A MONEY PITCHER : Sutter’s Millions Are Safe, but He Wants to Earn Saves Again

Iwo Jima is what they call it, a sandy, patchy wind-blown field that the Atlanta Braves usually reserve for their longshots, their rookies, their non-roster invitees with football-like jersey numbers: 73, 71, 57. Guys with names such as Pfaff and Dewey and Smoltz.

And Sutter.

That would be reliever Bruce Sutter, 35, who happens to rank third on the all-time list of saves, a former Cy Young winner. Who happens to be in the fourth year of a six-year contract worth $1.7 million a year-- guaranteed , and that doesn’t even include annuity and deferments. Who happens to be attempting the kind of comeback that has the Braves’ clubhouse rooting with unabashed emotion.

Back on May 27, 1986, Atlanta Manager Chuck Tanner summoned Sutter from the bullpen in Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium. The Braves had the lead with one out in the bottom of the eighth inning, the sort of situation Sutter savored.

Though still early in the long season, a win would have lifted the Braves to 24-20, into a tie for second place in the National League West and only 1 1/2 games from the division lead.

The Pittsburgh crowd, as usual, was small: 2,830 fans sat comfortably in the 58,000-seat stadium that once rocked to the sound of “We Are Family.” So when Sutter stepped to the mound that May evening, the place was predictably subdued. Twenty-eight hundred or so people can make only so much noise.

Already he had made 15 appearances in just 43 games, a noteworthy amount considering he was only five months removed from surgery on his right shoulder.

There were warning signs, though. Plenty. In the previous two weeks he had allowed 5 runs in 4 innings, especially dreadful by Sutter standards. He had just 3 saves, 2 wins and an earned-run average headed toward the mid-4s. The day after an appearance “I couldn’t hold a carton of milk up,” he said.

And then the tender shoulder, most likely worn down from a busier-than-expected exhibition season, followed by those 15 regular-season appearances, gave out. A run here. A run there. The famed split-finger fastball wasn’t splitting; it was sitting there in the strike zone, waiting to get the bejabbers knocked out of it.

“I could get the ball to home plate, if you call that pitching,” he said the other day. “I could have always done that.”

But that isn’t the Sutter way. Never has been, never will.

“At my job, at that stage of the game, when your team’s winning by one or two runs, you can’t go out there hoping,” he said.

Let the record show that Sutter did what he could, which wasn’t much, because his shoulder tightened. He coaxed a ground out from the bat of Pirate shortstop Sammy Khalifa and then Sutter was gone . . . for 21 months.

Asked now about the last game he pitched, Sutter can remember few particulars. “I didn’t think about (Khalifa) being the last one,” he said.

Sutter was placed on the disabled list, where he has resided in one form or the other ever since. You need the Surgeon General to explain all the intricacies of Sutter’s $10-million pitching shoulder, but the gist of it is this:

Since 1985, he has had surgery on the shoulder three times--once to repair an incomplete tear of the rotator cuff and remove cartilage; once to release a suprascapular entrapment of the shoulder, a fancy way of saying that a ligament had tightened around a nerve in the shoulder and hampered blood flow; and most recently, an operation to remove scar tissue surrounding the nerve damage in the shoulder.

The scar tissue operation, Sutter can live with. The incomplete tear is serious, but he said he can overcome it. The one that’s causing the most serious trouble is the nerve damage. The blocked nerve damaged muscles that keep Sutter’s shoulder in place. There is no true remedy, at least not for a pitcher. Instead, Sutter has tried to strengthen the muscles around the damaged area, in hopes that they can compensate for the loss.

“The nerve has never come back,” he said. “That muscle . . . is gone; it will never come back.

“But the (rehabilitation) is just something I had to do if I wanted to play. I don’t look at it as any great big deal. I’m not looking for sympathy.”

Neither are the Braves, who were stuck footing the considerable bill that Sutter commanded when he became a free agent after the 1984 season, leaving the St. Louis Cardinals to sign with Atlanta.

But this is the Braves’ legacy of sorts: Most everything they touch lately turns to mud. Sutter was just the most recent and costliest instance of poor timing.

And maybe it was only coincidence, but after Sutter’s injury troubles, fewer and fewer teams plunked down the big bucks for available players. So if Sutter’s misfortunes didn’t kill free agency as it once was, it may have maimed it a bit.

“I would say it’s just not Bruce; I wouldn’t want to single him out at all,” said Bobby Cox, Brave general manager. “There were a lot of free agents who couldn’t fulfill their contracts. There was so much money on the books for free agents who weren’t playing baseball, contracts out there for people who were no longer in the game. He’s one little part of it. But I think ownership took a look at that, sure.

