He Has the Look : Polonia Says He’s Ready for a Season of Superstardom

Luis Polonia steps out of the shower, slaps cologne on his face and stands in front of the mirror, trying to figure out his ensemble for the night.

He reaches into the top drawer and puts a gold chain around his neck. Then another. The third, the one with the diamond-laced cross, goes on last.

He looks into the mirror, realizes something is lacking and finds the missing piece. Ah, the diamond earring. It goes on his left ear.

Now that everything looks fine at the top, it’s time to work on the arms and hands. He places a diamond-and-gold chain on his left wrist and a New York Yankees ring on his third finger.

On the right wrist, he picks a thick gold bracelet, a watch and a thin gold chain. He decides to leave the fingers on his right hand bare.

“I used to wear everything together,” Polonia says, “but I decided that doesn’t look good. So I change my jewelry like I change my clothes. I spend $5,000, maybe $10,000, every year on jewelry alone.”

Polonia admires himself, starts to walk out of the bedroom for the night, then stops: The pager. He grabs a small black box and hooks it on his belt.

Wearing an Italian sweater and designer jeans, Polonia climbs into his new glistening-red sports car and is set for the night.

Hello world, it’s Luis Polonia.

Will you please take notice?

“My dream is to be recognized wherever I go,” Polonia says. “I want to be famous. I don’t want people to think I’m just another ballplayer, another .300 hitter.

“I want people to say, ‘There goes Luis Polonia, one of the best left fielders in this whole game.’

“That’s what I want people to say.”

Polonia has no idea what the fans think of him. He rips open his fan mail each day, signs his baseball cards and tosses the letters into a wastepaper basket without even reading them.

Polonia, 28, has not read any fan mail the past three years. Too painful, he says. Although there might be a hundred letters of adoration in one stack, it’s not worth the aggravation of reading the handful that cause the pain and anguish.

“I’m sorry I don’t read the letters,” he says. “I know there are a lot of nice people out there, but there’s a lot of bad people too. I just can’t do it.”

It’s the memory of that Aug. 16, 1989, night in Milwaukee, while Polonia was still playing for the New York Yankees, that won’t go away. It was an innocent mistake, he says, that continues to haunt his baseball career.

Polonia was arrested for having sex with a 15-year-old girl. She lied to him about her age, Polonia said at the time, and he believed her.

Polonia was sentenced to 60 days in jail and fined $1,500. He recently reached an out-of-court settlement to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the girl’s family.

“I learned my lesson,” he says. “I got tricked and paid the price for it.

“Now, I don’t care how old women say they are. If you want to be with me, you better show your I.D. If you don’t have it, I’ll see you later. The only ones I don’t ask are the women in the bar.

“If they’re in a bar, they fooled a lot more people than me.”

Polonia, who is the father of five children, each by a different mother, realizes that his social life may repress his popularity. But he supports all five kids, keeping three houses and an apartment to ensure that everyone has a place to stay.

“I don’t want my kids in the street with nothing to eat,” says Polonia, one of nine children raised by Luciano and Luz Maria Polonia. “They have a dad that is responsible for them. All five of them have my last name. They’re mine, and I tell their mothers to make sure to let them know they’re mine.

“I’ll do anything for my kids. I’m not just some jerk out there.”

Polonia, who lives in the off-season with his family, is a folk hero in his hometown of Santiago City, Dominican Republic. He can’t walk the streets without people shaking his hand and talking to him about baseball.

“In the Dominican,” he says, “people recognize me more than (they do) the president. People know me everywhere. The whole country knows my face. It’s beautiful.”

Polonia has been craving this attention since he was a 12-year-old in the Dominican Republic, telling everyone that he would be in the major leagues one day. He even began teaching himself English, knowing he’d need it while playing baseball in the United States.

“Luis always has been very confident of himself,” says teammate Stan Javier, who considers Polonia one of his best friends. “He’s very tough mentally. He loves someone to challenge him, because he knows he’ll always win.”

Now, Polonia is telling everyone that he no longer wants to be recognized as one of the best leadoff hitters in the American League. He wants people to believe, for once, that he’s also one of the best defensive left fielders in the game.

