He’s a Big Surprise for White Sox : Baseball: Former Dominguez Hills standout, the American League’s smallest player, makes it to the majors as a utility infielder.

He’s 5-foot-6 and by his own admission he can’t run very well. He went to Cal State Dominguez Hills, a small Division II school that had never had a baseball player make it to the big leagues.

The odds were against Craig Grebeck ever making it to the majors.

However, Grebeck beat the odds and is enjoying his rookie year as a utility infielder for the Chicago White Sox.

He is the smallest player in the American League, weighing only 145 pounds. Oakland’s Mike Gallego is also 5-6, but weighs 173.

“Playing in the majors is a dream that everyone who ever plays baseball as a kid has and now I get to live that dream,” Grebeck said last week at Anaheim Stadium during the Angels-White Sox series.

Grebeck enjoys being the first player to represent Dominguez Hills in the major leagues. During his junior year as a Toro, he hit .316 with 12 home runs and 36 runs batted in. He was named to the 1986 NCAA Division II All-American team.

“I didn’t realize that I was (selected) until someone from the sports information office sent me a postcard telling me,” he said. “It doesn’t really surprise me though, because anyone who wants to play wouldn’t go to a small Division II school.”

Andy Lopez, his coach at Dominguez Hills and now the head coach at Pepperdine, was impressed with Grebeck’s skills.

“He was always such a good player and you don’t always get that at a school like Dominguez Hills,” Lopez said. “He really makes me look like a good recruiter.”

Two weeks ago was a homecoming for Grebeck, who attended Lakewood High. It was the first time this season that the White Sox played in Anaheim Stadium.

He started the third game of the three-game series and collected one hit in three at-bats, a double down the right-field line. He scored on Sammy Sosa’s single in a 5-2 victory. The White Sox swept the series from the Angels to knock Oakland out of first place.

The unheralded White Sox have been the surprise team of the year. With a mix of rookies like Grebeck and Robin Ventura and a stable of veteran players like Carlton Fisk and Ron Kittle, they have come out of nowhere to battle for first place in the American League West.

Grebeck spent as much time as possible during the series at home. He caught up on the home life and the home cooking that he had been missing.

“It’s nice to be home for a little while,” he said.

His playing time with the White Sox has been limited. He normally comes in late in the game as a defensive replacement.

He is hitting only .125 with one run batted in. Last year in double-A ball, he hit .287 with 85 RBIs. White Sox Manager Jeff Torborg said that he is confident Grebeck will hit on the major league level.

Grebeck didn’t think he was going to be playing with the big club this season. After making the expanded roster of 27 at the beginning of the season, Grebeck thought he was going to be sent down to triple-A Vancouver when the roster was trimmed to 25 at the end of April.

“It was a surprise to me when Torborg called me into his office only a couple weeks into the season and told me that I didn’t have to make any moving plans,” Grebeck said.

He has mostly been a utility player in the pros. Last season, at double-A Birmingham, he played 30 games at third base, 25 at second base and 90 at shortstop.

During his entire minor league career, he never hit less than .280.

There were other things that Grebeck said made it hard to concentrate on playing. The first year was Grebeck’s first time away from home. He grew homesick and never realized that there were so many things that he had to learn to do for himself--like cooking.

“Everyone talks about how bad the traveling is on the player, but for me that was the least of my worries,” Grebeck said. “It was actually the best thing about the job.”

The worst thing, Grebeck said, happened to be the minor league pay.

“I barely got paid enough to live on and that was very tough to deal with,” he said.

That worry has disappeared with a rookie’s salary of $100,000 a year.

Even with All-American numbers at Dominguez Hills, Grebeck found that no one was willing to draft him.

He left Dominguez Hills after his junior year to give his attention to getting signed.

Grebeck called up his high school coach, John Herbold, now the baseball coach at Cal State Los Angeles. Herbold said that the call came to his office about dinner time.

“Today I wouldn’t be able to answer that call because I don’t have a key to the athletic department office anymore,” Herbold said. “I think it’s just fate that I happened to be there at that time and that I had that key.”

Grebeck asked him if there was anything that he could do to help him.

There was.

Herbold knew Greg Wallenvrock, a scout for the White Sox, and Herbold arranged for Wallenvrock to take a look at Grebeck.

Grebeck went to the open tryout and hit five home runs in three days. Soon after that he was signed by the team.

The contract to class-A ball came with a round-trip ticket in case he couldn’t cut it. He never needed it.

Lopez said that a lot of scouts refused to take a look at the 5-foot-6 Grebeck because they thought he was too short.

“If anybody had taken a look at him they would have seen that he could really play baseball,” Lopez said.

Herbold said Grebeck was a terrific player.

“He was very aggressive but not much of a runner,” Herbold said. “He is quick to make the play but he just can’t run.”

Grebeck agrees with that assessment, but is actually happy that he didn’t get signed until after he attended college.

“When I left high school I wasn’t ready to play pro ball yet,” he said. “I got a chance to mature in college.”

Playing baseball runs in the Grebeck family. His father, Stan, played for the class-B Washington Senators in 1958. He moved on to playing fast-pitch softball and now umpires softball seven days a week for the Long Beach Recreation Department.

Grebeck’s younger brother, Brian, 23, is playing class-A ball in the Angels system and his older brother, Stan Jr., 27, plays fast-pitch softball.

Stan Sr. has always encouraged his children to excel in baseball.

“I’ve probably lost three jobs by taking an interest in my children’s baseball careers,” he said. “I coached Little League teams and I worked with my children whenever I could.”

Grebeck said he knows how proud his father is of his accomplishments. “I definitely did a lot of this for (Stan),” he said. “In the end though, I had to want it for myself more than anything.”

Being the new guy on the team does carry certain responsibilities--such as putting up with pranks.

On his way to Texas earlier in the season, Grebeck took his shoes off and went to sleep on the plane. Upon waking, he discovered that someone had taken his shoes.

“That kind of stuff doesn’t happen too often, thank God,” he said.