DR. Zzzzzzz . . . : Ex-Angel Zahn Teaching His Craft to a New Generation of Pitchers

Geoff Zahn was never called overpowering. He was called boring. Sportswriters never tagged him with one of those nicknames that carry with it the possibility of Madison Avenue millions. Those were reserved for the throwers, the guys who could bring heat. No one named him Dr. Z.

Dr. Zzzzz, maybe. He was the kind of pitcher sportscasters called crafty. Always around the plate, he moved pitches in and out and kept hitters off-balance. A simple tactician.

Recently, Zahn stood on the mound at Anaheim Stadium during an old-timers’ game looking for all the world as if he was trying to shatter the national shotput record, not pitch a ballgame. He couldn’t even retire a bunch of retired hitters.

Former Yankee Tom Tresh had hit Zahn’s changeup into left field for a double, scoring Randy Hundley, who had also doubled. That gave a team of assorted old-timers a 1-0 lead over a team of former Angels. Hall of Famer Ernie Banks, 55, followed with another double, scoring Tresh.

With each pitch, Zahn’s left shoulder sloshed around like a sloppy gearbox. Just getting the ball to the catcher was cause for celebration. By comparison, Warren Spahn, now 65, had better control. Bob Gibson, 50, had more velocity. In just one inning, it became clear that Zahn, a relative youngster at 40, had the oldest arm of them all.

The exhibition was called in the sixth inning because the old men had run out of breath and time. The modern-day Angels had to play the Cleveland Indians.

While Zahn and the other seniors hobbled off the field, two pitchers from the Pleistocene Era, Phil Niekro and Don Sutton, hobbled on.

Ironically, Sutton, 41, had been added to the Angel roster last season after Zahn had spent most of the year on the disabled list. After 18 years in professional baseball--12 in the majors, six in the minors--Zahn announced his retirement this year before spring training. An injury to his left shoulder--and subsequent surgery--left him unable to wash his car, let alone throw a slider.

During the off-season, the Angels released Zahn. They invited him to Palm Springs for a tryout during spring training, but, realistically, they might as well have invited Bo Belinsky or Dean Chance back.

Zahn’s arthroscopic surgery, performed by Dr. Lewis Yocum, revealed a torn rotator cuff. Even worse, the cartilage in the shoulder was badly damaged. Said Zahn: “The cartilage is destroyed. They cleaned out the joint, but that made it less stable. It’s bone on bone.”

Yocum, sounding more like a mechanic than a doctor, said: “There’s only so much mileage issued to a shoulder. And he wore his out. He had gotten his 30,000 miles.”

With plenty of pit stops along the way. The shoulder surgery was the eighth operation of Zahn’s career. Eight, finally, was enough.

Since his retirement in February, Zahn has said he would like to work with the Angels as a pitching instructor, but he hasn’t heard from the club. “They know I’m available, but I won’t beg them,” he said. “I assume they’ll call if they need me.”

Meanwhile, Zahn has taken a job at Master’s College, a small Christian school in Newhall, as an assistant to longtime friend John MacArthur, the school’s president. Besides overseeing the athletic program, he has joined the baseball staff as a recruiter and pitching coach.

The idea is that Zahn, who had a 111-109 lifetime record in the majors, will attract better talent to an NAIA baseball program that isn’t exactly brimming with future major leaguers.

“A pitcher has to ask himself what he wants out of a program,” Zahn said. “I tell them, I’m gonna teach you everything I know. I can teach them how to pitch. The mechanics. I have to consider myself very knowledgeable.”

Even with Zahn, Master’s College will be hard-pressed to land top prospects. Pitchers with 90-m.p.h. fastballs usually don’t end up there.

“Maybe one or two of our pitchers have the chance to be prospects,” he said. “And I think they’re excited to learn from me. You can teach the breaking ball, but you can’t add the fastball.”

But then, if anyone can help pitchers whose fastballs aren’t that fast, it’s probably Zahn. He made a living throwing junk.

That he ever pitched in the majors was surprising to some.

It wasn’t that he didn’t show potential. He was drafted by the Phillies when he graduated from high school, but he headed, instead, for the University of Michigan. He was then drafted each of his four years in college--by the White Sox, Red Sox, Tigers and Dodgers. He signed with the Dodgers midway through his senior season.

From 1968 to 1973, it seemed Zahn played in every city where the Dodgers had a farm team.

He went from Daytona Beach to Albuquerque to Spokane to Albuquerque to El Paso to Albuquerque to Venezuela to Albuquerque to the Dominican Republic to Albuquerque.

But he didn’t get called up to the majors, not even after winning 19 games in 22 decisions for El Paso and Albuquerque in 1972.

The problem, according to Zahn, was that he didn’t throw hard enough. The Dodgers were looking for another Sandy Koufax, not another Claude Osteen.

The Dodgers told Zahn he needed to develop a trick pitch. They brought in then minor league pitching instructor Roger Craig to help. Craig taught Zahn to throw a forkball, the forerunner of the split-fingered fastball.

