Fishel Wants Another Shot at the Majors : Baseball: After being released, former Loara High and Cal State Fullerton outfielder thinks he can turn things around.

There was a time not long ago when John Fishel believed he had a future in professional baseball.

And why not? Major league scouts told him so. His high school and college stats reflected his potential. He even looked like he belonged on a bubble gum card.

The years that have rolled by since he first entertained those thoughts, years that didn’t fully measure up to his lofty expectations, haven’t altered his opinion. He’s still clinging to that notion, even though he was released from his last minor league contract months ago.

“I see all those guys on TV that I played with or against and I feel I should be there too,” Fishel said from his home in Columbus, Ohio. “I believe I can hit major league pitching . . . I’m letting people (clubs) know that I’m interested in getting back in the game.”

Whether teams are willing to dispatch welcome wagons for a 28-year-old outfielder with only 19 games of major league experience is questionable.Fishel’s pro credentials--particularly in his last two minor league seasons--won’t impress big league clubs.

But Fishel, who played at Loara High and Cal State Fullerton, remains hopeful he’ll get another shot.

“I think my chances are good to at least go to spring training (next year),” said Fishel, who is now a free agent. “But I would have to outshine everyone there (to get a job). I can’t have a mediocre spring training. Right now, I’m not looking at just playing triple A. My goal is to get to the big leagues.”

Fishel knows what it feels like to reach the majors.

Early in the 1988 season, the Houston Astros brought him up from their triple-A club in Tucson, and Fishel managed to get six hits in 26 at-bats for a .231 average. He even hit a home run in the Astrodome off St. Louis Cardinal left-hander Steve Peters. But Houston sent him back to Tucson, where he batted .261 with 18 home runs and 68 runs batted in.

The Astros had signed Fishel for $7,500 out of Fullerton in 1985. That was a far cry from the $48,500 the New York Yankees offered after his senior season at Loara or the $20,000 the Oakland Athletics offered after his junior year (1984) at Fullerton.

Fishel was a four-year starter at Fullerton, mainly in the outfield.He still owns Titan career records for games played (295), hits (379), doubles (72), runs batted in (281), runs (234) and at-bats (1,114).

His 116 hits in 1984, the year he was chosen the most valuable player of the College World Series for the NCAA champion Titans, tied the all-time school single-season mark set by Sam Favata in 1979. The games played and at-bat marks also are national college records.

“I felt he was a very fine professional prospect,” Fullerton Coach Augie Garrido said. “He was certainly an exceptional college player, among the top 3% in the country. His hitting was above average and he had adequate power.”

Fishel said he enjoyed his stay at Fullerton and learned valuable lessons from Garrido, whom he said was like a father to him. But he wonders whether playing there was detrimental to his big-league aspirations.

“If I had to do it all over again, I would have signed out of high school,” Fishel said. “You learn the whole professional structure right away. By 24, I would have been in triple A. . . . When the Astros drafted me, they could have given me $1. I was ready to play pro ball.”

Fishel’s pro career started in 1985 at Auburn, N.Y., the Astros’ short-season Class-A affiliate in the New York-Penn League. He batted. 261 with 42 RBIs and showed some power by hitting nine home runs in only 268 at-bats.

He improved his average to .269 and had 36 doubles, 12 homers and 83 RBIs the following season at Osceola, Fla., a stronger Class-A team in the Florida State League. From there, he went to double-A ball in Columbus, Ga., where he batted .278 with 24 home runs and 87 RBIs.

Then he went to Tucson, where things looked promising.

But on Dec. 4, 1988, Fishel was traded with pitchers Pedro De Leon and Mike Hook to the New York Yankees for pitcher Rick Rhoden, and assigned to the triple-A Columbus (Ohio) Clippers of the International League. Things didn’t look so hot any more.

“The trade took me by surprise,” Fishel said. “I always heard that they liked me a lot in the Astros organization. I guess the Astros needed a right-handed pitcher, and the reason they let me go was my lack of speed in the outfield.”

Fishel soon found that a little more quickness, both with the feet and with the bat, would have come in handy at Cooper Stadium, home of the Clippers. There, a right-hander batter such as Fishel has to poke the ball more than 355 feet and over a 6-foot fence for a home run down the left-field line. The power alleys are 385 feet.

And when your playing time is unpredictable, the results usually aren’t.

In 1989, his first season with the Clippers, Fishel batted .218 with only six home runs and 31 RBIs in 308 at-bats. The next season, his average plummeted to .200, his home run total to three and the RBIs to 21. He played in only 93 games and had a mere 185 at-bats because, Fishel said, there was no room for him in the well-stocked Columbus outfield.

“At one point they (Clippers) had Deion Sanders, Stan Jefferson, Bobby Brower, Kevin Maas, Hal Morris and me,” Fishel said. “Jefferson, Brower and me were the odd men out. I became an extra. The reason they call you that is because that’s how you are listed at the bottom of the lineup card. I was asking to be traded. I didn’t feel I was a backup triple-A outfielder.”

The manager at Columbus those two seasons was Bucky Dent, the former Yankee shortstop who is now a third base coach with the Cardinals. With so many other players clogging the outfield, Dent said he couldn’t find enough playing time for Fishel.

“He just got caught up in a little bit of a numbers game,” Dent said. “They (Yankees) wanted the younger guys to play.”

The frustration of riding the bench made Fishel assume a careless attitude he now realizes wasn’t in his best interest.

“I didn’t work as hard as I should have in my last year in Columbus,” Fishel said. “I look back and I think I should have worked harder.”

The Yankees, who cut him after the 1990 season, apparently thought the same thing.

For a while, life outside of baseball became perpetual motion for Fishel.

After working for a marketing company that promoted cigarettes in Columbus, Fishel returned to Orange County and began driving a delivery truck. That job lasted until an accident on an off-ramp of the Santa Ana Freeway in Anaheim early this year.

“The brakes gave out and the truck flipped on its side and hit a tractor,” Fishel said. “I was actually lucky to be alive. It was a tough squeeze. I don’t even know how I got out of it (the cab).”

He wasn’t totally unscarred, though. Fishel said he must have put his left hand through the windshield because he broke and split open the ring finger, ending up with a gash that required 29 stitches. At the time, Fishel said he had been talking to the Angels and the Philadelphia Phillies about spring training. The injury stopped all that.

Fishel went back to Columbus, got married--”My second and last,” he said--and found a new job with a firm that installs pre-fabricated office furniture. The hours are long, he said, but he finds time nonetheless for batting practice. And for hoping.

“I just want another shot. I’m very hungry for it,” Fishel said. “I see Steve Howe, who has been extremely fortunate, and I feel I should get another chance.”

If no major league team calls, Fishel said he would use his physical education degree to pursue a high school or college coaching career, possibly in Orange County.

“I want to stay in the game of baseball,” Fishel said. “Coaching would be my next step to take. Sooner or later I’ll be coming back to the West Coast.”

Preferably wearing a major league uniform, he hopes..