Royals Look for Consistency From Cone

Three big shipping envelopes of letters forwarded from the Toronto Blue Jays leaned against David Cone’s legs. He picked through them, one extreme to the other.

One from a class of fourth-graders, one from what he identified as “the ultimate groupie,” vowing that whatever Cone did and wherever he went, she was going to marry him.

And here is David Cone, the pitcher with the history of mercurial inconsistency and similar personality, trying to decide at age 30, where he is on the scale. Is he Davenport, Fla., where the Kansas City Royals train in an orange-grove setting? Or is he Port St. Lucie and the spring-break coast where the aroma is coconut oil on bikini-bared skin?

But, of course, a good hunter can find trouble, as Cone has shown in the past. Is this what will fulfill him as a person and enable him to mature as a pitcher? Is this what he wants, or 42nd Street, which he had?

He has led the major leagues in strikeouts over the last three seasons, has pitched 200 or more innings and hasn’t missed a start in five seasons. And yet the New York Mets traded him for two prospects, let him go with the public speculation that it wouldn’t be cost-efficient to sign him.

And here he is with a team that paid a king’s ransom for a player it decided in 1987 would always be more trouble than he was worth. “It’s ironic that the reason they traded me is the reason they brought me back,” Cone mused on the eve of his first glimpse of the Mets since they sent him to Toronto Aug. 27.

On Christmas Eve and Christmas, Cone served food in a homeless shelter in Kansas City, got in and mixed with people feeding and being fed. “I’ve got a chance to get involved in the community where I played Little League, at my old high school, in the inner city where I grew up,” Cone said. “It sounds coached for me to say that; I liked it. Anybody can write a check. I’m looking for something I’ve never experienced.”

This is a man whose appetites were the stuff of gossip-columnist dreams the last two years, whose independence dismayed the Mets.

“The Royals expect me to play a big part on the field and in the clubhouse,” he said. “Somewhat of a leader, expressing opinions and being vocal. Apparently they didn’t have that last year.”

The Royals finished 18 games under .500 and owner Ewing Kaufman decided he wanted what the Mets did not, much to Cone’s surprise.

He offered the Mets a second chance and got a chuckle. He courted the New York Yankees and got the Gene Michael-Joe Molloy confusion--”the incredible shrinking offer,” Cone called it. He and agent Steve Fehr sought permission to talk to George Steinbrenner directly and were refused by the committee-in-lieu-of-a-commissioner.

The Yankees wanted Greg Maddux, who was clearly the best pitcher on the market. Michael says he was prepared to up the ante on Maddux to perhaps $34 million for five years. “If he’d done his homework, he’d have known Maddux didn’t want New York,” Cone said. “In six years of coming to New York he never left his hotel.”

Cone said the best he was offered was $18 million for three years--and the Yankees kept backpedaling. He spoke in wistful tones.

Then Kaufman jumped in with $18 million for three years, but $9 million up front, ahead of the anticipated tax increase and outside any lockout.

Kaufman wanted the pitcher who was a combined 17-10, including 4-3 for Toronto in the stress of the race. “I hadn’t earned the right to fail with Toronto,” Cone said. “Fear of failure and humiliation was the motivation.”

Kaufman also wanted the man who had grown up in Kansas City. “I’m here because Mr. Kaufman sold me on the idea of coming home, and the lifestyle of Kansas City,” Cone said.

What lifestyle appeals to David Cone? Who is David Cone? He was always among the brightest and most engaging of players on the Mets. Charming, even. He displayed perceptions and sensitivities beyond the clubhouse. And at other times he appeared out of his own control and certainly out of the team’s control.

He was at the center of the rape charge that devastated the Mets last spring -- not because he was accused but because he was the player who had first met and charmed the woman. She liked him and, Cone said here, he liked her.

He says he has thought of her often in the year since. “I still feel confusion,” he said. “I still don’t understand a lot; there’s still so much mystery surrounding it.”

He is certain that the incident and long-running episode interfered with their lives. He is a ballplayer; they are ballplayers. Women are all around, some to be exploited, some to be hurt and some to exploit them.

“It was easy to say at the time that it was behind me and I learned to deal with it; that’s the cliche,” Cone said. “It stays with you. It had to affect us. How could it not?

“There was some finger-pointing, some of it from self-righteous people with their own skeletons. But I think a lot of people learned that the days of reckless lifestyle are over.”

The early returns suggest that’s questionable. The immediate rewards of being rich and famous are too great.

But some people do learn and mature. Cone believes he was too outspoken for the Mets. Jeff Torborg and the front office want a type. “For example,” Cone said, “they told me to just worry about the batter. If I wanted to throw to first base, the sign would come from the dugout. If there was going to be a pitchout, they would have control of that.

“To me, that takes away your individuality and the way you grow in the heat of battle. Here, they allow the freedom to express your personality in the clubhouse, off the field and how you express that on the field.”

It sounds good in March. Kansas City is a far cry from New York.