Despite Failed At-Bat, Loretta Found the Gap : Baseball: Called up to fill in for one game, the former St. Francis star showed the Brewers’ brass enough to warrant an extended look.

It must have been an impressive oh-for-one.

Mark Loretta had been summoned from the Milwaukee Brewers’ minor league camp to play in a “B” game with the major leaguers. He went hitless in one at-bat, but the next morning his phone rang.

“Report to the big league camp tomorrow,” the Brewers’ minor league director said.

Three weeks later Loretta, a shortstop who graduated from St. Francis High in 1989, was still kicking around with the Brewers’ major leaguers. Not bad for a 22-year-old kid who was playing at Northwestern this time last year.

“It’s been incredible,” Loretta said recently in the Compadre Stadium clubhouse as future Hall of Famer Robin Yount visited with former teammates nearby.

“I never imagined I’d be here. I was excited to come up for that B game. I thought that would be my only shot.”

Brewer Manager Phil Garner and Brewer coach Tim Foli, former major league infielders, watched that B game. Weeks later, Loretta still wasn’t sure what exactly he did to earn such a promotion, but Foli was.

“He’s got all the tools,” Foli said. “He has a good stroke, a good fundamental foundation at shortstop. He does those physical things really well. But the best thing I like about him is he’s got baseball sense. He knows where he’s at. He knows the situations. That’s something that’s tough to teach.

“We saw him one time and we liked what we saw, and we wanted to just see if it was for real.”

Loretta was sent back down to the minor league camp this week after hitting .476 in 15 games. He had been called up because of a rash of injuries to Brewer middle infielders such as Pat Listach and Jody Reed.

“He’ll be back, though,” Garner said Sunday, the day before Loretta played his final exhibition game with the Brewers.

Neither Loretta’s offensive nor defensive success should come as a surprise.

He started four seasons at shortstop for Northwestern, playing in 210 of a possible 221 games. After an injury-plagued freshman season in which he hit about .250, Loretta batted .348, .348 and .408.

Purdue Coach Steve Green once called Loretta the best defensive player he’d ever seen in the Big Ten.

He capped his senior year by being named Big Ten player of the year and first-team All-American. The Brewers selected him in the seventh round of the 1993 amateur draft.

After he signed, he made a brief stop in rookie-level Helena, Mont. He played six games there, hitting .321 with eight runs batted in. The Brewers promoted him to Stockton of the Class-A California League, skipping the traditional next step--Beloit, Wis.

“I was hoping, maybe toward the end of the year, to finish up in Beloit,” Loretta said, “but I was never expecting to move up two levels.”

Loretta proved the Brewers’ player development staff knew his abilities better than he did. He hit .363 in the final 53 games of the season at Stockton.

He began his first professional spring training with the minor leaguers, until the major league infielders started filling up the training room. Reed had tendinitis in his right shoulder. Listach had a bone spur in his knee. Third baseman Kevin Seitzer pulled a quadriceps.

Just when the coaches began combing the minor league camp for fill-ins, they saw Loretta play in that B game. After being called up, Loretta played mostly as a late-inning replacement at shortstop.

He had nine singles in his first 15 at-bats, a .600 average, the highlight being an run-scoring hit against Randy Myers.

“We are very high on him,” Brewer General Manager Sal Bando said. “For a guy with half a season of professional experience, he’s played very well.”

Loretta was expected to be assigned to double-A El Paso, Tex., but Foli said a promotion to triple-A New Orleans is not far off. Neither is a promotion to Milwaukee.

“I’m excited about his prospects for the future,” Foli said. “If you can play, they’ll find a spot for you. Believe me, he’s going to be in the big leagues.”