Young Ready to Give It His Best Shot : Baseball: Left-hander says he has recovered physically and emotionally from injury. Now he wants to make another run at big leagues.

Five years ago, Mike Young was a bright pitching prospect, seemingly destined to ride his 90 m.p.h. fastball all the way to the big leagues.

Today, Young is unemployed, his career blighted by psychological problems that magnified when a line drive shattered his left cheekbone in 1985.

“It’s been real, real hard,” Young said at his parents’ Palos Verdes home. “It’s taken its toll on both me and my family.”

Young’s problems began shortly after he transferred from Harbor College to the University of Arizona in 1983 with an attitude hard as his fastball. He was criticized for a lackadaisical work ethic, and admitted he sulked in the shadow of staff ace Joe Magrane, who today pitches for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Thus, Young struggled through a miserable 1984 season that ended with a front-row seat in the Arizona coaching staff’s doghouse, culminating in Jerry Kindall’s revocation of half of his scholarship.

Young, never one to back away from a challenge, answered Kindall’s punishment by beating out Magrane for the No. 1 spot on the Wildcat roster the following season, and seemed well on his way to fulfilling that wonderful promise on a hot, sunny April day in 1985, when he strolled to the mound to face top-ranked Stanford in Palo Alto.

Little more than an inning later, a line drive by Stanford’s Toi Cook shattered Young’s zygomatic arch and, in effect, his career in baseball.

The injury further complicated Young’s psychological problems, later diagnosed as “obsessiveness,” and led to a long, frustrating journey in and out of organized baseball.

“That injury was a big blow, not only to his baseball career, but to his life,” former Arizona teammate Gar Millay said. “He had everything in that left arm.”

Young never played higher than the Class AA level. He was suspended twice, hospitalized twice, released twice.

In the wake of his broken dream, he has worked as a golf-course attendant and has delivered flowers. Now Young, 25, believes he has solved his woes with the aid of religion and would like another opportunity to play professional baseball.

“A lot of people think of Mike Young as a problem, as somebody they don’t want to deal with,” Young said. “But I know I can still throw a baseball, and throw it well.”

Few have ever doubted Mike Young’s skills. From Little League to Rolling Hills High, he could zip a fastball past anyone.

At Rolling Hills, he was selected in the fourth round of the 1982 June draft. He chose to attend Harbor, where he was 11-1 and a first-team All-State selection in 1983.

Young was selected in the first round of the January and June drafts by the Blue Jays and White Sox. He opted for Arizona, where he battled himself as much as the hitters.

Young was as wild off the diamond as he was on it. During his first season, in which he was 0-6 with a 10.71 earned-run average, he was sent home from a road trip because he violated curfew. Kindall’s patience reached its limit, prompting the revocation of half of Young’s scholarship.

“I guess I didn’t realize what talent I had and what it could become,” Young said. “After always being the main guy, I was considered second fiddle at Arizona, and I couldn’t deal with that.”

He finally began to meet expectations during his junior year in 1985, and was 8-4 with a 4.07 earned-run average midway through the season. He had also become one of Baseball America magazine’s top 10 projected draft selections.

Young was rated right behind Bobby Witt, Will Clark, Rafael Palmeiro, Barry Bonds, Pete Incaviglia, B. J. Surhoff, Chris Gwynn, Barry Larkin and Magrane. Each player is enjoying major-league status today, and four have played in All-Star games.

“He was striving to reach his potential and was becoming more consistent,” said Jim Wing, the Arizona pitching coach. “He had competed well and proved he had what it took to be our No. 1 guy.”

Yet, for reasons Young had yet to discover, he battled guilt and anxiety.

“I was having trouble feeling worthy of being a first-round draft pick,” Young said. “I couldn’t handle people patting me on the back. I thought you had to be some sort of god to play pro ball, and Mike Young couldn’t accept the fact he was a human being.”

Young was promoted to the top spot in the rotation the same day he took the mound at Sunken Diamond in Palo Alto. The bottom of the first inning was characteristic of Young’s inconsistency. He walked three, struck out two, and allowed two runs and two hits.

“I wasn’t really into it,” he said.

Yet he took a 3-2 lead into the bottom of the second and faced Toi Cook to lead off the inning. On a 1-1 count, Young delivered a hard fastball on the inside corner that the right-handed Cook drilled back toward the mound.

“I heard it, but I didn’t see it,” Young said.

Young fell to one knee, blood rushing through his hand as he held it to his face.

“It was one of the most scary, gruesome things I’ve ever seen,” said Gar Millay, who was playing third base. “I didn’t even want to see it.”

“I’ve never seen anybody shot, but I think it was pretty close to that,” said Dave Sitton, a local radio broadcaster who was among the 2,000 stunned spectators. “The incredible thing about it was that I recall seeing the pitch coming in, but not seeing the ball again until after it struck Mike.”

“There was so much blood because of a cut over the eye that I couldn’t check his vision,” Scott Reynolds, the Arizona trainer, told the Tucson Citizen. “It was the worst injury I’ve ever seen.”

