Greene Light

It’s a sign of acceptance--and almost a badge of honor--when a young player can walk though a major league clubhouse with his teammates teasing him mercilessly.

It means he is one of them, a full-fledged member of the wise-cracking, snide-remarking insult-issuing fraternity of big league baseball players. It means he has arrived.

And even though it can get ugly for Todd Greene, the Angel catcher with the squatty frame, the smooth pate and the violent swing; even though pitcher Chuck Finley may only be half-kidding when he says he “knows Greene has a wonderful personality because he has a beautiful wife,” Greene accepts this initiation process.

But he’s no pushover. Another sign that Greene now belongs: He can return an insult with the best of them.

“He’ll say, ‘Hey, . . . , dynamite comes in small packages,’ ” Finley said. “He’ll stick up for himself. You’ve got be tough when you’re 17 and have no hair.”

Greene is actually 26, but it’s true, he went bald very young. Instead of feeling self-conscious about it or trying to hide it, however, he embraced it, shaving what little fringe he had. This gave him a, shall we say, distinctive look for a young player.

“It takes a special person to pull off a bald head and I do it,” Greene said with the confidence that helped him develop from minor league catching experiment to Angel starter. “I think it would be a shame to cover a pretty head like mine with hair.”

Greene then flashes a sly grin. “These guys try to ruffle my feathers here a lot,” he said. “It’s because they like me.”

What’s not to like?

Greene is still recovering from shoulder surgery last October but has the potential to become the first legitimate power-hitting catcher to spend his prime years in Anaheim.

The Angels thought so much of him after recalling him from triple-A Vancouver last July that they traded starter Jim Leyritz to Texas in the middle of the pennant race and handed Greene the job.

A foul tip broke a bone in Greene’s right wrist on Aug. 20, knocking him out for the season, but the 5-foot-10, 200-pounder still had nine homers and 24 RBIs in 34 games.

“If he catches 110 games and gets 450 at-bats, he’s going to hit 25-30 home runs,” Manager Terry Collins said. “And I’ll take that.”

Offense has always been Greene’s forte. His 88 home runs at Georgia Southern rank third on the NCAA list, and he hit 75 homers in his first two full minor league seasons, earning Baseball Weekly’s minor league player of the year award in 1995.

But his defense is catching up.

“He’s definitely come a long way,” Finley said. “For any kid who’s stamped a can’t-miss prospect, there’s so much pressure to do something quick. I don’t think he thought he belonged here when he first came up [in 1996], but now he’s as good as 90% of the catchers out there.”

When he moved behind the plate from the outfield, Greene wasn’t as good as any of the catchers out there. The Angels suggested the switch after his first professional season, then sent him to an instructional league in the fall of 1993 to learn the position.

For the first time in Greene’s life, he donned a face mask, chest protector and shin guards.

And it showed.

“He basically started from scratch,” said John McNamara, the club’s minor league catching instructor who spent that fall with Greene.

“He was very crude. He’d duck and flinch when a guy swung. I wondered whether he’d ever be able to make the transition.”

In one of Greene’s first games, he crossed signs with his pitcher, calling for a fastball, thinking he’d signaled for a curve. Greene was so thoroughly fooled he had to reach out and catch the pitch bare-handed.

“I had no chance,” Greene said. “I was so inflexible, it was hard for me to squat down at first. If you saw me try to get out of bed each morning, you’d know how bad it was, because I could hardly walk. I thought there was no way I’d be a big league catcher.”

But the Angels stuck with him. They sent him to Class A Lake Elsinore in 1994 with specific instructions: Make mistakes. Learn from them.

Greene did, cutting his passed balls from 30 in the first half to 14 in the second, while still putting up great offensive numbers--.302, 35 homers, 124 RBIs.

The next winter, the Angels sent a pitching machine to Greene’s home in Evans, Ga., and he spent the off-season working on his catching skills. His defense improved at double-A Midland and triple-A Vancouver in 1995 and he had another terrific season at the plate, 40 homers and 92 RBIs.

Greene was a quick study behind the plate too, and it helped that he seemed to have the temperament for the position.

“Greenie’s a dog, which is a term of affection in my vocabulary,” McNamara said. “He’s not afraid to get down in the dirt and work hard.”

Indeed, Greene was a hard-nosed, all-state high school defensive back who would go the whole season without washing his football pants.

“I liked being dirty and stinky,” he said.

But this catching gig isn’t all blood and guts.

“He’s intelligent and he learned the game,” McNamara said. “He learned the pitchers and what they could throw for strikes on any given day. He’d know the hitters’ strengths. And he has the mental capacity to retain it, which is important for any catcher.”

Surgery on his injured left wrist--Greene’s bat struck a cage during practice--sidelined him for six weeks in 1996, but he played well enough upon his return to Vancouver to earn a brief promotion to Anaheim in July and August.

He expected to be the Angels’ starter in 1997, but they acquired Leyritz that winter. Greene, after two weeks on the Angel bench in April, was sent back to Vancouver.

“I was disappointed, but I can understand,” he said. “They had to protect themselves. But getting sent down was the best thing in the world for me, because I was able to get my confidence back, with my power that I didn’t have because of the wrist surgery.”

Greene thrashed triple-A pitching, hitting .354 with 25 homers and 75 RBIs in 64 games, and the Angels had no choice but to recall him last July 3. Four weeks later, Leyritz was gone, and Greene was the starter.

“They were confident they could put a young catcher back there in a pennant race and win,” Greene said. “It wasn’t a gamble in their mind. They knew I could handle it, and that took the pressure off me.”

Greene was a big hit in Anaheim, and the Angels were tied with Seattle for first place the night he took a foul tip on the right wrist against the New York Yankees.

Season-ending injuries to Greene and Finley, and Tony Phillips’ arrest on drug charges, contributed to the Angels’ September fade, but Greene’s injury might have been a stroke of luck in the long run.

He didn’t tell trainers that his shoulder was hurting until after he’d hurt his wrist, and had he continued playing, he might have suffered a more serious injury than the slight tear.

But the shoulder has slowed Greene and instead of catching in Cactus League games, he has had to spend time in Tempe, trying to shed a label of being injury prone.

“I broke my [wrist] bone in Vancouver because of terrible conditions, and last year was a freak accident,” Greene said. “I don’t twist ankles or pull hamstrings. When you have two freak accidents, I don’t see how you can be labeled as injury prone.”

The Angels, however, aren’t taking any chances. Collins is confident Greene will be ready for the season, but he won’t push it this spring. He would rather Greene miss a week or two in April than a month or two later. Unlike so many Angel catchers in recent years, Greene is not another short-term project.

“He’s a keeper,” Finley said.