There’s Nothing Ordinary About Him : Well-Rounded John Wetteland Is Just Out of This World to Dodgers

Take heart, you Dodger fans who realize this year’s miracle has taken itself out of the lineup. Everything with this team is not terrible. Everything is not sullen, sulking or sore-shouldered.

Some of what is happening is funny. Some of it is weird. Some of it will even keep you awake. His name is John Wetteland.

He is the Dodger rookie relief pitcher who, according to one scout, “has the best young arm in the National League.”

But that’s only his main job.

“In my spare time I enjoy serving doughnuts on another planet,” Wetteland said.

Then there’s his music.

The son of Bay Area pianist Ed Wetteland, John grew up in the kitchens and back rooms of San Francisco jazz clubs. But his interests have since reverted to oldies. As in 16th-Century Latin chants.

“They had a lot to say back then,” said Wetteland, who recites the chants in his hotel room on the road.

Then there’s his poetry.

“We have contests in the bullpen where you have to name five poets, any five poets,” Wetteland said, rolling his eyes. “I’m excluded from those contests.”

Teammates realize he knows the literary form because, not only does Wetteland fill one notebook of poetry a season, he recites it.

“He’ll come running through the living room in the middle of the day with this ‘Skies are blue . . . ‘ rap,” said Dodger bullpen catcher Todd Maulding, who gives Wetteland a room in his house. “Man doesn’t care what anybody thinks about him.”

This otherwise ordinary right-hander has time for these pursuits because he doesn’t watch television or attend movies or do much of anything that some 22-year-olds consider fun.

On the road, during the day, some players check out the local restaurants. Others, the local shopping malls. Wetteland studies the local architecture.

Said Wetteland: “I don’t want to let my talents go fallow.”

Said Maulding: “He knows words nobody knows. Man knows real words.”

He also knows a bit of pitching, which is why he survived an argument with Sandy Koufax last spring. It is also why, after one start and 18 relief appearances this year, he has convinced the Dodgers there will be life after Hershiser. Although not as flashy as their other top young pitcher, Ramon Martinez, there is a reason he has stuck with the club since being recalled from triple-A Albuquerque May 31.

It’s more than his statistics--a 2-2 record with a 2.35 earned-run average with 41 strikeouts and only 11 walks in 38 1/3 innings. It’s more than his timing--he has been given the lead three times, held it each time, and none of his four inherited runners have scored.

His value lies in something he learned at his father’s piano stool.

“He has presence ,” pitching coach Ron Perranoski said. “He does more than just throw. He is a starting pitcher, one day he will be a starting pitcher . . . but because of his presence he can be just as valuable to us right now in the bullpen.”

This presence was first learned in a log cabin in the Northern California town of Sebastopol. That’s where he grew up, with the only heat coming from a fireplace and the only distractions coming from inside his head.

“I was always different,” Wetteland said. “I’d go to the library and read up on tepees, build one in my front yard, and sleep there for a while.”

Bored with the country by the time he was an adolescent, John and older brother Mitchell would accompany their father on his nightly 80-mile drive south to San Francisco, where Ed Wetteland would make a living playing the piano at nightclubs.

Once in the city, the father would let the sons loose.

“I thought it was good for them,” said Ed, who today works with his wife Barbara, a singer, to form a touring duet known as Sweet N’Hot. “They were interested in what life was all about, and this was a good way to show them. They wanted to see what a gay person looked like. They wanted to see a street person. They found out. They were better for it.”

At the end of each night, the boys would find their way back to the club, where bedtime was never a simple ritual.

“Sometimes they would fall asleep in front of the drum set,” Ed said.

The after-hours scene became so much a part of their life that John signed his first contract with the Dodgers in a nightclub kitchen. Outside, on the piano, his father played “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” and the customers were served champagne.

During this time he made room for baseball but only after clarinet and saxophone practice. In the eighth grade he formed a saxophone quartet with some friends down the street and would tour the community playing at different events. They played your basic eighth-grade music.

“Bach fugues,” he said.

As a sophomore in high school he finally put down the instruments to concentrate on baseball.

“My passion for baseball finally outweighed my devotion to music,” he said, pausing. “Maybe I shouldn’t say baseball. I never really followed baseball, I never knew who the players were. I had no pennants or posters. Maybe it was just the competition. I loved the competition.”

The only instrument he plays today is the electric guitar, at which he was self-taught. He plays it everywhere, even carrying it with him on the road.

“It makes my left fingers sore, but that’s no big deal,” Wetteland said. “What does a right-hander need with them anyway?”

After a successful baseball career at Cardinal Newman High in Santa Rosa, he was selected by the New York Mets in the 12th round of the June, 1984, draft. He turned them down, for obvious reasons, to attend College of San Mateo.

“A little voice told me to,” Wetteland said. “I make my quick decisions on my own. But for the longer decisions, I use the little voice.”

Six months later when the Dodgers took him as their second pick in the January draft, Wetteland also said no. Again, it was the little voice.

“I just didn’t think I was ready,” he said. “I was a rebel, a revolutionary. And remember, I wasn’t even a baseball fan.”

But Dodger scout Dick Hanlon persisted. He told Wetteland he would give him a week to change his mind. The week was all Wetteland needed.

“All of a sudden, the little voice told me to go fly the nest,” he said.

Five years and one disagreement with Sandy Koufax later, and here he is.

“I think that fight will go down as the turnaround in his career,” said his father. “John thinks he knows it all sometimes, and needs a kick in the pants like that.”

That argument occurred this spring, when Koufax was giving advice that Wetteland didn’t want to hear.

“The season was getting ready to start and I was tired of the monotonous spring and I just told him, ‘I can’t handle all of your advice at once,’ ” Wetteland said. “Sandy just said, ‘Hey, you don’t want my help, fine.’ But he didn’t say it in those nice words.

“I realized, sometimes my head goes where it shouldn’t.”

Promptly humbled, when Wetteland was finally given the big league call two months later, he actually acted like a rookie. It happened while he was playing for Albuquerque in Las Vegas. After Ray Searage went down with back spasms in Los Angeles, Wetteland was summoned in his hotel room at 12:30 a.m. and told to join the Dodgers in the morning. He would not sleep again until he had faced an inning of big league hitters.

“I was in shock,” Wetteland said. “The flight left at 7 a.m. and I came back up to the room and tossed and turned and, what the heck, decided not to sleep. I was ready to go.”

He arrived at Dodger Stadium at 10:30 a.m. for an afternoon game against the Montreal Expos. Perranoski said he might be needed to pitch. Wetteland said fine.

“I was buzzing from the high,” he said.

Sure enough, in the ninth inning of an eventual 9-4 victory, he was called in to face Tim Raines, Hubie Brooks and Tim Wallach.

“To see those three guys up there, it was amazing,” he said. “It was hard to believe myself.”

Yet, after walking Raines, he struck out Brooks and got Wallach to ground into a game-ending double play. He felt like pumping his fist into the air, jogging around the bases, celebrating. But he didn’t.

“Oh, I did that, I did all of that,” he said. “In my mind.”