Hartley an Old Rookie Battling Spring Clock

Mike Hartley figured this would be a spring to remember. This spring, he was finally going to be able to forget.

Forget the bus that broke down in a south Georgia hollow in the middle of the night, finally dropping him and his minor league teammates at a game 17 hours later. Forget pitching a minor league game before five people, three of whom were family. Forget the screaming match with the minor league manager, even though Hartley knew the manager was right.

And forget the fights with himself that brought alcohol binges followed by games in which he learned that pitching with men on base is easy compared to pitching with a hangover.

This spring, Mike Hartley, 28, after eight seasons in the minor leagues, was going to make the Dodgers.

“And now look at it,” Hartley said earlier this week, disgust in his voice as he sat in the back row of a San Diego flight bound for Florida. “Now I don’t know how much chance I have.”

To officials who said that the recently ended 32-day owners’ lockout was necessary for a successful baseball future, Hartley poses one question: Whose future?

Last season, when he was recalled to the major leagues in September, his fastball froze the first 12 batters he faced. In six innings, he allowed only two hits with one earned run--and just in time. The Dodgers were looking for a hard-throwing right-handed relief pitcher to set up Jay Howell and, possibly, Jim Gott.

“This was going to be my year,” Hartley said. “Finally, my year.”

But a baseball season includes six weeks of spring training with long, humid March days when managers can stare at new players long enough to be sold on their ability to play in the major leagues.

This season has already defied definition. Hartley, and many other rookies like him, will not have the luxury of being watched. Either they have made the team or they haven’t. Hartley, who thought he almost had it made, is no longer sure. And he wonders if it’s fair.

“Last year, my spring training was wrecked with a pulled groin,” Hartley said. “This year, the lockout. It’s the same thing.

“I support my union; I think we did the right thing. It’s just sometimes, I feel torn apart.”

Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda promised that Hartley will have a chance, adding: “He will battle like the rest of them.”

But when Hartley entered this spring, he was different from the rest of the prospects. Nobody else was as old. And nobody else had aged quite the same.

Hartley signed his first professional contract with the St. Louis Cardinals organization in 1982 at 21 despite not having played serious baseball since his freshman year in high school. He was always too busy wrestling. When he finally decided to pitch for his Grossmont College team in El Cajon, scouts were so amazed at his strength that the Cardinals signed him to a $50,000 contract before his first game.

“Pitching and wrestling have some things in common,” he said. “I like the one-on-one part. In both sports, you live and die with just you.”

He spent the next five years as a 197-pound kid who could throw hard but do little else. To prove himself adaptable, he partied as hard as he pitched.

“All I wanted to do was have a good time,” he recalled. “I would go out every night and party all night and then get up the next day and try to pitch. I finally learned, it’s no fun to pitch with a hangover. I got tired of going out there just hoping to get through the game.”

He partied so hard, he couldn’t get out of Class A. He spent life riding buses and sleeping in cheap apartments, including one month in somebody’s basement. Friends who had long since passed him on the ladder of success would wonder what he was doing with his life.

“I kept telling him, you can’t party until 2 in the morning and then play tennis until 4 in the morning and expect to be any good,” recalled Ky Snyder, a San Diego financial planner.

Tennis at 4 a.m.? “Yeah,” Hartley admitted. “I was one of those guys who would get drunk and play tennis.”

He finally listened to his friends--and himself--when he missed a bus in 1986 while playing for a Class-A team in Springfield, Ill., and had to catch a plane to a game in Wausau, Wis. He was fined, screamed at the manager and was sent down to a lower Class-A team in Savannah, Ga.

“It was then I decided, I should at least give baseball a chance,” Hartley said. “One more chance.”

The next season he was drafted by the Dodgers. And from Class-A Bakersfield to Los Angeles, he hasn’t had a bad year since. Last year, before being recalled, he was 7-4 with a 2.79 earned-run average in 58 appearances for triple-A Albuquerque. He has settled down with a wife and baby and a purpose.

“He’s as focused as any player I’ve been around,” said his agent, Dennis Gilbert, who signed Hartley in 1987. “When I first saw him, I could tell, wherever he had been before, he wasn’t going back there.”

Said Kevin Kennedy, Albuquerque manager: “He is fearless on the mound. When you bring in some relievers, you can tell if they are scared by the way they breathe and the way they look. Mike is just the opposite. Nothing shakes him.”

Until now.

“I kept thinking this lockout would be settled,” Hartley said. “I would see where we were getting ready to accept their contract . . . then reject it . . . then accept it. It got to be, like, a joke. I sure am glad us players got what we wanted. I just hope I can make the team and enjoy it.”

Dodger Notes

The Dodgers more than tripled their first-day attendance Wednesday when an additional 20 players joined the original eight for workouts. Eight of the remaining 10 members of the 38-man roster were scheduled to arrive Wednesday night, with the first true full workout set for today. The only players who may not arrive until today are injured outfielders Kal Daniels and Kirk Gibson, who were having logistics problems. Among those also missing from Wednesday’s workout were possible opening-day starters: second baseman Willie Randolph, shortstop Alfredo Griffin, third baseman Jeff Hamilton, center fielder Juan Samuel and right fielder Hubie Brooks.

Utility player Mickey Hatcher arrived late Tuesday afternoon and noted with dismay that his locker had been moved to the middle of a rearranged Dodger clubhouse to accommodate a large roster. “So everybody who thought we weren’t playing because of a lockout problem was wrong,” Hatcher said. “It was a locker problem.” Hatcher immediately enlisted coach Mark Cresse to pitch late batting practice to him.

Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda will have a sore right knee X-rayed today after injuring it a couple of days ago. . . . Some team officials are once again pushing for a trade that would add Philadelphia center fielder Len Dykstra, enabling the Dodgers to move Samuel to second base and Randolph out. But Fred Claire, Dodger vice president, said earlier this week that he was in no mood to deal. “My priority isn’t trading people; I like the roster we have,” Claire said Monday.