Ex-Angel Reconsiders His Moves : Van Burkleo Ponders Path of His Careers

There is supposed to be a time when a man can look into life’s rear-view mirror and correctly gauge the weight of his choices.

Isn’t hindsight always 20-20?

Not true for Ty Van Burkleo, 30, a former Angel and former Chatsworth High and Valley College standout who is in his 13th pro season.

The jury remains out on the biggest decision of his career. “I don’t like second-guessing myself,” said Van Burkleo, the top slugger on the triple-A Colorado Springs Sky Sox.

Yet he does. Constantly. Has done so for years.

Late in the spring of 1987, Van Burkleo left the Angels’ double-A affiliate in Midland, Tex., in the early stages of what promised to be his best year. In 48 games and after 183 at-bats, he was batting .328, with 12 home runs and 33 runs batted in.

He was heading east--The Far East--as a member of the Seibu Lions of Japan’s Pacific League. The Lions, who for a year had been charting Van Burkleo’s progress as a power-hitting first baseman and outfielder, bought his contract from the Angels.

Van Burkleo played the better part of five seasons in Japan.

As he reflects, his stay seems longer. “While I was over there it was real hard for me to give up the major league dream,” said Van Burkleo, relaxing before a recent Pacific Coast League game against the Phoenix Firebirds. “I was always thinking, ‘Why did I sell myself out?’

“I was just starting to come into my own when I went over there.”

Then again . . .

“It’s hard to say I made the wrong decision. Maybe things wouldn’t have panned out here. At least now I have some money in my pocket.”

Van Burkleo, his high school sweetheart, Christine, and their children, Brittany, 8, Cameron, 3, and Sierra, 1, live during the off-season in a luxurious 5,000-square-foot home adjacent to a golf course in Mesa, Ariz. They also rent out a townhome they own near Channel Islands Harbor.

Sell out, indeed. Theirs are not exactly minor league digs.

“We have a beautiful home and we have a nice lifestyle,” Van Burkleo said. “There’s something to be said for being able to provide that for your family.”

Was the trade-off worth it?

Van Burkleo thinks back to 1985 when he was playing in Rohnert Park, Calif., for the Class-A Redwood City Angels.

The furniture in the apartment that he and Christine shared consisted of two backyard lounge chairs and a television--financed at $20 per month--set on a box. They slept on a used boxspring purchased from a budget motel chain.

Christine, who was pregnant with Brittany, worked part-time for the club in the ticket booth. The job was not one taken simply to stay close to her husband.

“We were struggling,” Van Burkleo said. “We needed that job.”

He recalls one day, after a pregnancy check-up, Christine breaking down in tears at the doctor’s office. The physician’s charge for the visit was $25. She didn’t have it.

It wasn’t until a few years later, in Midland, that things started to look up. In the Texas League there is the kindly tradition of passing the hat for a home player who has slugged a home run.

Van Burkleo remembers the greeting Christine gave him the first time he came home with extra cash in his pocket: “She was excited because she could finally buy the iron she wanted,” he said.

A few months later, that iron, and the rest of their belongings, was packed for Japan.

The Lions sent representatives to Jackson, Miss., to watch Van Burkleo play in a three-game series. The ballpark in Jackson is the biggest in the Texas League, but in each of the first two games, Van Burkleo belted homers over the scoreboard.

Convinced they had found their man, the Japanese scouts left. The next game, Van Burkleo fanned four times.

Perfect timing.

In Japan, the young couple were quickly enveloped by culture shock. Arriving at the airport, they were led through a tunnel lined five-deep with reporters and camera crews.

“Everybody walking with us is looking around like, ‘Who’s with us?’ and we’re doing the same thing, looking back like, ‘Where’s the president?’ ” Van Burkleo said. “Then we find out they’re there for us!”

That was only the beginning of his indoctrination into Japanese baseball, where the actual rules of the game are the only things typical of America’s national pastime.

Suffering from jet lag, Van Burkleo woke up at 4 in the morning and looked out the window. Some 30 stories below, on a field adjacent to the hotel, a ballgame was under way between teams of white-collar workers.

“They love baseball there, but fields are so hard to come by that people have to reserve them months in advance, and at ridiculous hours,” Van Burkleo said.

Later the same day, he took batting practice, then held his first formal press conference.

Pumped up by all the attention, Van Burkleo put on a show during the workout, launching several prodigious home runs.

Meeting the press that day, Van Burkleo said he “felt like Bo Jackson.”

“I’m standing there at the podium in this huge room, wearing my Lions uniform, and people are asking me all kinds of questions and I’m thinking, ‘Hell, I was released (by the Milwaukee Brewers) three years ago!’ ”

The next morning, Van Burkleo’s interpreter met him with a pile of newspapers--all trumpeting the exploits of the previous day’s hitting display. Some of the accounts even included photos of the stadium with diagrams of where his home runs landed.

