Ruthless Streak : When Angel Center Fielder Chad Curtis Says He’ll Do Anything to Win, He Means It

Chad Curtis was sitting in his adult Sunday school class when he felt that familiar sensation.

It couldn’t be happening, he thought. Not here at the First Baptist Church in his hometown of Middleville, Mich. Not over this friendly board game that he was playing with his friends--men vs. women, for nothing more than bragging rights.

So, OK, the women were beating them pretty bad, yelling out all the correct answers. They were even starting to giggle about the ease of their victory.

That’s when it started. Curtis felt the blood rushing to his head. He breathed deeply and fast, called time out, gathered the men together, and unveiled his strategy.

It was time to cheat.

“I found out a way we could turn the cards so we could read them,” Curtis said. “I was just trying to get us back into the game. I mean, they were crushing us.

“It wasn’t until I got home when I realized what I had just done.

“I told my wife, ‘Can you believe it? I cheated because I hate the thought of losing.’

“I’ve done things I’ve been embarrassed about later, and I know I get too intense, but that might have been my all-timer.

“I felt pretty bad about that one.”

To Curtis, playing a game, any game, is a test of strength, intelligence and guts. No matter how frivolous, the goal is the same: May the most ruthless competitor win.

This insatiable desire to win might seem a twisted way of thinking, but for Angel center fielder Chad Curtis it has become a necessary evil.

It is, for Curtis, the difference in possibly being a star instead of a journeyman ballplayer.

“I’m a compulsive baseball player,” Curtis said. “I always feel I have to win. Losing drives me crazy. I’ve got to go at everything with full intensity.

“I look at guys like Ken Griffey Jr. He can play up to half of his potential, and be an All-Star. When he reaches his full potential, he’s a Hall of Famer.

“I can’t do that. I’ve got to play up to my full potential. I use that as a strength, not a weakness.

“That’s why I think Pete Rose and I are a lot alike. He hustles. He wants to win. He’s not of big stature, never had a lot of talent, but he has more hits than anybody in baseball history.

“I don’t think Pete Rose has abundantly more talent than I do. There’s some people in the Hall of Fame that can’t do the things I can do.

“I’m not going to sit here and say I’m going to be in the Hall of Fame, but every day I put my uniform on, I’m going to say, ‘I’m a Hall of Fame-caliber player.’

“Nobody can tell me any different.”

*

The game of baseball tried to exclude Curtis. He was too short. Too slow.

Baseball was never blatant about its feelings, but politely let him know that he wasn’t really one of its kind, waiting until the 45th round in 1989 to even draft him.

“It was three days after the draft before the Angels even bothered to call me,” Curtis said. “Even then, they said they didn’t want me. They just wanted my rights.

“I actually had to convince them to sign me, and they’re the ones who drafted me.”

Curtis was incensed, but the more he thought about it, why should this be any different?

He was the meanest, toughest kid on the football field at Benson High in Arizona, but when you’re 5-feet-9 and 155 pounds, no one pays much attention until that first big hit.

There was that game against Morenci High when the Morenci game plan simply was to dump off passes to their 6-4, 225-pound tight end, telling him to bowl over Curtis time after time.

“I knew what they had in mind,” Curtis said. “The first time they ran it, I had a 10-yard head of steam, and I hit him with everything I had. They never ran that play again the rest of the night.”

There was the game his senior year when rival Willcox running back Johnny Adana vowed that he would upstage Curtis and take over the league rushing lead. He even predicted Curtis would be knocked out of the game.

“Big mistake,” Curtis said. “Always let a sleeping dog lie. First play of the game, I gave him a full-body shot, and never heard from him the rest of the game.

“I might have been small, but I made you pay the price.”

Curtis had no scholarship offers to play football beyond high school, and was prepared to be a walk-on at the University of Arizona. Then he stopped at a restaurant and saw tables full of baseball players from Yavapai Community College in Prescott, Ariz. He boldly walked up to the coach, asked if he could try out. He made the team, and batted .360 with 30 runs batted in. He spent the next season at Cochise Community College, batting .407 with 15 homers and 71 RBIs.

Still, he failed to get a full scholarship from a major university. He kept weighing offers from Grand Canyon College against a quarter-scholarship to Arizona.

“I decided I needed to go to someplace where I could be recognized,” Curtis said. “Then I realized what better place than Canyon because Tim Salmon was there. I figured, if scouts were going to come out and see Tim, they had no choice but to see Chad Curtis.”

It was good thinking. Salmon attracted about 30 scouts a game, batting .356 with 19 homers and 68 RBIs, prompting the Angels to draft him in the third round.

Curtis had an even better season, batting .369 with 19 homers, 83 RBIs, and 36 steals. Scouts promised that he would be selected in the first 10 rounds. He stuck around until the Angels took him in the 45th round.

“You know something, I think that was the best thing that happened to him,” said Salmon, Curtis’ best friend on the team. “There were no expectations. It was like, ‘Who is this kid?’ He was the underdog.”

Said Angel shortstop Gary DiSarcina: “I think he uses that to his advantage even today. It’s what motivates him, to prove to everybody they made a mistake.”

It took less than three years for Curtis to prove he belonged, out-hustling everyone to the top. Everything in his life was done at full speed. He even wore his baseball uniform at his wedding, just to ensure he would not be late for batting practice.

“Hey, I had to be on the field at 2 and our wedding got pushed back to 1:30,” Curtis said. “I didn’t have any choice but to take off my suit and put on my uniform.

“There was me, my wife, my mother-in-law and the judge standing in the courtroom. He had to borrow his secretary to be a second witness. People think it’s strange, but I think it’s kind of neat our marriage is tied into baseball.”

Curtis, 25, says that marriage has mellowed him, but he still is probably the most intense player in baseball. The biggest difference now, Salmon says, is that Curtis no longer flings the remote control, chairs and tables across the room when he loses in Nintendo.

“Believe me,” said Salmon, his former roommate, “it got pretty ugly.”

Said DiSarcina: “He’s actually loosened up quite a lot. Before, he’d get so frustrated, he’d lose his mind and just go crazy.”

Just as when he was coming up through the minor leagues, Curtis relies on hustle and intelligence. He brings his own scouting book to the bench, having noted which pitchers have a quick delivery and what a pitcher will throw at particular times in the count. Although he is not an exceptional runner, his instincts have enabled him to steal 91 bases in his first two seasons.

“We used to talk all the time in the minors about how guys don’t prepare themselves, and how they don’t hustle,” Salmon said. “He used to tell me, ‘That’s fine by me. That’s just one less guy I have to worry about getting to the big leagues.’ ”

Said Curtis: “The way I look at it, there’s a lot of guys who have more talent than I do. So if everybody played the game with the same intensity I have, I wouldn’t have a job.”

This guy who has been overlooked most of his life, today is considered the Angels’ catalyst. Their hopes for a division title might hinge on his success as a leadoff hitter.

“That’s fine by me, because I want to establish myself as the guy who gets the team going,” said Curtis, who batted .285 and scored 94 runs in 152 games last season. “I want to be that guy. It doesn’t matter how I do in a game, I could go four for five, and I’ll still try to find a way to blame myself.

“I’ve learned now that I can’t control my performance when I play, but I can control how hard I play the game.

“I used to make baseball my No. 1 priority in life, that’s why I try to use Pete Rose as an example. On the field, I want to be the kind of player he was. Off the field, I don’t want to be the way he was.

“One day, I’d like to meet him.

“I’d like to thank him.”