Venezuelans Will Remember Angel <i> Rafaga</i> Curtis’ Name

The streets of Caracas, Venezuela, are crowded, but the young Norteamericano could not walk them unnoticed last winter. Nearly everywhere he turned, he was met with the exuberant greetings by people who had seen the minor leaguer play.

Rafaga!” they would shout.

“They’d yell my name,” said Chad Curtis, the young Angel outfielder, trying to imitate the awkward pronunciation attempts his Spanish-speaking fans made at his name. “Chad was the hardest. I don’t think I ever heard anyone say it right.”

It was not long before they stopped trying. Cleveland first baseman Carlos Martinez gave Curtis a nickname, a one-word moniker in the style of soccer stars. Rafaga.

“That was just my name, even in the newspapers, that or Rafaga Curtis,” said Curtis, 23. “It means machine-gun fire.”

The name stuck because of the way Curtis tore through the Venezuelan League, winning the batting title by hitting .338 for the La Guaira club, with 18 stolen bases, 16 doubles, eight triples and a home run in only 195 at-bats. He was also the league’s MVP.

“They gave him that name early, when it was like he was shooting the ball all over the field,” said Mark Davis, an outfielder who was Curtis’ teammate at triple-A Edmonton last season and again with La Guaira. “I got there at the end of November and he was hitting .500, and he was in a slump. I had been in Miami because I was having visa problems. It was two months into the season and I looked at the paper and he was hitting .625. Everything he hit was going off the wall or in the holes.

“When I got there, before I even said hello, I said, ‘Excuse me, sir, someone told me to ask you if I can play in your league, because obviously, you own it.’ ”

With winter behind, Curtis would just like to own a job in the major leagues. As spring training winds down, he is trying to stick with the Angels, battling for the fourth outfield spot now that Manager Buck Rodgers has declared center fielder Junior Felix well ahead of the competition for the starting job.

Curtis, with only 2 1/2 seasons in professional baseball behind him, has yet to make his major league debut. Despite batting .316 with 46 stolen bases for Edmonton last season, he was not called up for the September roster expansion.

This year, he has had an impressive spring, hitting .261 with three doubles, a home run and five runs batted in. His seven steals lead the team.

It might not be enough. Because he is young and a converted infielder who has yet to play a full season in the outfield, the Angels are of the opinion that it is important for him to play and continue to get at-bats. They will not let him languish on a major league bench, and it is possible that his outstanding winter and spring will win him nothing but a ticket to Edmonton.

“Chad’s done everything he could,” Rodgers said. “But when we’re talking about equal or close to equal, we’ll go with the veteran. Although Junior Felix hardly classifies as a veteran of 25, 26 or 24, whatever he is (24).”

The Angels have taken a hard look at Curtis, playing him not only in center field, but extensively in left and right. He has played in more games than any other Angel (19), missing only one.

“We’ve played him all over the outfield purposefully because if he makes this ballclub, right now it might be as the fourth outfielder,” Rodgers said. “If that’s the situation, he needs to be able to play all of them to our satisfaction. We have to expose him to all of them.”

It once seemed as if Curtis’ chances of making the team depended on how the Angels gauged his proficiency in the outfield, but Curtis, though not polished, has proved reliable.

“He ran the route a little ragged,” Rodgers said, speaking of one catch Curtis made of a fly ball at the wall. “But he recovered and made a hell of a play. Speed can make up for a whole lot of evils.”

The decision probably comes down to an estimation of how much the fourth outfielder is likely to play. If the Angels don’t think it is enough for their young prospect, Jose Gonzalez likely gets the job, and Curtis will have to wait.

Rodgers wants to keep Curtis--”If I can justify getting him enough at-bats to make this a plus-season for us as well as Chad Curtis,” he said. “If I could give him 15 to 20 at-bats a week, that would justify it.”

Edmonton is not what Curtis has in mind.

“I’d be disappointed,” he said. “I know I can help this team. There are other good players who can help the team also, but I want to be a contributing factor. If I have to go back to triple A and put up the numbers again and come back at some point during the season, I’ll accept that role if I have to. It’s not what I want to do, but if I have to, I’ll do it.”

Curtis has been eager to prove himself for a long time. His yearning to get out there and show what he can do goes back to high school, when Curtis was 5 feet 10 and about 165, 10 pounds lighter than he is now. He wasn’t recruited in baseball, and turned down a smattering of offers from small colleges that recruited him as an option quarterback. Football had been his favorite sport, but he gave it up and enrolled at Yavapai Community College in Arizona to play baseball.

“I didn’t like the idea of getting jumped on by guys who weighed 350 pounds and could probably outrun me,” he said.

He moved on to Cochise Community College in Arizona, and finished his career at Grand Canyon College, an NAIA school in Phoenix. His team was ranked No. 1 in the nation for part of his senior year, and five players were eventually drafted. Two of them, outfielder Tim Salmon and pitcher Paul Swingle, are in the minors with the Angels.

Curtis was among those chosen, but it was far down in the draft--the 45th round. Curtis says scouts suspected his power came from the aluminum bat, and were cautious because of his size and skeptical of his speed.

“It doesn’t bother me now,” he said. “When it first happened, it was kind of a shock to my expectations. I sat and wondered whether I could make it. I thought, ‘They’re not looking at me to make it,’ I had the self-pity routine. Then I decided this is my chance and I’m going to make the best of it.”

That is pretty much what he has done. His career average in the minors is above .300, and he has stolen as many as 63 bases in a season, in Class-A Quad City in 1990.

He had hoped to be in Anaheim by last fall, but he wasn’t.

“I felt after the season I had last year in triple A, I was ready to start to get a taste of the big leagues to where I could make the adjustments I have to make to play in the big leagues,” Curtis said. “I didn’t get that opportunity last September. I was a little disappointed. Then when I went to Venezuela, I wanted to show the Angels’ personnel I was ready to play in the big leagues. I wanted to show myself that, also. Once again I started second-guessing myself, saying, ‘Well, maybe I’m not ready to play.’

“By going down there and playing the way I did, I reassured myself that my season in triple A wasn’t a fluke, and I was ready to get a look at the big league level. I think I showed the Angels that also. That was my main goal in going to Venezuela.”

The Venezuelan League is generally considered to be on a par with double-A ball, but Curtis says it is hard to judge. Double A might be the average, he says, but that is because the players range from major leaguers to rookie leaguers. Rodgers is most impressed with what succeeding in winter ball says about a player’s makeup.

“Being an American, winter ball is tough to play,” he said. “You’ve got to be a gritty player because the conditions down there are not too conducive to having a good year, unless you’re a hard-nosed ballplayer. That’s what winter ball says to me.”

Curtis and his wife, Candace, didn’t find it the struggle everyone predicted, and they particularly enjoyed an outing to Aruba over New Year’s.

“Venezuela is just not as intimidating of a place as what people make it out to be,” Curtis said. “I was expecting to have a little bit of a rough time fitting into the culture and the language barrier. I thought it would be a problem, but I got down there and I had no problems the whole time I was down there. They treated us great and a lot of people spoke English, and I started to speak Spanish, so the language problem wasn’t nearly what I was building it up to be.

“I didn’t find it any struggle at all. I really enjoyed it and I plan on going back next year, regardless of my situation.”

Rafaga knows the bienvenido signs will be waiting.