Gary DiSarcina is . . . : Solid as a Rock : It Took an Injury to Point Out His Real Worth to the Angels

Batting averages, power statistics and fielding percentages are telling, but sometimes the true measure of a baseball player is how his team performs without him.

Submitted as evidence: shortstop Gary DiSarcina and the 1995 Angels.

With DiSarcina last season, the Angels went 62-42; without him they went 16-25. With DiSarcina, the Angels built an 11-game lead in the American League West in early August and were preparing to print playoff tickets; without him, they squandered a double-digit lead faster than any team this century and lost the division to the Seattle Mariners.

DiSarcina scoffs at the notion the Angel collapse was triggered by his hard slide into second base on Aug. 3, when he tore the ulna ligament in his left thumb. If the Angels couldn’t survive the loss of their No. 9 hitter, he reasoned, perhaps they weren’t as good as everyone thought.

But it’s hard to ignore the statistics, which seem to indicate that one fateful slide into second might have led to another.

DiSarcina committed only five errors in 88 games last season; following his injury, four shortstops (Spike Owen, Rod Correia, Damion Easley and Dick Schofield) combined for eight errors in their first 25 games.

DiSarcina was batting .317 with five homers, 41 runs batted in and 56 runs when he was injured; the four shortstops combined to hit .217 with 10 runs and 13 RBIs in his absence.

When DiSarcina returned to the lineup Sept. 22, the Angels won six of their last nine regular-season games to force the one-game playoff against the Mariners to determine the division title.

“He was so solid defensively we took him for granted,” right fielder Tim Salmon said. “Right after he got hurt, there was this question: Can Spike fill in? There was a lot of pressure on him and the other guys, and when things didn’t go well, you could sense it affected them at the plate.

“We also made the problem much larger than it should have been, and eventually, it was something we couldn’t climb out of. No matter who they put out there, there was this question in everyone’s mind: What is that guy going to do today?”

DiSarcina believes pennants aren’t won or lost because of one player. As he witnessed the collapse, he saw teammates pressing, trying to do more than they were capable of.

“Pitchers wanted to throw a no-hitter every time out, and guys tried to hit three-run homers with no one on,” said DiSarcina, 28. “You learn a lot from watching--mainly that it’s not an individual game.”

From the ashes of ’95 came a few more revelations. The Angels learned they cannot take a shortstop of DiSarcina’s caliber for granted; that it was no fluke DiSarcina, who had never hit higher than .260 in the major leagues, was named to the 1995 A.L. All-Star team; that if they are to contend in 1996, they’ll need DiSarcina to remain healthy all season.

And DiSarcina realized that, despite his modesty, his repeated attempts to deflect attention and praise, and his tendency to downplay his contributions to the team, he is, indeed, one of the Angels’ most valuable players.

“The shortstop is overlooked by a lot of people if you’re not putting up big numbers--who’s going to take a guy like me in a rotisserie league?” DiSarcina said. “But if you were going to start a team, you’d probably like to have a guy like me up the middle. Unfortunately, sometimes it takes an injury like last year’s for people to notice how well you do your job.”

A New Man

He’s the glue to the Angel infield and an emotional anchor in the clubhouse, a quiet, consistent leader and one of the team’s most respected players. But if you saw him at triple-A Edmonton in 1990, “you would have thought I was a psychopath,” DiSarcina admits.

DiSarcina’s arms were sore from throwing bats and helmets. He cussed more in one night than a raunchy comic. DiSarcina was batting .125 at midseason and taking every 0 for 4 home with him.

“I was miserable around my wife,” DiSarcina said. “I wasn’t able to separate my street clothes from my uniform.”

It was during this hellish summer that DiSarcina had a career-altering experience, when personal tragedy led to personal triumph. He went home to Massachusetts to attend his grandmother’s funeral and returned with a new perspective.

“I hadn’t swung a bat in a week, and the night I came back I got three hits,” DiSarcina said. “It finally clicked then that this game is more mental than you think.

“I was so concerned with mechanics, my swing, but it was like this little light went on and said, ‘Relax, prepare yourself, and if you don’t get results, it’s not because you don’t have a plan.’ I was exhausted because I was beating myself up.”

DiSarcina began to realize he didn’t have to get three hits to contribute to a victory, that moving a runner from second to third with a ground ball or making a diving catch or turning a double play were just as important as the game-winning hit.

He saw that he couldn’t approach baseball with the intensity of a football player and tried to remove emotion from his daily existence, not getting too high after a big hit or too depressed after an error.

DiSarcina hit well enough in the second half of 1990 to lift his average to .212 and in 1991 was named “Trapper of the Year” after hitting .310 with 58 RBIs at Edmonton.

By 1992 he had replaced Dick Schofield as the Angels’ starting shortstop, and in four years DiSarcina has gone from a light-hitting defensive specialist to one of the game’s best all-around shortstops.

DiSarcina hit .307 with 39 extra-base hits and 41 RBIs in 99 games in 1995 after entering last season with 69 career extra-base hits and a .242 career average. He was one of only two shortstops in baseball to hit .300. The other? Cincinnati’s Barry Larkin, the National League’s most valuable player.

He was especially tough in the clutch, batting .375 with 19 RBIs with runners in scoring position and two outs.

His teammates kid him about a patch of grass in shallow right field known as “Gary’s Garden,” where many of DiSarcina’s flares land for singles, but through weight lifting and extensive work with batting instructor Rod Carew, DiSarcina is able to drive the ball more.

