Rookie’s Hope: to Be Merely Another Angel

He is still very much the rookie, despite the 5-3 record, the poise and the impressive fastball.

He tries not to act like a rookie, but he knows if you try too hard not to act like a rookie, you really act like a rookie.

He is still sorting it all out.

“Some days it seems like I have the best job in the world,” Jim Abbott says. “Living in California, down by the beach, playing baseball in the major leagues. Other days I really feel the insecurity of it.”

He is learning. One day he learns that under certain circumstances he can outpitch Rocket Man Roger Clemens. Another day he learns what it is like to pitch batting practice to the New York Yankees.

“After the Yankee game, it was like: ‘Oh, man.’ ” he says. “I was trying to think of a time I was ever out of a game by the third inning, and I couldn’t. I said to Kirk (McCaskill), ‘Did you ever have an outing like that?’ ”

His teammates like him and understand the naivete.

Nolan Ryan has always been his pitching hero, because of Ryan’s presence on the mound--and his heater. Abbott’s first day in the big leagues in Angel Stadium, a clubhouse boy handed him a telegram.

“Congratulations,” it read. “Looking forward to seeing you pitch this year. (Signed) Nolan Ryan.”

He was stunned. Then he was wary. He looked around the clubhouse to see if he’d been had by the team’s practical joker.

“I thought it was Blyleven,” he says.

It wasn’t Bert Blyleven, it was Nolan Ryan. Abbott’s teammates passed around the telegram, almost reverently.

He barely knows these other Angels, but it crushes him when he lets them down. He is learning that the longest four days in life are the four days between starts, after you’ve been shelled. He walks in the clubhouse the next day and the loss hovers above his head like a personal cloud. He marvels at the vets such as Blyleven, who shake off a loss as easily as they nonchalant a shutout.

He has yet to feel overmatched on the mound, even that night against the Yankees, who he later beat, and he’s feeling more comfortable each time out. Some nights there are stretches when it seems fun out there, and easy. But he wonders how long it will be before he finds a real dominating groove, the kind he enjoyed in college ball, and in the Olympics.

He feels welcome. He came to Los Angeles two years ago when his college’s football team played in the Rose Bowl, and he was put off by the sheer mass of people and the general air of aloofness. He considered that he might not fit in. Now he’s everyone’s hero, everyone’s pal, and he feels much better about his new home. But is that because he and his team are winning? Where, exactly, is the reality?

Because he was born with one hand, which has absolutely nothing to do with the execution of his pitching duties, he finds himself the object of intense fascination and admiration. The media and public are fixated. Abbott understands, but looks forward to the wearing off of the novelty, to the dealing with Jim Abbott as a “normal” person.

He figures that will happen soon enough. He underestimates the tenacity of the press. He does not consider that if he wins 15 games, or 20, the media will be parachuting into Angel Stadium and his right arm will be mentioned in the first sentence of every newspaper story and TV report.

He has, though, accepted the irony that in the foreseeable future, his right arm will remain more famous than his left.

He radiates a friendliness that makes him even more attractive to the media and fans. He is Wally Cleaver with 92-m.p.h. juice. The boys and girls of the press so love the guy, it is almost embarrassing to him. This further complicates life, since he is still trying to become a big league pitcher and there isn’t enough time to do all the baseball stuff and all the media stuff.

What to do? Turn hard-boiled and aloof? Hide out? He opts for Plan C: Learn to politely say no to the press, to pick his spots.

He pulls for his homeboys, the Detroit Pistons, but he admits he has trouble with the team’s trademark smirking and posturing. He admires their talent, wishes they would just play ball. “But I still root for ‘em.”

He is a tourist. When two high school pals visit from back home in Michigan, they all decide to go see Hollywood one afternoon. Drive down Sunset Strip, marvel at the people, maybe buy a map of the stars’ homes.

“By the way,” he says, getting into his car, “how do you get to Hollywood?”