Spotlight on Wright Never Brighter

Like father, like son? Not quite. Jaret Wright, the son, lights up speed guns with a fastball in the mid-90s. Clyde Wright, the father, did it more with finesse. He won 22 games for the Angels in 1970, including a no-hitter, and he was remembering Wednesday how Cliff Keane, a former Boston sportswriter, once described one of his wins as a combination of “garbage and slop.” Wright laughed.

“I have no idea why Jaret throws so stinking hard,” he said in a twang still reflective of his Tennessee roots.

Clyde and Vicki Wright will be at Yankee Stadium tonight when their son starts for the Cleveland Indians in Game 2 of the American League divisional series against the Yankees.

Nervous time for the parents--”I’ll be sitting there throwing as many pitches as he will,” Clyde Wright said--and history for the son, who becomes the youngest pitcher to start an AL division series game.

“I have a job to do and I think I know how to get it done,” the 21-year-old right-hander said.

“I look at myself as a good pitcher who doesn’t back down just because he’s a rookie. I’m human. I’m going to be excited and nervous, but that’s competition. How am I supposed to act . . . like I’m scared to death? That’s just not me, and I guess that’s inbred. Dad was pretty hard-nosed too. He had to be, I guess, the way he threw.”

The son delivered that jab with a smile.

Will he be smiling after tonight?

It’s the severest test of his fastball and fortitude in a season that started in double-A and in which he stepped into the Indians’ injury breech and won eight of 11 decisions.

Or as General Manager John Hart said: “We won [the Central Division title] by six games, and he won eight. We probably wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t responded.

“The original plan was to call him up in September, but with the injuries [the Indians put eight pitchers on the disabled list this year], we had to rush him up in June.

“He’s not a finished product, but he can still dominate. I mean, it was a baptism under fire, and he kept rising to the occasion.”

Consider this occasion:

* Only three years removed from Anaheim’s Katella High and his 1994 selection as the Indians’ No. 1 draft choice, Wright (8-3, 4.38 earned-run average) will be making his first start in the historic and hysteric stadium in the Bronx.

* He will be facing the defending World Series champions, a team that has won 18 of its last 23 games and is riding the emotional crest of an 8-6 Game 1 victory in which it rallied from a 5-0 deficit against Orel Hershiser, who was already a high school pitcher when Wright was born and is arguably the best postseason pitcher ever.

* He will be obligated to keep it close against the playoff experienced Andy Pettitte, who was 18-7 with a 2.88 ERA this year, is 51-24 in his career and was 2-1 in the 1996 postseason.

* And he knows that a loss tonight, leaving the Indians 0-2 in a best-of-five series, would virtually eliminate them, as it did last year when the Indians also went 0-2 against the wild-card Baltimore Orioles on the road and were eliminated in Game 4.

“He’s a kid who can throw in the mid to high 90s, who is very aggressive and who has not been intimidated by the circumstances,” Manager Mike Hargrove said. “I think that’s because his dad is Clyde Wright and he was exposed to the big league atmosphere growing up. I see the same arrogance and belief in himself that I saw in his dad, but I see a lot better stuff.”

Clyde Wright, who does community service and speaking on behalf of the Angels, operates a pitching school in Orange County, but his influence on his 6-foot-2, 230-pound son has been mostly in the area of approach and attitude, although there are a couple mechanical issues Wright said he wants to work on when the season is over.

“I wouldn’t talk about pitching with him right now,” the senior Wright said. “I’m not going to tell him that this is the house that Ruth and Mantle and Maris built. I think he knows that. All I’ve told him is, ‘Just enjoy the ride, my son. This is what you play for, a chance to go to the World Series, and some guys play their entire careers without getting it.’

There are 10,000 kids out there who would trade places with him. Heck, so would I. I’m envious. The only time I pitched in a playoff was in Japan, and that’s not the same for an American.”

Jaret Wright has faced must situations on a lesser scale. He was 7-0 in starts after the Indians lost this year. He was 5-1 down the stretch. He came back to Anaheim in August to pitch before hundreds of relatives and friends only a few blocks from where he went to high school and went seven strong innings of a 10-4 victory.

He had his jaw broken by an errantly swung bat during pregame warmups for a Class-A all-star game at Rancho Cucamonga in June of ’96 and was unfazed when he returned. Tough?

“Seems like a nice place to pitch,” the former Katella quarterback said of Yankee Stadium.

But did he ever dream that he’d be pitching an October playoff game there after starting the year in double-A Akron?

“I’ve tried to stay out of that ‘did you ever think?’ mode,” he said. “I’m here now, and I’ll look back when the season is over in more of a dream state.”

How soon will it be over for the Indians?

Young Jaret Wright gets a chance to provide an answer tonight.