Abbott Finally Has His Priorities Straight

He doesn’t want it to appear that he is using the media for self-analysis or a catharsis. He is hesitant to discuss where he has been and where he is headed.

In his first major league spring since 1997, Jim Abbott hopes only to be judged on how he performs as a pitcher.

Forget his admirable work ethic or the inspiration he continues to provide as an athlete born without a right hand. Coming back from that 2-18 season with the Angels in 1996 and more than a year and a half off, Abbott is being counted on as a regular starter for the Milwaukee Brewers, earning a comparatively modest $600,000. He is 31, happy to have the opportunity to test his skills again--with a cleared head and rejuvenated competitiveness.

“My intentions at this point--I don’t want to say pure--but pitching is the primary thing,” he said. “I want to get back on the mound. I don’t dread it. I want to see what I can do. It doesn’t matter how much work I do in [the Brewer weight room] or how many times I run around the field or what some people perceive I’ve had to overcome. The ultimate measure of success is how I get people out.”

Abbott smiled and added, “Well, maybe there’s a higher measure, but let’s take one step at a time.”

He stepped away in the spring of 1997, rejecting the Angels’ offer to go to triple A and attempt to regain his form after going 2-18. He took the $5.6 million that was guaranteed on his contract when he left, but the money was small solace weighed against his personal confusion, the toll, as he says, his performances had taken.

“I began to think that my record was my name,” he said. “I felt that because I had a bad year while playing for a team in the area in which I lived, I was embarrassed to go places. I retreated from friends in the front office, from the media, from even wanting to go out. I didn’t want to be ashamed and didn’t like the person I was becoming. As athletes we tend to create this unrealistic world, but when you have a disappointment--not that this was deadly serious in the grand scope of things--in a part of your life that’s been very important, you’re bound to be left with a feeling that your world is suddenly off-balanced and teetering.”

What Abbott learned was that his friends and neighbors had a different perception of who he was and what their relationship was about.

They were either very supportive, he said, or they simply didn’t care and “that opened my eyes a little. I realized I could still live in the neighborhood and feel good about it.” He also began to miss the competition.

“I’d go to a concert and see somebody on stage putting themselves through it and that would strike a chord,” he said. “This is the only venue I’ve ever had where I had similar feelings. I saw nothing on the horizon that offered that kind of potential.”

In midseason last year, agent Scott Boras made some calls. The Chicago White Sox offered a minor league opportunity, and Abbott accepted. A first-round draft choice of the Angels who went right to the majors in 1989 after pitching for the U.S. Olympic team in 1988, Abbott this time started at Class A, moved up through the Chicago system and ultimately won all five September starts with the White Sox, with a 4.55 earned-run average.

The White Sox, however, leaving Abbott with the impression they wanted to go with younger pitchers, were slow in making an offer for this season and Abbott accepted the Brewers’ discount bid.

If nothing matters now except what he does on the mound, if he is prepared to take himself a little less seriously, the spring results have been promising.

In his second start on Wednesday, facing the Seattle Mariners’ powerful regular lineup, Abbott pitched five innings, giving up only four hits and one run. He struck out two and walked none. He also had a single and sacrifice bunt.

Asked if the spotlight should be on his hitting or pitching, Abbott smiled and said, “If I don’t pitch well, there is no spotlight.”

Pitching coach Bill Campbell said he is convinced the time off revitalized Abbott’s arm and approach.

“I know I can’t be one-dimensional anymore,” Abbott said, referring to the pitcher who relied on a cut fastball with which he jammed right-handed hitters. “That was one aspect [of what happened with the Angels]. I tried to change and lost everything.”

Now, in exchange for decreased velocity, he says he has regained some movement and, for the first time, has an effective changeup “that’s an interesting and encouraging dynamic I’m learning how to mix in. I also feel like I have a viable breaking ball, but I have to be able to execute all of it before I can say I’m doing things I’ve never done before.”

