Brundage Showed Little Appetite at Plate Against ‘Big Unit’

JetHawk Manager Dave Brundage will be able to empathize when he watches the San Jose Giant batters attempting to survive tonight against Randy Johnson during the Seattle Mariner ace’s rehabilitation start at the Hangar.

In 1992, when Brundage was a minor league outfielder in the Mariner system, he was picked to be the left-handed hitter to face the flame-throwing, 6-foot-10 left-handed pitcher in a spring training simulated game. In a simulated game, the pitcher tries to get the batter out as he would in a real game, but he keeps facing only specific batters.

Brundage was selected to be the lucky lefty, he said, “because I was No. 77 in your program. I was expendable.”

Before the workout, Brundage approached Johnson in the training room and said: “Just don’t hit me.”

Replied Johnson: “I’m not going to hit you . . . unless you hit one hard off me.”

Needless to say, there wasn’t much chance of that.

“I probably struck out the first couple times,” Brundage said. “Then I was really happy about grounding out to shortstop.”

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Now you see him . . .: The costume for K.B., the JetHawks’ buff purple hawk mascot, was stolen from a locked storage room while the team was on its last trip.

It will be difficult to get away with, General Manager Matt Ellis said, because “whoever took it is going to brag about it.”

Mascot-less for the current homestand, the JetHawks were forced to get creative with the kid-races-the-mascot-around-the-bases promotion. On Tuesday, they used an invisible “ghost mascot,” called Stealth Man, which required nothing more than a voice over the public-address system and some acting by the staff on the field.

If Stealth Man catches on, it might be the wave of the future in the minors.

K.B., after all, cost $10,000 to produce. Stealth Man is free.

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No place for wimps: What are the qualifications for being an effective relief pitcher? The way Dave Schmidt sees it, mental fortitude is perhaps the key.

Schmidt, a former All-City Section pitcher at Granada Hills High who also played at Valley College, UCLA and in the major leagues for 12 full seasons, was a starting and relief pitcher.

“To be a reliever, you cannot be a panicky kind of guy,” said Schmidt, who recently resigned as UCLA’s pitching coach. “You have no chance if you are panicky. You are going to wet your pants out there if you are not a person with a lot of confidence.”

Quotebook

JetHawk first baseman Shawn Buhner, after learning he likely would be out for the season because of a broken foot, and that his older brother, Mariner All-Star Jay Buhner, had just sent him some bats:

“I wish he’d send me his foot too.”

Things to Do

The American Legion District 20 championship game is scheduled for 11 a.m. on Sunday at Birmingham High. If necessary, a second game in the double-elimination tournament is set to start 30 minutes after the completion of the first game.

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Contributing: Fernando Dominguez, Jeff Fletcher, Michael Lazarus.