Joining the team in midseason, Van Burkleo put up respectable numbers, batting .279 with six home runs and 20 RBIs in 34 games.

That set the stage for 1988, the best full season of his career. But first came his inaugural winter and spring of Japanese training.

“Pre-spring training” was held at a remote hotel on the island of Shikoku. The players were roused each morning at 7 over an intercom system hooked up to their individual rooms. At that, they hurriedly threw on sweat clothes and made their way down to the beach for calisthenics.

Before exercising, rookie players were required to stand at the water’s edge and shout, Van Burkleo said, something along the lines of, “Good morning Mr. Ocean. My name is (fill in the blank) and I am going to work hard today . . . “

“Guys just stood there screaming out into the ocean while probably 150 fans watched them embarrass themselves,” Van Burkleo said.

After training, the players hiked back up to the hotel for a typical breakfast of seeweed mulch, fermented soy beans, squid in a squid-gut sauce and rice.

Van Burkleo, who boasts of having a “cast-iron stomach” said he never had a problem with Japanese cuisine--except at breakfast.

When he asked for “an American breakfast,” Van Burkleo was served a sirloin steak, a dinner salad, a roll and steamed vegetables. Reacting with typically glib humor, he responded, “Look guys, just round me up some cornflakes and we’ll call it even.”

The weather still was cold and snowy on Jan. 26, the first day of regular spring training. When the players arrived at the stadium they were told to jog around the field. After 30 minutes, they stopped and stretched.

Then, for 30 more minutes, they again jogged around the field, this time in the opposite direction. When they finally stopped, Van Burkleo, now dog-tired, remembers wondering when they would play some baseball.

No time soon. For the next two hours the players ran 100-meter sprints.

“It was the most incredible, ridiculous thing,” Van Burkleo said. “Guys were dropping like flies. It was like they were trying to get us in shape in one day.”

Van Burkleo hurt his Achilles’ heel and, while favoring the injury the next day, strained the knee of his other leg. Barely able to walk, he was shipped to minor league spring training where trainers made various therapeutic attempts, including messages and acupuncture, to heal him.

His stay was short. When Van Burkleo was well enough to hit, he began pelting home runs so far over the stadium’s right-field fence that they hit business buildings, parked cars and, occasionally, narrowly missed pedestrians.

“When the people back there got tired of playing dodge ball they complained to the general manager and he had me moved back to the major league team,” Van Burkleo said. “I was too dangerous.”

But with his knee still hurting, Van Burkleo still wasn’t ready to resume full-scale workouts, which, among other disciplines, included swinging a bat a minimum of 1,000 times each day.

During a meeting one night, the Seibu manager was addressing his team in Japanese when Van Burkleo heard his name mentioned.

Curious, he asked his interpreter what had been said.

“The manager says he hopes that your knee gets better soon,” he was told.

“I’m sitting there thinking, ‘Hey, OK, nice guy,’ ” Van Burkleo said.

Later, a few of his teammates--players who had learned some English during one year of training with a Class-A independent team in San Jose--approached him.

“Hey, don’t worry man. That’s bull----,” one of them said. “Don’t worry about it.”

Don’t worry about what? Van Burkleo inquired.

Actually, a more precise translation of what the manager had said was, “Van Burkleo, if your knee doesn’t get better, we’re going to ship you back to America.”

“I guess that’s kind of like saying, ‘I hope your knee feels better,’ ” Van Burkleo quipped.

Undaunted, he went on to hit 38 home runs and drive in 90 runs in 366 at-bats. But adjusting culturally wasn’t Van Burkleo’s only challenge.

His manager, it seemed, wanted production--but not too much of it. Van Burkleo often was removed for a pinch-hitter; either following a poor at-bat or when the Lions were up by several runs.

Six times he hit two home runs in a game and did not finish the game.

Also annoying was the penchant club officials had for chasing away the press. Van Burkleo didn’t wish to be a glory hog, but he did enjoy the extra money. Television stations paid $100-$150 for each interview.

At the all-star break that year, Van Burkleo had 19 home runs and led the league in RBIs, yet his own manager passed over him for selection as an all-star reserve.

“He didn’t like a double-A guy tearing up his league,” Van Burkleo said.

The next two seasons he got off to slow starts and was buried on the bench by the end of April. In 1989, he batted .210 in 119 at-bats. The following season he had only 112 at-bats and batted .196.

Lions hitting instructors weren’t much help. One of them suggested that Van Burkleo watch the ball with his left eye. “I’d pop up and be like, ‘Damn! Must have looked at that with my right eye,” Van Burkleo said.

