Depending on Dan : Petry’s Return to Winning Form Would Help Angels Return to the Hunt in AL West

Back in Dan Petry’s good old days, before a surgeon’s scar adorned his right elbow, the Detroit Tigers pitcher reported to training camp every day during the spring of 1986 and stared at the photo taped to his locker.

It was a baseball card of Gary Pettis.

“In 1985, he hit exactly one home run,” Petry recalls. “And it was off me. I still remember it. It was on national TV, right after the birth of my first son. A three-run home run to the opposite field at Tiger Stadium.”

Things like that have a way of sticking in one’s memory. And craw. The baseball card was Petry’s attempt to exorcise the spirits that conspired to bring about that deathless moment in baseball history.

Maybe, Petry should have burned some candles instead.

Last December, Petry was sitting in his Detroit living room, watching the evening news, when-- flashback --there it was again. Roll the tape, Petry kicks and deals . . . and Pettis sneaks it over the outfield fence.

It was the local station’s way of neatly packaging the major sports news of the day: Petry-for-Pettis, in the trade that kicked off the 1987 baseball winter meetings.

“They also showed me striking out Pettis,” Petry said. “A home run and a strikeout. I’m looking at this and saying to myself, ‘What can they be thinking of?’ ”

Since then, Petry has formed some thoughts of his own.

“I guess that means it’s going to be an even trade,” he said with a grin.

Even? Better not tell that to the Angels.

Pettis batted .208 in 133 games with the Angels in 1987. He hit 1 home run--and inside the park, at that--and drove in just 17 runs in 394 at-bats. His hitting tailed off so severely that he spent most of the month of August in the minors.

He also had 124 strikeouts, which is more than Petry has delivered since 1984.

It’s amazing what one arm operation can do to a pitcher’s market value.

Two years ago, with Petry coming off a 15-13, 3.36 ERA season in 1985, the Angels could have offered their entire outfield and not pried Petry loose from the Tigers. San Francisco tried, and failed, with Chili Davis. Cincinnati, Philadelphia and Cleveland all dangled various power-hitting types--and all came up empty.

“I was always being traded in the newspapers,” Petry said. “There was always talk. Even after I won 19 games (in 1983), there were rumors. For some reason, people were always stirring stuff up about me.”

Actually, there was a good reason. In a four-year span from 1982 to 1985, Petry averaged 17 victories a season. He went 19-11 in 1983 and 18-8 in 1984. After the 1985 season, he had already totaled 93 major league victories--and he was only 26.

That kind of pitching talent is forever in demand.

But the hue and cry died by the middle of the 1986 season, after bone chips were surgically removed from Petry’s right elbow. Another young pitcher had fallen to the knife, cut down in his prime.

Petry has spent the last two years waiting for the old pitcher, the old Petry, to make a comeback.

Petry’s numbers during those years:

--1986: 5-10 with a 4.66 earned-run average. A total of 175 baserunners in 116 innings, an average of 13.6 every 9 innings.

--1987: 9-7, 5.61, 148 hits in 134 innings, an average of more than 5 walks every 9 innings.

Petry once lived on finesse and control. Now, he says: “I think I got into some bad habits after the operation. I’ve been trying to throw hard, to let everyone know the arm’s OK. But my stuff is not Nolan Ryan’s stuff. I can’t get pitch belt-high all the time and get away with it.

“I have to become a pitcher again. Since the surgery, I’ve been more of a thrower.”

Petry, who makes his first regular-season start for the Angels tonight against the Chicago White Sox, has heard former manager Gene Mauch’s theory on post-op pitchers--that it takes a full year after surgery before a pitcher has confidence in his arm again.

He doubted the theory’s validity--at first.

“Now, I have to believe it,” Petry says. “I heard it so much that I started to think, ‘Well, I’m going to show everybody that I’m not tentative’ and I’d try to throw harder and harder. I was trying to blow people away--and I never could do that, even before the surgery.”

For two years before the surgery, Petry spent most of his time trying to convince himself that no surgery was necessary. An X-ray revealed the bone chips in early 1984, but Petry said, “They didn’t bother me so I said, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ ”

By 1986, he was worried.

“The chips started to float around,” Petry said. “They’d dislodge and get into a joint, and my arm would lock up. I remember it happening between pitches. I’d have to stop, pinch my elbow and move the chip to another spot so I could keep pitching.

“After a while, I said, ‘That’s not right.’ ”

Petry underwent arthroscopic surgery June 10, 1986, and spent more than two months rehabilitating the arm. He returned to the Tigers in late August and went 1-5 with a 4.26 ERA the rest of the way.

By August of 1987, Petry had pitched his way out of the Tigers’ rotation. He had struggled to a 7-7 record with a 6.31 ERA in 21 starts and was moved by Manager Sparky Anderson to the bullpen. There, he finished Detroit’s division-winning season, compiling a 2-0 record and a 2.93 ERA in 9 relief appearances.

