Dodger in the Rough : Rudy Seanez Throws 98 M.P.H., but He Is Still a Legend Only in Brawley

The trains rumbled behind his little house as many as four times a day, shaking his kitchen table, stirring up the dust and his dreams of leaving this desert town.

Rudy Seanez could not stop those trains, so he would go into his back yard and throw rocks at them. Then he would throw rocks over them. Soon, he was throwing rocks onto the roof of an onion storage house more than 300 feet away.

The trains would disappear and his mother would hear the thump-thump-thump of the rocks bouncing off the distant sheet metal. She would send her husband to scold the 10-year-old boy, but Rudy Seanez would not listen.

“I kind of couldn’t believe how far I was throwing those rocks,” Seanez said. “So I kept throwing.”

The arm grew stronger, the distance grew shorter, the rocks disappeared. The thump-thump-thump became the sound of a catcher’s mitt as Rudy Seanez and this town discovered his gift for throwing a baseball that could outrace even those trains.

Along the quiet streets that steam in the summer’s 115-degree heat, throughout the kitchens of the tidy matchboxes that are homes to the farm workers, the talk spread.

There was the boy who collapsed at home plate and remained motionless for 15 minutes after Seanez accidentally broke his ribs with a fastball. Seanez was 12.

There was the first baseman who was knocked out when Seanez’s pickoff throw broke his glove and hit him on the chest. Seanez was 14.

There was the catcher who refused to squat behind the plate for Seanez until he covered his hand with two batting gloves, a foam rubber pad and the thickest mitt he could find.

There was the metal backstop that was battered beyond recognition when Seanez, with nobody to play catch with him, repeatedly threw his fastball against it.

And there was the sound. Not the whoosh noise made by all those baseballs thrown 95 m.p.h. This was the noise made by the batters.

“When they stepped in there against Rudy, you could actually hear their knees knocking,” said Stacy Hoffman, his former catcher.

Fourteen years have passed, and the legend has come to Dodgertown. It has been tarnished by time and discounted by many, but a portion of it remains intact: Seanez still throws as hard as anyone in baseball.

If he has learned control, which the Dodgers believe occurred this winter, he and his 98-m.p.h. fastball could vastly alter their bullpen and their season.

“I pitched for 15 years, and I would give anything just to throw one pitch like he throws every pitch,”

said Burt Hooton, the Dodgers’ minor league pitching coach and Seanez’s coach this winter in the Mexican League.

“I look at his tools, I look at his age and I think back to Sandy Koufax,” Hooton said. “Sandy needed four or five years to get himself together, right? I think this is what it is happening to Rudy now.”

Hooton recommended the trade this winter that brought Seanez, 23, from the Cleveland Indians for Dennis Cook and Mike Christopher.

It didn’t take a lot of thought. Seanez gave up no runs in 34 innings for Hooton’s Mexicali team, with 71 strikeouts and 23 walks.

“There were times down there where Rudy could tell the hitter what was coming, and they couldn’t hit it,” Hooton said. “The hitters had no chance. They might as well have not even had a bat.

“Rudy was so impressive, even opposing crowds gave him a standing ovation when he came into the game. Everybody wanted to see him pitch.”

Now it is the Dodgers’ turn, although management is not yet standing and cheering. The Dodgers are still more curious than awed, particularly because Seanez had minimal success in parts of three major league seasons with the Indians.

“He sure does have a good arm--a great arm--but we’ll just have to see what he does in some games,” Manager Tom Lasorda said. “We’re very interested in watching him.”

Because Seanez is out of options--the main reason he was traded by the Indians--the Dodgers must put him on waivers if he does not make the team. This means unless he fails miserably this spring, he will be the Dodgers’ 11th pitcher.

“With an arm like that, he will not last a day on waivers,” said Fred Claire, Dodger vice president. “We traded for him with the hopes that he will make the team.”

Which begs the question: How can he make the Dodgers if he couldn’t make the Cleveland Indians, whose bullpen managed 33 saves last year, worst in baseball?

“Something happened to me this winter where everything seemed to fit,” Seanez said. “I just went back to the way I threw during high school, which was something they wouldn’t let me do with Cleveland.

