Little Goes Long Way for Eckstein

The bus was rolling along the highway, carrying the University of Georgia’s baseball team back to campus after a weekend series in Florida. The players were kidding the assistant coach about his kid brother. They had seen the major league highlights on ESPN, which showed the kid brother hitting a grand slam for the Angels, and they had heard the announcers call the little guy a ridiculously unlikely candidate to hit a slam.

Rick Eckstein took the teasing in stride. He was used to it. The Angels list David Eckstein as 5 feet 8, and they’re rounding up.

As the players laughed about the little guy hitting the big fly, Rick’s cell phone rang. Mom was calling. Rick nodded, smiled broadly, and made an announcement to the players who could hardly believe David had hit a grand slam.

“He just hit another,” Rick said.

Two grand slams in two days, by a guy who had never hit one in his life? This was great stuff, and the national media anointed the Angels’ shortstop the unofficial hero of the week. The New York Times called. Major League Baseball featured him on its official radio show.

ESPN practically adopted him and turned him into a multimedia sensation. You could chat with him on ESPN’s Web site, read about him elsewhere on the site and in ESPN magazine, hear from him on the ESPN radio network.

Many players relish their turn in the spotlight. Eckstein? He would just as soon retreat to the shadows. He is pleasant and cooperative but genuinely humble, and he doesn’t believe his grand slam exploits have made him--gasp!--a famous person.

“As long as we keep winning games, that’s all I care about,” he said. “What I’ve done in the past will not help me when I step on the field the next day.”

Said Rick, “I don’t think there’s time in David’s day to bask in the glory. He’s still fighting to prove he belongs there.”

His teammates do not begrudge Eckstein his moment in the sun. Asked what the chances were of Eckstein’s developing a big head, outfielder Darin Erstad said, “Zero.” He paused, then revised his answer.

“Less than zero,” Erstad said. “He’s worked so hard to get here and beaten all the odds. He was just born with a gift to keep driving himself.”

Eckstein, 27, says his parents are his heroes. He is the son of teachers, Whitey and Patricia Eckstein, who instilled in their five children the pride that compels David, the youngest, never to settle for less than his best--in every swing, every practice, every game.

He draws inspiration from his oldest brother, Kenny, and his sisters, Christine and Susan. They all required kidney transplants, for a condition for which David and Rick tested negative. Today, the three siblings are healthy.

But whenever yet another skeptic would taunt Eckstein about how the big leagues were no place for such a little guy, he would smile and think of his oldest brother and, especially, his sisters.

He couldn’t play baseball for a living? Doctors told his sisters they could not be mothers, that the transplants would make childbearing virtually impossible. Today, Christine has three kids and Susan has two.

“With everything my brother and sisters went through, those are definitely people I look up to,” he said. “Living life daily was a chore for them.”

There is no facade in this family. Mark Ellis, a minor league infielder for the Oakland A’s, played shortstop for the University of Florida when Eckstein played second base there. When the players worked out together last winter in Sanford, Fla., Ellis moved in with Eckstein and his parents.

“He’s the most genuine person I’ve ever met,” Ellis said. “They’re the greatest family I’ve ever met.”

Good kid, good family, good job--but no girlfriend. Eckstein, 27, insists he would have no patience for a woman interested in him because he plays baseball.

He says, almost apologetically, that he might not be too much fun in a relationship anyway. He does not hit the town after games. He won’t take a chance on cutting back on his daily workout routine, so he arrives at Edison Field by 2 p.m. for a 7 p.m. game.

“This is my job, and I take it very seriously,” he said. “I need to get my sleep. I don’t go out too much.”

All that hard work counted for little two years ago, when two Boston Red Sox hitting coaches decided Eckstein needed to alter his stance and swing. He had hit better than .300 in each of his three minor league seasons, but he shrugged and adapted, at least until the results became so poor he finally spoke up.

“I was at .160 when I said, ‘I can’t do this anymore,’” he said.

That was in June. He was at .246 in triple A in August, when the Red Sox put him on waivers.

The names of hundreds of players appear on the waiver wire each season, and a lucky team can find a reliever or pinch-hitter there. The Angels claimed Al Levine and Ben Weber on waivers. Starting shortstops are not supposed to be found there.

When Eckstein’s name appeared on the waiver wire, Angel General Manager Bill Stoneman nodded in recognition. Gary Sutherland, one of his assistants, had recommended Eckstein after watching him in the Arizona Fall League. Sutherland’s brother Dale, an Angel scout, had watched Eckstein in the Boston organization and recommended him. So had another Angel scout, Jon Neiderer.

Said Stoneman, “Gary just kept saying, ‘Hey, there’s something about this guy.’ He’s not what you call a scout’s player. He’s not a multi-tooled player. He just comes to play baseball.”

The Angels sent him to their triple-A club, where he hit .346 in 15 games. In spring training last year, they made a utility infielder out of him. When second baseman Adam Kennedy suffered a broken hand, Eckstein started the season at second.

The Angels had projected a double-play combination of Kennedy and Gary DiSarcina, attempting a comeback from shoulder surgery. “We were hoping DiSar would come back to be DiSar,” Stoneman said.

The comeback failed, and they opened the season with a double-play combination of Eckstein and Benji Gil. When Kennedy returned, 10 days into the season, the Angels moved Eckstein and his .406 average to shortstop.

“Everyone’s always doubted him,” said Ellis, his college teammate. “No one ever thought he would even get drafted. Now he’s a starting shortstop in the big leagues. He always seems to get the job done.”

That he does, one way or another, in ways that do not usually interest the national media but nonetheless thrill the Angels.

He has started every game this season. He’s not the fastest guy on the team, but he’s got the most stolen bases. He has not hit into a double play. He leads the league in getting hit by pitches. In this strikeout-happy era, he has as many walks as strikeouts and has the best on-base percentage among Angel regulars. He batted twice Sunday with runners on third base, producing a sacrifice fly each time.

The grand slams startled him, and concerned him, because he normally hits ground balls and line drives. He’s not strong enough to hit fly balls out of the park with any consistency, the grand slams notwithstanding. The road to major league success was daunting enough for him without his hitting a bunch of harmless fly balls to the warning track.

He figured that out as a little kid. The grand slams were his first anywhere--majors, minors, college, T-ball, wherever.

He might be the one ballplayer in America who never entertained the grand-slam dream. The fantasy is standard-issue for just about every kid who ever picks up a bat: Coming up with two out and the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth inning, then hitting the game-winning grand slam.

Not that Eckstein never imagined himself in that situation. He did, and he dreamed about delivering the game-winning hit. And what was that hit?

He remembered, as best he could, and laughed.

“Probably,” he said, “just a single up the middle.”