“Every year, I buy all these magazines, look at all the TV shows, and they all say the same thing,” Polonia says. “They talk about my defense, saying I’m a poor defensive outfielder.

“They’re stupid. Get some clue. They don’t know what they write. I’m asking them, I’m asking everybody, to please take a hard look at me in left field this year.

“I think I’m as good a left fielder as anybody in this league. There’s no doubt in my mind. I want that respect. I want people to say, ‘That guy catches everything out there, he’s a complete ballplayer.’ ”

Polonia will have the opportunity for the first time to prove he is adept defensively. He will be the Angels’ left fielder this season and will seldom be the designated hitter.

“I never wanted to be a DH in the first place,” Polonia says. “I want to show people what I can do. Before, I was afraid to make mistakes. Now, I want every ball hit toward me.”

Says Sam Suplizio, the Angels’ outfield coach who has worked extensively with Polonia: “Luis made mistakes in the past and got a reputation for being a poor outfielder. But I’m telling you, Luis is as good a left fielder as there is in the American League today. He’ll prove that this year.”

Polonia is one of only two career .300 hitters in Angel history--Rod Carew is the other--and he was never told to work on his defense. He batted .308 in his first professional season at Madison, Wis., in the Oakland organization, and virtually left his glove behind three years later when he made the big leagues.

“They were never satisfied with me over there,” Polonia says of the Athletics. “(Manager) Tony (La Russa) wanted me to be too perfect. I was happy I got a chance to play, but they never gave me a chance to be somebody.”

The A’s didn’t believe that Polonia would be a star, and traded him along with two pitchers June 21, 1989, to acquire Rickey Henderson from the Yankees.

“It’s a trade I’d make again tomorrow,” La Russa says. “We not only got the best leadoff hitter in the game, we got the best in the history of the game.”

Polonia was given his first chance to play every day under then-Yankee Manager Dallas Green, batting .313 the rest of the ’89 season, but returned to the bench when Bucky Dent became manager.

“To play for Bucky is to play for nobody,” Polonia says. “He was just a puppet for George (Steinbrenner). It made me sick.

“The worst day was when Mel Hall wasn’t feeling too good, and he told (hitting coach) Champ Summers that they should put me in left field. I heard Summers say, ‘Polonia? There’s no way.’

“I couldn’t believe it. Champ Summers, who is he? He never played. He was a pinch-hitter for life.

“From that point on, I told myself I’m going to be the best left fielder in the game.”

If Polonia indeed emerges this season as a capable left fielder, it’s quite possible that he might be the next player to leave the Angels. Traded from New York on April 29, 1990, he is eligible for free agency after this season, and the Angels have yet to open long-term negotiations.

“I don’t understand them,” Polonia says. “There are a lot of guys that don’t want to be here. Hey, I want to be here.

“I don’t need the Angels. They need me.”

Dan O’Brien, Angel senior vice president/baseball operations, says: “We’re going to take a wait-and-see attitude. It all depends on how things fall. As we get down the road, we might start talking.”

Polonia, the first player in Angel history to lead the club in hits for three consecutive years, is dumbfounded. Isn’t he the latest recipient of the team’s most valuable player award? Isn’t he rated one of the best clutch hitters in the game, boasting a career .331 batting average with two outs and runners in scoring position? Isn’t he considered perhaps the finest leadoff hitter in Angel history?

“What more do they want from me?” Polonia says. “I score more runs than anybody. I get more hits than anybody. I steal more bases than anybody. I have the highest on-base percentage. I do everything they want.

So the way Polonia has it figured, it will be no one’s fault but the Angels’ if he leaves. If they waited this long to negotiate, how will they react, he asks, once he wins the batting title?

“Luis can do an awful lot of things with that bat,” said Carew, now the Angels’ batting instructor, “and if he bunted more, there’s no doubt he could win it.”

Who knows, Polonia speculates, his biggest worry in the off-season might be be trying to decide on which finger to wear his batting-title ring.

“This is my year,” he says. “This is the year I’ve been waiting for, and someone’s going to pay the price.

“I guarantee you this: People will know who Luis Polonia is after this year.”