Orioles’ Jim Dwyer Is Making the Most of His Last Chance

In this remarkable stretch for the Baltimore Orioles, he’s easily their most remarkable story.

He’s a player General Manager Hank Peters calls “a professional hitter” and one Manager Cal Ripken Sr. says is a “true team player.”

His performance has provided testimony to what weight lifting and food supplements and hard work can do for the twilight years of a baseball career.

This season, at age 37, his career has been reborn. He has homered once every 9.3 at-bats, easily the best ratio on a team loaded with power hitters, and in the Orioles’ record-breaking 13-game stretch, he has six of their 36 homers and a .436 batting average.

And yet, no one seems to know much about Jim Dwyer.

He’s among the quietest of Orioles, a beer and cheeseburger guy in a champagne game. His wardrobe is jeans and short-sleeve shirts, his hobbies bowling, cards and a beer or two with the boys. Giorgio Armani does not know his closet.

Dwyer does not rock boats, either. When the Orioles wanted to cut his salary from $400,000 to $275,000 last winter, he hesitated about six seconds and signed. When he got only 15 at-bats this spring, fewer than even Jackie Gutierrez, he did not complain.

He finally did scream three weeks ago when he began reading that he might be released. He could not understand it because the season was 24 games old, and he had all of 15 at-bats. And now he was going to be cut? Wouldn’t he get a chance to prove himself one last time?

After all, the Orioles gave Jim Palmer, Ken Singleton and Al Bumbry chances before delivering their pink slips. After six years of “doing everything they asked,” wouldn’t he get the same courtesy?

He did. Ripken threw him into the lineup on May 5 at Minnesota mainly because he had nowhere else to turn. Lee Lacy was on the disabled list, John Shelby was hitting .185 and the Orioles were 11 games out of first place.

That night, Dwyer hit a two-run homer, and the Orioles won, 5-4. Ripken threw him in the next night, and he had an RBI single in a 6-0 victory. He then was penciled in for another game and another and another.

Since that first start, Dwyer has missed only one start against right-handed pitching and gone 17 for 49 (.347) with seven home runs and 13 RBIs.

He has had a major impact in the Orioles’ turnaround. Like Larry Sheets and Alan Wiggins, he was supposed to ride the bench, and maybe the waiver wire, in 1987. The Orioles wanted fresh faces such as John Shelby and Ken Gerhart, a grand experiment that lasted 25 games.

“It’s kind of funny the way it has worked out, isn’t it?” Dwyer said. “There was all this talk about making the club different to make it better, and now we start winning when we go back to an old lineup. But that’s the way Oriole teams have always been. I don’t think they’ve ever had a set lineup, and that’s one reason I came here when I was a free agent (in 1981). I knew I’d get a chance to play.”

Today, the Orioles may say all the right things, but three weeks ago they had all but ordered him a retirement watch and a new bowling ball.

“I was upset when I saw in the paper I might be released,” Dwyer said. “No one had said anything to me, and, if I was going to be released, I at least wanted a chance to prove I could play. Maybe that was my last chance I was getting, and if so, fine.

“If I can’t do it, I’d be the first one to say I ought to be sent home. But I thought I could still play. I could tell by hitting off the batting machine that I still had my bat speed, so I wanted to get a chance.”

Three weeks later, he finds himself a key player on a team that has been suddenly revived. Against right-handed pitching, he has found a comfortable spot in the batting order between Wiggins and shortstop Cal Ripken Jr. With three hits Wednesday, Dwyer is batting .308.

Still, 37-year-old outfielders with patched up knees don’t know what to expect, and when Dwyer heard recently he might be traded to the Dodgers for reliever Tom Niedenfuer, he was worried. He mentioned it to a couple of teammates, and first baseman Eddie Murray asked Ripken Sr. about it.

“He said he wouldn’t do that to you,” Murray told Dwyer.

Peters was even stronger, saying, “We’re not going to trade Jim Dwyer.”

Dwyer: “I want to finish my career here. Terry Crowley went to Montreal at the end of his playing days, and he just got buried. They judged him on 10 at-bats because they’d never seen all the things he’d done in the past. At least here, they know what I can do.”

Dwyer traces his new strength and confidence to an off-season weight-training program he began two winters ago. He talked to Fred Lynn and others about weight training during the 1985 season and became convinced it was worth trying.

So every morning the last two winters, he’d get up early at his suburban home southwest of Chicago, drink two cups of coffee, read the newspapers and gulp a glass of amino acid solution.

He’d then drive 10 minutes to a gym and spend the next two hours working out, almost always alone. By the time he showed up for spring training last year, he’d added 13 pounds of mostly muscle and over two years, the change in his strength has been remarkable.

He has gone from squatting 115 pounds to 385 and from bench-pressing 115 pounds to 235 pounds.

“It has made a big difference,” he said. “Last year, I had the first good spring training of my life. You go up there with so much more confidence, it’s unreal. When you swing the bat, you feel the difference.”

He noticed the difference last season, although it was hard to tell. Earl Weaver gave him only 33 starts, and just a few after Aug. 6, a pivotal date in Dwyer’s career.

That night, Dwyer hit a grand slam against Texas and appeared on his way to a decent season. He had seven homers in 116 at-bats and was batting .310. After that, he went only 3 for 44 and didn’t homer again. Peters used that slump to show why Dwyer’s salary should be cut, and having tested the chilly free agent waters the year before, Dwyer accepted.

He then waited through spring training and the first 25 games of regular season without playing. Now, he may end up with more at-bats than he has ever had in 14 previous big league seasons.

“I’m not making excuses, but Earl just stopped using me,” he said. “I think I made four starts, and three of them were against Roger Clemens, Jim Clancy and Kirk McCaskill, three of the better right-handers in the league. The rest of the time Earl got me one at-bat every other night. I don’t care who you are, you’ve got to play now and then to be effective. I’ve always known my role here was as a left-handed pinch-hitter, but the more I play, the better.”