“With Cleveland, everybody from the manager to the front office guy was trying to change the way I pitched. ‘Move over here, over there.’ ‘Step up, step back.’ I was trying to do two or three things at the same time.”

Seanez said that Dan O’Dowd, the Indians’ director of player development, once told him that his problem was in his shoe.

“He told me I was landing too much on my heel,” Seanez said. “After a while, I didn’t know what to think.”

The Indians, who watched him have 36 walks and 38 strikeouts in 37 1/3 major league innings, were equally frustrated.

“It is very sad to part with an arm like that,” O’Dowd said. “All he has to do is gain control and show some poise and maturity on the mound. But unfortunately, he couldn’t do it here.”

When Seanez was growing up in Brawley, he wasn’t sure he would have a chance to do it anywhere.

“Scouts don’t find many guys from the middle of nowhere,” said Mike Romero, Seanez’s coach at Brawley Union High.

Living in a town that was two hours from the nearest major city, San Diego, Seanez could have easily remained there and worked in a machine shop, as did his father. Or he could have followed his friends and become a border patrol agent, a truck driver, a carpet cleaner.

“But I knew I could throw hard, and I liked the feeling when I really popped one off,” Seanez said. “It’s like you aren’t really throwing at all. It’s like slow motion. Throwing like that really made me feel good. I didn’t want to stop.”

Seanez said he realized his gift when, at 11, he entered his first youth-league game in the seventh inning. He went to a full count on the first three hitters before striking all of them out.

“I thought, ‘This is fun,’ ” Seanez said.

By the time Romero saw him as a freshman, he had heard all the stories. He didn’t know whether to be excited or frightened.

“At first, none of the kids wanted to even take batting practice against him,” Romero said. “When his ball hit the catcher’s mitt, you could hear the ringing all over the diamond. And he didn’t always know where the ball was going.

“I walked up to him and said, ‘Son, where did you learn to throw like that?’ And he said, ‘Throwing rocks across railroad tracks, coach.’ ”

The trains had a better chance of avoiding his pitches than the hitters.

“At first he was like Charlie Sheen in the movie, ‘Major League,’ ” said Hoffman, the catcher. “Sometimes it was like he couldn’t even see home plate. The batters were afraid, and I was afraid.”

Even Seanez was afraid, confiding to his parents that he was worried he might kill someone.

But shortly after breaking another boy’s wrist, Seanez learned that every pitch did not need to be thrown so hard. He backed off a few m.p.h., discovered control and opponents still could not hit him.

He also began working with weights, and not merely the kind found in the musty workout room at his school. Seanez would take an eight-pound shot and throw it, like a baseball, against a chain-link batting cage at a local park.

“After a while, I would put holes in the screen, so I had to jump in my car and take off,” Seanez said. “The next day, I would find another cage. Pretty soon, I had wrecked most of the cages in town.”

The weights eventually transformed him into a 5-foot-10, 185-pounder.

During his junior and senior seasons, he struck out 239 in 145 innings with 63 walks. During his senior season, he struck 13 or more six times. In one game he struck out nine in a row.

He was drafted during the fourth round in 1986 by the Indians, who sent him to Burlington, N.C., of the Appalachian League and watched him throw a no-hitter during his first season. But then they began tinkering with his delivery and he was never the same.

Last season he gave up nine runs in five innings for the Indians, with as many walks--seven--as strikeouts. He even struggled at triple-A Colorado Springs, walking 22 and striking out 19 in 17 1/3 innings.

“Whatever I did for them wasn’t right, and in the end I didn’t know what I was doing,” Seanez said. “When I got to Mexico this winter, Hooton let me relax and do everything naturally again. They say power pitchers take longer to develop. I hope my time for developing is done.”

The only thing that seemed unnatural last winter was the trade announcement.

“Burt told me I was traded to the Dodgers, but I couldn’t believe it,” Seanez said. “I had to call home--twice. Not that I didn’t believe him, but it was too good to be true. I had to make sure he wasn’t joking.”

When Romero heard of the trade while watching television at his Brawley home, he screamed. Woke up his children. Angered his wife.

All over town, the legend was reawakened.

“The boy who had his wrist broken runs around town nowadays telling everybody about it,” Romero said. “He points to his wrist and says ‘Look, Rudy Seanez did this.’ Isn’t that something?”