BASEBALL’S LATEST POWER BROKERS : Braves’ Virgil Gets Lots of Laughs Off Field, but His 16 Homers Are Nothing to Snicker At

The blizzard of Oz is upon us, and, quite frankly, we’re all a little shocked. Ozzie Virgil--an Atlanta Brave catcher and nothing more--already has hit 16 home runs this year.

Now, if we’re ranking the Oz types, Virgil ranks a distant third, well behind the St. Louis Cardinals’ Mr. Smith and the Wizard of.

We look at Virgil’s 16 home runs--fifth most in the National League--and we snicker. We think the baseball is juiced up. And when we see that New York Met mighty mite Lenny Dykstra has hit one over the center-field wall at Shea Stadium this year, we snicker some more.

We look at Virgil’s 16 home runs, and we cough. Have you seen them pitch to him?

Ozzie Virgil prefers inside fastballs, so why in the world do they keep throwing inside fastballs? It’s beyond us. And, quite frankly, it’s beyond him, too.

We look at his 16 home runs, and we wink. He plays in the “launching pad,” a stadium known more for home runs than home victories. They used to employ an Indian chief down here--his name was Chief Noc-A-Homa--whose sole assignment was to dance whenever the Braves hit a homer. He danced so much, it’s still raining cats and dogs here.

We look at Ozzie Virgil, and we wonder what the heck’s happening. He walks like a duck. His father--another virtually unknown Ozzie--made him a catcher for fear that his son would hurt himself in the outfield.

At that, Ozzie appears to be a little dizzy. Last year, a Brave pitcher became pretty upset over the way Virgil was handling a ballgame. A runner had been on second base and Virgil had not changed his signs to the pitcher. The baserunner, then, was free to steal them.

Asked about it afterward, Ozzie explained: “Oh, (the guy at second) wasn’t looking.”

So maybe it’s time we explained about Ozzie Virgil. Truth is, his 16 home runs are legit.

Think the ball’s juiced up?

Maybe it is, but Dale Murphy, who knows a little about home runs, said: “Every ball Ozzie’s hit would’ve been a home run in the dead-ball era, whenever that was.”

And true, Ozzie gets to play 81 games a year in the “launching pad,” but of his 16 homers this season, he has hit half on the road. So perhaps his bat has something to do with all this.

A logical explanation for the homers is the pathetic pitching. In the National League, only the Dodgers and the Cubs have team earned-run averages under 4.00. “It’s true,” Virgil said. “I’m an inside fastball hitter, and they’re throwing me inside. Don’t ask me why.”

Ask anyone who plays with Virgil, and they point to his biceps. Glenn Wilson played with him in Philadelphia a couple of years back, and Wilson says: “His swing is the closest to Mike Schmidt’s I’ve ever seen. He swings down through the ball, and that’s hard to teach.”

Hank King, the Phillies’ left-handed batting practice pitcher for years, rates Virgil over every right-handed hitter he has ever faced in batting practice, including Greg Luzinski and Dick Allen.

“Ozzie just pounded me,” King said. “There’s one of the great BP hitters.”

But batting practice is a lot different than playing time, and Virgil has had this tendency during games to swing at balls five feet outside. In BP, you swing at everything, and you swing hard. During PT, you’d better not.

Ozzie’s dad--Ozzie Virgil Sr., the Seattle Mariners’ third base coach--says that’s the difference this season. He says his son is being more selective this year. He says his son is laying off balls five feet outside.

In other words, his son supposedly has grown up.

Ha! That’s a laugh.

If we all knew him, maybe he’d move up in the Ozzie polls. Ozzie Virgil is one of baseball’s great characters, home runs or not.

One day at spring training this year, he brought his pellet gun with him to the stadium. He wanted to take some target practice but he had nothing to aim at.

So Virgil ended up shooting at some stadium lights, and Brave Manager Chuck Tanner hit the grandstand roof. “Are you crazy!” Tanner shouted. “What if you shoot somebody?”

Most of the time, Virgil is playing with guns or fishing or hunting or flying remote-control airplanes, or flying real airplanes. He’s got more hobbies than Leonardo da Vinci. This spring, he was a missing person during a morning workout, and somebody said: “He’s probably out in the parking lot, flying his toy planes.”

Indeed he was.

Last year, the Braves were hitting so many homers, they called themselves the “Bomb Squad.” So, as a promotion, a real bomb squad showed up at the stadium one day--the Georgia Air National Guard.

Virgil told one of the officers that he wanted to fly in an F-15 fighter plane. He kept bugging the guy about it, and last month--after the governor of Georgia had approved it--he got to take the ride. He said it was pretty neat, going 600 m.p.h.

“That lit my hair up,” Virgil said. “I had a lot of feelings I never knew I had. That was not no roller-coaster ride. You can feel the blood leaving your body, down to your feet. You’ve got to keep yourself from falling asleep. You’re screaming to stay awake. I was up there for an hour and 20 minutes. And it took me four hours to recover, like I was in a war, like someone beat me up.”

