Reloading the Gun : Radinsky Pitching Again as Surgery Breathes New Life Into Professional Baseball Career

Scott Radinsky, left-handed pitcher and the closest thing to Superman this side of The Daily Planet during his final two seasons at Simi Valley High, experienced two new sensations in his first two years as a professional baseball player.

The first came in the spring of 1986 when the high school king of heat, the pitcher who struck out a dizzying 180 batters in 100 innings his senior season, unleashed his first pitch for the Chicago White Sox team in the Florida Instructional League. It was a sizzler, a pure Radinsky fastball, the same 90 m.p.h. gas he used to give batters goosebumps of fear at Simi Valley. The ball left his hand and hissed toward the plate.

A half-second later it came whistling back at his head. He never actually saw it go by, but from the sound of it, a screeching noise popularized by German rockets in World War II, Radinsky had a hunch the batter had gotten some good wood on it.

“He just ripped it,” Radinsky recalled. “It made noises when it came back. I said to myself, ‘Oh, oh. This isn’t high school anymore.’ I lasted two innings that day and figured out right away that I better learn how to pitch, not just throw the ball.”

The second sensation came last September as he warmed up on the sidelines in Sarasota. It came about one second after he had released another of those fastballs, when the force of his arm motion caused the glenoid labrum cartilage in his left shoulder to fray like a cheap piece of rope.

“It was one pitch, just a normal pitch,” he recalled. “But it felt like someone was holding a burning match under my armpit. No, not a match. More like a blowtorch, actually. I’d had the regular sore arms before, the kind every pitcher gets. But this was something altogether different. My shoulder was on fire.

“My pitching coach was standing right there and he didn’t even say much. He just got me off the field right away and got me into the trainer’s room.”

Since his father died in 1985 at age 60, Radinsky knew that life’s roads often take unexpected and painful turns. But this, he thought, was ridiculous. After two years in the minors Radinsky reasoned he would be well on his way, climbing the slippery-runged ladder toward the major leagues. Instead, he found himself gripping the steering wheel of his car and heading back to California, his career in somewhat of a shambles. And he was gripping the wheel, he noted, with his right hand.

On the long drive home, Radinsky stopped in Alabama to be examined by another Sox-appointed doctor. Tests were negative, and the doctor told Radinsky that it must be just a minor muscle tear and that a few months of rest should help. So Radinsky rested. And just before Christmas he decided it was time to test it.

So he went out behind his house and threw a baseball. And it hurt.

The White Sox sent Radinsky to another doctor, Alan Strizak of Fountain Valley, who decided that instead of being on the outside trying to guess what was wrong with Radinsky’s shoulder, it would be better to be on the inside, searching with an arthroscope for the problem. Early in January, Strizak made the incision and threaded the tiny scope inside. That’s when the frayed cartilage was discovered and clipped away.

“I started rehabilitation the very next day,” Radinsky said. “I went down to Fountain Valley, sat on a table and tried to move my arm. It was pretty tough.”

But after a week he was lifting light weights and stretching. The weights have gotten heavier and the stretching more intense. And two weeks ago, more than a month after he would have reported to spring training in Florida if he had been healthy, Radinsky picked up a baseball and a glove again. And when he threw, he didn’t yelp. The pain had vanished.

There was, however, one little catch. He was only throwing at about 50% of his regular velocity. The final result of the surgery, then, is still not in.

“I haven’t been able to let one go yet, to really unload one,” he said. “It’s not my arm. It feels fine so far. But I’m just pretty apprehensive. It hurt so much the last time I threw my best fastball, and after the surgery and all the rehab work I just don’t know what I’d do if it hurt like that again. It’s strange. I’ve lifted so many weights that I feel stronger than I ever have in my life. But something’s just not the same. I just don’t want to let one go yet.”

All this is not what Radinsky had in mind when he signed with the White Sox. He was drafted in the third round, the 72nd pick overall, and signed a hefty contract. Reports pegged it at more than $50,000.

“He doesn’t think anyone can beat him, and that’s what will get him to the big leagues,” Dwayne Schaeffer, the White Sox scouting supervisor for the West Coast, said after Radinsky’s signing. “He’s the type of high school pitcher who could move up very quickly. I don’t see anyone stopping this kid from doing what he wants to do.”

His first stop, in the summer of 1986, was pleasant enough once he got over the shock of that headhunting line drive on his very first pro pitch. He said he learned a lot in the following months and apparently impressed some White Sox officials. He played again in the Florida Instructional League that fall, and when he reported to spring training in 1987, he was told he’d be working out with the double-A club, a Bob Beamon-type leap from the instructional team.

It was a leap too far.

“I worked with them for three weeks and then got bumped off that roster,” Radinsky said. “Those guys were all so consistent and a lot more mature. I wasn’t in their league yet. I could see it.”

He was assigned instead to the club’s Class-A Carolina League team, the Peninsula White Sox, in Virginia.

“That was a rough time,” Radinsky said.

How rough? Well, does a 1-7 record in eight starts and a 5.77 earned-run average sound rough enough?

“I had a different coach with different techniques and I felt like I was going downhill,” he said. “I wasn’t happy with the way things were going and I developed a bad attitude toward the situation and the coach.

“After two and a half months, I was sent back to Sarasota.”

During the drive from Virginia to Florida, Radinsky had plenty of time to think. What he thought about mostly was that he was thinking too much.

“It hit me that I had started taking it all too seriously,” he said. “I always loved playing baseball, and now I had made it like a job. I was on the mound thinking about how to pitch to this guy, who that guy was. Thinking about everything. On that drive to Florida I decided to go back to the attitude I had in high school, to just throw hard, just let it fly. That’s when I’m at my best. I still have things to learn about pitching, but I decided not to forget to have fun doing it.”

For the last two months of the Florida Instructional League last summer, Radinsky began to regain the form that once drew scouts to him like bugs to a headlight. He was 3-3 with a 2.31 ERA, giving up 43 hits in 58 innings. And he regained his mastery of batters, striking out 41 in those 58 innings.

“I was really happy to be back there,” he said. “I wanted to forget all that had happened and just start pitching again.”

After the season, he returned to Simi Valley for two weeks and then headed to Sarasota for the start of the fall instructional league. But before he threw his first pitch in a game, he suffered the shoulder injury.

“That’s been the low point,” he said. “Or maybe it was being sent down from the Carolina League. When that happened, I felt like I’d been given my chance and I’d blown it. I was really down.”

But there have been shining moments, too. The brightest was the time Chicago White Sox Manager Jim Fregosi came to see one of Radinsky’s finest pro performances.

“It was the first instructional league in 1986 and I pitched three shutout innings,” he recalled. “I struck the last three guys out and I ran off the field. I was just real happy. And then Jim came over and looked at me and said, ‘Scott Radinsky. A left-hander and a Californian. That was good stuff.’ That was pretty exciting. I felt like I was on top of the world.”

He will return to Sarasota on Friday to continue his rehabilitation. Two years of professional baseball have left their marks, both on his head and shoulder. But Radinsky said he knows he can regain that top-of-the-world feeling.

“I’ve got to keep trying,” he said. “I know what I can do. I know what I want. I’ve just got to keep chasing it. As long as they give me the opportunity, I’ll keep trying. I know that someday I can be a good major league pitcher.”