SAVING GRACE : Orioles’ Aase, the Fireman Who Isn’t Fiery, Stays Calm Amid New Success

They rebuilt his elbow, not his ego. They gave him a second chance, not an inflated sense of stature.

Quiet. Modest. Still taking it a batter at a time, a game at a time. There is none of the bravado nor the eccentricities associated with relief pitching.

Don Aase, the former Angel, is tied with the New York Yankees’ Dave Righetti for the major league lead in saves, having registered a club-record 29 for the Baltimore Orioles.

Those who know Aase, however, say he is the same as when he went 0-10 with the Boston Red Sox’s Williamsport farm club in his first pro season, or during that long summer of 1983 when he was coming back from elbow surgery and did not pitch at all.

Fred Lynn, a teammate in Boston, Anaheim and now Baltimore, said of Aase:

“He’s now got the reputation that Goose (Gossage) had in New York and Righetti has (there) now, in that other teams want to be ahead in the late innings so that they don’t have to face him, but he’s never changed. He’s the same every day, and that’s good. It’s hard to be fiery unless you’re the Mad Hungarian. Then you get waxed. Then what do you do?”

In the end, the Mad Hungarian, Al Hrabosky, was getting waxed more often than his mustache and retired.

Aase, 31, sat at his locker the other day and said: “To me, pitching is a matter of concentration. I feel a lot of that other stuff inside, but it’s not my style to show it. I’m satisfied to sit back, do my job and let everyone else get the applause. I also think that all that time I spent alone during my rehabilitation reinforced the way I am.”

It certainly gave him an intimate sense of the fragile line between spotlight and shadow.

At this year’s All-Star game--he was named to the American League team for the first time in a career that seemed in jeopardy just two years before--Aase was asked to preserve a 3-2 lead in the ninth inning. There was one out, the tying run was at third and the winning run was at first.

On his second pitch, Aase got Chris Brown of the San Francisco Giants to ground into a game-ending double play.

Minutes later, he sat stoically at his locker. Reporters were inclined to ask him if he wasn’t excited.

“I was ecstatic,” Aase said looking back. “I mean, I was happy just to be named to the All-Star team, considering that at one point I didn’t know if I would ever pitch again.

“Then to save the game was probably the greatest thing that’s yet to happen to me. I didn’t display it, but I know how I felt. I told Judy (his wife) on the way back to the hotel that a lot of things come and go, but they could never take that away from me.”

Now he is the Orioles’ final line of resistance in an Eastern Division pennant race that will provide a continuing test of his elbow and fortitude. The frequency with which he will be asked to pitch may depend on the frequency with which the Orioles can get a late-inning lead.

“Getting a lead he can protect has been our biggest problem up to now,” Manager Earl Weaver said.

Through 119 games, Aase has appeared in 51, contributing to 55% of the Orioles’ 62 victories with his 29 saves--Tim Stoddard set the previous Oriole record with 26 saves in 1980--and five wins in nine decisions.

Aase has recorded the 29 saves in 35 opportunities. He has inherited 42 runners, and only 14 have scored. He has been scored upon in only 11 of the 51 appearances. Opponents are batting .223 against him. His earned-run average is 2.11.

“He goes in now, knowing he’s going to get them out,” Lynn said. “If they get a hit, he just strikes out the next guy.”

Said Mike Boddicker, who has a 14-6 record and can thank Aase for saving eight of his wins: “There’s no telling what I would be without him. He’s been my savior. The guy’s awesome. He’s always there. You know he’s going to respond, no matter what the situation is.”

Said Weaver, asked if Aase is the best he has ever managed: “I’ve only managed in Baltimore, and Don has the record here now, so I guess that stands for itself. I mean, you don’t put up all those wins we have (over the years) without some relief pitching along the way.”

Weaver has generally employed two or three relief pitchers in the absence of one key stopper. In recent years he has had Tippy Martinez, Sammy Stewart, Don Stanhouse and Stoddard. The early years featured Moe Drabowsky, Eddie Watt, Pete Richert and Dick Hall, among others.

