A Sad $13-Million Man : Forget Money; What Mark Davis Wants Is Success

Mark Davis’ eyes started to moisten. He bit his lower lip. He then began blinking rapidly, hoping his eye lids would wash away the tears.

This was the last thing he wanted, dammit. He had somehow managed to keep his composure these past two traumatic months, and now here, sitting in the middle of the Kansas City Royals’ bench before a game, he was starting to lose it. Please, don’t let it happen, he told himself. Not where his teammates could see him. Not with his manager standing 15 feet away.

Davis turned away, paused, squeezed his thighs and took a deep breath. OK. Everything would be all right. His teammates hadn’t seen a thing.

But for the first time, he knew his cover was blown. As much as he has tried to let everyone in Kansas City know that he’s happy, comfortable with his decision to leave the Padres and Southern California for the Royals and the Midwest, it has been one large facade.

Never in his life did he envision that he could be so miserable playing the game he long has cherished. How could he make so much money, he asks himself, and feel so rotten?

How could he win a Cy Young Award in November, be provided a four-year, $13-million contract in December, buy a bigger home than he ever dreamed of in January and feel as if the world is tumbling down upon him in June?

“I never thought something like this would happen,” Davis said. “Never did I envision this. You try to put everything out of your mind, but that’s impossible.

“Every day I think, ‘This is going to be the day. This is going to be the day where everything turns around. This is the day where life is good again.’

“But every day turns out to be the same, only a little worse than the one before.

“I’ve tried to keep a good perspective on things, but it’s hard, really hard.”

Davis turned away. This isn’t easy. Talking about failure never is. But even though he lost 17 games as a starting pitcher for the San Francisco Giants in 1984 and was a mediocre middle reliever for the next three seasons, there’s no comparison to his current suffering.

He came to the Royals as their savior. He was the bullpen stopper who was supposed to be the last piece of the puzzle the Royals needed to finally get past the Oakland Athletics in the American League West. The Royals haven’t had a pitcher save more than 20 games in a season since the departure of Dan Quisenberry in 1985, and now they had a guy who saved 44 in 48 opportunities for the Padres in 1989.

“Everybody was saying this is the guy who’s going to lead us to the championship,” said Frank Funk, the Royals’ pitching coach. “Hell, I thought he would. I mean, I’ve been in professional baseball for 36 years, and with him and the rest of the pitchers on this staff, I thought this was a 36-year dream come true.

“It’s turned into one living nightmare.

“I’ve done everything I can to control my emotions and not take it home with me, but that’s impossible. I remember waking up in the middle of the night once, and there I was, pacing the floor at 3 in the morning, wondering what was going on.

“I’ve been in organizations where we’ve lost a lot of games, and I’ve been on a lot of bad teams, but I’ve never had it affect me more than this. I never thought I’d live to see the day where I actually didn’t look forward to coming to the ballpark every day.

“You look at Mark and what’s happened to some of the other pitchers, and you wonder why baseball (with its unpredictability) is so concerned with gambling.

“I mean, who’d ever thought something like this would happen? Who could have predicted that after winning a Cy Young, the same guy would be wondering if he could do the job anymore.”

Who’d have thought that Davis, one of the nicest guys you’d ever want to meet, would wind up being largely responsible for the fact that his manager and pitching coach are worrying about being fired? Who’d have thought that Davis would help cause an organization to contemplate wholesale changes, a rebuilding process? Who’d have thought that Davis would have Royal General Manager John Schuerholz saying that any further free-agent bidding is unlikely in their future? And who’d have thought that Davis, the finest reliever in baseball last season, would now be nothing more than a middle man who appears in meaningless games?

The same guy who virtually was unhittable last season, who had at least six teams, including the Angels, offering him more than $3 million a year, just so happens to be yielding a .304 batting average these days, allowing 31 hits and 18 walks in 23 1/3 innings.

The numbers get even worse. Davis, 1-2 with a 5.79 ERA, has blown four of his past five save opportunities. He recorded his fifth save on May 7, and hasn’t been entrusted to a save situation since. Of his past six appearances, three have been games in which he entered with either a five-run deficit or a five-run lead.

