Gibson’s Return: 1 for 2 in Triple A

His game face carried its customary stubble as Kirk Gibson stepped into the batting cage at Albuquerque Sports Stadium Thursday afternoon and began hitting drives off the rock facade of the picnic area behind the right-field fence.

The crack of his bat was accompanied by a ring of obscenities and epithets as Gibson chastised himself for not doing what he wanted to do with certain pitches.

This was the competitor gearing up to return to competition.

This was Gibson on the first day of his rehabilitation assignment with the Albuquerque Dukes, the Dodgers’ triple-A affiliate in the Pacific Coast League.

This was the National League’s most valuable player of 1988, a 32-year-old veteran--he will be 33 Monday--of 10 major league seasons wearing Albuquerque red, hoping it accelerates his return to Dodger blue.

“I can wish, but that’s all it amounts to still,” Gibson said. “I’m still not putting a timetable on it.”

A rehabilitation process that can last 20 days--the final steppingstone, perhaps, in Gibson’s recovery from an Aug. 29 operation to repair a tear in his left hamstring--began cautiously Thursday night.

Batting third and playing center field, the position he is scheduled to occupy when and if he returns to the Dodgers, Gibson played four innings of a game with the Colorado Springs Sky Sox in his first competitive appearance since July 22.

Facing Rod Nichols, a 25-year-old right-hander who opened the season with the Cleveland Indians, Gibson flied to center in the first inning and singled sharply to right in the fourth.

His only defensive test came on a deep drive hit by Colorado Springs catcher Tom McGrann that got caught in a strong wind, turned the rusty Gibson in the wrong direction and fell on the center-field warning track for a double.

Said Mel Didier, the Dodger special assignment scout: “The only concern with Kirk is his leg, and I was pleasantly impressed. There was no indication of a limp, no evidence he was favoring it.”

Gibson said he made elementary mistakes by swinging at the pitcher’s pitch in his first at-bat and failing to consider the wind on the double to center, but that it was an exciting feeling to be playing again and that it was a good start.

“Hopefully everything will be fine tomorrow,” he said, adding that he felt his hamstring grab a bit while moving from first base to second on a passed ball in the fourth inning. “I want to be able to wake up and walk.

“I’d still rather under-do it than over-do it and experience a setback. I don’t need another at this point.”

In that regard, Gibson said, he may choose to get five at-bats as designated hitter tonight, then return to the field Saturday. It’s his call.

Before the game, Gibson relaxed in the Dukes’ clubhouse with an ice pack on his left knee and said he had done everything that could be done in the controlled environment of a trainer’s room. It was now time “to trickle back into a competitive environment.”

“This is part of my recovery,” he said. “I was anxious to come down. It’s another rung up the ladder. I mean, it would have been foolish to try to start at the major league level. I wouldn’t have been ready to play every day, and I don’t want to play one and sit three. That’s not what this is all about. Put me in there every day and I’ll still put the numbers up.

“I mean, if I didn’t think I could help the Dodgers by being the player I have always been, I wouldn’t have gone through this.”

This, of course, is what Gibson described as a frustrating and time-consuming process comparable to the best and worst of an amusement park ride.

It left Gibson, the consummate competitor, to do what he does not do well: sit and watch. The original estimate was that he would be back in 12 weeks. It has been almost 36, and Gibson, looking for a game, any game, growled: “I didn’t come down here to lose. And if you want to play pool, I’ll beat you at that, too.”

For the present, however, he will work with a stick of another kind. In Gibson’s opinion he has not played since 1988 because the 71 games he played last year represented “200 swings with no legs.”

Thus, he said, he has to find his mechanics, reacclimate at the plate and readjust to the nuances of center field.

Asked about that Dodger decision and the stress it might put on his legs, Gibson shrugged and said: “I played center field a lot in Detroit. It’s no problem. Kal (left fielder Daniels) is hitting the ball good. The Dodgers want more offense, and that’s where they see me fitting in. I told them I’d play center field if they gave me the time and patience to adjust, but if they move me back and forth between center field and left I’ll be terrible in both.”

Gibson paused, then said: “I’m not worried about my hitting or my fielding. I’m here to find out if I can run hard and do it consistently.”

Those tender legs are the heart of Gibson’s game. He has speculated, during the dark moments of his recovery, that if he can’t run hard he might have to consider moving to the American League as a designated or moving on, period.

He smiled Thursday night and said:

“Who knows? A week from now I may have to retire, but then I’ve said that before, and I’m still here.”