Sophomore (High)Jinx : Eric Karros Doesn’t Have to Impress Anyone After Rookie-of-the-Year Season, but He Still Works Hard

Some of the guys call him Elvis. They kid him about his clothes, cut his tie off when he falls asleep on the team plane and tease him about his California good looks.

Eric Karros may be in his sophomore year at Lasorda University, but to his teammates, he is still the rookie in the Dodgertown clubhouse.

“Last season Eric was ‘GAPS Are Us’--he had the GAP ad down to a tee,” said teammate Roger McDowell. “This year, he’s ‘GQ.”’

Other than his clothing, and his agent, not much has changed about Karros since he was voted National League rookie of the year last season. His teammates say he is still very quiet, very humble, still drives a utility vehicle Pathfinder and still eats a lot.

“He is kidded all the time, but he doesn’t get mad like some guys have done in the past,” Brett Butler said. “Eric just laughs and says, ‘Hey, that’s part of being a rookie.”’

The kidding actually is a sign of respect and acceptance from the veteran players, who say they would ignore him if they didn’t like him.

“Eric came into spring training last year as the third man at first base (behind Kal Daniels and Todd Benzinger) after he was released from winter league,” McDowell said. “Here’s a guy trying to make the club, with all the physical tools. As a veteran player, you like to see somebody like that who is trying so hard to make it. And then he does.

“Then, he does the Lou Gehrig thing and stays in there. So you try to take him along and take him out to dinner--be helped out by the veterans. I just felt like our group should take and mold him.”

For the first eight weeks of last season, Karros stayed with Butler at his home in Glendale. Karros had made the team, but was so unsure of his status that, in what has become a legend, he wouldn’t even take his clothes to the cleaners.

“We used to stay up late, talking, and he would pick my brain, but I

think in his mind he felt he may not stay,” Butler said. “The evidence of that is one day I got ready to take my dry cleaning in and I told Eric I would take his too, but he said no.

“I said, ‘What do you mean, no?’ And he said, ‘If you take my clothes to the cleaners, and I get sent down, I won’t be able to get my clothes.”’

Butler said that Karros is very mature for a 25-year-old, and is still the same person he was a year ago.

“There is something about a guy who can’t wait to get to the big leagues and then becomes that arrogant, better-than-everybody-else ballplayer,” Butler said. “Eric will never be arrogant. Eric is a player that is going to be the same whether he makes a dollar or $10 million. The same person and the same player.”

It’s not a struggle for Karros to stay the same, but the demands are becoming greater.

In the off-season, a local television crew wanted to spend time with him at UCLA, where, donning a backpack, he took a few classes toward finishing his degree in economics. Karros politely turned the station down, saying he did not want to disrupt the classroom. But it would have been as accurate had he said he didn’t want to disrupt his chance to be a merely a student again.

“I don’t go out looking for attention,” Karros said. “I don’t mind going on MTV or playing softball for a charity, or going to functions, that is fun stuff. But I don’t know how Orel (Hershiser) does it. He can’t go out anymore. I don’t know how guys do that, and obviously, I am not even close to that level.

“I like my privacy and don’t like being the center of attention, and I don’t want that. I’m not the kind of guy who drives a Mercedes with my name on it or anything like that. I know the responsibilities that come along with playing. I accept them, and I deal with them the best I can. But if I had my choice, I would just be playing ball.”

Over the winter, Karros left his longtime agent, Dennis Gilbert, and signed with Jeff Moorad, who on Saturday negotiated a $435,000 second-year contract with the Dodgers, giving Karros a raise of $311,000. That’s $85,000 more than the Dodgers’ original offer. Karros is happy.

Karros said that Gilbert, one of the most successful player agents, had been great to and for him, but it was time for a change. However, Some close to the situation say feel that Moorad’s conservative manner fits more with Karros’ image. Gilbert, whose clients include Barry Bonds and Jose Canseco, has a higher public profile.

This winter, Karros was also busy with charity and baseball card-show commitments, and his agent said he has received a multitude of endorsement and charity requests.

Then there were the photo sessions for the cover of the Dodger media guide and a rookies of the year calendar.

It was altogether a remarkable turnaround for Karros from the previous winter, when, touted as the team’s answer at first base, he went to Venezuela to play winter ball just to show the Dodg ers how dedicated he was. Just so they wouldn’t re-sign Eddie Murray.

And then, for a while anyway, the answer became a question.

If he had stayed in Caracas any longer last winter, Karros might have been shipped home in a cardboard box, so mentally debilitating was his experience there.

Fans yelled at him, booed him when he left his hotel, even made signs to taunt him at the park. He played so poorly that he was cut from the team after three weeks and shipped back.

“In my two years down there, I had never seen a sign there at all and here they had one written in English saying, ‘Karros, go home, you’re fired,”’ he said. “They have a lot of pride, you are representing them and you are representing their city. And they had seen enough of my act after three weeks. I don’t know how I made it through.

“I hit a buck-thirteen (.113) down there and after that, in a lot of people’s eyes, especially even in this organization, there were a lot of people who doubted whether I was going to be the answer. At the time when I got sent home, they were still negotiating with Eddie Murray, who was obviously the previous first baseman. Then Eddie leaves and they were going to move Kal to first and then they traded for Todd Benzinger. “So, I was not in their plans for last year, regardless of what anybody says. But maybe if I’m the Dodgers, maybe I wouldn’t stick my neck out for me, either. If you would have seen me for those three weeks, I was horrible.” Fred Claire, the Dodgers’ executive vice president, said that the club would have signed Murray for one year to keep the 1991 team together, but Murray wanted two years, and the team wasn’t willing to do that because of Karros.

“On the contrary, I gained tremendous respect for Eric when he went back to winter ball last season,” Claire said. “He had not had a good season the winter before but he went back to prove himself. Phil Regan, (Karros’ manager at Caracas) said that Eric never gave up during those three weeks. He always worked hard. We have had many quality players who just don’t do well in winter ball.”

All in all, the mental strength Karros gained from that experience helped him during the spring, when he hit .370 with 11 runs batted in.

“I never doubted my ability and when I went to spring training last season, I was playing as much for (scouts from) other clubs as I was for the Dodgers, because I don’t care what anybody says, I wasn’t in the Dodgers’ plans for last season,” Karros said. He made the team the final day of the exhibition season and hung in until mid-May, when he finally got his chance to play regularly. Daniels had fizzled at first and Benzinger got hurt. Karros broke out after the All-Star break, when he hit five home runs and had 12 RBIs in 14 days and ended the season with a .257 aver age, 20 home runs and 88 runs batted in.

“It was almost like I had something to prove,” Karros said. “That’s the way it has always been. I’m not the type of guy that you are going to go to a game and watch and I’m not going to stand out. I don’t have those tools. I’m not fast, I don’t have a great arm, I don’t look like a natural or anything like that. But at the end of the year I will have my numbers.”

At Lasorda U., where Manager Tom Lasorda works overtime with his prize students, Karros labored over the plate last spring, learning how to hit the inside pitch.

To get into the university, Lasorda says, the tuition isn’t money, it’s hard work, perspiration, inspiration, determination and observation.

“He got by his freshman year with good grades, but he certainly didn’t graduate yet,” Lasorda said. “He’s only a sophomore now.”

Lasorda talked about his university the other day at Holman Stadium as he was watching Karros field ground balls the other day when Karros reached for a ball hit far to his right, but missed it.

“You would have dove for that ball last spring,” Lasorda yelled.

And Karros smiled.