Van Slyke Not Afraid to Get Dirty : Pirate Outfielder’s Determination Knows No Bounds

If Andy Van Slyke played for Charlie Brown’s team of “Peanuts” characters, his name would be Pigpen, but among the Pittsburgh Pirates, he goes by Norman Bates.

Named after the murderous motel manager in “Psycho” was an affectionate joke by the young players making a run at the New York Mets for the National League East championship. It stemmed from the intensity visible in Van Slyke’s blue eyes, but it could have derived just as easily from the crazy manner in which he plays center field.

The running, belly-smacker dive of a catch he made in left field to rave reviews in the July 12 All Star game was a typical example of why the 27-year-old Van Slyke is gaining a reputation as one of the best center fielders in the game. He also robs opponents of sure hits while skidding across the turf on his back, his knees or on his ribs or while flying up, down or sideways through the air.

Once, earlier this season, he made a near-blind catch with his nose buried in the carpet of Three Rivers Stadium.

Van Slyke’s range extends from deep center to just behind second base and from just inside the power alleys in left and right field. His determination and enthusiasm know no bounds.

In short, Van Slyke plays baseball with the abandon and innocence of a kid who does not know the meaning of fear because he does not yet know the meanings of either pain or failure.

At 27 and after a lifetime in sports of all sorts, Van Slyke has become well acquainted with the latter two experiences. But, despite 10 tough years in professional baseball, he claims to have never experienced fear.

It seems impossible that he has never been afraid of something--a pitch too close to his head, a funny noise in his knee during a feet-first slide into second.

“I’m not a masochist. I don’t like pain,” Van Slyke says. “But I don’t fear doing something on the field. I don’t fear any aspect of the game, whether it’s in the field, hitting, diving for a ball or trying to break up a double play.

“You can’t play this game with fear. There’s only one way to play this game--with fun. And getting dirty, getting a little bit of dirt or a little bit of blood on you now and then is part of the fun.”

That does not mean he deliberately takes unnecessary or potentially career-threatening risks.

“I don’t want to leave my feet if I don’t have to . . . Diving on the turf is no fun at all,” says Van Slyke, who always sports at least a couple scabbed-over scrapes from such dives. “It’s not like grass. You might see me diving around a lot more if we played on grass more, and I’d like to see padded walls--that’d be a lot of fun. There’s a lot more of them in the American League, and that’s why you see so many more great catches against the walls over there. There are too many walls in the National League that you have to respect.”

As a child, Van Slyke had no ivy-covered brick walls or placard-decorated plywood barriers to respect. Nor did he have much regard for an adult’s admonitions to stay clean and avoid injury.

Yes, he says, he was like Pigpen, drawn to mud and puddles the way a magnet is to metal. He laughs then, with a disarming charm he probably used many times to defuse his very tolerant mother.

“If you would see my 4-year-old son (Andy Jr.) go out to play and when he comes in, well, the best way to describe him is to tell you that you’ve gotta change his clothes three times a day,” Van Slyke says. “I was the same way. He’s so much like me, it’s scary.

“I didn’t have much respect for my body. I still don’t. I grew up in a snow-belt area (he was born in Utica, N.Y., and went to school in New Hartford, N.Y.)

“We had a hill behind the house, and we’d go down on our bellies as fast as we could. No sleds, just a piece of plastic under our bellies.”

Later there was baseball, football, basketball and some unorganized, unofficial boxing matches in an unsupervised garage.

“The day before the Cardinal scouts came to my high school, I boxed, and I showed up with welts all over my body the day of the tryout,” he says. “My arms were so sore I couldn’t even swing the bat. I didn’t get a ball out of the infield.”

St. Louis, probably liking his pluck as much as his high school statistics, took him in the first round of the 1979 draft anyway. A hand injury suffered in his high school baseball finale kept him the disabled list that entire season, but four years later he was in the majors.

If life had gone according to plan, Van Slyke would have been graduating from college and accepting an NBA contract about the same time. But his 6-foot 2-inch, 192-pound frame stood in the way of a college basketball scholarship.

Basketball was his favorite sport because it best suited his natural derring-do.

“I played the way I play center field in every sport,” he says. “But I loved basketball. There’s a lot of physical action, elbows, boxing out, diving for loose balls ...”

Pirates officials, who obtained Van Slyke in a four-player deal with St. Louis early last season, do not approve, but he still manages to get in a few pickup games during the off-season.

Most of the time, however, he limits himself to the less hazardous pastimes of golf, fishing and hunting.

“I have enough excitement during the season,” he says. And baseball is giving him both a livelihood and an opportunity for continued growth--two things basketball could not provide.

“I try to improve on every part of my game every year,” he says. “I want to be a complete player. I want to be known as a guy who got the most out of all his abilities -- hitting, fielding, running, everything.”

He tries, therefore, to play offense with the same joy and fearless determination he applies to defense.

“When I know I’ve hit a single, I try for a double,” he says. “When I know it’s a double, I’m thinking triple.”

The results are paying off. In 96 games through July 25, he was batting .291 with 16 home runs and 68 RBIs.

The latter was third-best in the National League. He also led the league in triples with 14 and was tied for the lead in game-winning RBIs in 11. He ranked in the top 10 in home runs, runs scored, slugging percentages and extra bases.

Not bad for a guy who goes onto the field with the intensity of Norman Bates and comes off it looking like Pigpen.