Burleson Is Crazy About Baseball

So little time and so much to prove. Rick Burleson must press four lost seasons into one and he must do it today, yesterday if possible, tomorrow for sure.

He can’t wait. His right shoulder pops out of its socket without notice, and doctors have told him another date with surgery is inevitable. Worse, at 36, he may already have lost a couple of important seconds of bat speed.

“I’ve got money,” he said. “I’ve won all the awards. I just want to win and to play because I don’t know how many games I have left.”

His attitude is intense, bordering on desperate, flirting with fanatical. He is California, but not cool.

“He’s wound a little bit tightly,” said Baltimore Orioles center fielder Fred Lynn, a friend and occasional teammate since they both played for the Pawtucket Red Sox in 1974. “He’s not as bad as he used to be, though. He never has been a player you could kid about a mistake.”

And he does not tolerate idiots, which he defines as players who care less than he, managers who won’t write his name into the lineup every day and almost anyone who questions his desire, intensity or ability.

The result is that almost no one does, and that people take him for what he is, which is a complex 5-foot-10, 160-pound package of muscle, surgical scars and emotions.

Especially emotions. He has such a fierce temper that people who have known him a decade or more are still a little bit afraid of him and say his temper seems continually to bubble near the surface.

California Angels Manager Gene Mauch does not blink when he says: “He wanted to kill me last year when I didn’t have him in the lineup a couple of times. He could probably do it, too. Have you seen him without a shirt?”

Affectionately, Mauch adds: “The man’s body is not big enough for his heart. If there’s ever been anybody at his age who burned to play the game as much as he does, I haven’t heard of him. Sometimes, you’ll see guys who’ve missed a lot of time because of injuries, and they get used to it. They start thinking, ‘Hey, this isn’t too bad.’ Not the Rooster.”

If he sometimes seems too intense, Richard Paul Burleson says people should understand what he has been through.

He had been one of baseball’s iron men with the Boston Red Sox from 1975 until 1980, averaging a league-leading 613 at-bats and playing in four all-star games. He was Cal Ripken Jr. before baseball ever heard of Cal Ripken Jr.

“That’s what I took a lot of pride in,” Burleson said. “I wanted to be in there every day and, if I didn’t get a hit, I still felt I could help the team by making the plays at shortstop. Before I was hurt, I couldn’t sympathize with a player who was. I’d look at an injured player with the attitude, ‘What’s wrong with him? Doesn’t he know we all hurt?’ After you’ve been hurt yourself, it changes your perception.”

Since they were about to lose him to free agency, the Red Sox traded him to the Angels after the 1980 season. He played one healthy season for his new team, then tore up his rotator cuff and essentially missed the next four.

He worked his way back from that injury, then dislocated his right shoulder lifting weights in his home on New Year’s Eve 1984. He bounced back from that, too, and was available last season when he got only 271 at-bats for Mauch’s Angels.

He played out his option and signed with the Orioles, who were desperate for a second baseman. The only other team he was interested in was the Texas Rangers, who also needed a second baseman.

When he signed the contract, he said the $500,000 was much less important than the chance to play. The people who know him best believe that. They said he had spent hundreds of hours in therapy and weight rooms and with ice packs strapped to his shoulder, and that he didn’t want it to be wasted.

“The California Angels never saw the real me,” he said. “I was there six years and hurt four. Going back there doesn’t give me much of a feeling, not like going back to Fenway Park. That’s where my career was.”

He had wanted the last chapter of his career to be in Baltimore but, as the season nears its one-quarter mark, he hasn’t had an easy or a happy time of it.

He kept his starting job for only 23 games and was removed at a time when he was hitting .151 and the Orioles had lost 11 out of 14 games. Looking for a different combination, Manager Cal Ripken Sr. settled on one that had Alan Wiggins at second.

Burelson started only two of the next 12 games, and he responded by seething. He snapped at a couple of teammates and a few more reporters. He sent word to a television announcer that he was on the bench because of his batting average, not his shoulder.

He got his reprieve last week when Wiggins misplayed a ball that helped cost the Orioles a game. Ripken was furious at Wiggins and responded by putting Burleson back at second, where he had been five straight games going into Tuesday night’s game. Burleson has not only played the position flawlessly, but gone six for 17 to raise his batting average to .192.

“Let’s put it this way,” he said. “I was more upset about hitting .150 than not playing. I did think I was the second baseman coming out of spring training, then after 70 or 80 at-bats that seemed to change. But I’ve been around long enough to know, if I get an opportunity, it’ll work out. If I have my health -- and right now I do -- I’ll hit. What’s my career batting average (.275)?”

His physical worry is that his right shoulder won’t hold together for an entire season. Already, it has popped out three or four times, but with the exception of one game in Cleveland he has missed no playing time because of it.

Doctors have told him the problem is the result of his dislocation, and that, eventually, it could happen in the middle of the night.

“If I had surgery after this season, I might not be ready for spring training,” he said. “That’s why I’m taking it one year at a time. If I can get through this year, I’ll think about playing one more.”

He’s thinking of having the surgery only when his playing days are over “since I don’t want to sleep with an Ace bandage wrapped around me.”

His days have been doubly tough because, while he has been adjusting to a new team in Baltimore, his wife and four children are remaining in Southern California until school is out.