Zero Tolerance

Chad Curtis doesn’t know why the whims of so few began trampling the ideals of so many. But he believes they have and, frankly, that bothers him.

He does not know why a father would lean over a railing in the bleachers of a ballpark, young son at his side, and spurt such profanities from between inebriated lips. That bothers him too.

What he does know is that he will not turn his back. He will not pretend the man and his son do not exist. He will not pretend that music lyrics he finds offensive are not, or that cheaters do not, or that teammates should not at least act the part. He cannot.

If his glare and his judgments make people uncomfortable, so do their actions make him uncomfortable. The fight, then, will be a fair one.

And if these values of loyalty and faith and right and wrong cost him a place on the baseball team for which he had searched most of his life, and that is exactly what he believes, then he’ll live with that too.

They are more important to him than a career with the New York Yankees, the home runs that won a World Series game, the two championship rings, and his place in a clubhouse where his obsession with teamwork finally was sated.

“We live in a society that wants to practice tolerance and acceptance, which at the root is a good idea,” Curtis said. “But, you step back sometimes and say, ‘What is it that we tolerate? What is it that we are accepting? Is anything acceptable?’ My answer to that is, ‘No. Not everything will be tolerated.’

“I’m just a person who decided that if there’s something worth standing for, I’ll stand for it. I’m willing to stand for things that are good.”

Nearly a decade ago, when the Angels allowed free agent Wally Joyner to sign with the Kansas City Royals and a young, flat-topped outfielder was slamming line drives, then-club President Richard Brown strode into the press box and announced that Anaheim was no longer Wally World. “It’s Chad City,” he said, smiling.

Five cities later, the outfielder sits in a metal folding chair in the visitors’ clubhouse at Edison Field, where the Rangers will wrap up a four-game series against the Angels today. The Yankees traded him to Texas two weeks before Christmas, six weeks after he hit the 11th walk-off home run in World Series history. Injuries to outfielders Rusty Greer and Gabe Kapler have made Curtis a regular; he’s batting .286 with four home runs and 15 RBIs in 28 games going into Saturday night’s game.

He wears a goatee and the same flat-top, a hair style as tight and square as most presume him to be. He is ready with pictures of his three young children, the last a boy born in August. He says there is a new non-stop flight from Dallas to Grand Rapids, Mich., and so he sees them as often as he can.

He says he is reasonably content with the Rangers, with this group of players, in this lineup. Only five weeks before, he argued with shortstop Royce Clayton over a rap song played on a clubhouse CD player. Curtis would not stand for the racy lyrics and Clayton would not turn them off.

In front of the locker beside Curtis’, Clayton dresses silently for batting practice.

“Well,” Curtis says, grinning, “you know me. I’m not the easiest guy in the world to get to know. I’m not the most congenial person right up front. Do I know them? Do the guys here all like me? I can’t say that. But, I hope by the end of the season they see me as a guy who plays hard and does his job. I’d rather have a friendship built that way and have it be real than to have it be a perception.”

In the clubhouse across the ballpark, Tim Salmon, Curtis’ friend since they were teammates at Grand Canyon College in Phoenix, sighs and chuckles.

“He’s been that way since the day I met him,” Salmon says.

Curtis has been involved in many scraps, some of them high profile.

In Detroit, Curtis confronted teammate A.J. Sager, a pitcher, with evidence that Sager had been scuffing baseballs. When he believed Sager continued the practice, Curtis went public with his accusations.

In Cleveland, he tussled with teammate Kevin Mitchell over Mitchell’s choice of music, also played loudly enough for all to hear.

In New York, he engaged in a very public dispute with Derek Jeter over the shortstop’s deportment in a brawl with the Seattle Mariners. It is the act Curtis believes got him traded from the Yankees, a team he truly loved.

“If the people that are making the decisions decide there’s a conflict there that’s going to rub a little bit, and one of us has to go, are you kidding me?” Curtis says. “What kind of idiot is going to send [Jeter] out of there? That is absolutely a no-brainer.”

Since the trade, speculation also had the Yankees tiring of Curtis’ religious zeal, and perhaps unsettled by a rift that was supposed to have developed between Curtis and Manager Joe Torre.

In a meeting before Game 4 of the World Series last year, Torre accused Curtis of acting on his own when he declined a live postgame interview with NBC’s Jim Gray the night before. Actually, the team had voted, 22-3, to snub Gray because of the reporter’s heavy-handed interview with Pete Rose.

But by then, Torre already had chastised Curtis in the media, and it was too late to retrieve. It hurt Curtis, although he still views Torre as an exceptional manager and person.

Curtis hadn’t picked that fight with Gray and NBC. With many of his teammates watching from the dugout, however, Curtis was not afraid to finish it.

He said he then suffered the consequences.

“I kind of got hung out to dry,” he says.

Club officials contend Curtis was traded for equal value. They received two minor-league pitchers. One is recovering from ligament transplant surgery in his pitching elbow. The other is at triple-A Columbus and projects as a middle reliever.

In fact, the trade was financially motivated. Along with Curtis, neither Joe Girardi, Hideki Irabu, Chili Davis nor Luis Sojo were retained. The decisions saved the Yankees $10 million.

“Chad was a good Yankee,” Yankee General Manager Brian Cashman said. “Between the lines, he goes 110%. He plays hard and he leaves it all out there. There were a lot of circumstances that led to his trade. None had to do with religion or Jeter.”

Curtis wouldn’t buy it.

“Whether it was Derek or Joe or a combination of things,” he says, “it was time to sever ties.”

Two years remain on a contract that pays Curtis $1.9 million annually. By the end of it, they might learn to appreciate him in Texas. He already has a fan in Manager Johnny Oates.

“We are on the same page,” Oates said. “We believe there is a right way to handle yourself, a right way to live. Our philosophies and our beliefs are the same. He helps hold me accountable, and I’ll take that any time.

“There is no in-between with Chad. There’s no gray area. You don’t have to wonder or guess where he’s coming from. It doesn’t matter if you’re the manager or the star player or the bat boy.”

In that regard, he did not just take on Jeter, or the Yankees. He did not take on just Clayton or Mitchell, and certainly not Jim Gray.

There were larger issues to face. In his mind, he confronted every father who set a poor example for his child, every bully who ignored the wishes of the majority, every superstar who simply forgot how to treat real, decent people.

People don’t like him for it. Curtis understands that. He only resets his mind and, if need be, his jaw.

“I would like to see someone break the chain,” he said.