He has seldom had a power pitcher whom he trusted against both right- and left-handed batters with the game on the line, a pitcher who combined Aase’s 92- or 93-m.p.h. fastball with an equally wicked curve and slider. With Aase, however, Weaver has to use caution, remembering the elbow and the long rehabilitation from surgery.

“I let Don control the situation,” Weaver said. “When he says he can pitch, he’ll pitch. When he says he can’t, he won’t. I’ll use him in the eighth or ninth inning every day if he says he’s ready.”

Aase appeared in as many as three straight games only once in the first half of the season. There have been times when he has told Weaver that discretion seemed in order.

“I don’t have any more spare parts,” Aase said, alluding to that 1982 operation in which a tendon from his left wrist was used to replace a torn ligament in his right elbow. “I hate saying I can’t pitch, but I learned the hard way that it’s something I have to do. I can’t abuse it. I don’t want to get carried away.

“I mean, by taking care of a little tenderness with a day or two off as we go along, I should be able to pitch regularly down the stretch. I’m very pleased with the way the arm has responded. I hadn’t really had any problem until a week or so ago.”

Aase removed himself from a game in Texas July 30 because of elbow soreness, then felt it again while pitching two scoreless innings against Toronto two days later. He took another two days off and was ready to pitch again when he suffered a slight back strain playing with his 4-year-old son, Kyle.

The Orioles, with Aase unavailable, lost two home games to the Rangers in which they had held late-inning leads, then, with Aase available again, failed to generate a late-inning lead while losing three in a row to Cleveland.

Aase, who hadn’t worked in seven days, was provided a tuneup in the eighth inning of the series finale. The Orioles were losing, 4-3. He gave up three hits and a run in 1 innings of a 6-3 loss, and came back the next night to help end the costly streak by getting the final two outs of a 3-1 victory over Toronto. Then, in the series finale Aug. 14, pitched three innings for the first time this year, shutting out the Blue Jays to gain the decision in a 7-6 win.

Now free of discomfort again, Aase said there was a time in his years with the Angels that he would have continued pitching rather than leave that game in Texas. Then the elbow injury taught him the need for caution, though even now, he said, he would have continued pitching if it had been the final week with the pennant on the line.

“The fact that there was two months to go is a lot different than if there were two or three days to go,” he said. “I mean, I’ve got all winter to heal from tendinitis.”

Most of Aase’s communication is with pitching coach Ken Rowe. Of Weaver, who has had stormy and tenuous relationships with some pitchers, Aase said: “Our relationship is that I’m ready to pitch until I say I need a day off and then he gives it to me. Of course, I’m down there in the bullpen most of the time so that the most we talk is when I come in and he gives me the ball and says, ‘Go get ‘em.’ That’s about the extent of it.”

Aase, however, credits Weaver for restoring his confidence last season. “It was the lowest of my career,” he said. He had one save and a 7.07 earned-run average on July 13 when Weaver returned as manager, replacing Joe Altobelli.

Aase had been signed the previous winter as a free agent, receiving a four-year, $2.4-million contract. He thinks now that he may have been trying too hard, destroying his mechanics. There was a period when Altobelli didn’t use him for 19 days.

“It was horrible, but I don’t blame anybody,” he said. “I didn’t do the job, which is the bottom line. I do think I pitch better when I’m pitching regularly, and I wasn’t. Earl came in and said I was going to be his man in the eighth and ninth innings. He instilled confidence in me from his first day. I told him, ‘1985 is over, let’s start on 1985 1/2.’ ”

In his final 34 appearances last year, Aase had a 5-3 record with 12 saves and a 1.78 ERA, justifying the Orioles’ financial investment in him. The Angels, still unsure about the stability of Aase’s elbow, had refused to offer more than a one-year deal.

But then, Aase’s road with the Angels had often been a bumpy one.

In August of 1980, then-Manager Jim Fregosi made Aase a reliever after the struggling starter had lost 5 straight decisions and 9 of 10 all season, even though he had the best arm on the staff.

