Smith Saves the Easy Way : Angels Counting on Closer to Shore Up Bullpen, Add to Baseball-Best Total of 434

He likes to nap in the clubhouse during games. He takes long, leisurely strolls from the bullpen to the mound, like a guy walking on a moonlit beach without a worry in the world.

You meet Angel reliever Lee Smith, shake his huge hand--”He shakes your elbow,” teammate Chuck Finley said--and chat with him for a while, and you come away thinking he could be the most mellow guy in baseball.

And this is the game’s all-time saves leader?

“Of all the closers, I must be the strangest one,” said Smith, a free-agent acquisition from Baltimore who, along with left-hander Mitch Williams, will be counted on to solidify the Angel bullpen this season.

“You look at how I go about the game and you think, ‘What? This guy couldn’t be a closer. He’s too laid-back. He’s too easygoing.’ But when I go between the lines I’m one of the meanest guys you could meet.”

This contradiction is confusing to fans who hardly suspect a 6-foot-6, 269-pound pitcher with piercing eyes, a goatee and a 90-m.p.h. fastball is a softy.

“Some people don’t know how to approach me,” Smith said. “They think I look like a guy who wants to kill somebody. The other day a 4-year-old asked for my autograph and I said, ‘No, I don’t like kids.’ His eyes got really big and I said, ‘Hey, I’m just kidding,’ and we talked for a while.”

Smith, who signed a two-year, $4-million deal with the Angels, didn’t always have this happy-go-lucky reputation. When he broke into the big leagues with the Chicago Cubs in the early 1980s he was labeled as unapproachable, hard to get along with.

It could have been a misunderstanding. Smith, who has amassed 434 career saves for five teams, always kept to himself before games. While teammates were playing cards or chatting with reporters, he usually hid in the corner behind a newspaper, practically hanging a “Do Not Disturb” sign at his locker.

“I looked like a guy who was mad at the world,” Smith said. “But no one bothered to ask.”

The reputation could have been partly justified. Smith admits he was a tad surly at times. Growing up in Castor, La., during the 1960s and early ‘70s, he endured many experiences that shaped his view of the world.

Smith had to get up at 5:30 a.m. to catch the bus that passed three all-white schools on the way to his all-black school. And when schools were integrated in 1969, he had to cross picket lines of students and parents to get to class.

When Smith was called up to the Cubs in 1980 he attended a team function at a hotel. He was mingling at the entrance when a Cub front-office official, who didn’t know Smith, handed the pitcher his keys and asked, “Do I park the car or do you?”

“Early in my career I looked at things too much as black and white, because of where I came from and the things I went through,” Smith, 37, said. “I probably judged people before I knew them. But I’ve grown a lot since then. My philosophy now is I treat everyone the way I want to be treated.”

Smith said his wife doesn’t understand why he goes back to those same schools that wouldn’t admit him to sign autographs and talk to kids about school, sports and drugs.

“I just tell her that those kids weren’t even born then,” Smith said. “They have no idea what went on, so I can’t hold it against them.”

Smith doesn’t carry any negative feeling for more than a short period of time, and that may be the main reason he has been one of baseball’s premier closers, averaging 42 saves the last four seasons.

“A lot of guys have closer stuff but can’t close, so mental makeup is a big part of that job,” Angel Manager Marcel Lachemann said.

“Closers like to go out there when the game’s on the line. The big guys don’t like to blow them, but the reason they’re so good is they realize that comes with the territory. A lot of guys beat themselves up when they blow one, they don’t handle losses that well, and that only compounds the problem. But Lee’s past success shows he can handle it.”

Early in his career, Smith said he would be so upset after a blown save that he “couldn’t speak to my wife for three days.” But the more consistent a pitcher he became, the more even-keeled he became.

“I never accept losing, but I learned not to take it as hard,” said Smith, whose career earned-run average of 2.92 ranks first among active pitchers. “I don’t let success go to my head or keep failure for too long.”

Smith was a success from the minute he first took the mound, but he didn’t play baseball until his junior year of high school.

Basketball was Smith’s game. He could palm the ball in grammar school and was starting on his kindergarten-through-12th-grade school’s varsity team in the seventh grade.

The baseball coach always bugged him to go out for the team, but it wasn’t until his older brother, Willie, bet Lee $10 that he couldn’t play catcher, that Smith relented.

Then, early in his junior season, one of the Castor High pitchers was killed in a hunting accident, so Smith moved to the mound. He threw a no-hitter in his first game en route to an 8-0, 0.14-ERA season.

