BEYOND SUCCESS : Abbott Overcomes Pressure as Just Another Challenge

The tighter the camera zooms in on Jim Abbott, the more of the story it loses, for no portrait of Abbott can be considered complete without considering the people around him.

Take a look at the little one-handed boy in the Angel cap, sprinting alongside a practice field at the Angel training camp because he spotted Abbott warming up at the other end.

Watch the youngster growing up across the street from Abbott’s home in Flint, Mich., who stopped playing catch with two hands and learned how to do it with one because that’s how Jim Abbott does it.

Read the letters of the dozens of parents of handicapped children who write Abbott every week, congratulating him--and thanking him--for making it to the big leagues.

Follow the four Japanese television crews who traveled to Anaheim Stadium to document Abbott’s major league pitching debut because, in Japan, they still can’t get over what Jim Abbott is able to do.

Sit among the 46,000 spectators who witnessed that game, who cheered every strike Abbott threw, booed every Angel error made behind him and stood in applause when Abbott left the mound, on his way to a 7-0 defeat.

And then, cast an eye at the big league baseball Establishment, which has been plainly ambushed by Abbott and still isn’t quite sure how to deal with the concept.

Lacking any other point of reference, they feebly compare him to Pete Gray, the one-armed outfielder who played for the St. Louis Browns during the talent-lean war year of 1945.

Lacking the proper articulation, they hang bumper-sticker slogans on him--America’s Phenom, America’s Pitcher.

And in some cases, lacking the proper insight, they cynically write him off as a publicity stunt, a major leaguer by way of box-office appeal over baseball skill.

Abbott the Angel, the 1988 Olympic gold medalist, has become a major major league issue, not because of what he’s done, but because of what he hasn’t done.

He hasn’t spent one day in the minor leagues, instead making the very rare jump from college baseball to the big leagues.

And he wasn’t born with a right hand.

It has all served to create a conundrum for Abbott. He knows his disability has helped him emerge from the crowd, but he still longs for the day he will be recognized because of his ability--a day that should arrive soon, considering his recent outings.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” Abbott says. “If I wasn’t doing well and if I wasn’t at this level, then me being born with one hand wouldn’t matter. But at the same time, if I had two hands, there wouldn’t be all this attention. I’d just be another left-handed pitcher.”

The attention, Abbott concedes, can be daunting. One day, Time magazine is calling. The next, it’s Newsweek. Sports Illustrated has written him up once and is coming back for more. Life magazine recently spent 3 1/2 hours on the beach with Abbott for an on-location photo shoot, scrounging for any possible new angle.

Abbott, finishing his second month with the Angels, already leads the club in fan mail. When he’s away on the road, the Angel publicity staff collects his mail in a shopping cart and then wheels him the correspondence when he returns to Anaheim.

Tim Mead, the club’s director of publicity who has been assigned to Abbott as his personal press liaison, says: “Jim has received more attention than any Angel I can remember--more than Wally Joyner when he was a rookie, more than Reggie Jackson, more than Rod Carew.”

Baseball America, a national publication, took it one step further, ranking Abbott’s debut, in terms of national significance, behind only Jackie Robinson’s breaking of baseball’s color barrier in 1947.

Abbott is 21. The ink on his last University of Michigan term paper is barely dry. During off-seasons, he still lives at home with his parents, Kathy and Mike Abbott.

He looks, seems and is young to be thrown into such a maelstrom.

Yet Abbott endures well, tapping a seemingly endless reservoir of patience. Although he will occasionally dash off an interview by rote--”Sometimes, I feel like I’m reading answers off a mental notebook,” he says--Abbott is consistently upbeat and cordial with all those clamoring for his time.

“He is the most mature, resilient 21-year-old I’ve ever seen,” says Doug Rader, the Angels’ manager. “He’s a well-rounded guy. He’s stable, well-traveled, well-educated. He’s been prepared for this.”

From a very early age, too, according to Abbott.

“When I was little, my parents always encouraged me to be outgoing,” Abbott says. “My dad was always pushing me, when I’d see someone new, to walk up to the kid, shake his hand and say, ‘Hi, my name is Jim Abbott.’ He really encouraged that.

“Looking back at it now, I know the reason for it. My dad never wanted me to feel out of place, he never wanted me to be held back, just because of my hand. He wanted me to have as normal a life as I did.”

And was it normal?

“Yeah, I think so,” he says. “I think I had a very stable childhood. I still have friends that I’ve had since the fourth grade. Right away, they accepted me and I accepted them.”

Sure, Abbott said, he received the expected teasing growing up, but nothing devastating, nothing he and his family couldn’t deal with.

“Maybe I blocked it out in my own mind, but I don’t remember anybody being cruel,” Abbott says. “Maybe there was something here and there, but it was more like calling someone wearing glasses “Four Eyes.”

“Everyone is dealt a problem in life. Mine is missing four fingers.”

Jim Abbott, international sporting star, reaches into his locker and pulls out a sporting magazine to show a reporter. On the cover is a picture of Abbott. Inside are many more pictures of Abbott. The captions and the accompanying text are in Japanese.

Abbott flips through the pages, glancing at the two-page spread of his pitching delivery, the photograph of him smiling next to an Arizona cactus, the snapshot of him reclining on a bench.

“Aren’t these hilarious?” he says. “I can’t explain the fascination.”

Last summer might have something to do with it. Preparing for the Olympic gold medal he later helped the United States baseball team win in Seoul, Abbott pitched in Japan during a world-wide tour.

