A Star Is Born: His Name Is Terry Steinbach : Most Unlikely of All-Stars Is MVP Winner

So he received 690,438 votes, making him the American League’s starting catcher in the 59th All-Star game and a subject of national ridicule because of his .217 batting average, 5 home runs and 19 runs batted in with the Oakland Athletics.

So what? Steinbach had already been conditioned to tougher times in 1988. He was hit by a thrown ball on May 6 and suffered five fractures around his left eye, resulting in corrective surgery and almost a month on the disabled list.

He was back only four days, in fact, when he played 10 pin to the bowling ball that is Kirby Puckett and was put out of action for another four days in a violent collision featured frequently on “This Week in Baseball.”

A little ridicule? A little teasing? Big deal.

“I don’t think I snuck in and I wasn’t going to turn it down,” he said Tuesday night. “I know there were a lot of questions asked about me, but I wasn’t trying to prove anything. I just wanted to do my best and hope some of the people who didn’t think I belonged would change their mind.”

Steinbach didn’t call it vindication, but the most unlikely of the 56 All-Stars in Tuesday night’s game at Riverfront Stadium emerged as the most valuable player. Terry Lee Steinbach clutched the trophy after driving in both runs in the American League’s 2-1 victory.

He hit a solo homer off Dwight Gooden in the third inning and a bases loaded sacrifice fly that sent left fielder Vince Coleman to the warning track in the fourth.

“I can’t describe my feelings,” said Steinbach, who is as imperfect as the system that elected him, which is a tired theme.

What if they stuffed the ballot box in Oakland? What if they punched thousands of ballots with a nail on a stick, resulting in many being discarded by the commissioner’s office? What if Tim Laudner, the All-Star backup, and Bob Boone, the venerable Angel, should have been selected ahead of Steinbach, who hasn’t even been the Athletics’ regular catcher, sharing that position with Ron Hassey because of his injuries? What if the nicest thing they could say about Terry Steinbach in the All-Star media guide is that he “got off to a slow start but was batting at a .226 clip as of late June?”

Isn’t this what happens every year? Isn’t this the way the system is? Haven’t we been told that it’s the fans’ game and that it’s not going to change? Why fight it?

Now 26, Steinbach hit .286 in 1987, his first full season in the major leagues. He had 16 homers, 16 doubles and 56 runs batted in.

He knew he belonged. He and others just didn’t know if it was in an All-Star game?

“I know my numbers aren’t what they should be, but the fans call the shots,” he said, surrounded by media at his locker. “I think people saw a combination of this year and last year when they voted for me.

“I mean, I’m very happy with what I’ve been doing defensively (he’s thrown out 47% of opposing baserunners), but I’ve been down on myself offensively and down on myself about the injuries. The one thing in baseball is that you’ve got to keep going, you’ve got to keep looking forward. Hopefully I can go on and turn it around now. Hopefully I can have a good second half.”

His All-Star hopes were simple.

“What was the worst I could do?” he said. “Strike out twice, have a couple runners steal, let a pitch get by me for a passed ball? That was the worst and I knew it wouldn’t be that bad.”

Nevertheless, Steinbach couldn’t be sure when Gooden threw that first fastball past him in the third. “It’s no secret,” Steinbach said. “He has one of the best fastballs in baseball. I wasn’t looking for the curve.”

He got enough of the next fastball to hit a drive toward the right-field wall. The ball apparently hit the top of the fence, then glanced off Darryl Strawberry’s glove before falling for a home run.

“I didn’t crush it. I didn’t hit a towering drive. I hit it to the one area of the park where it had a chance,” Steinbach said, then tried to describe his feelings.

“I can’t,” he said. “I mean, one minute you’re standing in the batter’s box. You’re nervous, you don’t want to strike out, you don’t want to embarrass yourself. Then you’ve hit a home run and it doesn’t really hit you until you’ve rounded third base.”

It hit Steinbach hard enough that he reached the dugout and clanged elbows with a number of his more renowned teammates in the celebratory gesture known as the Monster Bash and initiated by Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire of the Athletics. Steinbach had now homered in his first All-Star at-bat as well as his first at-bat in the major leagues and he was teased by the American League All-Stars, who wanted to know his secret.

Then, when he went to bat with the bases loaded in the fourth, he said he was thinking only of the AL’s pregame meeting in which Manager Tom Kelly asked his team to remember the little things and advance runners when needed, hit the sacrifice fly when needed.

“I was looking for a pitch up in the strike zone that I could drive to the outfield,” he said. “I knew it wasn’t gone, but I knew it was deep enough to get in the run.”

What Kirby Puckett knew about Terry Steinbach is that he was tough enough to handle the ridicule being directed at him. Puckett stood at his locker Tuesday night, smiled as he thought about that June collision and said: “I gave him all I had and I came away with the stitches. Three in my lip, two in my nose. He never took his mask off and that’s what I hit.”

Said Steinbach, who held onto the ball: “Kirby went one way and I went the other. He was out, but I was really out. I was seeing stars.”

The good part to that was that Steinbach wasn’t seeing double, as he did for several weeks after an errant throw by McGwire during batting practice struck him near his left eye in early May. Doctors removed the chips, lifted the socket, repositioned the bones and fastened it together with wire.

“They did a great job,” Steinbach said late Tuesday night, then exhaled and said, “you know, I think I’m feeling a lot of relief right now. I guess this was something of a pressure situation and I wanted to come in and show people I could play a little.”

Some 600,000 or so never had a doubt.