Smith used his blazing fastball to go 7-1 with a 0.95 ERA as a senior, striking out 124 in 53 innings. He was voted Louisiana’s outstanding Class B player, and the Cubs drafted him in the second round in 1975.

“I was in a soda shop that day and the guy said, ‘Congratulations Lee, you’ve been drafted,’ and I got real scared,” Smith said. “I said, ‘To the Army? Damn, I thought they quit drafting guys.’ I didn’t even know baseball had a draft.”

Smith signed for $50,000 and entered the Cub farm system, but he also played basketball at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, La., where he was a 6-6 shooting guard. “I weighed 195 at the time,” Smith recalled. “Then my wife learned how to cook.”

Smith was a raw talent as a youngster. His fastball was clocked in the 95-m.p.h. range, but he often had no idea where it was going.

It’s ironic that he’s now teaming with Williams, known as “Wild Thing,” because Smith once deserved that nickname--in Midland, Tex., he had a league-leading 128 walks in 1978 and 85 in ’79.

After six minor league seasons, Smith reached the Cubs in 1980 as a long reliever and set-up man. But a suggestion from pitching coach Billy Connors, who changed Smith’s grip on his fastball and slider, helped Smith gain command of both pitches. Manager Lee Elia converted him to a closer, “and the rest is history,” Smith said.

Smith, who has a career 83% conversion ratio (434 saves in 520 opportunities) spent a little more than seven seasons with the Cubs, two-plus years with the Boston Red Sox, three-plus seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals, one month with the New York Yankees and one season at Baltimore.

Teams either gave up on him, thought he’d break down physically, figured he could no longer survive without that 95-m.p.h. fastball or couldn’t afford to keep him. But Smith seems to have improved with age.

He’s no longer a pure power pitcher--his fastball now clocks in at 88 to 90 m.p.h.--but he has pinpoint control of his fastball and slider and mixes in an occasional forkball as an off-speed pitch.

His calm demeanor and care-free attitude have earned him the nickname “Big Easy,” and he’s so immune to the game’s pressures that he can actually fall asleep after the national anthem.

“I have no problems taking a nap--I just make sure the trainer wakes me up in the fifth inning,” Smith said. “I feel so much better, so much more relaxed after a nap. You get your mind off the game, so you’re not thinking, ‘Damn, I might have to face Ken Griffey in the ninth.’ It’s probably one of the best things I started doing in my career.”

Smith usually begins stretching and some light weight-lifting in the fifth, heads down to the bullpen in the sixth or seventh, and he joked last season that the station televising Oriole games “could probably show a miniseries or a half-hour comedy series” during his treks to the mound.

“I developed that from life,” Smith said of his strolls to the mound. “That’s my personality--I’m always laid back. I’ve never seen anyone get any outs by running to the mound. If they did, I’d be the first one out there.”

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Lee Smith’s Pitching Statistics

Lee Smith’s key statistics in his 15-season major league career:

Year Team G IP BB SO W-L SV ERA 1980 Chicago (NL) 18 22 14 17 2-0 0 2.86 1981 Chicago (NL) 40 67 31 50 3-6 1 3.49 1982 Chicago (NL) 72 117 37 99 2-5 17 2.69 1983 Chicago (NL) 66 103 1/3 41 91 4-10 29 1.65 1984 Chicago (NL) 69 101 35 86 9-7 33 3.65 1985 Chicago (NL) 65 97 2/3 32 112 7-4 33 3.04 1986 Chicago (NL) 66 90 1/3 42 93 9-9 31 3.09 1987 Boston 62 83 2/3 32 96 4-10 36 3.12 1988 Boston 64 83 2/3 37 96 4-5 29 2.80 1989 Boston 64 70 2/3 33 96 6-1 25 3.57 1990 Boston 11 14 1/3 9 17 2-1 4 1.88 1990 St. Louis 53 68 2/3 20 70 3-4 27 2.10 1991 St. Louis 67 73 13 67 6-3 47 2.34 1992 St. Louis 70 75 26 60 4-9 43 3.12 1993 St. Louis 55 50 9 49 2-4 43 4.50 1993 New York (AL) 8 8 9 11 0-0 3 0.00 1994 Baltimore 41 38 1/3 5 42 1-4 33 3.29 Totals 891 1163 2/3 427 1152 68-82 434 2.92

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

All-time major league save leader

30-plus saves in nine seasons, most by any major league pitcher

Among active pitchers, ranks first in games and ERA and second in strikeouts per nine innings (8.91, based on 1,000 innings; Randy Johnson is at 9.61).

Has struck out more batters than innings pitched in eight seasons.

Has allowed fewer hits than innings pitched in 14 seasons.