L.A. Sees Reyes of Hope With Lefty’s Arrival

Dennis Reyes is awakened at 7:30 a.m. at the Biltmore, gets out of bed and begins his day as the youngest pitcher in the major leagues.

Mike Brito, the baseball scout, is already in an automobile on his way to downtown Los Angeles, to pick up Reyes bright and early. Brito will drive him over to Boyle Heights, first to attend Mass at the Assumption church, then to pop across North Evergreen Avenue and drop by the El Tepeyac to buy the kid some breakfast.

Reyes makes a long-distance telephone call to his family in Mexico. “Be quiet, go easy, don’t get too nervous,” Juan Reyes advises his son, who was 20 years, 86 days old, an honored guest in a stately hotel and about to be Sunday’s starting pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers of international renown.

Reyes would never disobey his dad, a man he calls his hero. “But how does one not be nervous?” he wonders.

In a few hours, 51,730 spectators would be in Chavez Ravine, every eye on the young stranger in town with the soft tummy and the numeral 57 on his spotless white Dodger shirt. Home plate umpire Charlie Reliford would hand Mike Piazza a fresh baseball, Darryl Hamilton of the San Francisco Giants would step into the on-deck circle and Dennis Reyes, a dozen weeks beyond his 20th birthday, would toss his first big-league pitch.

Everyone expects his personal idol to be Fernando Valenzuela, rather than his own father. Dennis understands how this assumption could be made. Yes, he does pitch so much like Fernando, it seems a mirror image. They have the same leg kick, the same fluid left-handed motion. They have the same oh-so-slow, rigidly erect posture, walking from the dugout to the mound. It is like watching someone mimic Fernando, a comedian, doing an impression.

“It’s kind of eerie,” says the Dodger Manager, Bill Russell, shaking his head. “If he had a screwball, it would be just like Valenzuela.”

Reyes certainly respects Valenzuela, admires everything he has done. But his father was a ballplayer, a pretty good one. His father was the one who watched his progress as a boy, watched him play for good old Ignacio Zaragoza High School, watched him switch hands from his right to his left after the Dodger scout who discovered Valenzuela dropped by one day and joked that he only was interested in southpaws.

Brito saw the kid grow.

A matter of months ago, Reyes was still pitching for such teams as the San Bernardino Stampede and the San Antonio Missions, in the lower levels of baseball’s minor leagues. Brito says he got in touch with Charlie Blaney, who is in charge of the Dodgers’ farm-club operations. He offered to buy him dinner if Dennis Reyes didn’t pitch for the Dodgers within a year and a half.

Brito claims, “Then I changed my mind. I told Charlie, ‘Make it this year, not next year.’ ”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” he says Blaney replied.

Sunday morning, the scout won the bet. That is why he was more than happy to spring for the pitcher’s breakfast. Besides, it was on the club.

And so was Reyes.

At 1:07 p.m., he looks in to Piazza for a sign. In the batter’s box stands Hamilton, who recently became the first batter in interleague play history. On the mound stands Reyes, the first left-hander to start for the Dodgers since Sept. 24, 1992.

Reyes doesn’t look nervous, but he is. He is only four days older than Andruw Jones of the Atlanta Braves, who is the youngest player in the majors. He is one of the youngest pitchers in Dodger history, in his early 20s, the way Mike Kekich and Rick Sutcliffe were, and a wee bit older than Joe Moeller and Dick Calmus, who started games in the early 1960s when they were still boys of 19.

Hamilton digs in, left-handed. He punches a single to left.

“That first inning, I was very, very nervous,” Reyes will acknowledge later.

But if his knees are knocking, Reyes doesn’t show it. Before he can throw a pitch to Jose Vizcaino, he picks off Hamilton with a snap throw to first. And then he strikes out Vizcaino with three pitches.

He looks sharp. But that’s when Stan Javier doubles to the fence, then Barry Bonds lofts one over the fence. Reyes knows exactly what just happened: “I made a mistake, and in the major leagues, you cannot make a mistake.”

But he recovers, beautifully. Not one batter from San Francisco gets another hit until there are two outs in the top of the fourth. Reyes works six strong innings, and the Giants get only four hits.

Lifted for a pinch-hitter with the bases loaded, Reyes gets a standing ovation. He takes a curtain call and tips his cap.

“I will never forget this in my life,” he says later.

He is dressed in a green vest and slacks, with a white dress shirt, buttoned all the way to the top. Dennis Reyes is about to leave with the Dodgers on his first trip. He will pitch next against Atlanta, which is in first place, same as San Francisco.

On the way out the door, Reyes says, “I have to call my family and let them know I won.”

In the stadium he has no relatives, but 50,000 new friends.