DR. J, AS IN JUNK : Geoff Zahn, His Arm Dead at 39, Now Teaching Others the Craft of Pitching

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

Dr. Zzzzz, maybe.

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

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

Former New York Yankee Tom Tresh had hit Zahn’s changeup into left field for a double, scoring former Chicago Cub Randy Hundley, who also had 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, 65, had better control. Bob Gibson, 50, had more velocity. In just one inning, it became clear that Zahn, a relative youngster at 39, 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 a game to play against 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, was 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, 6 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.

Zahn’s arthroscopic surgery, performed by Dr. Lewis Yocum, revealed a torn rotator cuff. Even worse, the cartilage in the shoulder was badly damaged.

“The cartilage is destroyed,” Zahn said. “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.”

There were plenty of pit stops along the way, too. 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 The 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 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, The 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 Philadelphia 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 Chicago White Sox, Boston Red Sox, Detroit Tigers and Dodgers. He signed with the Dodgers midway through his senior year.

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

But he didn’t get called up to the majors, not even after posting a combined 19-3 record 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 a left-hander reminiscent of Sandy Koufax. Zahn had a drooping fastball like Johnny Podres’.

The Dodgers told Zahn that he needed to develop a trick pitch. They brought in Roger Craig, then their minor league pitching instructor, 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 weren’t so sure.

Finally, at the insistence of Craig, Zahn was called up in 1974. He pitched sparingly and finished with a 3-5 record. The Dodgers were so impressed that they traded him to the 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 had surgery. The Cubs’ interest in Zahn nose-dived. He managed to make the roster in 1976, but after a week and a half, he was sent to the minor leagues.

Zahn searched for a team that needed a soft-throwing 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. He used changeups, sinkers and curves to win no fewer than 12 games a season for Minnesota. But he lost a lot, too, including 18 in 1980. “I pitched about the same as the team went,” Zahn said. The way the team went wasn’t spectacular, but Zahn carried the pitching load, 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. Four years earlier, Zahn said, he had just wanted to see if he could make a major league club. Now, he had it made.

Never mind that he had once been told by Al Campanis, the Dodger vice president, that he would never have enough stuff to pitch in the big leagues. Never mind that the Cubs had given 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, Geoff is a fierce competitor,” Mauch said. “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.”

That was exactly the situation when Zahn joined 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.

Surprisingly, between stops on the disabled list, Zahn pitched the best baseball of his career for the Angels. He helped lead the team to the AL West championship in 1982, when he finished with an 18-8 record. In ‘84, he started with a 9-4 record and just missed being named to the All-Star team.

Then, last year, he came up with 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.

The 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.”