BEST FOOT FORWARD : After a Frustrating and Painful (Yet Productive) Season, Salmon Is All Right in Right Again

Tim Salmon’s days began with a grimace. Some days he would want to scream, really scream, because the pain was so bad.

The first step of the day was the worst, Salmon lifting his left foot out of bed and putting it on the floor, then putting weight on it. That first step every morning, from April until nearly October, was agony.

Sometimes the pain made him sweat. Sometimes his eyes watered. Sometimes it just caused him to exhale heavily. Those were the good days.

“What Tim went through last year, I don’t think a lot of athletes would have gone through,” says Marci Salmon, his wife. “It’s hard to make people understand the pain because you couldn’t see it. There wasn’t a cast or surgery or something tangible. But I saw what he went through every day and I know. What Tim did last year was a pretty amazing thing.”

In the third inning against the Baltimore Orioles last April 22, Salmon was rounding first base after hitting a home run for the Angels and the pain struck. A searing, ugly feeling on the bottom of his left foot. The foot had been hurting before, but not like this and Salmon left that game to have an MRI.

The diagnosis was a strained left plantar fascia. This sounds so harmless, so innocuous. The plantar fascia is a ligament in the foot that supports the arch and what’s the big deal about that?

So, your foot hurts a little, right? Salmon smiles at that description, for that’s what went through his head. There was one stretch on the 15-day disabled list that ended on May 9 and from then on, he played baseball almost every day. He played and yet he didn’t play.

He was no longer able to play right field. He could only be the designated hitter, a job Salmon was barely able to swallow. But it was all he was capable of, seeing as how every time he put down his left foot he wanted to yelp.

Salmon didn’t know how to act as a designated hitter.

“After every at-bat, I’d run back into the clubhouse and ride the bike or swing off the tee,” he says.

It was as if he was trying to work up a sweat, like the other guys.

“Finally, I called up Paul Molitor and asked him how he did it, how he became a good DH,” Salmon says. “Paul told me it was simple, that I should just sit on the bench and watch the game. That made a difference, but still, it was hard to feel a part of the team. You’d feel like you couldn’t say anything in the clubhouse in front of guys going all out in the field.”

And as much as the pain was a drain, so was the mental anguish. Doctors told Salmon that the only cure for his foot would be surgery, which would end the season, of course.

But the surgery wasn’t urgent. He would not become a cripple or become any less likely to make a full recovery by continuing to play. So whether Salmon played or not was up to him and to his own tolerance for pain.

“I learned a lot about myself last season,” Salmon says. He is leaning against a wall. His arms are crossed and one leg is crossed over the other. Yes, Salmon is standing with all his weight on his left foot.

“What I learned is that I could stretch my limits of tolerance,” he says. “Honestly, I wouldn’t have thought before last year that I could have made it through the season with the pain I had. But I did and I’m kind of proud of that.”

Salmon, 30, is starting his seventh season in the major leagues. In 1998, playing on one leg, he hit .300. He led the Angels in home runs with 26, sacrifice flies with 10, walks with 90, and in slugging percentage, .533.

He also scored 84 runs, each at a cost. For as the season progressed, Salmon’s torn ligament tore a little more. From 10% torn to 20% to 50% to 75% to nearly 100%. Had the tear become complete, Salmon’s season would have ended. And had the Angels ever fallen out of the American League West race, he would have ended his season.

“I was nearly ready to shut down at the All-Star break,” he says, “but then we were hanging around. Five games out, six games out, four games out, so I decided to hang in there. Every day I’d say to Marci, ‘We’re still in it, we’re still in it, I’ve got to go to the park.’

“And then other guys would get hurt--[Dave] Hollins, [Darin] Erstad. I’d look at the bench and see the injured guys and I’d say to Marci, ‘I’d better keep going.’ ”

Marci says, “There were times when I wished the Angels would just drop out of the race and I know Tim did too. It was so hard for him. The decision was all his. If it had been cut and dried, you know, something torn or broken so the doctor says that you have to stop right now. But it wasn’t like that. It was all on Tim and how much he was willing to put up with and how much responsibility he felt to the team.”

As hard as the day-to-day baseball grind was, it was more discouraging to go home and have to say no when his daughter, Callie, wanted a piggyback ride or his son, Jacob, wanted to be tossed in the air.

“I couldn’t pick up the kids or really play with them,” Salmon says.

He is not a hands-off father, Marci says. He is the dad who likes to get down and dirty. On an afternoon when most of his teammates want to hurry from spring training workouts to the golf course, Salmon is in a rush to get to a T-ball game.

Callie, a rambunctious 5-year-old with a short attention span and athletic talent busting from her rangy arms and legs, has already mastered the art of smashing the ball off the tee and gets frustrated when her teammates, boys and girls, don’t know how to run the bases or field the ball.

“I’m afraid she’ll get bored with T-ball,” Salmon says. “We’ve got to help her get her head in it.”

It is the little things like this--being able to hurry off to the car and not tiptoeing gingerly--that make day-to-day living so pleasant now.

Out on the field, Salmon runs gracefully. He can catch up to anything these days. He can run backward, forward, sideways.

“One thing that surprised me is how easily I got back into the groove in the field,” he says. “It really is like they say, like riding a bike. You never forget.”

Tim and Marci met at Grand Canyon College in Phoenix when Tim, a freshman, maneuvered his way into Marci’s sophomore English class. They were immediately hooked on each other. Marci was a cheerleader, Tim the athlete. Both had come from strong Christian backgrounds and both say that their faith was important last season.

Marci’s dream was always to be a full-time mom. Tim wanted a full-time mom for his kids.

“And we’re blessed to have that opportunity,” Marci says.

If Tim and Marci say the injury of 1998 has made them stronger for 1999, both also say they would be perfectly happy not to have to build that strength any more for a while.

Marci says that Tim was “ecstatic” the day the Angels signed Mo Vaughn. Right now Manager Terry Collins sees Salmon batting fourth, right behind Vaughn. Life should be good, right?

“Well, the pressure will be on a little,” Salmon says and then he laughs. “I’m a notoriously slow starter. If Mo’s up there creaming the ball, I’m going to be wanting to hit the ball too. I don’t want Mo wondering what’s up with me.”

And now it’s time for Salmon to run. He jogs out to his car and off to T-ball. No, he says over his shoulder, the left foot doesn’t hurt a bit. Not on the first step of the day, the last, or any in between.

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com.