“He was the first one I ever taught that thing to,” said Craig, now the manager of the San Francisco Giants. “He didn’t have a fastball, but he had above-average poise and control. And everything he threw broke down. I knew any pitcher who could do that would be successful.

“The first time I saw him, I thought, ‘This guy can pitch in the major leagues.’ ”

The Dodgers still weren’t so sure.

Finally, at the insistence of Craig, Zahn was called up in 1974. He played sparingly and finished with a 3-5 record. The Dodgers were so impressed, they traded him to the Chicago Cubs after the season. In return, they got Burt Hooton.

Things didn’t get better for Zahn.

Midway through the ’75 season, he injured his elbow and underwent surgery. The Cubs didn’t count on him to pitch again. He managed to make the roster in 1976, but after a week and a half, he was sent to the minor leagues.

“They said they’d call me,” Zahn said. “But when I got to Wichita, Doc Edwards, the manager, didn’t even know how he was supposed to use me. He didn’t even know I was coming.”

Edwards hardly needed Zahn. He already had Bruce Sutter, Mike Krukow, Dennis Lamp and Milt Wilcox.

Said Edwards: “He just didn’t throw well. I was told to be patient, but he wasn’t effective. He knew what he was doing, but he just couldn’t pop the ball.”

During his first sojourn through the minors, Zahn had the patience to endure bus rides. Now, the thought of going back to the minors and the bus rides was unbearable.

“In 1977, I asked the Cubs for my release,” he said. “If I wasn’t going to big league camp, why should I beat around the minor leagues?”

Zahn searched for a team that needed a gimpy left-hander. Of course, no club did.

Finally, he got a call from Gene Mauch, who at the time was managing the Minnesota Twins. Mauch asked Zahn if he would do some throwing for Don McMahon, the Twins’ pitching coach. McMahon met Zahn at Cal State Northridge and later gave Mauch a favorable report. Zahn was invited to the Twins’ training camp as a free agent without a contract.

During the next four seasons, Zahn blossomed--if not like a rose, at least a dandelion. He used changeups, sinkers and curveballs to win no fewer than 12 games a season for Minnesota. But he lost a lot, including 18 in 1980. “I pitched about the same as the team went,” Zahn said, which wasn’t spectacular. But he carried the pitching load for the club, averaging 213 innings a year.

When Zahn became a free agent after the ’80 season, Philadelphia, Texas, Cleveland, the Yankees and the Angels showed interest.

On the recommendation of Mauch, who had joined the front office, the Angels made Zahn an offer.

The pitcher signed a three-year contract with the Angels for $1.2 million. “They were the ones who came to me,” Zahn said, almost apologetically. “Gene Autry was emptying his saddlebags to get the players he needed. It wasn’t like I was robbing a bank.”

Four years earlier, Zahn said, he just wanted to see if he could make a major league club. Now, he had it made.

Never mind that he was once told by Al Campanis, the Dodgers’ vice president, that he would never have enough stuff to pitch in the big leagues. Never mind that the Cubs gave up on him. He was making a million bucks.

“When they say I can’t do something, I like to prove people wrong,” he said.

Outwardly, Zahn looks as menacing as Pee Wee Herman. But when the words, “I like to prove people wrong,” come out of his mouth, his face twists and his eyes stare the way Clint Eastwood’s did when he said: “Go ahead, make my day.”

“In his own quiet way,” Mauch said, “Geoff is a fierce competitor. He’s a highly motivated individual. He’s got a heart that didn’t figure to fit in that skinny body of his. The intensity with which he approaches everything is conducive to overcoming numerous physical problems.”

Which is exactly what Zahn faced after joining the Angels. First he injured his knee, which required surgery. Then he hurt his knee again. More surgery. An inflamed shoulder here, a groin pull there. In 1984, Zahn had another knee operation, this time for bone chips on his left knee. The twisting from his pitching motion was shearing off pieces of cartilage.

Said Yocum: “He was in a significant amount of pain. To undergo surgery that often and for him to keep coming back was a credit to his makeup. His knee was arthritic. The knee operations alone would have ended a lot of careers.”

Surprisingly, between stops on the disabled list, Zahn pitched the best baseball of his career for the Angels. Zahn helped lead the Angels to the American League Westrn Division championship in 1982, when he finished 18-8.

He holds the major league record for most consecutive innings pitched (292) without allowing a stolen base. Omar Moreno was the last to successfully steal with Zahn on the mound--in August of 1983.

Then, last year came the shoulder injury that ended his career. Zahn said it was God’s way of telling him to move on.

So now Zahn is teaching small-college pitchers the art of confusing hitters. The changeup, the curve, the sinker, the cut fastball.

Master’s College Coach John Zeller said it’s no coincidence that the school is putting in new dugouts, new sprinkler systems and new fences around its field. That’s what happens, Zeller said, when a former major league pitcher manages the athletic department’s budget.

Recently, while sitting in an office in the school’s administration building, Zahn talked about how fulfilling his new job would be.

When he finished, though, he paused for a second and then said: “If I thought I had a chance, the slightest chance, to come back and play--I’d be in Edmonton right now.”