FINLEY FEVER : Angel Starter Sends a Message That Comes In Loud and Clear

Every night, the world comes to West Monroe, La., courtesy Charles and Sue Finley’s satellite dish, but in recent weeks, the featured programming has turned almost other-worldly.

For the past four years, the Finleys have spent their prime time monitoring the progress of their son, Chuck, a young plugger on the pitching mounds of the American League. Rather uneventful through its first three seasons, The Finley Report is now keeping Charles and Sue up well past their bedtime and on the edge of their sofa.

Will Chuck get that no-hitter in Fenway Park?

Just how many Baltimore Orioles is Chuck going to strike out?

And how much more can Chuck lower that ERA of his, anyway?

“They’re getting a kick out of it,” said the star of the show, Angel left-hander Chuck Finley.

And not for such obvious reasons as Finley’s 2.36 earned-run average, eight victories, six complete games or the 15 Orioles he struck out at Anaheim Stadium Saturday night.

“They’re finally getting to watch me pitch,” Finley said. “When I was relieving, they’d stay up up till 2 or 3 in the morning, waiting for me to get in the game. They’d be there throwing stuff at the TV set.

“The next night, they’d be so worn out, I’d go five innings or something and they wouldn’t be able to stay up. They’d always miss it.”

Now, an Angel pocket schedule serves as the Finleys’ TV guide. Since Chuck moved into the Angels’ starting rotation in 1988, every fifth day, from April to October, is a couch potato day.

Through late June, Finley has made tuning in enjoyable. After the trial-and-error of his first season as a starter--he was 9-15 with a 4.17 ERA--Finley, at 26, is currently tied for second in the American League in ERA, is third in complete games and is fifth in strikeouts with 80.

Fifteen of them came Saturday night in an 8-3 victory over Baltimore, which equaled the 1989 major league, single-game high, set by Texas’ Nolan Ryan on April 12 against Milwaukee. The 15 strikeouts were also the most by an Angel pitcher since 1986, when Mike Witt struck out 16 Seattle Mariners, and the most by an Angel left-hander since 1976, when Frank Tanana struck out 15 Oakland Athletics.

They’re going to play the All-Star game in Anaheim this year. With two weeks to go, Finley stands a good chance of being there to represent the home team.

Is the world ready for Chuck Finley, American League All-Star?

If not, Finley suggests the world should think about catching up. Soon.

“It doesn’t surprise me,” Finley said, not boastfully, of his early-season success. “I knew if I was patient and kept working, something good had to come of it.

“Every year, you see new faces come around and show up in the crowd. Why shouldn’t one of them be me? What’s wrong with Chuck Finley leading the league in wins? What’s wrong with the California Angels having the best staff in baseball?

“You look at all these other teams who do it and you wonder, ‘What’s it take?’ ”

For Finley, it has actually taken very little. Just a few more runs . . . and one more pitch.

In 1988, he had become the new Charles 0. Finley. Lack of support was his middle name. In nine of his 15 losses, the Angels scored two runs or less. Fifteen of Finley’s 24 decisions were decided by two runs or less.

This year, the Angels have scored nine runs twice, five runs twice, eight runs once and six runs once for Finley, who won each of those games. He also beat Detroit’s Jack Morris, 1-0, en route to a 7-2 start.

Finley recently weathered a four-game losing streak, breaking out against the Orioles Saturday, but again, that coincided with a team-wide offensive slump. The Angels scored a total of two runs in those four defeats, with Finley losing the first three by scores of 4-0 (to Kansas City’s Mark Gubicza), 1-0 (to Cleveland’s Greg Swindell) and 5-1 (to Ryan).

Finally, two nights ago, Finley and the Angel batting order got in sync again. Four Angels hit home runs and Finley responded with the most overpowering game of his career--15 strikeouts, including 10 in the first five innings.

In the process, the Orioles were privy to the little secret that has spread through the rest of the league this year.

Finley’s got a forkball.

Pass it on.

A year ago, Finley didn’t have one. Strictly a fastball-curveball pitcher, Finley only began tinkering with a forkball during the final weeks of the 1988 season, a season in which he lost more games than any Angel left-hander since 1974.

“It was sort of a desperation move,” Finley said. “The pitches I had (before) were only going to carry me so far. You see a lot of pitchers struggle with two pitches, then they get one more and that gets them over the hump.

“Take Dave Stewart. He wasn’t successful until he developed a third pitch and started throwing the forkball. Now look at him.”

