SEASON OF DESTINY : Hey, Abbott! 1997 Looks Like Make or Break for Fans’ Favorite

The baby was born on the 12th month, 15th day, at 12:15 a.m., with the father praying for one more bit of symmetry.

“I was scared to death,” he says.

The baby was born while the father was counting.

Two arms. Two legs. Ten fingers. Ten toes.

Then she was here, all of her, Madeleine Destiny, as beautiful as her name.

Which might explain why the father is walking around these days as if he has just witnessed a miracle.

Throwing like it too.

“She’s perfect,” Jim Abbott says. “Just perfect.”

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Four months after a 2-18 season, the first thing you notice about Jim Abbott is that he looks as if he is wearing shoulder pads.

“You think?” he says. “I’ve been working the weight room pretty hard; I hope I’m not overdoing it.”

The second thing you notice is his fastball. You can hear it again.

It’s not the loud pop of Troy Percival, whose pitching literally stopped students on a recent morning at the Fullerton College field.

But it’s louder than it was last year, when the only sound of an Abbott pitch was the crack of a bat knocking it into a distant corner.

“He’s making some progress,” pitching coach Marcel Lachemann says with a smile.

The third thing you notice is the stare. Last year it was directed either at the sky or the tops of his shoes.

This year the stare is on the mitt, only the mitt, a stare unaltered by the thick drops of sweat falling from his forehead.

Everything about Jim Abbott says he hears exactly what everyone else is whispering.

One more chance.

Either he pitches well in spring training, or the Angels will ship him out or buy him out.

Either he earns a spot as the fifth starter, or the Angels will get rid of him to save Abbott and us the embarrassment.

He is too popular not to be a distraction in the bullpen.

He is too beloved to be allowed to continue looking this bad.

The organization won’t want it, the fans won’t want it . . . and Abbott’s pride won’t stand for it.

He will be banished to the minor leagues, or the Angels will try to cut a deal to release them from some of the $5.6 million remaining on a contract that lasts through 1998.

At age 29, after eight seasons, Jim Abbott’s career here comes down to six weeks.

“I’m going there battling for a job,” Abbott says of spring training. “It’s a position I haven’t been in for a while.”

That said, this winter he is spending five days a week in a gym, three days a week on a mound.

Even if, sometimes, that mound is located down the street from Lachemann’s Northern California home.

Not only has Abbott flown up there to work, he also has driven. With wife Dana and Madeleine Destiny. Talk about taking the hard road.

“First time he’s come up like that,” Lachemann says.

“Guess I’ve worked as hard as I ever have,” Abbott says.

Aside from the sale of the Dodgers, the results of this work will be this town’s biggest baseball story this spring.

Only there are actually some people who are happy with the sale of the Dodgers.

Have you met anybody cheering against Abbott?

Not in this space, you won’t.

This is a man whom people applauded last year while he was walking off the mound in the third inning against the Baltimore Orioles--after giving up six earned runs.

The most amazing part of his popularity is that it seems to have little to do with any birth defect.

Abbott has proved that his most notable feature is not the lack of a right hand, but the presence of a fairly substantial heart.

You know the kind of fan who runs up to a player in the parking lot and announces, “I just wanted to meet you”?

Abbott is the sort of player who usually stops and talks to that fan.

He is modest after successes, on the verge of tears after some losses. Afterward, no matter what his numbers, he always stands behind them, and for anyone who cares to ask.

There is no greater charity magnet in all of sports, and yet he accepts that role gracefully, even apologetically.

“It’s overblown; I really don’t do that much stuff,” he says. “There’s a whole lot of people a lot worse off than me . . . and doing a whole lot more than me.”

You would think people would forget those things last year while watching him set a club record for most earned runs allowed (118).

People didn’t.

“I feel that, I appreciate that,” he says. “I haven’t come across one negative comment all winter long. You don’t know how much that support means.”

Still, when he’s on the mound, he acknowledges, “I’m all alone.”

And never did he feel it more than last year, during which his fastball dropped to 81 mph and his movement stopped and every wondrous achievement of the previous seven years caught up with him.

Because nobody wanted to speculate that maybe his arm was simply worn down, everyone looked for reasons.

He may have been trying too hard to help manager and close friend Lachemann keep his job.

Who knows, he may have been thinking about Dana’s pregnancy. Even though doctors said their first child was no more at risk for a birth defect than the average baby, the possibilities may have worried him like any first-time father.

Typically, Abbott will not blame it on anything but the pitches.

“I went through a period of, ‘What happened?’ ” he says. “It was not one thing. It was a combination of things.”

“Whatever it was,” Lachemann says, “it just snowballed.”

By the time he was mercifully sent to the minor leagues in late summer, he says he was considering retirement.

“There were times I wanted to stop, to step away. I thought it would be better for everyone involved,” he recalls.

But everyone involved told him the same thing.

“They all said, ‘No,’ ” he says. “They all believed in me. It kept me going.”

Retirement remains a possibility if things don’t get better, and quickly.

As you might guess, Abbott has never been the type of person who wants anyone to cry for him.

“If baseball ends tomorrow for me, it’s been great,” he says. “I don’t want it to end, but I’ve sure been fortunate. People should not feel sorry for me.”

For now, he is intent only on changing his mechanics to improve his fastball, and working on different grips to help his location.

Oh, and there is one more thing he wants to fix.

“I was reading Jim Murray’s autobiography, and one thing he said really stuck with me,” he says. “Jim said he could never have been an athlete because he has too much imagination.

“That’s been my problem. Too much imagination. I need to forget about what could happen. I need to turn the imagination off, put the blinders on.”

If one tries, one can imagine Abbott winning 14 games, hitting a one-handed homer in an interleague game and being named comeback player of the year.

One could also imagine a May news conference during which the Angels end Abbott’s minor league struggles by announcing his release.

What one can’t imagine is a player unafraid to admit he read a book by a sportswriter.

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Jim Abbott Profile

BACKGROUND: Born Sept. 19, 1967 . . . 6 feet 3, 210 pounds . . . Throws left . . . Threw no-hitter as a Yankee on Sept. 4, 1993, against the Indians.

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YEAR TEAM W-L ERA 1989 Angels 12-12 3.92 1990 Angels 10-14 4.51 1991 Angels 18-11 2.89 1992 Angels 7-15 2.77 1993 Yankees 11-14 4.37 1994 Yankees 9-8 4.55 1995 White Sox 6-4 3.36 1995 Angels 5-4 4.15 1996 Angels 2-18 7.48

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