Catcher Gone Awry : Cardinals’ Zeile Makes Move to Third Base but His Heart Remains Behind the Plate

OK, so maybe it wasn’t as if they asked Michelangelo to do a little something with aluminum siding instead of all that fancy-schmantzy painting. But when the St. Louis Cardinals told Todd Zeile to play third base, it broke his heart.

Zeile, you see, was a catcher. And it wasn’t just that he knew how to catch. He was a catcher in mind and spirit too. One of those rare birds who find pleasure in having a foul-tipped, 95-m.p.h. fastball thud against his face mask or throat.

“Catchers are different,” Zeile said. “Not everybody wants to do it.”

Gee, imagine not wanting to spend a summer in St. Louis where the heat and humidity can make Ecuador’s climate seem cool, squatting behind home plate day after day, night after night, groveling in the dirt and getting run over by baserunners, all while wearing a heavy chest protector, leather-and-steel mask and clumsy shin guards.

“I miss it,” Zeile said last week during his Cardinals’ three-game series against the Dodgers in Los Angeles. “I really do.”

You have no doubt figured by now that the switch from catcher to third baseman was not Zeile’s idea. Rather he would have played a week of baseball with the metal cleats inside his shoes instead of on the soles.

But the powers that be in the Cardinal organization told Zeile early in the season to put away the heavy equipment and get used to catching baseballs that a batter has hit, instead of the ones the batter has missed.

Zeile, 25, of Valencia, was a standout at Hart High and UCLA and was the Cardinals’ No. 3 pick in the 1986 free-agent draft. The following season, he was a success from the start, earning co-MVP honors for Springfield, Ill., of the Class-A Midwest League after hitting 25 home runs and driving in 106 runs.

In the winter of 1987-88, he ventured to the Dominican Republic for the winter league and was promptly left gasping by a foul tip that crashed into his right thumb and broke several bones.

The injury contributed to a slow start in 1988, when he played for Little Rock, Ark., of the double-A Texas League. But when the thumb healed Zeile again showed his talents. He finished the season with 75 runs batted in.

After the 1988 season, Zeile married former Olympic gymnast Julianne McNamara of Encino and was invited to the Cardinals’ spring training camp in 1989 in St. Petersburg, Fla. He spent the 1989 season playing for the triple-A club in Louisville, and again he excelled. He had 85 RBIs in just 118 games, second-highest in the American Assn. and fourth-highest among all triple-A players.

And then, in August, 1989, at a team picnic in Louisville, he got the call. He reported two days later to the Cardinals and played in 28 games in the major leagues at the end of the season.

At spring training in 1990, Zeile was picked by a national magazine as the top candidate for the rookie-of-the-year award. He batted .244 in his first season, with 15 homers and 57 RBIs and finished sixth in the rookie balloting. Admittedly, more than 140 games behind the plate had worn him out.

And the Cardinals, while not displeased with his defensive skills, saw one of their top hitting prospects grinding down before their eyes. Dal Maxvill, the Cardinals’ general manager, broached the idea of moving Zeile to third base.

He made his debut inside the foul lines Sept. 5, last year, trotting past home plate and all the way out to third.

“It was very strange at first,” he said. “I think I played a few games at third base at UCLA. Against nonconference teams.”

A skilled athlete with good reflexes, Zeile made a fast adjustment. When the 1991 season started, there was no retreat. Zeile was the Cardinals’ third baseman, replaced behind the plate by Tom Pagnozzi.

The result?

Zeile has played in more games this year than any other Cardinal, missing just four of the team’s first 137 contests. And without the exhaustion brought on by full-time squatting, Zeile’s production at the plate has soared. After Tuesday’s game against the Philadelphia Phillies, Zeile was batting .271, fourth best among Cardinal regulars. He also had nine home runs and 69 RBIs.

And Pagnozzi? He was batting .272 at the All-Star break, and then, he is quick to admit, the grueling beast that is catching began to catch him . Entering Tuesday’s game, Pagnozzi had batted just .213 since the break.

The move to third base might just make Zeile a standout in the majors. But still . . .

“The switch was a management decision, not mine,” he said. “They thought it was best for the team. They said it would prolong my career and give me more opportunities to hit.”

The change was not difficult physically, Zeile said.

“I think there are some great similarities,” he said. “As a catcher I had to make the quick throw to second base. From third, I have to make the quick throw to first base. It’s just a question of stopping the ball and getting it to first.”

Which is not always easy.

A week ago in Los Angeles, Zeile gave the Dodgers the game when his throw to first in the bottom of the ninth inning sailed into the photographer’s well along the first-base line and allowing pinch-runner Tom Goodwin to score from second for a 5-4 victory.

They pay Zeile to hit the ball into the seats, not to throw it there.

“The ball was wet and just slipped out of my hand,” he said. “I could feel it slipping and I just tried to aim it. I’ll have to work on that. We play on natural grass quite a bit and the ball does get wet at night.”

It was Zeile’s 19th error of the season. The errors (he currently has 20), he vows, will decrease. And, he said, batting .300 is not an unreasonable goal.

If only he could be the catcher.

“There is something about catching that’s different than any other position,” he said. “I did it for so long, since I started playing baseball, really. I just miss it.”

Joe Torre, the Cardinals’ manager, has helped Zeile make the transition. Torre, who was one of the best catchers in the National League during the late 1960s with a cannon of an arm, won the National League’s most-valuable-player award with the Cardinals in 1971.

As a third baseman.

“I know how Todd feels,” he said. “I felt the same way. But it will make him and our team better.”

And then Torre smiled.

“Going from catcher to third base, well, it has been done before,” he said.

And Zeile’s whole world does not consist of heaving baseballs wildly into the seats. Thursday against the San Diego Padres, he gloved a hard smash from Jerald Clark in the third inning, stepped on third for one out and fired quickly and accurately to second base, forcing the runner there and then watching as the Cardinals completed the triple play at first.

You can’t do that as a catcher.