Thrown a Curve : Trade Talk Upsets Angel Reliever Crim, Who Is Pitching for Redemption

The phone call startled Angel reliever Chuck Crim. He kept trying to listen, but his senses were numbed by confusion. It wasn’t until after he hung up, minutes later, that his mood turned to anger.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Crim said. “I could not believe this was happening. I made so many plans, and now I felt like I was going to get cheated.”

The caller a few weeks ago was a friend from California, telling Crim that he read in the newspapers that the Angels were trying to trade him. There was even speculation that if they were unsuccessful, the Angels might release him.

Crim winced as if someone had elbowed him in the stomach. This wasn’t about money. He was going to be paid every two weeks the rest of the season, no matter what. The Angels still owe him $1.1 million as part of a two-year, $2.2-million guaranteed contract he signed before last season.

No, he said, this was about pride.

“I spent the whole winter thinking about this season,” Crim said. “I tore apart my garage, put in exercise equipment, and worked out every day. I mean, that’s all I thought about.

“I approached this year like somebody was going to pay for what happened last year. I felt I owed it to the organization for them to get their money’s worth out of me this year. . . . “

Crim stopped speaking, momentarily looked around at his teammates in the Milwaukee clubhouse and said, almost in a whisper: “I just want a chance, because if I’m going to go down, I want to go down fighting.”

Crim, who opened the season with the Angels simply because they could find no takers, might be converting a few of the Angel skeptics into believers. He was tossed into consecutive games last weekend against the Detroit Tigers, and was virtually flawless. He won one game and kept the Angels close in the other, pitching 3 1/3 innings without giving up an earned run.

“I was so happy for him, because of what happened to him last year,” said fellow reliever Steve Frey. “He has set pretty high standards for himself, and last year was tough to take.

“You’re talking about a guy who was the premier setup man in baseball, and nobody last year got to see the real Chuck Crim.”

Crim, who led the American League two consecutive years in appearances and was invaluable as Dan Plesac’s setup man for five years in Milwaukee, didn’t resemble the same pitcher last year. He opened the season by surrendering 10 earned runs and had a 5.09 earned-run average for the month of April, en route to an abysmal season in which he posted a 5.17 ERA, giving up 100 hits in 87 innings.

“It was an absolute nightmare,” said Crim, who was traded before the 1992 season for pitchers Mike Fetters and Glenn Carter. “Everything went wrong. I couldn’t even stand the thought of coming to the ballpark.”

Crim, 31, born and raised in Van Nuys, was booed by hometown fans. He wanted so much to impress the Angels and his friends, but instead thought he was embarrassing them.

His ERA had soared to 6.80 the first week of July, and the Angels were afraid to use him. Had it not been for the guaranteed contract, he would have been released.

“My mechanics were so messed up last year,” Crim said, “I don’t even know what I was doing. We had a new pitching coach in Milwaukee, Larry Haney, and he got me all screwed up.”

Baseball scouts contend that the Brewers might have been responsible for Crim’s downfall long before the 1991 season. They had Crim pitching 130 innings during his 1987 rookie season, once having him pitch on three consecutive days, three innings each. Crim said there were fewer than 10 games the entire season that he wasn’t either warming up or pitching.

Yet, no one seemed to notice. The Brewers won their first 13 games, Juan Nieves threw a no-hitter, Paul Molitor compiled a 39-game hitting streak and the Brewers stayed in the race.

Veteran pitchers urged Crim to tell Manager Tom Trebelhorn that he was too sore to pitch some games, but Crim refused to listen. Just as when he pitched in a league-high 70 games in 1988 and 76 games in 1989, Crim never refused the ball.

“I guess I was a rock-head,” Crim said. “Guys were telling me to take a day off, but I wouldn’t do it. I didn’t care about the consequences.

“I pitched more in my first five years than anybody in baseball, and I was proud of it.”

The result, scouts say, is that Crim’s fastball has slowed to about 80 m.p.h. His breaking balls are not nearly as sharp, and he tends to throw pitches that hang in the strike zone.

Crim, realizing his fastball is not as effective anymore, thinks he can overcome his weakness with savvy pitching. He knows he has to hit corners now, and he can ill afford to fall behind in the count, having yielded a .362 batting average in those situations a year ago.

“I’m not going to come out and say that I’m going to throw the cover off the ball,” Crim said. “But I know what it takes to be successful. The biggest adjustment is to pitch without your good stuff, and I learned a lot from last year.

“More than anything, I just want to stay here and pitch for these guys. I feel I owe them something.

“I just hope they give me the chance to pay them back.”