This Salmon Is Plain Good : Angel Outfielder Stays True to His Roots Despite Signing Biggest Second-Year Contract After Being Rookie of Year

The camera crews were waiting outside the Angel offices.

Reporters were gathered. Talk-show hosts were standing by their telephones.

Right fielder Tim Salmon, the 1993 American League rookie of the year, would soon be receiving the most lucrative contract of any second-year player in baseball history, guaranteeing $7.5 million over four years.

The stage was set for a publicity bonanza. The Angels not only were changing their penurious image, but upstaging the Dodgers in the bargain.

It was a stroke of genius, and the Angels were going to capitalize on it. Everyone was going to gather for photographs. The Autrys, the front office, agent Ted Updike, Salmon . . . uh, Salmon?

Hey, anybody seen Salmon?

Salmon was 30 miles away, at his home in Phoenix. He had politely excused himself 2 1/2 hours before completion of the contract negotiations, saying he needed to take care of some personal business.

What could possibly have been so urgent?

Salmon had to mow his lawn.

“I didn’t want to sit around all day,” Salmon said. “I had a lawn to mow. I figured my agent could handle everything without me.”

So, no publicity shots. No press conference. No national exposure.

The Angels make a little history and a neighborhood in north-central Phoenix has a freshly mowed lawn.

It was hours before Salmon even had a chance to tell his wife, Marci, the details. If she had known, she could have planned a gourmet dinner in an expensive restaurant overlooking the city, celebrating their new financial security.

Instead, with Salmon bringing it up as casually as if he were reminding her to pick up some milk, there was no time for a celebration.

The new millionaires sat around the dinner table, said grace, and ate leftovers.

Welcome to the world of Timothy James Salmon, who chooses obscurity.

“There’s a lot of guys who play this game just so they can have that spotlight,” Angel center fielder Chad Curtis said. “Well, Tim has it, and would just as soon it go away.”

This is a guy who last November was unaware of the American League rookie-of-the-year announcement. When he was named unanimous winner of the award, Salmon was vacationing in Hawaii, unable to return for a news conference.

This is a guy who was not even the most publicized rookie on his own team last season, taking a back seat to J.T. Snow, and loving every minute of it.

This is a guy who undoubtedly will be overshadowed by Bo Jackson this season, and his biggest fear is making sure he doesn’t somehow annoy Jackson.

“I can’t wait to hear his football stories, but I don’t want to pester him,” Salmon said. “He gets hounded by so many people, I don’t want to abuse my privilege of playing with him.”

Salmon may be a star--he is on the cover of this year’s Angel media guide--but he considers himself nothing more than a small-town kid lucky to be playing with his idols.

Why else would he make sure he got autographed baseballs last season from Nolan Ryan, an autographed bat from George Brett, and still kicks himself for not getting an autograph from Robin Yount?

Or why else would he feel embarrassed when people occasionally recognize him away from the ballpark, asking for his autograph?

“I guess I just don’t think of myself as famous,” he said. “I don’t get embarrassed by a kid walking up to me, but by the commotion it creates.”

Salmon, who was shuttled between divorced parents while growing up, makes it quite clear that baseball must stand in the on-deck circle while he attends to family responsibilities.

He could easily have equaled his $127,500 rookie salary this winter with promotions and card shows, but shunned all but three events. His only national endorsement was a brand of baseball cards.

“I know my agent gets frustrated with me, but I say, ‘Ted, how much do I need?’ ” Salmon said.

“I don’t want to use baseball to promote my afterlife. For some guys, this is all a show, but that’s not me. I don’t want to be in the spotlight. I don’t want my face all over town.

“Maybe in the future that will change, but I don’t want to get caught up in things. This is a very humbling game. I don’t want to be caught up in meeting all these people, and two years down the road if I’m struggling, I’m looking for all my so-called friends.”

Salmon, 25, can’t guarantee that he will be able to hit .283 with 31 home runs and 95 runs batted in every season, but he can predict that his personality will never change. He’s not planning to buy anything extravagant with his new wealth, except maybe new tires for the family van.

And now that they know money won’t be a problem, he and Marci are planning to give their 9-month-old daughter plenty of playmates. They want to have four kids.

Step into Salmon’s house and you wouldn’t even know that he’s a baseball player. He still has all of the plaques and trophies, but they’re stored away in an office, where no one else can see them.

“I don’t want people to walk in my house and tell them, ‘Hey, look at what I’ve done,’ ” Salmon said. “That’s a conceited attitude. I feel awkward even having the things in my house, but the question is, ‘What do you do with the stuff?’ ”

Perhaps if these were football awards, it might be a different story. He still has a great passion for football, and tells his younger brother, Mike--who played four years at USC--that he lived Tim’s dream.

If Salmon had received a football scholarship coming out of Greenway High in Phoenix, he would have traded his glove, bat and spikes for shoulder pads, helmet and cleats.

Instead, he was left to vicariously share Mike’s football exploits, attending every game he could, wanting to jump onto the field himself to catch that touchdown pass against UCLA.

“I remember standing on the sidelines, high-fiving everyone and yelling out, ‘We’re going to the Rose Bowl! We’re going to the Rose Bowl!’ ” Salmon said.

“When it didn’t happen, I was devastated. I was depressed for three or four days. It got so bad that my brother ended up comforting me. “

Salmon, still brooding over USC’s loss to the Bruins, perhaps was playing a bit too aggressively a few days later on Thanksgiving morning in his church flag-football league. He was rushing the quarterback, spun off the offensive lineman, only to slam into another body. His nose began bleeding profusely.

It wasn’t until a few days later that he realized his nose was broken. Of course, his pain threshold never has been a problem. In Salmon’s first two years of professional baseball, he was beaned twice, suffering a broken jaw, a broken nose and a mouthful of broken teeth.

Salmon shrugged off the injuries, just as he has all of life’s obstacles. He refuses to allow distractions to interfere with his ambitions.

At the All-Star break last season, one national publication omitted him as the leading candidate for rookie of the year. The Angels telephoned the newspaper for an explanation and immediately stepped up their public-relations effort, making sure that the world knew about Salmon.

And Salmon?

“Everybody was panicking, but I didn’t care,” he said. “I told them all I can do is play the game, and if it’s not good enough, no big deal.”

Said Tim Mead, the assistant general manager who was the media relations director last season: “That’s the truth. Tim really didn’t care about it. He was more upset with the team’s performance than his own honors. We were two games out, and he was worried about closing the gap.

“But that’s Tim. There’s not flamboyancy, extra pizazz to his personality, nothing. He just wants to play baseball the way it should be played.”

Salmon indeed is a throwback to the days when baseball was only a game, except for one slight difference, says Angel Manager Buck Rodgers.

“We were never that disciplined,” Rodgers said. “This guy is disciplined off the field, too.”

Said Salmon: “I know people are going to have tremendous expectations of me, and will expect me to act different because of the money. But it won’t happen.

“For some guys, this is a show and they’re on stage. Well, that’s not me. I’m not going to showboat around the bases, show anyone up, or get people to perceive me differently.

“This is me, like it or not.”