Giambi’s Yankee Career at a Crossroads

Out among the Waffle Houses and the firing range with fake bullet holes in the sign, Legends Field, spring home of the New York Yankees, was nearly one-third full by mid-morning Tuesday.

The people had come on the first day of full-squad workouts, and they applauded when the men in pinstriped pants stepped into the sunlight, four months after ... well, you know.

As the Boston Red Sox, two hours south by way of Interstate 75, gathered to roast Alex Rodriguez in absentia, the Yankees started over, with all of the usual subplots, win or lose.

And while the crowds fawned over such familiar attractions as Derek Jeter and Bernie Williams, and gaped at Randy Johnson as a Yankee, and delighted in Tino Martinez’s having come back, it was Jason Giambi who drew the standing ovations and encouragement.

“Give ‘em hell, Jason!” a tattooed man yelled from the first row.

From right field, Giambi turned, a grateful smile under his navy-blue cap, and waved.

It has been 19 months since Giambi was quite right, from the knee injury to the respiratory infection to the intestinal parasite to the strained groin to the pituitary gland tumor, and few dare speculate on how much of it was self-inflicted.

He used steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs for several years, according to his reported testimony in the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative scandal, and Giambi has not denied that.

Presumably, he no longer takes such things. Three years ago, the Yankees signed Giambi for roughly $120 million, money spent on a player they expected to hit in the middle of their lineup, to swat home runs and drive in runs well into October every season.

Instead, a trimmer and supposedly clean Giambi begins his fourth year as a Yankee with no set position, no set place in the batting order, and no sense of the player he has become.

The sweat of his first full day among his teammates had not yet dried when Giambi stopped before his locker for more questions, the clubhouse clearing behind him.

“When you’re a player at this level, you expect to be great every year,” he said. “I’m always going to have that expectation of having a big year.”

Asked whether his body, improved by better health, the implication being that it also has been weakened by his abstention from steroids, was capable of the production of past seasons, he said, “I hope so. I worked hard to try to get myself in that spot. If not, it won’t be from lack of effort. There’ll be a lot of hard work. I’ll just go from there.”

In a couple of dozen swings during batting practice, still six weeks from opening night, Giambi hit a few home runs. Mostly, however, he hit ground balls to the right side. The Yankees have asked Don Mattingly to help Giambi think less about Yankee Stadium’s short right-field fence and more about its spacious left center-field gap.

There was a time when he hit 20-some home runs and 40-some doubles, rather than the other way around, back before Yankee Stadium came into his life, and who knows what else.

“He probably has to go back to what made him that player to begin with,” Manager Joe Torre said. “It’s a rebuilding, I think, just of the confidence and ego and inner conceit you need to be successful.”

After that, Torre said, “He has to accept, after working hard, to get out of yourself what there is. All things being considered, I think he’s still going to be a good player.”

Hearing back, “A good player?” Torre said, “I’m saying ‘good.’ There’s probably more there than that.”

Thing is, the Yankees don’t know, and Giambi probably doesn’t, either.

“I know one thing, we’ve been talking to him for two years about being the hitter he was in Oakland, which was using the whole field,” General Manager Brian Cashman said. “He was a different hitter.”

According to Cashman, Giambi, who bats left-handed, believes he became more of a pull hitter when he injured his knee midway through the 2003 season.

According to hitting charts from 2004, Giambi remained a spray hitter against right-handed pitchers but pulled left-handers most of the time.

“Whatever the reasons are,” Cashman said, “I think he tried to take advantage of the right-field porch.”

Billy Beane, as general manager in Oakland, watched Giambi develop as a hitter, then become most valuable player of the American League, then leave his small market for New York.

“Regardless of his strength level, the reason he’s a good hitter is because he hits to all fields,” Beane said.

“Jason’s strength as a hitter has always been his superior command of the strike zone. I think that puts him in a far different category as a hitter. Health provided, he’ll always be a good hitter.”

In a camp with its share of drama, from Williams’ walk year to Johnson’s grand entrance to Rodriguez’s qualifications as a Yankee to last October’s great fall, it is Giambi who holds the intrigue, Giambi who commands the attention.

“Because we have a huge investment in the guy and we’re not sure where this is going to go,” Cashman said.

“Absent of the steroid controversy, he hasn’t been on the field [consistently] in a year and a half.

“But,” he added, “he was always a hell of a hitter.”