Japan never got over it.

“I remember when I first got off the plane in Tokyo,” Abbott said. “There must have been 50 or 75 cameramen waiting there. Every kind of camera, every kind of lens.

“I didn’t know what was going on. All of a sudden, click-click-click.”

Abbott’s reputation had preceded him to Tokyo and, as the pitcher puts it, “They were fascinated by my playing with one hand.”

Abbott-san, as he was jokingly nicknamed by his Olympic teammates, became an instant sensation.

“My picture was in the paper every day,” Abbott says, shaking his head. “There was a constant amount of attention.

“When we first practiced there, I fielded a bunt and cameras went off by the millions. Before I left, a lady gave me a scrapbook and there was a huge layout, frame by frame, of me turning the glove over.”

Winning gold at Seoul only heightened the interest. Before Abbott had thrown the first pitch of his major league career, he made the cover of the Japanese Street & Smith’s.

And before he made his big league debut against the Seattle Mariners in early April, four Japanese television crews arrived in Anaheim to chronicle the event, asking him such questions as, “How did it feel to strike out the great hitter, Jose Canseco?” and “What will be the first ball you throw against Seattle?”

Says Abbott: “They also asked me what my blood type was. That might be the strangest one yet.”

Abbott smiled.

“I don’t know about what goes on over there as opposed to what goes on over here,” he said. “Their’s is a different culture.

“They ask me a lot of questions about spirit and determination and the inner kind of things. They seem to be amazed by what I do, thinking that I must have some special drive.

“They look at a Mike Tyson or a Carl Lewis the same way. I think the special kind of determination in all athletes is something that’s looked up to over there.”

Abbott looks fondly upon his international baseball experience, but regards it as valuable in a practical sense, as a preparation for life in the Angels’ fishbowl.

“We were on the road from June 10 till the end of September,” Abbott said. “It was grueling. We were in foreign countries, eating food we weren’t used to eating. You couldn’t find anything. Everything was awfully hard.

“But I think it helped mature me. This year, I’ve been away from home for a long time, but I’m not real lonely. It’s not like it was last year, when I wanted to go home so badly.

“I can now appreciate what it’s like to be 8,000 miles away with three weeks to go before you can come back home.”

Some things, however, preclude preparation.

How, for instance, do you prepare yourself for such questions as “Were you born a natural left-hander?” or “Do you have any brothers or sisters who are deformed?”

How do you prepare yourself for the yoke that goes with being America’s inspiration to the handicapped?

How do you prepare yourself for the controversy that erupts simply because you’re one of 24 players wearing Angel uniforms on opening day?

When the Angels announced that Abbott had not only made the team but a spot in the starting pitching rotation, Abbott was unwillingly thrown into a public debate: Does he belong here or are the Angels merely trying to sell tickets?

Abbott bristled at all the publicity-stunt talk, talk that has dissipated with each game he wins.

“People didn’t see all the sides,” Abbott said. “I can see where (charges of a publicity stunt) would be an argument, but I would hope that I’m proving them wrong.

“As long as there are any questions in people’s minds, that’ll be around. I think it’s going to take maybe a year of performing at a respectable level here. If we start winning and every fifth day, I’m out there pitching, people will start saying, ‘Hey, he’s helping the team.’ That’s no publicity stunt.”

Says Angel bullpen catcher Rick Turner, who rooms with Abbott on the road: “His approach is, ‘I’m here because of my prowess and the contribution I’m making, not because I’m a draw at the gate.’

“If (seeking a draw) was the case, we’d also have a 50-year old pitcher, a 17-year old and a guy three feet tall on the team.”

Yet there can be no denying Abbott’s popularity and what he represents as a role model. Abbott acknowledges that he might not comprehend the magnitude of it all.

“I don’t think I have a full grasp of it,” he says. “Maybe by saying that, I do. I don’t know.

” . . . When people talk of me being an inspiration, there are some days when I can’t take it. I get tired of it. Anyone would get tired, being asked the same questions.

“But before, I used to kind of fight it--’I’m normal, I’m normal, I want to think of myself as normal.’ Of course we all want to be treated as normal.

“More and more, though, I’ve begun to realize that playing with one hand is different. It’s not a negative, it hasn’t hindered me. It’s just changed a few things.

“I think I’m a lot more comfortable with that now.”

And when he reads the letters he receives from parents of handicapped children, he can understand.

“I can only imagine what it’d be like to have a wife who’s pregnant and expecting a baby,” he says. “There’s so much hope and praying for a normal child, for he or she to live a normal life.

“If that doesn’t happen, what a trauma that really must be--’What do we do now? What’s the right role model?’ They feel like there’s no standard for their children.”

They have one now.

As Abbott is proving on every fifth day, the major league fraternity is not exclusive to players with right and left hands. Ask the Boston Red Sox about his supposed handicap. He shut them out. Ask the Baltimore Orioles, Toronto Blue Jays, New York Yankees, and the Milwaukee Brewers, all beaten by Abbott’s pitches.

The other day, Mead answered the phone in the Angel clubhouse and spoke with a man who claimed he had developed a prosthetic hand especially designed for Abbott.

Mead, knowing that Abbott had once worn an artificial hand at age 4 but discarded it at 5, told the man thanks, but no thanks.

“I said we appreciate the intention,” Mead said, “but Jim Abbott’s got everything he needs.”