Tettleton Can Feel Good in Bad Times

Just when Mickey Lee Tettleton was achieving the ultimate in performance, a storybook career year and contributing bountifully to a winning team concept, he was dealt a sudden jolt that literally took his left knee right out from under him.

The most famous Mickey to come from Oklahoma since Mantle had produced 22 home runs and was on his way to establishing a record for a Baltimore Orioles catcher. But then the knee locked and the searching hands of the surgeon uncovered cartilage damage and a cyst on the upper part of his calf.

The team misses the thunder he can create with a bat, booming home runs and authoritative line drives. But Tettleton, after an operation 10 days ago, already has thrown away his crutches and is getting on with rehabilitation.

“I expect to be swinging lightly, off a batting tee, next week,” he said the other day, “and then we’ll see how it goes. I don’t rule out being able to at least pinch hit in early September. The only thing Dr. Charles Silberstein doesn’t want me to do is start running. That can wait.”

Tettleton has accepted this cruel turn of fate -- which took him out of the lineup and put him on the disabled list -- with a mature reaction. He knows it would be foolhardy to start venting his disappointment by breaking up the living room furniture with one or more swings of his Adirondack bat.

He’s too well versed and wise in the vagaries of baseball to let the injury dismantle his outlook, preferring instead to recount and savor all the good things that have happened in a remarkable season. This is known as being a professional.

At a down time like this, Mickey even casually reflects on his days as a high school and college player. He is especially grateful for the decision that turned him into a catcher and, consequently, made all this belated rush of success possible.

Had it not been for the perceptive judgment of his two college coaches, Gary Ward and Tom Holliday at Oklahoma State, baseball might never have heard of this mighty Mickey from Oklahoma City. They first awarded him a half scholarship and decided he would make a good catcher.

“I did a lot of blinking,” is how Tettleton looks back in describing the position transition. He now works three sides of home plate -- swinging from either side as a switch-hitter and catching behind it.

The important physical mechanics -- the shifting to keep behind the pitch and give the umpire a better chance to call it a strike, receiving the ball with soft hands, throwing to all three bases, running down foul flies, blocking home plate and deciding the sequence of signals -- are all in a day’s or a night’s work.

“I didn’t become a full-time catcher until I signed in professional baseball with the Oakland A’s,” he recalled. “Bob Didier and George Minterwald spent a lot of time working with me. I had to learn to move with short, quick steps and be faster throwing the ball; not like in the outfield where you get to sort of wind up.”

Tettleton says the lowest point he experienced came on March 28, 1988, when the A’s gave him an outright release. But, as so often happens, in baseball and in life, the negative became a positive.

That’s when the Orioles called and offered a chance to catch at Rochester, N.Y., in the International League. He could have signed with other organizations, notably the Houston Astros, Pittsburgh Pirates, Cincinnati Reds or Montreal Expos.

“I didn’t want to be a backup to some phenom coming along,” Tettleton said. “I wanted an opportunity to go to triple-A so I could play, not watch.”

That’s precisely what the Orioles provided and here he is, a little more than a year later, blinking his eyes, but not behind the swish of a bat, as he deals with the reality of it all and how quickly fate can spread an exciting new hand.

Tettleton went from a veritable nobody to a somebody, and the Orioles, listed at 400-1 on the preseason oddsboard, have stunned the major leagues by holding on to first place in the American League’s East Division for 93 days.

“I thought coming out of spring training we were a young, talented team and that our main goal was to play fundamental baseball. I never thought so many good things would happen to the team and to me. I think we’ll keep on winning.”

Tettleton’s wife, Sylvia, disclosed a family secret when she told sportscaster Tom Davis in an early-season interview that the reason Mickey was hitting for consistency and distance was attributable to a packaged breakfast food known as Froot Loops.

“It brought me a lot of attention and recognition,” he remarked, not realizing, of course, how he has influenced the eating habits of young America. “There are a lot of Froot Loop boxes coming in the mail for me to autograph. I don’t mind it. If it helps the fans have a good time, then I think that’s the important thing.”

Oddly enough for the natural right-hander, 15 of his 22 home runs have come left-handed.

Tettleton, with an erect stance and arms somewhat close to his body (the opposite of what most hitting theorists say to do) has been difficult for pitchers to get out. They’ve tried everything but novenas to negate him, but he, before he got hurt, was starting to see more off-speed pitches when he was ahead in the count.

“I just try to keep my arms comfortable, free of tension. Jim Lefebvre (now the Seattle manager) worked with me when I was with the A’s and Frank Robinson made the point in the spring I was holding my hands too high. I dropped them down and that made the swing quicker.”

Tettleton is thankful for the opportunity that has come to him and decides it’s much better than what happened to his father, now a director of security for Safeway Stores in three southwestern states. The New York Yankees wanted to sign him, but there was a disturbance known as World War II and Roy Tettleton had to respond -- with his baseball skills deteriorating in the process.

So now Mickey Tettleton contemplates the future, of recovering from the knee surgery and then resuming a career that has become more noteworthy and exciting than his boyhood fantasies ever dared let him imagine.