Tettleton: From Pink Slip to Turning Point

Mickey Tettleton suffered the worst fate imaginable for a major-league player one week before the start of the 1988 season, but no one would have noticed by looking at him.

Tettleton’s agent, Tony Attanasio, calls him a “silent giant,” and the catcher reacted to his release by the Oakland A’s the same way he reacts to other misfortune: with seeming indifference.

“I was really more nervous than he was,” Tettleton’s wife, Sylvia, said. “He was lying in the back yard, soaking up the sun and relaxing. But I was thinking, ‘What’s going to happen?’ ”

Fourteen months ago, it was impossible to imagine Tettleton’s leading the American League in home runs. In the baseball vernacular, he was “out on the street,” looking for work.

A’s General Manager Sandy Alderson recalled that no other club showed genuine interest in trading for Tettleton, a career .221 hitter earning approximately $120,000.

Thus, Tettleton received baseball’s equivalent of a pink slip. It proved to be a turning point in his career, just as last season’s 21-game losing streak was a turning point in Orioles’ history.

The parallel is unmistakable, and Tettleton, with his 16 home runs, bulging muscles and Oklahoma roots, has emerged as the unlikely symbol of the Orioles’ storybook season.

True, the Orioles have lost four of their last five games, but they still lead the American League East by four games entering Tuesday night’s series opener here against the New York Yankees.

A dizzying array of player changes helped put them in this position, and the most successful move of all might have been the signing of Tettleton to a triple-A contract on April 6, 1988.

Attanasio said the contract would have been worth less than $25,000 if Tettleton had remained at Rochester, N.Y., but the Orioles recalled him one month later to replace Carl Nichols on their roster.

What ensued amounted to a fairy tale, and Orioles Manager Frank Robinson jokingly advises reporters to “leave him alone, don’t start him thinking.”

No one imagined this.

“He’s in a make-believe world right now,” Orioles first base coach Johnny Oates, the manager at Rochester last season, said. “He feels like he’s in a dream.”

Tettleton knew he wasn’t dreaming when Alderson gave him the bad news last March. He realized two weeks before his release that the A’s wanted Terry Steinbach as their starting catcher and free agent Ron Hassey as the backup.

Tettleton was 27 and unemployed. To make matters worse, he was released on a Friday afternoon, after the league offices in New York had closed. His 48-hour waiver period didn’t start until Monday, which meant he had to wait nearly a week before signing with another club.

It was during that time that Tettleton sat in his back yard, catching rays if not baseballs, brooding over his future, hiding his pain. Attanasio described him as “real down.” Tettleton said, “It wasn’t that bad.”

The Cincinnati Reds showed immediate interest, Attanasio said. Tettleton was excited, but Attanasio said he wanted to contact Orioles General Manager Roland Hemond before making a decision.

“I had other ideas,” Attanasio said. “I knew the Orioles very well. I saw who was catching. I knew Mickey was a switch-hitter. I knew they were paying (Terry) Kennedy a lot of money. So I called Roland.

“I told him I was prepared to make a deal with another organization, but as a courtesy to him, this is how I viewed his catching situation. Did he disagree? He said, ‘No, I don’t. As a matter of fact, I tried to call you.’ ”

Initially, Hemond tried to trade for Tettleton, who was something of a cult figure in the Orioles’ offices, thanks to club counsel Sven Holmes, whom club president Lawrence Lucchino jokingly labeled an “early cheerleader” of Tettleton’s.

In fact, Holmes was a fan, but the Orioles were astonished they could land Tettleton so easily. “I couldn’t believe it,” Manager Frank Robinson, who was then in the front office, said. “I jumped out of my chair. I said, ‘Get him, sign him, put him at Rochester and see what happens.’ ”

Tettleton had never played in triple-A. He rose from double-A to the Oakland A’s in 1984, returning to Class A Modesto, Calif., only for rehabilitation assignments. But the Orioles offered him the quickest chance to return to the majors. Their catchers were Kennedy and Nichols, both of whom would later be traded.

Tettleton signed April 6, two days after the Orioles began their 21-game losing streak with a 12-0 Opening Day loss to the Milwaukee Brewers. “We went at it real rapidly,” farm director Doug Melvin, who closed the deal, said. “We did a good selling job.”

Looking back, Tettleton needn’t have worried about resuming his career, even though he was released.

Major-league clubs are scrambling to find catchers, and Tettleton was a switch-hitter, solid defensively and 6-foot-2, 214 pounds.

His dream was starting anew.

“I guess you could say I was a first-round draft choice off the waiver wire,” Tettleton said.

Tettleton is playing every day after platooning with Steinbach in Oakland and eventually losing his job. He has made a series of mechanical adjustments with help from batting coach Tom McCraw and Robinson.

Thirteen of his homers have come from the left side, and six of those went to the opposite field. Tettleton has hit two homers against the A’s, including one off his close friend Dave Stewart May 11. “He’s not going to get much stronger,” Stewart said. “How much stronger do you want a guy to be?”

Said A’s manager Tony LaRussa, “I never expected him to hit 16 home runs in a hurry like this. I always thought he was a lot like Carney Lansford, except he hadn’t had success. He always pressed, and he strangled his ability. He was always tense.”

But now, LaRussa said, Tettleton has “just exploded.” It is a heady time. Sports Illustrated called Tettleton a “cereal killer,” noting his well-documented affection for Froot Loops. Tettleton’s wife, Sylvia, never knew what she was getting into when she disclosed her husband’s diet tips on cable TV.