Immediately after that trip, Virgil went on his home run tear, hitting five in five games, seven in eight games. People at the Air Force base called him and said, “We got you going.”

So there’s a new theory: Flying in the F-15 woke up Dizzy Ozzie.

“If it’ll get me another ride, sure, I’ll agree,” Virgil said.

He’s more proud of his F-15 blast-off than his home run blasts. There are no photos of his home run swing in his living room at home, just one of him in his F-15 flying outfit. To be honest, Virgil has never really cared much for sports.

His parents were divorced when he was 9. He went to live with his dad four years later because his mother was having a difficult time raising him and his two sisters alone.

But his dad wasn’t around much. Ozzie Virgil Sr. was in the major leagues for nine seasons--with the New York Giants, the Pirates, the Orioles, the Tigers and the Kansas City A’s. He was the first Dominican to reach the majors, and the first black to play for the Tigers.

In one game in the minors, Ozzie Sr. played eight positions. He reached his peak in his first professional game--with Detroit--when he went 5 for 5. He never had another offensive day like it. His career batting average was .231 with 14 homers.

His son hit 13 homers this May.

Anyway, the point is, Ozzie Jr. began to take sports for granted. His dad took him to meet Willie Mays and Willie McCovey, and he was in the clubhouse almost every day. But Ozzie Jr. never cared to ask for their autographs. He got some signatures for his friends, but never for himself.

Ozzie Jr. was also something of a loner. He enjoyed toy planes and GI Joe dolls and things like that. His dad said he made little Ozzie play high school ball, for fear he’d get into drugs if he didn’t play sports. Ozzie Sr. didn’t even know his son was a prospect until some scout said, “Hey, your son ain’t half bad.”

“You’re kidding me,” Ozzie Sr. said.

The thing was, Ozzie Jr. always kidded around, was never serious.

How did he propose to his wife? He went searching for a ring, and while he was looking, he saw a gun he liked. He then drove to see her, slipped her the engagement ring and suddenly pointed the gun to his head.

“That’s Ozzie,” his wife, Leigh, says now. “He’s a little boy, that’s what he is.”

Still, after he proposed to Leigh, he didn’t marry her for two years. “We broke up about 20 times,” Leigh said.

Eventually, she started dating someone else and, one day, called off their engagement. Ozzie got the message. He told her he was coming over to take her for a ride. He picked her up at her home in San Diego and drove to Las Vegas. They were married that day.

At about that time, the Phillies drafted him. One year in the minors, he hit 29 homers. And he hit 28 another year in Triple-A.

But his first major league manager, Pat Corrales, thought he was the most irresponsible catcher ever, except it should be noted that Corrales is a former catcher and could be overly critical sometimes.

Anyway, the Phillies didn’t like his work habits. They made him take grounders at first base one day, blasting ball after ball at him. One hit a crease in the artificial turf, bounced up and crushed Virgil’s nose.

The next day, they had him fielding grounders while wearing a catcher’s mask.

Steve Carlton, then the Phillies’ top pitcher, thought Virgil was the worst ever behind the plate, though it also should be noted that Carlton only liked to throw to Tim McCarver. Carlton didn’t even like Bob Boone.

Anyway, the Phillies used to get all over Virgil about his outside interests. Whenever there was turbulence on a team flight, Carlton would shout: “Get Virgil out of the cockpit! He can’t fly either!”

Basically, the Phillies weren’t sure what to make of Virgil. On the road, he’d buy 20 magazines at once--”And not Sports Illustrated or Sporting News,” Virgil says. He’d buy every hunting or fishing periodical imaginable. He says he prefers fishing for sharks. “I like to fish for something that might eat you if you fall in the water.”

He and teammates Wilson and Von Hayes used to take hunting trips to Michigan, where Virgil shot his first deer.

They all drove back to town in Wilson’s pickup truck, on top of which Wilson was hauling a three-wheeled recreational vehicle. Ozzie and Wilson propped up the deer on the three-wheeler, then drove to a fancy club for dinner, dropping the truck and the deer off at valet parking.

One off-season in Puerto Rico, Virgil was accidently shot in the thumb by a stray bullet at a Fourth of July fireworks show. He wasn’t hurt seriously, but he saved the slug and wore it around his neck on a chain as a souvenir.

But the bottom line was this: Virgil had power. For the Phillies in 1985, he hit a career-high 19 home runs. The Phillies needed a quality pitcher, though, and traded Virgil to Atlanta in December of 1985 for reliever Steve Bedrosian and outfielder Milt Thompson.

Virgil, who had come up in the Phillie organization with Bob Dernier, Ryne Sandberg and Keith Moreland, was hurt by the trade. His wife and Ozzie Sr. think that’s why he hit only .223 with 15 homers last year.

“I let me affect me last year,” Virgil says now. “Me! Sometimes, you’re your own worst enemy.”

But this year--even though 13 of his homers have been with the bases empty , and even though he has had only 1 homer in his last 49 at-bats--is altogether different.

We look at his 16 home runs, and we must accept them. Maybe, just maybe, this is no ordinary Oz.