Now look at Finley.

His quantum leap in status--from just another left-hander to quality starter--was never better illustrated than on May 26, his 10th start of the season, at Boston. On that night, Finley matched fastballs with Roger Clemens, threw a few past Wade Boggs and came within one bloop single of becoming the first left-hander to throw a no-hitter in Fenway Park in 72 years.

Finley took his bid into the eighth inning when, with two outs, Red Sox shortstop Jody Reed fisted an inside pitch over second base that touched down just in front of the Angels’ onrushing center fielder, Devon White.

Finley finished with a one-hitter, the first of his career--and a long ways from those midsummer days of 1986, when a cab ride in a major league city was enough to overwhelm him.

Much ado has been made of Jim Abbott’s plunge from college baseball into the big leagues, but when Finley was called up by the Angels in May, 1986, his professional baseball experience totaled 28 games and 41 innings. And unlike Abbott, Finley had never pitched in the Olympics or Europe or Cuba.

Finley had barely made it beyond Louisiana.

Drafted by the Angels out of Northeast Louisiana State in June, 1985, Finley spent three months pitching for Class A Salem, Ore. Then, in 1986, he lasted less than two months at Class A Quad City before the Angels, riddled by injuries in their bullpen and needing a left-hander, any left-hander, decided to summon him.

When the phone call came, Finley was floored.

“We were getting on the bus, going from the hotel to the park,” Finley said, “when the manager pulled me off the bus and told me, ‘You’re not gonna play. We’re gonna be moving you out of here.’

“I figured it was going to be double-A and didn’t think nothing of it until he told me, ‘Mike Port (the Angels general manager) is going to call you.’ Then I got on the phone with Mike and he finally told me I was going to New York.

“It didn’t sink in. He had to say it two, three times. I said, ‘You sure you got the right guy?’ I still couldn’t believe it.”

Greater shocks awaited once Finley’s plane landed in New York.

“That was wild,” Finley recalled. “Before that, Anaheim and Dallas were the biggest places I’d ever been. I’d never been to the big city. I only heard about New York City cab rides.

“When I got to my (hotel) room, I order room service. A couple of pieces of chicken, $30. I was so damn scared, I didn’t even want to venture outside. I stayed in the hotel. I’d never seen so damn many people on the street at 2 o’clock in the day in all my life.”

Somehow, Finley got to Yankee Stadium and slinked into the visitors clubhouse. Eventually, he found his designated locker stall.

For a few moments, he simply stared at it.

“There were two sets of pants, two sets of shirts with my name on the back,” he said, almost with reverence. “I remember pulling my bag out and one of the clubhouse kids ran over and said, ‘You don’t do that here. I’m supposed to do it.’ ”

As he recounted the story, Finley still seemed a little surprised he survived it all. At 23, Finley lasted the rest of the season with the Angels, pitching in long relief and fashioning with a 3-1 record and a 3.30 ERA, finishing the season by making three appearances in the American League playoffs.

He also finished a few meals outside the sanctity of his hotel room.

“I was lucky,” Finley said. “There were guys on the team who really looked out for me. Kirk (McCaskill) and Ron Romanick, they were always around to make sure nothing would go wrong.”

Gradually, Finley got acclimated to the life style. Major league hitters took a little longer. Finley’s development was mostly arrested in 1987, his duty usually restricted to mopping up after blowouts. Finley went 2-7 and the Angels went 4-31 during games in which Finley pitched.

Then he went 9-15 as a starter in 1988.

Finley was beginning to find himself cast as a pitcher who didn’t know how to win.

“That number (4-31) looks real bad,” Finley said, “but I’d be coming into games we were already losing, 7-2. I’d pitch four shutout innings and we’d end up losing, 7-6. I’d have nothing to show for it.”

Said Angel pitching coach Marcel Lachemann: “He was in there, just trying to get experience. It was designed for him to be in those situations. He was learning. Game on the line were other people’s responsibility at the time.”

Finley survived that, too. As he puts it, “That’s over and done with. I’m on to bigger and better things.”

Such as?

“I predicted 17 wins in spring training,” he said. “Last year, I predicted 13 to 15 wins--I just had the 15 on the wrong end.

“But I felt I could have won a lot of those games I lost. I just felt with a little more luck than last year, more experience and a new pitch, 16, 17, 18 wins would be realistic.”

Toward that end, Finley offered the rest of the American League the same advice he has given his parents back home in West Monroe:

Stay tuned.