. Down and up.

He came into Sunday’s game against the Baltimore Orioles with Cal Ripken at bat. Mike Witt, a man six inches taller, had been pitching. Witt’s long stride had left a small hole in front of the rubber. As Corbett pitched to Ripken, he stepped into the hole and did a somersault off the mound. Chevy Chase, pitching relief.

“Call him Mary Lou Retton,” Mauch suggested.

Angel pitcher Terry Forster enjoyed it enormously. Told Corbett so. “Ozzie Smith’s got nothing on you,” Forster said.

“I put it more in a class with Greg Louganis,” Corbett said. “It was a front, 1 1/2 twist with a flip.”

Up and down.

Corbett saved Sunday’s game, getting Eddie Murray on a hot shot to the mound to end it. He pumped his fist in the air to celebrate, knocking off his own cap in the process. But at least he didn’t trip on the dugout steps returning to the clubhouse. He has been known to do that once or twice.

The next night, Corbett shagged flies in the outfield before the game. Upon returning to the infield, he strolled near the mound and repeated the somersault, for anyone who had missed it. Then he popped back to his feet. “Who called me Mary Lou?” he asked.

Up and down.

A few hours later, Corbett was called in the ninth inning of a 6-6 game with the New York Yankees. The first man he faced, Rickey Henderson, lined a double that scored a runner from first.

In the clubhouse, long after most of his teammates had left, Corbett relaxed near his locker. The Angels had rallied to take the game, 8-7, so he felt better than he might have. Yet, he also reminded himself that it was the effort, not the outcome, that mattered most.

To do so he fished a pocket-sized Bible from his belongings and found a passage he had underlined, from Colossians 3:23. “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.” He read it aloud, twice.

Corbett could remember the exact date--March 21, 1979--that he knocked off work at the Twins’ spring training camp in Orlando, drove over to Tampa to attend a Billy Graham Crusade “and realized I wasn’t putting forth the effort. I dedicated my life right then and there to serving Him,” meaning the Lord, not Mr. Graham.

He made the Topps rookie all-star team in 1980 and the American League All-Stars in 1981. From 1974-81, not once did he have an earned-run average above 3.00. He had a hard sinker and a tough disposition. According to criteria established by the player union’s basic agreement at that time, Corbett rated status as the third-most productive player in baseball, behind Cecil Cooper and Steve Carlton. It was a very up time.

But there came a conflict within him as to whom he was doing all this for. “Success came so quickly and so easily, and I just got too involved in Doug Corbett,” he said of himself Monday, talking quietly to a visitor in a clubhouse otherwise deserted, with the time pushing midnight. “I didn’t handle the down side.”

In 1983, Corbett spent more time in the minors than in Anaheim. In late November, he became the father of twins, but on Christmas Eve, one of the boys, Jason, suffered a collapsed lung “and turned about as blue as your sport coat,” Corbett told his visitor. “It was at that time that I thought, you know, how meaningless is it to want recognition for yourself when life itself is such a gift? At that point in time, I really changed.”

Jason has been hospitalized frequently, and suffers from asthma and allergies. But he is getting stronger every day, as is his father. It doesn’t matter to Doug Corbett any more if he gets Eddie Murray out or if Rickey Henderson gets a hit, so long as he satisfies himself that he has made every effort to do the best he can.

He does take the work seriously. So seriously that he studies “imagery” with a Ph.D. from Cal State Fullerton, Ken Ravizza, in order to visualize situations from the bullpen, to pitch to batters mentally before stepping onto a diamond to face them, to blot out umpires whose definition of a strike differs from his own, and to entirely eliminate negative thoughts.

Willpower will not retire hitters, but that part is out of a pitcher’s hands. “Everybody who walks out there is going to have failure along with success,” Corbett said. “There’s only one person who ever walked this earth who was perfect, and he went to the cross 2,000 years ago.

“You’ve got to have no scruples to want to be a relief pitcher. A starter can go out and give two, three, four runs by the first or second inning and still settle down and pitch and pick up a win. A relief pitcher is going to be a hero or a goat, no two ways about it. You’ve got to have ice water running through your veins. You can’t let it affect you. And I can remember a time when it did. That’s just not how I look at it anymore.”

He read from the pocket Bible again, then paused to reflect on it.

“See, I know I’m not always going to be a success in man’s eyes,” Corbett said.

Looking up.