Said Pat Dobson, the Padre pitching coach who coaxed 71 saves in 81 attempts out of Davis the past two seasons: “It’s unbelievable, isn’t it? He’s a $3 million mop-up man. Three million dollars for a guy they won’t trust in close games.

“You don’t know how this depresses me. It really does. I think about him a lot.

“He’s called me a few times, and I’ve tried to help him, but there’s only so much you can do over the phone. I’ve offered to fly in to help him, but it’s kind of awkward since he’s with another team. I’d just like to have 30 minutes with him, and I’ll straighten him out again.

“You know what I really wish, I wish they’d say, ‘Here, you can have him back. He’s not helping us, anyway, you give him a shot.’ That’s what I wish.”

“It’s just not right what he’s going through.”

It occurred just two weeks ago, the night of May 29. Davis walked to the mound, heard a smattering of boos and then saw some shiny objects being hurled at him.

He looked closer. They were coins. His own fans at Royals Stadium were throwing money at him. He tried to ignore them, fighting off the tears and humiliation, but it was of no use. He walked pinch-hitter Tracy Jones on five pitches. That was enough for Royal Manager John Wathan, who immediately yanked him.

The booing was deafening. It was as if the fans hit a button and all at once decided to vent their anger and frustration over the Royals’ failure upon Davis.

“I’ve never heard our fans act that way before,” one team official said. “They were unmerciful. I mean, they’ve booed Quiz (Quisenberry) at times and Bo (Jackson) for a while after he announced he was going to the Raiders, but nothing like this.

“It’s almost come to a point now where I think he’s scared to pitch.”

Said Quisenberry, who retired from baseball last month and now lives in Kansas City: “I feel like I should talk to the guy, try to help him, since we went through the same thing. But I don’t know him, so it’s hard. I feel for him, I really do.”

Davis has become the focal point of public ridicule on the talk shows. One radio station recently played the song “Wild Thing” over and over, taunting Davis. Another station is saturated with calls requesting that the Royals trade Davis away.

“I guess that’s surprised me more than anything,” Davis said. “They’ve really been on me hard. You get booed, and you think, ‘I am trying so hard. So hard. I wish you knew how hard I was trying.’ But obviously, it’s a part of the game, and they don’t like the way I’ve been pitching.

“The best thing I can do now is to change those boos to cheers, or at least quiet.”

But Davis is only fooling himself if he believes he can soothe the wounds without pitching up to Cy Young standards again. The day he signed his contract, paying him more per year than any player in the history of the Royals, put him in his own private sector as far as the fans are concerned.

You’ve got to remember, this is a franchise that, until former Angel catcher Bob Boone came along, had not signed a free agent since utility infielder Jerry Terrell in 1978. And now, here they were, paying more money to a relief pitcher than fixtures George Brett and Frank White combined. What’s this guy ever done for the franchise, the fans asked? The only thing they knew about Davis was that he struck out Bo Jackson in the 1989 All-Star Game.

It hardly put Davis in good stead with his teammates, either. Brett, a 13-time All-Star, demanded to be traded when the Royals refused to renegotiate his contract. Jeff Montgomery, who saved 18 games with a 1.37 ERA in 1989, asked to be traded. And two-time Cy Young winner Bret Saberhagen and two-time All-Star pitcher Mark Gubicza, each of whom signed three-year deals last fall, wondered aloud why Davis was provided an extra year with a lot more money.

“There might have been,” Schuerholz said, “some psychological negative impact among our players, who might have said to themselves, ‘Geez, why are they bringing guys in from the outside, paying him all this money. I’ve been here for five or six years, I helped this club win a pennant and get in a World Series, and I’m not getting what this guy’s getting. What about me?’

“We knew that might occur, but we took our chances. We thought the signing of Mark Davis was the final piece of the puzzle, and he’d get us over the top.”

Instead, Davis has flopped, and the Royals are floundering right with him. The Royals (22-30) are a whopping 13 games behind the Athletics and they have already spent more time in last place in any of their previous 21 seasons.

