Living Off the Edge : Allen Watson Uses His Daredevil Attitude on the Mound to Challenge Hitters

He’s not exactly the next Evel Knievel, but Angel pitcher Allen Watson has always been something of a daredevil.

Growing up in the concrete jungle that is the Queens, N.Y., Watson and his buddies used to play a game called roof-top-tag, in which they’d leap from the roof of one building to another, and tombstone tag, where they’d run and jump from headstone to headstone in crowded cemeteries.

When he was 16 he was so enthralled with a movie scene in which a stuntman jumped out of a moving van, that he tried it himself . . . and broke his wrist.

Watson went bungee jumping in 1993--”Going down was scary, but shooting straight back up was even worse,” he said--and skydiving is on his things-to-do list after baseball.

“I think it shows,” Watson said, “that I’m not afraid of anything.”

Watson, acquired from the San Francisco Giants for first baseman J.T. Snow last November, carries this attitude with him to the mound. The left-hander is not afraid to pitch inside, and he’s definitely not afraid to knock down an opposing batter.

“If you come inside to Jim Edmonds or Eddie Murray then I’m going to come inside to you,” Watson said. “You have to protect your hitters, and I’m going to establish that. That’s how you get respect. That’s how you win.

“I think pitchers saw the years these guys had in 1995 and wanted to scare them last year . . . it’s our job to knock them down so it stops.”

Watson admits he has sometimes taken that job to the extreme. As a St. Louis Cardinal pitcher in 1994, he started a bench-clearing brawl with the Florida Marlins when he beaned Orestes Destrade.

Watson had given up three homers and seven runs in 1 1/3 innings before the beanball, and he was fined and suspended for a week because of the incident.

“I got a few bumps and bruises, but I gained a lot of respect from my teammates,” Watson said. “We were down, 10-2, in that game and came back to win. The inside is my part of the plate, so I’m going to hit some people.”

Plenty of opponents have hit Watson, too. The 26-year-old has had only one winning season in the major leagues, when he went 6-5 in St. Louis in 1994. He went 8-12 with a 4.61 earned-run average for the Giants in 1996 and gave up 28 home runs, third-highest in the National League.

He’s also had a rough spring for the Angels, with a 10.38 ERA in his first four starts.

A first-round draft pick of the Cardinals out of the New York Institute of Technology in 1991, Watson comes to Anaheim with a warning label: “Caution: Has Not Lived Up to Expectations.”

Is the reputation justified?

“I don’t know,” said Watson, who has a conventional repertoire consisting of a fastball, curve, changeup and slider. “I never had a full season in St. Louis--we had the strike in 1994 and ‘95, and I was hurt [biceps tendinitis] for a month in ‘95--and I was out for a month and a half [strained ligament in elbow] with the Giants last year.

“But I thought I pitched pretty well. I lost a lot of close games. I’m not old. I think I have a good 10 years ahead of me. But the teams I’ve pitched for have been rebuilding teams, so it’s been hard for us to win.”

Watson has shown flashes of the pitcher many believe he can be--he has a 6-1 career record against the Atlanta Braves. And despite his elbow injury, he still threw 185 2/3 innings last year, striking out 126 and walking 69.

“I got to the sixth, seventh or eighth inning in most starts,” Watson said. “A few runs here and there, and maybe I win 17 games.”

Watson said he’s not bothered by his reputation.

“It motivates me,” he said. “I know I give 100% every time and I want the Angel organization and their fans to know that. If I’m healthy, I’m an asset to this team.”

Not just on the mound. Watson has a career .255 batting average and hit .417 (15 for 36) with four doubles and five RBIs for the Cardinals in 1995.

He’s so good with the bat he was used as a pinch-hitter in St. Louis and San Francisco, and Angel Manager Terry Collins may use him, too.

“When we play a National League team, absolutely,” Collins said. “He could hit early in the game if we need him to.”

Watson earned All-American honors his junior year of college but not as a pitcher. He also played first base and designated hitter and finished with a .481 average.

Though he played four years of baseball at Christ the King High School in New York, he didn’t begin pitching until his senior year, 1988. He was a quick learner--he was named New York City Player of the Year that season.

Watson was also a standout high school basketball player, averaging 12 points for a nationally ranked team that included six future Division I players--Khalid Reeves (Arizona), Derrick Phelps (North Carolina), Jamal Faulkner (Arizona State, Alabama), Carl Beckett (St. Johns), Nick Sanchez (Florida) and Carlos Easterling (Rhode Island).

Watson had an offer to play basketball at St. John’s, and he had baseball offers from more prominent Division I programs but chose New York Tech because he could pitch and hit there.

The Cardinals used the 21st pick of the first round to select Watson in 1991, and within two years Watson was in the major leagues, going 6-7 with a 4.60 ERA for the Cardinals in 1993, including a 7-1 victory over the Braves in his major league debut.

But Watson and his agent had a falling out with Cardinal General Manager Walt Jocketty in 1995--Watson felt he needed just one minor league rehabilitation start after his injury; Jocketty had him make eight--and Watson was traded to San Francisco the following winter.

He played only one season there before the Giants, in need of a first baseman, decided they could part with him to obtain Snow. He could be just what the Angels are looking for--a pitcher with the potential to throw 200 innings and win 15 games or more.

“He has a chance to win a lot of games for us,” Collins said. “We ran eight good right-handed hitters at him when I was at Houston, guys like Brian Hunter, Craig Biggio, Jeff Bagwell and Derek Bell, and he went right through us a couple of times, so I know he can do it.”