Minor League Notebook / Donna Carter : Lankard Makes Pitch at Comeback : Katella High Graduate Bounces Back From Knee Injury

Steve Lankard capped a successful pitching career at Katella High School in 1981, his senior year. His team won the Empire League title and advanced to the Southern Section 3-A semifinals.

Then, Lankard tried out at Orange Coast College.

Strike one.

He tried out at Fullerton College.

Strike two.

Lankard, a right-hander, finally caught on at Cypress College. After a season, he transferred to Rancho Santiago, then to Cal State Long Beach, where he was named the school’s pitcher of the year in 1985. That June, Lankard, a relief pitcher, signed with the Texas Rangers as a 19th-round draft pick.

After two years of Class-A ball, he moved up to the Tulsa Drillers, a double-A team in the Texas League.

With just two weeks remaining in the regular season and the first-place Drillers heading into the playoffs, Lankard’s professional baseball career apparently was shattered.

A hitter lined a ball straight onto Lankard’s kneecap.

It looked like strike three.

“I was out in the bullpen when it happened, and I saw him go down,” said Jeff Andrews, the Drillers’ pitching coach. “The first reaction I saw from him was an effort to basically crawl for the ball. After about two knee steps, he went down flat on his stomach and kind of rolled over. I knew it was something serious.”

Lankard’s knee was broken in seven places.

“It was broken in such a way, it was really just like corn bread, just pieces, just pieces all over the place,” Lankard said.

Before the operation, Lankard’s doctor told him it was the worst knee injury he had seen in 25 years. He didn’t think he would be able to save Lankard’s knee.

“Thank God he saved it,” said Lankard, who came out of the surgery determined to rehabilitate his knee and return to the mound. Perhaps the hardest part was being a spectator as his team won the Texas League championship.

“The rehab was tough at first,” he said. “I lost so much muscle in my thigh and quadriceps, (just) three weeks (of inactivity) and I had no muscle. First there is a lot of stretching, just trying to get it to bend. Then I started weight work, and I couldn’t lift one pound. It hurt. Then you start to see progress, and it keeps your hopes up. It took about three months to rehab where I could run full speed and everything.”

He began throwing a bit in January and surprised everyone, well almost everyone, by showing up for spring training in March.

“I know Lank and his personality,” Andrews said. “I knew that if anybody could come back, he would be the one. For him to be throwing when I talked to him in January was nothing short of a miracle.”

Lankard has come back. This season he has more appearances than any pitcher on the Drillers.

He uses sidearm and submarine style deliveries. “That is how he makes up for his lack of velocity--with the deception and the different arm angle and break on the ball that you don’t see from a conventional pitcher,” Andrews said.

The style has helped him strike out 21 batters in 28 2/3 innings. He is 2-2 with three saves and a 3.45 ERA.

“What he does is provide (us with) a guy who surprisingly is able to get left-handers out,” Andrews said. “That has allowed him to be used in middle-short relief against either right- or left-handers. His appearances and innings worked will go up because of that.”

Bobby Hamelin, who set state community college records with 31 home runs and 107 RBIs at Rancho Santiago College in 1988, is tearing up the Southern League this season for the Memphis, Tenn., Chicks, a double-A team in the Kansas City Royals’ system.

After a season of Class-A ball in the Northwest League with Eugene, Ore., Hamelin, moved up to double A this year. Hamelin, a left-handed-hitting first baseman who graduated from Irvine High School, leads the Chicks in batting average (.333), hits (32), runs scored (19), RBIs (19), walks (23) and home runs (7). He is second in the league in doubles (six) and he has the league’s third-highest batting average.

Fourteen of his 32 hits were for extra bases, which accounts for his team-high .633 slugging percentage and his nickname.

“His nickname is ‘The Hammer,’ ” said Ted Tornow, a team spokesman. “He is just a big old boy and he pounds the living daylights out of that ball.”

Coach Joe Breeden said Hamelin, 6-foot-1 and 235 pounds, “has hit two or three that have gone 500-feet plus.”

Angel update: Bob Rose, third baseman for the Midland, Tex., Angels, a double-A team in the Texas League, leads his club in home runs (six) and is second in RBIs (20) despite having missed the past 11 games with strained ligaments in his right thumb.

He injured his thumb in late April when he was jammed twice on back-to-back pitches, Rose said.

Rose, a San Dimas High School graduate, is batting .389 in his first season of double-A ball. The Angels are in first place in the league.

Last year, Rose played Class-A ball, batting .284 with 13 home runs and 78 RBIs for the Angels’ Quad City club in Davenport, Iowa.