Fregosi believed that Aase was doing too much thinking between starts and then trying to conserve his stuff over the seven or eight innings that a starter normally goes. As a reliever, Fregosi thought, Aase could simply let fly.

Aase considered the move a demotion, but responded immediately. He was 4-0 with 4 saves over the final two months of that season. He had 11 saves in the strike-interrupted 1981 season and seemed on the verge of becoming one of baseball’s very best relievers when, in the early season chill of 1982, Manager Gene Mauch used his short man in a series of surprisingly long assignments.

By June 3, Aase was on the disabled list with what was believed to be a muscle strain in the elbow. Then late in July, pitching at Cleveland, he “felt a shot of pain from my elbow to wrist.” That was it, the torn ligament, though neither Aase nor Dr. Lewis Yocum was positive until the October surgery.

The Angels, in the meantime, were on the way to a division title and were hoping that Aase could return. Asked about it in early September, Mauch said that a pitcher inevitably has to pitch in pain, that there comes a time when he has to go about it “with tears in his eyes.”

Aase was infuriated. In an interview with The Times in February of ‘83, he cited those early season stints of the previous year and blamed Mauch for the injury. He said of Mauch’s later comments, “He has no idea what it takes to pitch, and that hurt deeply. . . . I had already given him my arm. Where did he come off suggesting I wasn’t willing to give him tears, too.”

By that time, Aase knew he would have to miss the entire 1983 season, that he would have to go nine months without touching a baseball. Tommy John had successfully pioneered the tendon transplant surgery among pitchers, but John didn’t throw with Aase’s power.

Predictions? Yocum counseled patience instead.

Now, as he has for the last three years, Aase continues to praise the Angels’ medical staff of Yocum and trainers Rick Smith and Ned Bergert for helping him negotiate the peaks and valleys of an 18-month rehabilitative process. They were the physical support. Judy and Kyle got him through it mentally.

“The mind never shuts off,” he said. “That was the hard part.”

Aase began his now-remarkable comeback by appearing in 23 games over the second half of the 1984 season. He had a 4-1 mark with 8 saves and a 1.62 ERA, impressive negotiating weapons at a time when Aase was eligible for free agency.

The ensuing negotiations ended bitterly.

Angel General Manager Mike Port said that Aase’s representatives kept him in the dark as to where the negotiations were and where they were headed and that Aase had a moral obligation to listen to a final proposal, considering the support he had received from the Angels during his recovery.

Aase said that the Angels had plenty of time to sign him, that he owed the club nothing because he had been hurt pitching when maybe he shouldn’t have and that Baltimore’s four-year offer was four times the security offered by the Angels. In his view, they seemed to be saying that there was still a question about his elbow.

“I recognize that it was a gamble for anyone to make a long-term offer,” Aase said. “The Angels did what they had to do, and I did what I had to do. It’s in the past. I don’t want to dwell on it.”

That also seems to be Aase’s attitude about Mauch. He added that they resolved their differences when he returned to active duty in ’84.

Said Baltimore General Manager Hank Peters: “It’s very difficult to develop or trade for a relief pitcher of that caliber. We thought that he’d be a steal if he came through the way we projected. He’s a guy built for that role if his arm held together--and it has.”

Said Aase: “There was a stretch earlier when I was pretty amazed by the way I was pitching, considering that three or four years ago I didn’t know if I’d ever pitch again.

“I’m pleased by what’s happened and surprised by some of it, but I haven’t looked as deep into it as I will this winter. I don’t want my thinking sidetracked with the team in a pennant race. I’m sure it will mean a lot more to me when the season is over.”

Until then, he said, he is taking it a day at a time, resisting the temptation to put weight on what he did last week or the day before, a philosophy that he believes is best for him.

He said he would like to lead the majors in saves but that he doesn’t set numerical goals. He said his confidence has never been higher but that he doesn’t expect to walk in and get hitters out automatically. “That kind of thinking can get you in trouble,” he said.

“You have to do this over a long period of times to be classified in the Fingers, Gossage or Sutter category. I don’t think I’m there yet. I have to keep doing it.”