The Big Easy : Smith’s Laid-Back Personality Helps Him Become One Mean Pitcher on the Mound

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--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, with lefty Mitch Williams, is expected to solidify the Angels’ bullpen this year.

“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 guy with piercing eyes, a goatee and a 90-m.p.h. fastball to be a big teddy bear.

“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 a 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 saves for five teams, always kept to himself before games. While teammates were playing cards, 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 too. Smith admits he was 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. When schools were integrated in 1969, he had to cross picket lines of students and parents to get to class.

Six times in his senior year, schools forfeited basketball games against Castor High rather than compete against a team with a black player.

When Smith was called up to the Cubs in 1980, he attended a team function at a hotel. He was mingling around the entrance when a Cub front-office official, who didn’t know who Smith was, 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,” said Smith, 37. “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, Diane, doesn’t understand why he returns to those schools that wouldn’t admit him to sign autographs and talk to the kids.

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

Smith is not one to hold a grudge. In fact, he says he doesn’t carry any negative feeling for more than a short period, and that might be the main reason he has been one of baseball’s premier closers.

“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 his emotions stayed on an even keel.

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

Smith was a smashing success the minute he took the mound, but it’s not as if his Hall of Fame career is the culmination of a longtime goal. He never even played 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 try out, but it wasn’t until his older brother, Willie, bet Lee $10 that he couldn’t play catcher, that Smith relented.

Early in his junior season, one of the Castor High pitchers was killed in a hunting accident, so Smith moved to the mound. He pitched a no-hitter in his first game and finished the season 8-0 with a 0.14 ERA.

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 baseball player, and the Cubs picked him in the second round of the 1975 draft.

“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 Smith often had no idea where it was going.

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

After six minor league seasons, Smith reached the Cubs 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. Lee Elia, then the Cubs’ manager, 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 Boston, three-plus seasons with St. Louis, one month with the Yankees and one season at Baltimore. In the last four seasons he has averaged 42 saves.

Now the Angels, who had the American League’s worst bullpen in 1994, are ecstatic to have him.

“It’s like when (Bryan) Harvey was here,” said Finley, one of the Angel starters. “He has a way of shortening the game. You don’t feel like you have to throw 8 2/3 innings every time out.

“And there’s nothing more demoralizing for a starting pitcher than to throw a good game and then lose in the last inning.”

Considering Smith’s success, it seems odd that he has moved around like a sore-armed journeyman the last seven years.

Teams 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 gotten better 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 carefree 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. It’s probably one of the best things I started doing in my career.”

Smith usually begins stretching and some light weightlifting 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.”

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.