Before the 1991 season, the Lions finally granted his request for a trade, shipping him to the power-starved Hiroshima Carp.

On April 4, opening day, Van Burkleo was the Carp’s starting first baseman and clean-up hitter--positions he held for half a game. After grounding out and then popping up with a runner on third and less than two outs, Van Burkleo was replaced by a pinch-hitter.

His next start was June 13. In the meantime, he made only three pinch-hitting appearances.

“I walked up hitting zero on June 13,” Van Burkleo said with a laugh. “And they put me in there against a left-hander of course.” He got two hits, one of them a home run.

Van Burkleo played in only 29 games for the Carp, who removed him from the active roster with about a month left in the season.

His career in Japan was over. Van Burkleo only hoped the same could not be said of his playing days in the states. Certainly he had conquered failure before.

Van Burkleo was not drafted out of high school. Professional clubs weren’t interested until he made a particularly strong showing in the fall of 1981 while playing for Valley College.

Ray Poitivant, a Brewers’ scout, asked Van Burkleo how big of a bonus he wanted to sign as a free agent. “At the time, I was pretty set on going to college,” Van Burkleo said. “So I thought I’d say something so outrageous that he would never get me.” His price was $30,000.

Poitivant offered $10,000, which Van Burkleo flatly refused.

Later, the Brewers came up with the entire sum--”called my bluff,” Van Burkleo said. He signed.

Van Burkleo’s first season, at Clinton, Iowa, of the Class-A Midwest League, he hit 22 home runs and had 65 RBIs. But less than two years later--after struggling at Stockton of the Class-A California League--he was released.

A reprieve came when the Angels signed Van Burkleo after watching him play for Dave Snow, his former coach at Valley College, as a member of the Fairbanks Goldpanners in the Alaska Summer League.

Van Burkleo finished the 1984 season batting .315 in 26 games for Peoria, Ill., of the Midwest League. But the next spring, he almost retired.

The Angels wanted to send him back to the Midwest League, where Van Burkleo felt he had nothing else to prove. Christine had recently learned she was pregnant. He was 21, making $850 a month.

“I was going to have my wife come out and take a trip to the Grand Canyon with me, then go home and, I don’t know, sell shoes or something,” Van Burkleo said.

Instead, the Angels agreed to assign him to Redwood City, where Van Burkleo assured them he would beat out one of their prospects for a starting job.

At the start of the season he wasn’t playing much, and not hitting when he did. He opened by getting three hits his first 38 at-bats.

When Van Burkleo stepped to the plate in one game his .079 batting average flashed on the scoreboard. “I’ll never forget what my wife said to me that night,” Van Burkleo recalled: “Gee, honey, I’ve never seen anyone with an average under a hundred before.”

Thanks Snookums.

At one point, he went 15 days without playing and entertained the idea of changing positions.

The Redwood City pitching coach said he would try him in relief, but first he wanted clearance from the Angels’ front office.

The next day, Van Burkleo was in the lineup at first base. Two hits, including a home run, and he was on his way to becoming a regular again.

The following season, after the Redwood City franchise relocated to Palm Springs, Van Burkleo hit 22 home runs with 108 RBIs, thereby earning his 1987 promotion to Midland.

After his strong start in double-A, Van Burkleo thought he had discovered the fast track to the big leagues. There was just one problem: At first base, the Angels had Wally Joyner, the runner-up in balloting for the 1986 rookie of the year award.

Part of his decision to play in Japan, Van Burkleo said, was based on the limited future options the Angels offered.

But by the time he came back from Japan, he was far less picky.

The Angels welcomed him back and Van Burkleo rewarded their confidence with a solid season at triple-A Edmonton in 1992. He batted .273 and was among PCL leaders with 19 home runs, 88 RBIs and 83 runs scored. Van Burkleo also stole 20 bases, becoming only the third player in franchise history to hit more than 15 home runs with as many stolen bases.

Back in triple-A last season, Van Burkleo rebounded from a slow start to bat .274 with six home runs and 56 RBIs and earn his first promotion to the big leagues.

His stint with the Angels lasted 12 games. In 33 at-bats, Van Burkleo had only five hits, including his first major league home run. And he would have had another had Twins outfielder Shane Mack not robbed him with an over-the-fence grab.

Van Burkleo has 30 days of major league service--27 with the Angels last season and three with the Colorado Rockies last week. He was promoted on the last Friday of July, after Andres Gallaraga sustained a season-ending injury, and returned to the Colorado Springs roster a week ago when outfielder Ellis Burks came off the disabled list.

He was 0 for 5, but remains optimistic.

“Even in triple-A you have your 4 a.m. wake-up calls and sometimes that makes you think, ‘Good God, what am I doing?’ ” Van Burkleo said. “But I still play this game for the same reason I started.

“It’s fun.”