Conine Is Ignored No More

He did something only a Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Jimmie Foxx, Stan Musial, a Reggie Jackson--to say nothing of a Red Schoendienst, Tony Perez and Johnny Callison--had done before.

Won an All-Star game with a homer.

It wasn’t as dramatic as Williams’ in 1941 when, with two out and two on and his team behind, 5-4, in the bottom of the ninth, Ted ripped it over the right-field wall for a 7-5 American League victory.

It wasn’t quite Stan Musial’s clout in the bottom of the 12th inning at Milwaukee in 1955 for a 6-5 victory for the National League.

Nor did it compare exactly to Schoendienst’s 14th-inning blast at Chicago in 1950 or Perez’s 15th-inning wallop at Anaheim in 1967.

Jackson’s clout with one on cinched the victory at Detroit in 1971 but was notable chiefly because it crashed into the light towers in right center, inspiring the scene in the Robert Redford movie “The Natural.”

Ruth’s homer won the inaugural All-Star game in Chicago in 1933, fittingly, but it came in the third inning and it was the last time a Babe homer would win an important contest.

So, the public would think Jeffrey Guy Conine of the Rialto, Calif., Conines had nerve joining this august cast of characters in the All-Star game last week. I mean, who did he think he was?!

Who he was bothered a lot of people. Editors who scoured the pages of their Baseball Registers. Photo departments who were sent requests, “Got any head shots of a guy named Conine? That’s spelled with a ‘C.’ ”

The news didn’t set off any dancing in the streets, but rather a bunch of guys punching the sides of their radios to be sure they heard right and reporters shuffling through their notes for clues on who this hero might be.

Jeff Conine is not exactly your new Sultan of Swat or the Man or the Splendid Splinter. He plays for the Florida Marlins, who are not exactly the new Murderers’ Row or Bronx Bombers either. They’re just a bunch of guys who were considered expendable and let go in the expansion draft--a baseball version of a garage sale.

So when Jeff Conine came to bat in the eighth inning of the All-Star game the other night, a lot of people thought his role was to pop up or strike out. The pitcher, Steve Ontiveros, didn’t give much thought to walking him. Just throw him the fastball and get rid of him.

So the pitcher did. And Jeff Conine got rid of it--410 feet away in the seats. Game-winning homer.

Ontiveros shouldn’t have been surprised. Jeff had hit 44 homers against major league pitching in a little more than two years.

No one had been paying much attention to him, anyway. They never are. At the All-Star game, all the attention--and all the cameras--were on Hideo Nomo. This was to be the Nomo All-Star game. The focus was all on the rising son of Japan. The rest of those guys out there were just extras.

Being overlooked might have been annoying for Barry Bonds, but it was par for the course for Jeff Conine. Jeff leads the majors in overlooked. That he’s a major leaguer at all, much less one of the best, produces head-scratching all over the game.

You know how the Willie Mayses, Henry Aarons, Mickey Mantles get spotted early in childhood? How they’re coddled, tracked, traced and catered to their whole careers? They’re discovered in grade school, traced and plotted from then on? Scouts and agents track their every move and hang around them from their days in knee pants, beginning with lollipops, then advancing to Lincoln Continentals. And signing them up before they can waste any time in college.

Jeff Conine not only spent his formative years ignored by the game, but he went to college (UCLA) and didn’t even get a scholarship. He was a pitcher. Not even a good one. His earned-run average was 5.18. He had two pitches, a fastball and a slow ball. His record was 5-4. He wasn’t going to make the world forget the Ryan Express either. He was hardly Conine the Magnificent. He wore glasses. “I didn’t have a real good career,” he acknowledges. But he showed flashes. “I struck out Barry Bonds and Mike Devereaux in a game against Arizona State once.”

He didn’t even get to bat. They used the designated hitter in college. But somehow, Guy Hanson, a UCLA pitching coach who left to be a scout for the Royals, sensed the competitive talent and recommended Jeff to Kansas City. “They picked me on the 58th round. So it wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, not much of a chance on their part,” Jeff says, laughing.

But then somebody put a bat in his hands. And suddenly outfielders were backing up and pitchers were holding conferences on the mound when he came to bat. “Who is this guy?” was the question around the game.

It’s not a new phenomenon for the grand old game. Remember, they thought Ruth was a pitcher. Believe it or not, they had Musial as a pitcher.

Conine batted .320 with 15 homers and 95 runs batted in at Memphis in 1990. He would have been ranked top prospect in the league, except Frank Thomas was also in it. Still, Kansas City didn’t protect him in the expansion draft. They didn’t think Florida would be paying attention.

Florida was. The Marlins picked him 22nd in the expansion draft in 1992.

All he managed to do was go four for four in his first game as a Marlin. He batted .292 for the season with 12 homers. Last year in the strike-shortened season, he upped his totals to .319 and 18 homers. He had driven in 82 runs by Aug. 11.

So he doesn’t have nerve getting in that photo with Ruth, Williams, Mays, Reggie, Musial and Co. There may come the day when the fan will frown and say, “I know Jeff Conine, but who are those other codgers in the Homer-Wins-All-Star photo with him?” They’ve got some nerve.