Doctors at Stanford University Medical Center said if the ball had struck an inch higher, it might have killed Young, who underwent 3 1/2 hours of reconstructive surgery. His cheekbone was broken in five places and his vision was permanently blurred.

Despite the injury and its aftereffects, Philadelphia selected Young in the second round of the June draft. Young didn’t sign, however, vowing to return to Arizona for his senior season.

But Young’s control, possibly because of fear of being hit again, deserted him when he returned to Arizona in 1986 for his final season.

“Nobody wanted to hit off him in batting practice,” Millay said. “One, he was wild. Two, we didn’t want to risk hitting him again. It was kind of sad.”

Young’s psychological problems worsened, and he was demoted to No. 3 in the Wildcat rotation. He was 0-1 with a 6.60 ERA, and had allowed 17 hits and 17 walks in 15 innings when he decided to leave the team.

“Baseball was the last thing on my mind,” Young said. “I was fighting just to make it through each day.”

Young said his problems stemmed, in part, from unbearable expectations he placed upon himself.

“I had lived my whole life thinking I was going to make it the big leagues, and when I find out I’m going to be one of the top picks in the draft, I’m full of fear,” Young said. “I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t know how to conduct myself. I thought I had to be perfect, a flawless human being. I became guilty and full of fear to the point that it immobilized me.”

In 1987, Young signed a contract with the Padres, who assigned him to their Class A team in Charleston, W. Va. He struggled to a 2-3 record and 7.58 ERA, walking 26 batters in 19 innings.

Yet, despite these unimpressive statistics, Young was promoted to the Padres’ Class AA Wichita club.

“The good Lord gave him an awful lot of talent,” said Tom Romenesko, the scouting director. “We took a chance and drafted him, and thought he was headed in the right direction.”

But Young, still fighting his emotions, went 4-6 with a 7.06 ERA.

“I was miserable,” he said.

Young spent three months in a South Bay hospital, where he was treated for “obsessiveness.” He returned to the Padres in 1989 at the Class A level, and was 0-1 with a 7.04 ERA for the Riverside team.

When his emotional troubles resurfaced, he left the team.

“I was really bitter,” he said. “I was wondering why I was in Class A ball, in Riverside. I kept asking God why I was playing there. I thought I was better than that.”

Young was suspended for 10 days for leaving the team. When he left a second time, the troubled pitcher was released, and he returned to the hospital.

“Everything just snowballed,” he said.

Despite Young’s problems, baseball didn’t give up on the talented left-hander. Milwaukee invited him to its spring training facility in Phoenix this year.

“He wanted to make a comeback, and was doing really well,” said Terri Buono, Young’s girlfriend. “Then, all of a sudden, he felt the pressure again. He started thinking that if he wasn’t perfect, it would all begin to slip away, and he was scared. As soon as he thinks that way, it overwhelms him. It was so discouraging that it happened again.”

Once again, Young was released.

June 30: The tall, slender left-hander adjusted the bill of his cap, kicked his right leg into the air and delivered a fastball that hissed past the batter. The ball registered “84” on a radar gun behind home plate, which raised a few eyebrows at the Major League Scouting Bureau tryout.

Three months had passed since his latest release, and Mike Young was into his latest comeback, this time at Westchester High.

Young allowed one hit and struck out one in an inning of work against players from high schools, colleges, and minor leagues. But when word spread of Young’s previous problems, scouts’ interest waned.

“It’s a shame,” said Dick Cole of the bureau. “There are some guys in the big leagues who don’t have half the arm this kid has.”

Young talked briefly with a scout, then left the field with Buono at his side.

“Even if that tryout doesn’t amount to anything, it was enough to me to prove that I had beaten whatever was haunting me all those years,” Young said. “I can always look back and say that I stood on the mound and won. I defeated the enemy and, if I never get asked to play again, that’s fine.”

Young, a “born-again” Christian since his release by Milwaukee in March, says religion has cured his illnesses and he would like an opportunity to pitch with a clear mind.

“I still think I can play,” he said. “Just because I wasn’t mature enough to handle things at the time doesn’t mean I’m washed up. I’d be better than I ever was. I just want somebody to believe in me and my talent.”

Romenesko, the Padres’ scouting director, said he always believed in Young’s left arm, but lost interest when he was dragged along with Young’s problems.

“He’s definitely left a trail of bitterness with a lot of people,” Romenesko said. “He probably still has a live arm, and is worth signing. But it will have to be with a club that will give him an honest shake, and I’m not sure he will get that chance again because of his past problems.”

Although what was once a promising career now consists of playing softball in a church league, Mike Young says he wouldn’t trade his experiences for a multimillion-dollar contract.

“Here I am, unemployed, and maybe I’ll never pitch again,” he said. “But I wouldn’t change things now for Jose Canseco and Will Clark’s salary combined. I’ve overcome my fears, and now I have a higher strength, and that’s God. Life is fun, it’s great.”

He swallowed and leaned back in the couch.

“I’d just like to know whether this chapter in my life is over or not,” he said.