BASEBALL : Kansas City Giving Ace Saberhagen Lots of Elbow Room After Surgery

Credit Bret Saberhagen with wanting to recover quickly enough from arthroscopic elbow surgery to pitch again this season.

Credit the Kansas City Royals with considering shelving Saberhagen until next spring.

The competitive fire of the pitcher is rightfully being tempered by the cautiousness of the club.

“(Saberhagen is) too valuable to fool around with,” said Frank Funk, the Royals’ pitching coach. “There is no sense running guys like that out there to pitch until they are ready. This is a million-dollar arm you’re talking about.”

Saberhagen, a two-time Cy Young Award winner from Cleveland High, had two rice grain-sized bone fragments removed Monday from his pitching elbow. Team officials described the surgery as successful and Saberhagen predicted he could be throwing again in three to five weeks.

The Royals, however, are mired in last place in the American League West, and, as of Saturday, trailed the first-place Oakland Athletics by 16 games. Nothing Saberhagen, 26, can do in a few September starts can change that.

In addition, pitcher Mark Gubicza and outfielders Bo Jackson and Danny Tartabull are out with injuries.

“We won’t rush any of the players on the disabled list back into the lineup until there is no question about their health,” Royals Manager John Wathan said.

Perseverance personified: His professional career began in frigid Medicine Hat, Canada, and hung by a thread in sweltering Laredo, Mexico. But in his ninth minor league season, Dave Walsh, a left-hander from El Camino Real High, is finally on the verge of a call to the major leagues.

Walsh’s numbers suggest the promotion is due: He leads the Albuquerque Dukes with 12 saves, a 2.65 earned-run average and has a 5-0 record. Also, the Dukes are the triple-A affiliate of the Dodgers, a team in need of left-handed relief pitchers.

Walsh has risen from the scrap heap of rag arms to be reborn as a prospect at age 29. “It would be awesome to be up there before I turn 30,” he said of pitching for the Dodgers. “But I take it one day at a time.”

That’s the only way he has survived an odyssey that included two knee operations, tendinitis in his pitching shoulder, banishment to the Mexican League and what Walsh describes as divine guidance.

Walsh, signed in 1982 out of the UC Santa Barbara by the Toronto Blue Jays, wore out his welcome after bouncing around the Blue Jays bushes for six years.

“I woke up in the middle of the night this one Saturday and had a strong feeling I was going to get released,” he said. “I laid in bed and prayed over whether I should quit or keep trying. The next day, sure enough, they called me into the office and said they were sending me to Mexico.

“I started to laugh. They looked at me like I was crazy. I said, ‘Hey, I’ll experience another culture.’ ”

Walsh flourished with Laredo, leading the league with a 14-1 record and a 1.73 ERA. His success caught the attention of the Dodgers, who thrust him into Albuquerque’s starting rotation last season.

The Dodgers soon had second thoughts: Walsh was 1-2 with a 5.00 ERA after six starts. Down to his last chance, Walsh was sent to double-A San Antonio and converted to relief. Although he was 2-6, his ERA was 3.72 and he notched two saves. And he met a coach who believed in him--former Dodger pitcher Claude Osteen.

“Osteen taught me about getting power out of my legs,” Walsh said. “I never threw 90 miles an hour my whole life and now I do sometimes. It’s amazing and I owe it to Claude.”

The new-found velocity is apparent; Walsh has struck out 60 and allowed only 45 hits in 54 1/3 innings.

Can he do the same against National League hitters?

“I feel I am ready for the first time in my career, as far as control, my pitches and my health,” Walsh said. “I think the Dodgers are getting to know who I am and what I am made of.”

Playing Tags: Be wary, New York-Penn League pitchers and umpires. Gino Tagliaferri is slowly regaining that swinging, swaggering feeling.

Tagliaferri set City Section records last season at Kennedy High for home runs in a season and career. He also never hesitated to tell an umpire his opinion of a call and once drilled a home run that landed on an arbiter’s auto.

After signing with the Detroit Tigers for a $55,000 bonus last July, however, Tagliaferri struggled to a .173 batting average for Niagara Falls of the Class-A New York-Penn League. He struck out 54 times in 110 at-bats, hit only three home runs and found that professional umpires don’t take kindly to advice from raw rookies.

Tagliaferri, 19, began this season with Fayetteville of the Class-A South Atlantic League and hit .212 with four home runs in 58 games. Although he led the team with 73 strikeouts, he hit a dramatic three-run home run against Asheville on June 14 to help Fayetteville clinch the first-half Northern Division championship.

Three days later, he was shipped back to Niagara Falls in what could be considered a slight demotion. “As young as Gino is, the Tigers don’t want him down on himself,” said Dan McD, a Fayetteville official. “They want him somewhere he can prosper.”

Tagliaferri’s spirits plummeted, however, when he was told he was leaving Fayetteville.

“They rushed me a little by sending me to Fayetteville in the first place, but getting sent to Niagara was very disappointing and hard to cope with,” he said.

His depression carried onto the field; he had only one hit in his first 12 games with Niagara Falls. Lately, however, the move has paid off the way the Tigers envisioned: Tagliaferri has 22 hits in his past 25 games, including three homers.

“I’m ready to pop,” said Tagliaferri, who added that he has ceased popping off to umpires. “I’m getting my confidence level back to where it was in high school.”

His three-run home run with two out in the eighth lifted Niagara Falls to a 9-6 victory over Utica last week. After primarily playing left field at Fayetteville, Tagliaferri (5-11, 190) has moved back to third base, the position he played last season. He was a shortstop in high school.

“I really enjoyed outfield when I was there,” he said. “I’ve always loved shortstop, but the first thing they did when I was signed was make me a third baseman. Now I can see why. They want me to be a power hitter and the shortstops here are little quick guys.”