DiSarcina’s offense, combined with his solid and sometimes spectacular defense, earned him a trip to the 1995 All-Star Game. But as he rubbed elbows with the game’s elite players in The Ballpark at Arlington, he was overwhelmed by a we-are-not-worthy feeling.

“I felt embarrassed to be around those guys,” DiSarcina said. “I always felt the All-Star game was for superstars, guys like Cal Ripken and Frank Thomas. It was an honor and a blast to be there, but I’m realistic. I know what my role is on this team, and it’s not offense. If your shortstop is offensive-minded, that’s a step in the wrong direction.”

Compared to flashy shortstops such as Cleveland’s Omar Vizquel, DiSarcina admits, “I’m Mr. Vanilla.” DiSarcina won’t bare-hand a high chopper like Vizquel did in the playoffs last season--he gets more enjoyment out of making the hard plays look routine.

“He’s boring as hell because he’s so damn good,” Angel General Manager Bill Bavasi once said of DiSarcina.

“I like that--I hope I’m boring the rest of my career,” DiSarcina said. “But the best compliment I ever got was when [Boston television announcer] Bob Montgomery came up to me last season, looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘Don’t you ever miss a . . . ball?’ ”

The answer: Rarely. DiSarcina went 54 consecutive games without an error last season, and during the all-star break, Bavasi said he believed DiSarcina was the best shortstop in the league, even better than the mighty Ripken.

DiSarcina knows expectations of him will be high this season, which opens tonight against the Milwaukee Brewers in Anaheim Stadium.

“But I can’t expect to do more than I’m capable of doing,” he said. “I’m not going to hit .330 with 15 homers and 90 RBIs. When you’re labeled an all-star, people look at you differently, but I can’t look at myself differently.

“If I’m hitting .230 in May, I can’t say to myself, ‘How come I’m not hitting .300?’ I just have to go about my business like I did last year and every year before that.”

Leading by Example

More than a dozen Angel second basemen have come and gone since 1992, and the third base and first base positions have changed hands numerous times, but DiSarcina has been the pillar of the Angel infield.

With his unflappable and unassuming demeanor, his dry New England wit--DiSarcina on a spectacular diving catch in a recent spring training game: “Sometimes if you close your eyes, good things will happen.”--DiSarcina has also emerged as a stabilizing clubhouse influence.

“He’s definitely not a loud leader, but he’s a leader in the way he goes about the game,” Salmon said. “You can’t have a leader who’s in the penthouse one day and the doghouse the next. If you see a sense of panic after a bad day, that rubs off on other guys.

“But if he makes an error he shakes it off. It’s like a kid looking up to his dad. Things go wrong, but he’s solid as a rock. That’s what you see in Gary. It’s not that he punches in and out, but he’s even-keeled every day.”

He’s also accessible, whether the Angels win or lose, whether he has the game-winning hit or blows the game with an error.

“We had an 11-game losing streak in 1992, and I booted a double-play ball in Yankee Stadium with two outs in the bottom of the ninth and a two-run lead,” DiSarcina said. “We lost the game, but I’ll never forget that day because it was a turning point in my career. Some guys would have been showered and dressed before the media came in, but I faced the music.

“Responsibility can sometimes separate a good guy from a jerk. Some guys, when things are going well, seek out the media, but they have a few bad games and they sneak out the back door.

“One of the best things I learned going through bad times is to stand up and be accountable. If you’re willing to be in the headlines when things are going good, you need to be there when things are going bad.”

DiSarcina didn’t grab many headlines until 1995. He was a four-year varsity starter at Billerica (Mass.) High School, but it was prep teammate Tom Glavine, now an Atlanta Brave pitcher, who received most of the attention.

DiSarcina helped Billerica win the state championship in 1983, a feat he still considers “the most exciting moment in my baseball career--bigger than my first major league game, hit, home run and all-star game.”

But he was not drafted out of high school. In fact, it wasn’t until DiSarcina’s junior year--and Glavine’s senior year--”that I realized scouts came to games,” DiSarcina said.

“I always played to have fun, and I remember going to college [at the University of Massachusetts] thinking I’d use baseball to get my degree, graduate, and go to work like everyone else. Never once did I think I’d use UMass as a stepping stone to the big leagues . . . because who the hell uses UMass to get to the big leagues?”

DiSarcina kept working, grinding and improving, though, and by his junior year in college was chosen in the sixth round of the 1988 draft by the Angels.

“I knew I had it in me, but I knew it would take time,” DiSarcina said. “I’m the type who would ride a bike, fall off, ride it, fall off, until I did it. I remember scraping my knees and my dad telling me, ‘OK, let’s go in now.’ But I’d say, ‘No, I want to ride it.’ I take the same approach to the game.

“You have doubts along the way, but I always had that picture in my mind of falling off the bike and getting up. My swing stinks today, but I’m going to get it right. There’s always something to work on in this game, and that relentless drive has helped me get to where I am. There’s still a long way to go, but the bike is always there.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Fall

The Angels’ ratio of wins to losses took a steady drop after an injury to shortstop Gary DiSarcina in early August. The chart breaks each month in half to show the percentage of games won by the Angels over a 15- or 16-day period. Figures are not cumulative.

May 16: Angels lead American League West by 1 1/2 games.

Aug. 3: The Injury--DiSarcina pulls a ligament in his left thumb while sliding into second base. Angels hold 11-game lead in the division.

Sept. 30: Angels 2 1/2 games out, in second place.