Abbott also understands returning to the mound is “not quite as dire as I once made it out to be. I have a different perspective, and I think that will be the greatest reward and lesson I’ll take from baseball. There was so much support and so many good friendships and so many encouraging gestures when I wasn’t playing that it was completely opposite than what I imagined. I know now all of that will still be there no matter what I do on the mound.”

KEVIN TO KEVIN

Dodger General Manager Kevin Malone quietly called San Diego Padre General Manager Kevin Towers about a week ago to say that much of his brash rhetoric has been a tongue-in-cheek attempt to generate interest and fuel the rivalry.

“As I recall the conversation, his point was that if we get the rivalry going and put people in the seats, it will all have been in good fun,” Towers said. “Well, I don’t personally think we can put people in the seats. I think that’s up to our teams.”

Malone, of course, is the self-proclaimed “new sheriff in the West” and has boldly been saying the Dodgers are back as a feared force.

He welcomed the New York Yankees’ acquisition of Roger Clemens by saying they will need him when they play the Dodgers in the World Series and chided the Padres for bringing entertainer Garth Brooks to spring training while the Dodgers were signing ex-Padre pitcher Kevin Brown.

Tongue in cheek?

Maybe, but Towers says Malone has been taking the rest of the division “a little too lightly,” and he reiterated to Malone what he has been saying publicly, that he thinks the Padres and San Francisco Giants will finish ahead of the Dodgers--no kidding involved.

“The Padres and Giants are the two teams that rarely get respect, that everybody takes for granted, but we’re the two teams that have dominated the division the last three years,” Towers said.

“Kevin is evidently pretty proud of his team and that’s fine, but we haven’t played a game yet. He makes it sound like he has this well-oiled machine and the only roadblock is the Yankees, but I think they have some problems and we’ll be ready for them.

“I mean, he may be the big sheriff up north and we’re all his little deputies, but holy cow. Give us some respect.”

KEVIN TO KEVIN II

Towers and relief ace Trevor Hoffman flew back to San Diego this week for the Qualcomm Stadium announcement--

complete with Hoffman’s “Hells Bells” theme ringing over the PA system--that the Padres and Hoffman had agreed on a four-year, $32-million extension. That their flight was delayed for an hour leaving Phoenix prompted Towers to take a jab at the luxury items in Kevin Brown’s $105-million contract with the Dodgers.

“One of the deals we forgot [to include in Hoffman’s contract] was 10 or 12 flights on Southwest Airlines and double the peanuts,” Towers said.

The Hoffman contract, as club President Larry Lucchino pointed out, should remove any doubt that the Padres--who will start the season with a higher payroll than last year’s--are in the process of a Florida Marlin-type dismemberment. Said Tony Gwynn, who had publicly urged the Padres to get the Hoffman deal done: “They did the right thing. This sends a good message to the team and community.”

NOTE TO KEVIN BROWN

David Wells, who will be paid

$4.5 million this year and isn’t exactly the corporate type, is buying a private jet in partnership with Kirk Gibson. “This will let me whisk in and out whenever I want,” the Toronto Blue Jay left-hander said, adding he intends to take flying lessons so that he can pilot the plane himself. Does the FAA know?

PIN-STRIPED PRIDE

Two weeks ago Yankee Manager Joe Torre had talked about his players’ professionalism and self-motivation, their “machine-like determination.” Those qualities will be tested as the Yankees try to stay focused while their manager battles prostate cancer, the latest definition of mortality in a difficult week for the Yankees. Catfish Hunter, battling the fatal illness known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, visited camp; Joe DiMaggio died; Darryl Strawberry, still undergoing chemotherapy for colon cancer, returned to the lineup, and Torre was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

“It makes you wonder what’s going to happen next,” catcher Joe Girardi said.

Pitcher David Cone said that Torre had created an “aura of calmness” in an often chaotic environment and was the “perfect man for the toughest job in baseball.”

The Yankees have won two of the last three World Series under Torre and have too much talent and too much sense of who they are and what they are part of not to remain successful under an interim manager.

The hope, of course, is that the interim is short and that the manager returns with that aura of calmness--and health.