MINOR LEAGUE NOTES / MARTIN BECK : Barbaras Thinking Big Time

While watching brothers Sandy Jr. and Roberto Alomar play in the All-Star game last week, Don and Dan Barbara couldn’t help but ponder their own possibilities.

Such thinking can be expected, though the Barbaras are still at professional baseball’s formative level, Class-A minor league ball.

Don, who is in his first season of pro ball, plays for the Angels’ affiliate in Palm Springs. Dan, who is in his third, plays for the (Hampton, Va.) Peninsula Pilots in the Seattle Mariners’ organization.

“I thought about it a little bit, but not too much,” said Dan of playing with his brother in the All-Star game. “They’re (the Alomars) both great athletes with a lot of talent and they were in a situation where the teams they were on both had room for them to move up.”

Don, a 24th-round draft pick who was signed by the Angels in June after his senior season at Cal State Long Beach, is more bullish.

“I know I want to be there and I’d love to have my brother there too,” he said of the major leagues. “I want to be in the bigs with my brother. I don’t care if we are on the same team.”

As might be expected of someone with almost three seasons of minor league experience, Dan’s outlook is more wary.

Dan, a catcher and 1983 graduate of Servite High School, wasn’t drafted by the Mariners--he signed as a free agent after his senior season at the University of San Francisco--and thus his place in the organization is not secure. Teammates such as Jim Campanis, the Mariners’ third-round pick in 1988, have priority.

In 1988, Barbara was behind the plate for every inning his college team played; in the minor leagues, he’s learned to be a reserve.

That’s why Dan says, if any Barbara makes it to the majors, Don, the 6-foot-2, 210-pound first baseman and natural of the family, will be there first.

At Cal State Long Beach last season, Don hit .474, a school record and the second highest average of the season in NCAA Division I baseball. He also had single-season school records for doubles with 27, third highest in the nation, and hits with 102.

Apparently, Don has made the transition from college to professional baseball quickly. He was drafted by the Angels June 5, signed June 8 and was assigned to Palm Springs June 9. Aside from some initial nervousness and just one hit in his first 17 at-bats, he said the switch was no problem.

“My feet weren’t even touching the ground,” said Barbara, who attended Canyon High School. “I was shaking. But now I know I can do it. I’m going to hit .300.”

He’s making good on his promise. After cracking the starting lineup, he hit .367 over the next 20 games, improving his average to .306.

But the last couple of days, during a series with the San Bernardino Spirit (a Mariners farm club on which his brother played for about a month last season), Don has been hearing quite a bit about his brother’s batting average, which had been above .300 for most of the season and is now .290.

“(Spirit players) are coming up to me and saying, ‘Your brother’s the talk of the organization. They want to know how he’s hitting .300,’ ” Don said.

The question is a fair one. In his first season in the minors, Dan hit .253 in the Arizona rookie league, but in Class-A ball last season, he hit .190 during a short stint with the San Bernardino Spirit and .215 for the Mariners’ Wausau, Wis., team.

This year, however, he hit above .400 for about three weeks and then dropped to about .330 for another month before slumping.

Dan credits his improvement to off-season instruction from Bob Bailey, a 17-year major league veteran who last played in the majors with the Red Sox in 1978, as well as less swinging for the fences and the chance to play every day. That opportunity came when his roommate, Campanis, who played at USC and Valencia High, dislocated a finger and missed 20 games early in the season. When Campanis recovered and resumed catching, Barbara stayed in the lineup as designated hitter.

As he labors to keep his batting average up, Barbara is battling for playing time with the team’s other designated hitter, Lash Bailey, out of Long Beach City College, who is hitting .218 but was a 15th-round draft pick.

It can be frustrating. As frustrating as being a catcher on a minor league team with Campanis, who was a California League all-star last season.

“But if they want me to back him up all the way to the big leagues,” Barbara said, “I don’t mind that at all.”