“It’s a risk that you take (signing free agents). And it’s a risk that we’re willing to take. We’re not crying sour grapes on it at all. We made a decision at that time. We like Bruce.”

In a way, they have no choice. The contract is long since signed, an agreement by the Braves to make 30 years of annual payments set to begin after the conclusion of Sutter’s salary period in 1990. When they first lured him to Atlanta, the Braves thought they were purchasing one of the best relievers in the game. In 1985, he had 23 saves, a 7-7 record and a 4.48 ERA.

Now the Braves aren’t sure exactly what they have, other than injured goods.

“He wants to pitch,” Cox said. “It’s really hurt him inside to have come over here and not pitch. He wants to earn his money, I know that.”

Sutter has spent almost two years readying himself for this spring training, admittedly his last if his shoulder betrays him once more. He lifted weights. He ran. He worked with a therapist.

Here, he follows his own rehabilitation program, an unusual arrangement, but then again, an unusual pitcher. Unlike 1986, when he returned from surgery much too quickly, Sutter is forcing nothing. One day he’ll throw on the sideline for exactly five minutes and batting practice for another five minutes--not a second more. The next day he allows himself only 10 minutes’ worth of long tosses. The next day he rests.

“He’s come an awful long way in a year,” pitching coach Bruce Dal Canton said. “You don’t want to mess it up now.”

Dal Canton is Sutter’s governor switch, his Mr. Realism. No matter how well Sutter might feel that particular day, it’s Dal Canton’s job to temper the thought.

“I’ve got to take my time because it will be the last shot,” Sutter said. “I’m 35 years old. I’ve sat out a year and worked hard. If I can’t do it now, the chance of me doing it when I’m 36 isn’t going to be much better. If I can’t do it, then I just can’t do it. But the way I’ve been feeling, I think I have a pretty good shot at it. If I didn’t . . . I wouldn’t be down here wasting the Braves’ time, the fans’ time, my time.”

There’s no timetable for this sort of thing. Dal Canton has worked with other pitchers on the mend, but never with one worth this much. So they step carefully, always glancing at that stopwatch.

By his best estimate, Sutter said he might be able “to air it out” by, say, the third week of March, but only on the sideline and not in a game. That comes later.

The other day, while pitching those precious five minutes of batting practice, Sutter looked strong enough. Of the three batters he faced, only two managed any hits of consequence. The rest bounced harmlessly toward infielders.

“It’s early and all that, but he’s loaded with confidence,” Cox said. “I mean, if it’s ever going to heal, it’s done it. If it isn’t, it will blow.”

Said Dal Canton: “He looks like he’s throwing it free and easy. The big test is not going to be until you get a hitter up there and an umpire behind a catcher.”

Those who know Sutter said he would have attempted the comeback no matter if his contract was worth $10 or $10 million. Such is his pride. Almost every morning, he is among the first players to arrive at Municipal Stadium here and one of the last to leave.

His teammates have noticed.

“The guy the last couple of years has worked harder than anybody I’ve seen, just to try to get back and help this club,” pitcher Rick Mahler said. “I know Bruce. I know that he’s the kind of guy who doesn’t just want the money. He wants to come back and prove that he’s worth the money. He just wants to help this club win.”

Said catcher Bruce Benedict: “Here’s a player who is financially stable and does not need to throw a ball again. But the hours he has spent rehabilitating himself have been extraordinary.”

Should Sutter be able to pull this off, return and produce, no one is expecting a repeat of 1984, when he had a league-leading 45 saves for the St. Louis Cardinals. “It’s hard to expect a guy to be that good with the arm problems he’s had,” Mahler said.

The Braves learned their lesson. No matter how well Sutter looks in spring training, or feels come opening day, “he’s not going to be overused,” Cox said. The investment is too large, the time committed too substantial.

So Sutter sees the light at the end of the odyssey. He plods optimistically along, making one careful throw after another. He’s rich, sure. Professionally satisfied, not yet.

“I don’t want an injury to force me out,” he said before making his way to the Braves’ weight room. “They were expecting a lot of things from me here at the Braves, and I only gave them about two months of work (in 1986). Then all of the sudden I’m hurt for two years. Now I just want to see if I can do it.”

He’ll find out soon enough.

An old pitcher once told Dal Canton there’s an easy enough way to see if a guy still has the right stuff. “The hitters will tell you if you have it or not,” the man said.

The hitters soon will tell Sutter. He can’t wait for the answer.