A Would-Be All-Star Chases the Swing Vote

He is preparing to work, preparing to put one more day and one more game between those frustrating years when he wondered if he would ever get a chance and his emergence as an All-Star caliber player (even if the electorate hasn’t realized that yet).

He is sitting at his locker Thursday night, putting on clean socks, clean uniform, no slave to sudden superstition, to the hitting streak that is a tribute to perseverance, to making the most of a chance when it finally comes.

He will be behind the plate against the San Francisco Giants, catching Odalis Perez and putting his 25-game streak on the line, but he will be going about it as he always does because he hasn’t reached a point (well, we have to accept his word on this) that he is wearing yesterday’s underwear in a weird belief it will help perpetuate the streak.

“I’m not into that stuff,” Paul Lo Duca is saying. “I have only one superstition. If I have a bad day, on the field or off, I’ll do everything the same way the next day. I’ve always believed two negatives make a positive.”

Behavioral experts might be confounded by that thinking, but who can question his approach?

In June of his third season, immune to the inconsistency that has plagued the rest of the Dodger lineup (“He’s become our most complete hitter,” Manager Jim Tracy said), Lo Duca would face the Giants in the series finale of this mini-showdown with a .336 average that ranked first among major league catchers and fourth in the National League.

In addition, his .405 average with runners in scoring position ranked second in the NL, he was again among the toughest to strike out, and he was hitting .422 during a streak that had increased his respect for a man named Joe DiMaggio, who set the record, of course, by hitting in 56 consecutive games 62 years ago.

“The amazing thing,” Lo Duca was saying at his locker, “is that this is best I’ve swung as a professional, and I’m not even halfway to DiMaggio. It’s incredible.

“I think there are three records that will never be broken. His, Cy Young’s [511 wins] and [Cal] Ripken’s [for consecutive games played].”

With no illusions about the course he was on, Lo Duca’s streak would end, to the disappointment of a Dodger Stadium crowd of 51,047.

The Giants would escape Los Angeles with one win and a one-game lead in the NL West as Jason Schmidt gave up only three hits in a 2-0 victory.

Lo Duca, now one for 16 against Schmidt, would draw a walk in his first at-bat and then go hitless in three others, the streak tying the second longest in L.A. Dodger history, falling nine games shy of Benito Santiago’s record for a catcher and serving to underscore how far Lo Duca has come from those minor league summers when he kept putting up .300 averages and kept hearing how many in the organization thought Angel Pena was the catcher of the future.

Pena, of course, is long gone, and Lo Duca looked back and said maybe all of that was good for him in the long run, good in the context of experience, and teaching him to deal with the discouragement that at times had him thinking of quitting and returning to Arizona State, where he once hit in 37 straight games, and/or asking to be traded.

“Everybody has a timetable and gets discouraged when they don’t meet it,” Lo Duca said. “There were probably 50 to 100 guys who I thought I was better than but who got to the big leagues ahead of me, but there were probably 50 to 100 guys who were better than me and never made it.

“You have to be in the right place at the right time and have somebody in the organization who believes in you, who opens the door. I got here a little later than I had hoped, but I’m still young, still learning to call a game, still developing as a hitter, and hopefully I can play until I’m 40.”

At 31, Lo Duca is finding his niche. After batting .320 with 25 home runs and 90 runs batted in during his first full season in 2001, Lo Duca collected 163 hits to rank first among major league catchers last year, but his average dropped to .281 and he hit only 10 homers while driving in 64 runs, his performance affected by several factors.

One was a lingering groin pull. Another was his involvement as his team’s union representative amid the labor negotiations, a distraction on which Lo Duca reflected and said, “I made a lot of stupid statements and I still have regret for that.” A third was that “I probably became a little too pull happy trying to hit 25 homers again. I’m not saying I won’t ever hit 25, but I think it was an aberration to do it in my first year and not really the kind of hitter I am.”

Now he is using the whole field, being patient and selective as the No. 2 hitter, romancing .340 while handling a pitching staff that ranks first in the big leagues in earned-run average.

“Talk about an All-Star,” General Manager Dan Evans said.

Talk about oversight. Lo Duca doesn’t rank among the top five catchers in All-Star voting and will have to hope his peers vote him in or Manager Dusty Baker picks him.

“Who wouldn’t like to be an All-Star?” said Lo Duca, upset last year when Damian Miller and Santiago were selected as backups to Mike Piazza. “I thought I had a shot each of the last two years, but I’ve always been under the radar and it doesn’t bother me anymore. If it happens, it happens.”

The streak happened, and now it’s over. Lo Duca said he didn’t feel that he put too much pressure on himself in quest of extending it but may have swung at bad pitches against Schmidt as the crowd moaned with each failure.

“I’m more disappointed that we lost the game,” he said of two negatives that didn’t add up to a positive.