Soriano May Be Second to None

There was the unique odyssey that took him from the Dominican Republic to Japan to a lost year spent partly in Los Angeles, and then finally to the New York Yankees.

There was the blizzard of trade rumors as one team after another tried to obtain him, and there was the eventual and inevitable shift in positions from Derek Jeter’s shortstop to left field to second base.

It is difficult to know where to begin with the multilingual, multitalented Alfonso Soriano, but maybe it should be said at the top that in some ways his journey has just begun because there’s no telling how good he can be.

Which, as teammate Rondell White suggests, is “pretty scary” considering that at 24 he’s already a candidate for the Most Valuable Player award.

Or, as White put it, he’s “already a stud” who has “the potential to be the best second baseman ever.”

Well, it can’t be certain that the veteran White has memorized all 2,857 pages of the Baseball Encyclopedia, but if Don Zimmer, the 71-year-old coach who is a walking abridgement of that book, is going to say Soriano is “one of the few players I would pay to watch,” then White seems justified in referring to him as “Super Sori” and insisting he has some of the same raw, best-in-baseball skills as White’s former Montreal teammate Vladimir Guerrero.

“He’s not yet the defensive player Guerrero is, but they’re the only two teammates I’ve had who have told me they were going to hit a home run in their next at-bat and backed it up,” White said. “The thing about Soriano is, he’s confident without being cocky. He works hard, plays hard and doesn’t let anything get to him. He treats the game as if it’s PlayStation. A lot of us think he can be a 50-50 player.”

White meant 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in the same season.

Why not?

“Maybe some year, not this year,” Soriano said. “Not enough games left to hit 50 homers.”

Through Friday of his second full season, Soriano had 27 homers and 30 stolen bases.

He was batting .313, had driven in 67 runs, was second in the American League in hits and led in steals, extra-base hits, total bases, runs and doubles.

When Jason Giambi, now back in MVP form, was struggling early in his new uniform, Soriano helped carry the Yankees, a catalyst in the leadoff role he won in the spring.

“I’m confident in myself,” he said. “More important, I’m more comfortable at second base now and more comfortable with my teammates.”

At his Edison Field locker this weekend, and generally elsewhere when approached by language-limited U.S. reporters, Soriano speaks improving English, determined to be at home away from home and demonstrate what he has learned, in part, from watching American movies.

He is a native of the shortstop breeding ground that is San Pedro de Macoris in the Dominican and also speaks Spanish, of course, along with a modest measure of Japanese.

Soriano spent two years with the Hiroshima Carp after signing at 16 when he visited their baseball academy not far from his home. He yearned to play in the United States but had no offers and remembers people telling him, “Sori, play two years there and then maybe they will trade you to the majors.”

As difficult as the regimented demands of Japanese baseball were for the young Soriano far from home, his departure was more so.

Ultimately, he had to go on a voluntary retired list and ignore what he viewed as threatening visits from Carp emissaries demanding he return to Japan. He would also have to sit out the 1998 season as Major League Baseball examined his case before declaring him a free agent.

Part of that year was spent with agent Don Nomura in Los Angeles playing weekends in a beer league and taking sandlot batting practice against a pitcher hired by Nomura.

“It was difficult,” Soriano said. “All I wanted to do was play. Don was sure it would work out, but I was getting frustrated and desperate.

“Every time I struck out against some old guy on the weekend, I was sure no one would want to sign me.”

Once freed of his Japanese restrictions, the showcased Soriano was widely pursued, signed a four-year, $3.1-million contract with the Yankees and learned to ignore the persistent trade rumors as one club after another (the Angels dangled Jim Edmonds) came knocking, thinking Soriano had no realistic future in New York because of Jeter.

In fact, documenting the adage that the best trades are those that aren’t made, the Yankees did agree to trade Soriano and Ted Lilly to Houston in June 2000 only to have Moises Alou, who had the right of approval, disapprove of leaving the Astros.

By the spring of 2001, Soriano wasn’t going anywhere except left field, and then only until late March, when the exasperated Yankees decided they couldn’t tolerate Chuck Knoblauch’s throwing problems and moved Knoblauch to left and Soriano to second.

Adjusting to a new position in his first full season in the majors, Soriano hit 18 homers, drove in 73 runs, finished third behind Ichiro Suzuki and C.C. Sabathia in rookie-of-the-year balloting and hit .276 in 17 postseason games. He won Game 4 of the ALCS against Seattle with a walkoff homer and Game 5 of the World Series against Arizona with a 12th-inning single, and he carried all of that into spring training.

He arrived, Manager Joe Torre said in Anaheim, “with that look in his eye, knowing he had a job” and convincing Torre he could bat leadoff despite his comparatively low on-base percentage and free-swinging strikeouts.

Soriano struck out 125 times last year and will exceed that by the end of the month, but the Yankees, convinced he is making adjustments on his own, aren’t demanding Super Sori cut down on his swing or become something he isn’t.

“Look, we all know that if he cut his strikeouts in half, he’d have that many more potential hits,” said Zimmer, “but anybody who preaches patience to this kid should be slapped. I mean, nobody likes to strike out, but it just doesn’t bother him just like he has no fear on the bases. He’ll swing and miss a pitch that bounces in front of the plate and leave you thinking he doesn’t belong in the majors, and the next time up he’ll hit it in the water fountain in center field. He’s just a wild swinger, and we can live with that.”

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Torre uses the word “unpredictable” to describe Soriano at the plate, but he could use it in other contexts because he still, on occasion, has to lecture Soriano for “being more fan than participant,” for lapses on the bases or standing and watching a soaring home run, as he did in the ALCS only to have the ball carom off the fence, and Soriano ending up with a single.

It’s all still a learning experience for a player who General Manager Brian Cashman believes has more “explosive power, speed and raw abilities” than the “five-tool Jeter” and who, in the view of second base mentor Willie Randolph, infuses the Yankees “with juice and energy.”

“Last year,” said Zimmer, “you’d cringe wondering if he was going to catch the ball and cringe wondering where he might throw it. He’s made unbelievable progress in the field.”

An admittedly tough critic, Randolph said he needs to see consistency on a long-term basis before he begins predicting Cooperstown or a career of Gold Gloves.

But he said that with the confidence that comes of knowing he now has a position, with his “quick, lean and agile racehorse body,” Soriano has begun to turn his focus to defense and there is no reason he won’t join with Jeter to “give Yankee fans a very special combination for a long time.”

No reason, said historian White, he can’t be the best second baseman ever.