“Going to the bullpen last year was probably the best thing for me,” Petry said. “Earlier, I had some doubts. But in the bullpen, I had a few good outings and felt like I did contribute something to the Tigers.

“It was like, ‘Hey, wait a minute, I still know how to pitch.’ ”

And that is the sliver of hope Petry, and the Angels, take into the 1988 season.

Petry heard the news--and revisited that blasted swing by Pettis--last Dec. 5. He should have been prepared for such a development, but when it happened, all Petry, a Detroit Tiger for nine years, could do was stare vacantly at the television screen.

“I was shocked,” he said. “I shouldn’t have been. I had thought about leaving anyway. The Tigers talked all season long about trading me, and if they didn’t tender me a contract by Dec. 20, I was going to be declared a free agent.

“It’s just that the Angels were the least-likely team I thought of.”

That would be too easy, Petry thought. Too neat. Petry grew up in Placentia, about five freeway off-ramps north of Anaheim Stadium. He attended El Dorado High School in the same city, pitching that school to the CIF Southern Section 2-A championship in 1976. After he was married, he bought a house in Anaheim Hills, which he sold in early 1986--just before the arm operation.

He should have known.

“I grew up there so, naturally, I figured I never was going to play there,” Petry said. “Once you spend 10 years in Detroit, no way, just forget about it. So, in the summer of ‘86, we moved to Detroit.”

Petry is not quite ready to move back just yet.

“If I could write the story, I’d have 20 wins and sign a good, long contract and buy a new house,” he said. “But I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m not going to make any drastic moves.”

Still . . .

“When I think about it, it’s almost a perfect situation,” Petry said. “People bring it up to me--’You wanted a new start.’ And it’s not like they traded me to Ethiopia. I know the freeway system, I know the ballpark, I know the area.

“The only difference is, I have to learn about a different team and a different manager.”

One more thing, too. The Angels are banking heavily on Petry learning how to win baseball games again. If they have any realistic hope of finishing in the top half of the AL West in 1988, the Angels need Petry to at least approach his old 15-victory form.

After Petry’s 0-4, 9.50 spring, the Angels aren’t holding their breath--although Petry attributes much of that to his Feb. 27 back injury and subsequent late start during training camp.

“The back thing definitely set me back,” said Petry, who suffered a slight herniated disk in his lower back while bending over during agility drills in Mesa, Ariz. “I missed two weeks of batting practice time. I never never worked on my breaking ball, and I had to fine-tune my slider and my changeup during games. That’s not an easy thing to do.”

Petry’s first three spring outings resulted in losses of 7-1, 10-1 and 11-0. His fourth start was a no-decision--he allowed three runs in five innings--and his last exhibition appearance was a 5-0 loss to the Dodgers in the Freeway Series. Petry and the Angels, however, considered that a moral victory, with Petry retiring the first 15 batters he faced before tiring in the sixth inning.

And tonight, it’s the real thing. With Mike Witt having already lost the opener and Chuck Finley scheduled to start Thursday, the Angels may need a victory out of Petry to avoid entering their home opener on the heels of a three-game sweep in Chicago.

Manager Cookie Rojas and pitching coach Marcel Lachemann planned for Petry to pitch Game 2 here because of his track record against the White Sox--9-5 with a career ERA of 3.58.

“I had real good success against the White Sox early in my career,” Petry said. He smiles. “But the last year-and-a-half, I haven’t had much success against anybody.”

Lachemann is hopeful that will change, based on the signs evident from his last two spring viewings of Petry.

“He’s only 29 years old,” Lachemann said. “He’s already won 107 (major league) ballgames. A lot of guys never reach that their entire careers. We’re trying to get him to remember how good Dan Petry was and how good he can be again. He’s got to get that picture of himself back in his mind.”

And, maybe remind his arm as well.

“When he was in Detroit, he used to throw 90, 91, 92 miles per hour,” Lachemann said. “We’ve had him on the gun over here and he’s been in the high-80s range. That’s not a flat overpowering fastball, but in his repertoire, it’s good enough. He also has an excellent curveball, a changeup and the slider as an out-pitch. He has four quality pitches to work with.”

Petry credits Lachemann’s lecturing for the strides made in his last two starts. “Lach has worked hard with me,” he said. “Whatever success I have this year will be because of him.”

But an old friend named Roger Craig lended an assist a couple weeks ago in Palm Springs.

Before he was manager of the San Francisco Giants, Craig was Petry’s pitching coach in Detroit. Former teacher and pupil got together for a few minutes before a game in Palm Springs, and rehashed old times before Craig offered one piece of advice.

Said Petry: “The only thing he told me was, ‘Have confidence, throw your shoulders back and feel a little cocky out there. Just like you were in Detroit.’ ”

So, Petry will try tonight to regain that old feeling, although, as the last two years have shown, that’s easier said than done.

A few sliders on the outside corner and five or six shutout innings wouldn’t hurt.