“The frustrations of our fans in Kansas City are higher than they’ve ever been this year,” Schuerholz said, “because the expectations are higher than they’ve ever been. And to me, the frustrations of the players, the fans, the media, the manager, the general manager and the owner simply parallel the expectations we all had.”

But is it fair for everyone to say Davis is the man responsible for the collapse of the club?

“Baseball is such a psychological game,” Schuerholz said, “that when Mark went out and struggled, I think the players began to have some doubts whether we’d have enough runs going into the ninth inning. So they started putting more pressure on themselves to do more. The starting pitchers thought they had to pitch better, to get a bigger lead. . . . It was a big snow-balling effect.”

The players say they hold no ill feelings or grudges toward Davis because of his contract. The ones who have taken time to know him enjoy his company. But the confidence they once had in their new teammate has deteriorated.

“We heard all about him and what a great pitcher he was and stuff,” said Kevin Seitzer, Royal third baseman, “and now we’re saying, ‘OK, where is he? Come on, where is he?’

“I remember talking to Gary Gaetti during the winter, and he said, ‘I faced him in the All-Star Game, and this guy is unbelievable. The guy can’t be touched.’ That’s all we heard about. We kept hearing how he’d dominate, but he hasn’t been dominating much of anything yet.

“During training camp, I’d ask (catcher) Mike Macfarlane how he’s pitching, and he’d say, ‘Well, some days he’s on, some days he’s off.’ We were a little surprised, but we thought, ‘It’s just spring training. Wait until the season starts.’ Well, the season started, and nothing’s changed. If anything, it’s gotten worse.”

The situation has deteriorated to a point that Davis has not pitched a one-two-three inning since May 7, spanning 11 outings. After blowing his fourth save May 11 in Chicago, turning a 4-2 eighth-inning lead into a 6-4 defeat, Wathan said he had no choice but to demote Davis to middle relief.

“I told him it was only temporary,” Wathan said, “and then we’d go back the other way. I thought it would be a matter of a week, maybe 10 days. I never imagined it would take this long.”

There are times it appears that Davis is about to extricate himself from his stupor. He was summoned in the eighth inning of a 6-1 game May 27 against the Yankees. The bases were loaded with none out, and Jesse Barfield was at the plate with Don Mattingly on deck.

Davis struck out Barfield on four pitches. He made Mattingly look silly on three pitches.

“I remembered thinking, ‘He’s back. The man is back,’ ” Seitzer said.

Davis then walked Roberto Kelly on four pitches.

“And the pitches weren’t even close, not close,” Seitzer said. “I couldn’t believe it.”

Those same warning signs appeared again. Beet-red face . . . rapid breathing . . . bulging eyes . . . Davis was finished for another night.

“He’s like a thoroughbred horse that you have to keep the reigns on,” Funk said, “but it seems like we’ve exhausted all our options trying to do that.”

Padre Manager Jack McKeon and Dobson are confident they could turn Davis around in a matter of days, if not hours. In fact, when Davis left the Padres, McKeon and Dobson predicted that he would have problems. This was a guy who even at his best last season needed constant reminders and pitching tips from Dobson to remain under control.

“It was funny, you’d think he’d have all the confidence in the world with the way he was pitching,” Dobson said, “but I don’t think he ever really believed in himself. He lost his confidence so easily. Remember, he had always been told he had great stuff all of his life, but until the last two years, he never had much success. So when he fails now, he thinks, ‘Oh, no, now I’m going to go back to where I was before.’ ”

Said Denny Sommers, the Padre bullpen coach: “Even in the bullpen warming up, it was like he was always thinking of every possible thing that could go wrong when he got to the mound.”

Now, his greatest fears have materialized.

“I saw him pitch the first weekend of the season,” said Gordon Lakey, a Toronto Blue Jay scout, “and I thought, ‘Boy, this guy could be unhittable this season. He’s going to give us fits.’

“I saw him last week in the Oakland series, and it was like I was watching two different pitchers. His curveball is flat, and it looks like he’s lost all confidence in his fastball.”

Said Macfarlane, the catcher: “There’s no question he’s lost his confidence. The question now is just when is he going to get it back.”

Or if he gets it back.

