Battery Switch : Percival Went From Dud as a Catcher to Angels’ High-Voltage Closer

Troy Percival has a pretty good idea how his life would have turned out had he not made the switch from catcher to pitcher after his first professional season in 1990.

“I think I would have been a hell of a painter,” said Percival, the Angels’ flame-throwing closer. “And I know I wouldn’t have been able to play as much golf as I do now.”

The Angels have not been known for making the shrewdest player personnel moves, but when minor league instructors Bob Clear and Frank Reberger suggested Percival switch from one side of the battery to the other, it may have been one of the most brilliant decisions in franchise history.

Percival went from being the next Jerry Narron to the second coming of Goose Gossage; from a catcher who “couldn’t hit a lick,” as he says, to a reliever who established himself as one of baseball’s best closers.

“He’s like a superstar in high school--nine times out of 10, no one touches him,” said Mike James, fellow Angel reliever. “And it’s not like the hitters have a whole lot to think about. It’s basically, ‘Here’s the fastball, hit it.’ But how many people have done it?”

Not many. Percival converted 36 of 39 save opportunities last season, going 0-2 with a 2.31 earned-run average, striking out 100 and walking 31, and giving up only 38 hits in 74 innings.

Percival went 3-2 with a 1.95 ERA as the Angels’ rookie set-up man in 1995, striking out 94, walking 26 and giving up 37 hits in 74 innings.

He has a 97-mph fastball, amazing control for a guy who is so near-sighted he can barely make out the catcher’s signs, and a pit-bull mentality that seems tailored for the closer role.

“I wouldn’t have made the switch for anything but this, because I still come to the park with a chance to play every day and I’m always in there with the game on the line,” Percival, 27, said. “Some people get nervous in those situations. I get more intense, more focused.”

And pretty wired. After his warm-up pitches and before the ninth inning, Percival goes through his ritual of crouching behind the mound, back to the batter, staring at a single blade of grass to focus his mind and relax his body.

But then he stalks to the rubber the way Mike Tyson used to corner opponents, squints to get the signs and is a bundle of twitches and nervous energy before launching into a herky-jerky motion that results in a baseball screaming toward the plate at a mind-boggling speed.

“That can’t be too comfortable for the batter, seeing Troy squint on the mound,” James said. “I know he’s as blind as a bat. Some days he can’t see anything.”

Percival, who will resume throwing Thursday after missing a week of spring training because of back spasms, has a a good curve, which, if you’re expecting fastball, can be almost impossible to adjust to.

But what makes him so effective is his killer instinct, a fearless attitude that makes him feel invincible regardless of who is in the batter’s box.

When White Sox slugger Frank Thomas complained about Percival’s fist-pumping antics last season, Percival didn’t back down. “Everyone’s world revolves around Frank Thomas,” Percival said at the time. “The last time I looked, we did the Pledge of Allegiance, not the Pledge to Frank Thomas.”

And when Yankee second baseman Mariano Duncan took offense to a brush-back pitch, Percival challenged him to charge the mound.

“It’s a man’s game, if they’re going to play like a bunch of crying babies, they can expect the inside pitch,” Percival said. “If you’re mad enough you’ll come to the mound, but don’t stand in the dugout and flap your jaws. . . .

“You can’t have anyone thinking they’re going to get the best of you. You can’t let them intimidate you. I’m not out there to show people up, but I don’t have a problem with a guy hitting a homer off me and pumping his fist. Why should they have a problem when I do it?

“I give 110% on every pitch, and I’m very intense. Nowadays you’re supposed to be so diplomatic with everything, but I’m not going to be afraid to let you know I’m excited. That’s the way I am. It’s nothing that’s purposely done. It’s just a reaction.”

Percival has always been aggressive, from his days as a catcher at Moreno Valley High and UC Riverside to his first few years as a reliever in the Angel farm system. But he didn’t really begin cultivating that closer mentality until 1994.

Elbow surgery to remove calcification of the medial collateral ligament ended his 1993 season at triple-A Vancouver in late May, and when Percival returned in ’94 he appeared tentative on the mound, afraid to test his rebuilt arm.

A chat with Lenny Sakata, Vancouver’s hitting coach at the time, snapped Percival out of his funk.

“He said, ‘Hey, if you’re going to blow out your arm, blow it out like a man, don’t baby it,’ ” Percival said. “Within two weeks I started letting my fastball loose and things started coming around.”

A four-inch scar that snakes through the inside of Percival’s elbow--his souvenir from that 1993 surgery--seems incongruous with Percival’s radar-gun readings. Most pitchers lose velocity after such a medical procedure.

But Percival went through a post-surgery strengthening program that focused on muscles he hadn’t previously worked on, and he came out of surgery throwing harder than he did before.

“It was completely backwards,” Percival said.

Percival says he has no fear of blowing out the elbow, and though he experienced numbness in his arm along with the back spasms last week, doctors say his elbow is sound. But it’s not as if Percival has put the surgery completely out of his mind.

“It makes you appreciate being here a little more,” Percival said, “because at one point I realized I may never play again.”