The Decline, Fall and Rebirth of McGregor

This is Scott McGregor’s story, and it’s not a simple one.

It weaves through 10 major league seasons, it catches the human animal in some of its best and worst poses and contains all the elements essential to become a part of the scripts of “Dynasty,” the “PTL Club” or both.

Publicly, McGregor and the Baltimore Orioles say the worst appears to be over, and that much will be forgiven if he continues what appears to be a remarkable turnaround.

After two terrible seasons, he is coming off an outstanding spring training (2.96 ERA). His curveball is again in the strike zone, and his fastball once more has enough pop to make his change-up deadly. From a career that appeared over, he was good enough this spring to be given the Orioles’ second start of the season.

“I sense that his priorities have changed,” Orioles General Manager Hank Peters said, using some of the many words that still infuriate McGregor.

No one appears certain how an almost-perfect eight-year relationship came to this kind of talk the last two seasons, but almost everyone agrees on two turning points.

One occurred in the spring of 1979, a few months after McGregor had finished a first-rate rookie season and, at 25, appeared on his way to stardom. Not only was he left-handed, he had a devastatingly effective change-up, pin-point control and a big round-house curve that left hitters shaking their heads.

By almost any measure, he had it all. He was never a high-roller, but says he did sample the smorgasboard of baseball’s late-night life. He drank a few beers and has told church groups he sampled marijuana. He says at times he was willing to try almost anything because nothing much made him happy.

“I was getting to the point where I was supposed to have everything that man works for, but I felt I had nothing,” he said.

Then that spring, he felt a sharp pain in his left elbow. His first thought was, “ ‘I may be finished.’ That’s when it hit me I had to have something more solid to build my life on, and that’s when I began to look to the church.”

After the injury, he and Orioles outfielder Pat Kelly talked about the Bible, the Lord and the hereafter. McGregor said he eventually made a commitment, not only to Jesus Christ, but to join the ministry once his baseball days ended.

Once he made that choice, he said his life changed, that he had a tranquility non-believers find hard to believe.

The second turning point came in the winter of 1985 when the Orioles rewarded six straight outstanding seasons--93-50, 3.62 ERA--with a four-year, $4-million contract. The Orioles knew it was a gamble to give any player a long-term, big-money contract, but they hardly flinched.

“We know the kind of person he is,” Peters said at the time, “and these people don’t change because of money.”

Within a month, McGregor stopped doing exercises to keep his left arm strong and got off to a 1-4 start. He was so mystified as to why his fastball and change-up had become the same fat pitch that he had doctors check out his arm strength.

What they found was a noticeable weakness, and McGregor admitted he’d stopped exercising. “I don’t know why,” he said. “I just felt so good it didn’t seem necessary.”

The Orioles were furious and wondered if they hadn’t been taken for a ride. To management, McGregor became a point man in the team’s decline after the 1983 championship. Not that he was doing any less than Dan Ford or Wayne Gross or Juan Bonilla, it was just that they expected so much more of him. He was family, and in the Oriole family betrayal was the deadliest sin.

McGregor struggled through one bad season, then part of another before then-manager Earl Weaver shipped him to the bullpen. At that point last season, he was 6-10 with a 4.92 ERA, and the Orioles no longer talked about turning him around, but about eating the remaining $3 million on his contract.

Their relationship bottomed out last summer when Peters told him he ought to quit if he was unwilling to work. Peters said he understood religion is important, but had he forgotten who paid his bills?

McGregor remembered: “I said, ‘Hank, if you’d had a calling in your life that affected you so much, how would you balance it?’ I don’t want to cheat the game, but it’s not easy to balance both worlds. I admit I may have gotten them out of balance. Once I started to go bad, I did retreat a little more to my church work. But that’s only human nature that when something isn’t going well, you turn to something that is.”

Peters believes his talks with McGregor may have helped.

McGregor says his two-week trip to the bullpen last July was the difference, that all of a sudden he realized he had stopped throwing strikes and challenging hitters. He said it occurred to him that, when the Orioles’ pitching was great, it was because they challenged hitters and stayed ahead in the count.

“We got away from that,” he said. “We had started nibbling at the strike zone instead of saying, ‘Here it is. Give it your best shot.’ When the count is 2-0 and 3-1 all the time, their best shot is going to be 20 rows up in the bleachers.”

He said once he started throwing strikes, everything changed. He finished last season throwing two shutouts and, after leaving the bullpen, had a 3.35 ERA.

“See those?” he asked, pointing to his muddy uniform pants. “I’ve been out running in puddles. That’s what little boys who are out having fun do. I didn’t run in puddles last year.”

But he is no less devoted to the Baltimore County church he helped found seven years ago. The charismatic, fundamentalist Rock Church has grown to about 800 members and is still growing. He also is helping found a downtown soup kitchen.

The Orioles say they see a new addition to McGregor’s placid, help-everyone attitude.

“I think he’s got a little chip on his shoulder now,” Peters said, “and that’s not a bad thing to have in a competitive game.”

Both sides hope the Orioles again will see the McGregor of the early 1980s, the guy who was one of the league’s best pitchers, and one who can help bring the Orioles back to respectability.

“We all learn lessons,” McGregor said, “and I’m willing to admit I learned some. You learn them everyday, but unfortunately, you seem to learn more from the tough ones.”