Whether it is the burden of trying to live up to his contract, the daily disappointment of his performance or just living in the Midwest, Davis’ personality is only a skeleton of what it was. Instead of sticking around and having a couple of beers with his teammates after games, Davis is among the first to leave. Instead of being the clubhouse prankster he was in San Diego, Davis keeps to himself, talking mostly to the batboys. Instead of laughing aloud, he’s crying inside.

“You can tell he’s miserable here,” second baseman Frank White said. “Any time you’re making $3 million, coming off 44 saves, blowing most of your opportunities here and have people booing you, you’re going to be miserable.

“You hate to see anybody go through this, but because he’s a new guy, and no one really knows him, no one can really help him.”

Davis talks almost daily with Andrew Jacobs, the team psychologist. He has telephoned several of his former Padre teammates and has had conversations with Padre coaches Greg Riddoch and Dobson. Everyone comes away with the same impression.

“I talked to him the other day, and it didn’t even sound like the same guy,” said Padre reliever Mark Grant, who had been teammates with Davis since 1984 in San Francisco. “Usually, he says, ‘Hey, great, how are you doing? Great to hear from you.’ Now, it’s, ‘I’m doing OK, what about you?’

“I said, ‘Just OK?’ He said, ‘Yeah, that’s about it.’

“It’s scary, really. You feel for him so much. Man, I wish he was back here.”

The cruel fact is that Davis never should have left in the first place. The Padres know that. Davis knows that.

Practically everyone in the Padre organization has been blamed for his departure. Club President Dick Freeman had the opportunity to sign Davis to a two-year, $2.4-million as late as April but decided to wait. Corporate lawyer Fred Lane, who was assigned the case by Padre owner Joan Kroc, had two months to sign Davis after the season ended but failed. Davis had a four-year, $12-million offer from the Padres on Dec. 3 but turned it down. Alan and Randy Hendricks, Davis’ agents, believed the Padres would continue to offer more.

Then, the Hendricks made a huge mistake. They publicly criticized Kroc. She telephoned McKeon and told him that he had better find himself a reliever, because Davis wasn’t coming back.

“There’s no way he wanted to leave San Diego,” Padre catcher Mark Parent said. “All he wanted was the best deal he could get, but I don’t think he realized there was ever a final offer.

“There’s no way he ever wanted to leave. I know that. He knows that. There’s not a guy in this clubhouse that doesn’t know that.”

Davis tries not to think about the Padres. It only makes the pain more severe. Still, he catches himself watching the scoreboard each time the Padres play, and it’s the first box score he reads in the morning.

“It doesn’t do any good to think about the past,” Davis said. “My job is in Kansas City. I keep hearing people talk about all the pressure I’m under because of what I did last year, combined with the money I’m making.

“But I would have been the $3-million man wherever I went. What people don’t understand is that I didn’t sign saying I was going to be a better pitcher. I signed saying I was going to be Mark Davis.

“These fans don’t understand, saying that it makes it easier with the money I’m making. Hey, if all I cared about was the money, there were a lot of other places that offered me more. But I did what I thought was best for me and my family.”

The final teams bidding for Davis’ services, according to sources, were the Angels, New York Yankees, Philadelphia Phillies, Detroit Tigers, Montreal Expos and Atlanta Braves. The final choice came down to the Angels and Royals.

Davis telephoned Dobson, among other friends, asking for his advice. Dobson recommended the Angels because of Marcel Lachemann, the pitching coach. Davis went to Kansas City anyway, citing their championship history and vast ballpark.

Who knows if life would have been any different back on the West Coast? He knows it couldn’t be any worse.

If there’s any consolation to Davis, at least he has been through the doldrums before. He has experienced plenty of previous failure in his career. And now it’s slapping him in the face again.

“But you know,” Davis said, “it’s like when you stub your toe. You could’ve stubbed your toe nine times before, but that still doesn’t mean the pain’s not there, and you don’t know when it’s going to go away.

“I just wonder when this will.”

DAVIS, THEN AND NOW

Year G IP ER H BB SO W L S ERA Opp. BA 1989 70 92 2/3 19 66 31 92 4 3 44 1.85 .200 1990 24 23 1/3 15 31 18 28 1 2 5 5.79 .304