One Big Step At A Time

Nine a.m., the Seattle Mariners clubhouse at the Peoria Sports Complex.

Workout isn’t until 10, but the Mariners - all but a few of the 34 remaining on the spring training roster - are here, in various states of half-dress and no particular hurry. Pitchers Bob Wolcott and Greg McCarthy hunch over a chessboard balanced precariously on a stool. Bob Wells arranges a cardboard box in front of his locker, drapes a white towel over it and deals himself in with three fellow relief pitchers.

Edgar Martinez unboxes a new pair of Reebok hightop spikes that catch the eye of Ken Griffey Jr.

“We’re talking the 10-10-10 club,” crows Griffey, fondling the leather and needling Martinez on his noted lack of speed. “Ten doubles, 10 bombs and 10 bags.”

They’ll tell you this is where ballclubs are built, where scatological humor, macho swagger and shared confidences are stirred into a silly but essential mortar of camaraderie.

It is into this mix that Alex Rodriguez arrives at 10 minutes after 9, wearing a sportcoat over an Izod shirt - his public appearance uniform - straight from a taping down the hall with, Griffey informs us, “Roy (earthy vulgarism).”

Roy Firestone to the rest of us.

If it’s Friday, it must be Roy. If it’s not Roy, it’s Sports Illustrated.

If not SI, Leno.

If not Leno, Sport magazine.

If not Sport, well, it’s always something these days for Alex Rodriguez. An interview, an appearance, a photo shoot. Some obligation. Some duty of celebrity.

This makes him the ballclub bull’s eye in a profession where celebrity is something to be tolerated but never courted. And his locker along the west wall of the clubhouse puts him in a crossfire of the Mariners’ best dart throwers: Junior, Jay Buhner, Joey Cora, Norm Charlton. Only Martinez survives with much dignity in this war zone.

“Hold it! Hold it!” Griffey commands when Rodriguez strolls in, opening the morning’s copy of USA Today, in which it is noted that White Sox shortstop Ozzie Guillen has played with 18 different second basemen in his career.

“Ozzie says, quote: ‘Joey Cora is the best I ever played with.’ Unquote,” Junior reads.

Staring at Cora but standing inches from Rodriguez’s face, Junior delivers the hammer.

“Now, Joey - who’s the best shortstop you played with? Hmm?”

Two stools down from Cora sits the shortstop who at the age of 21 led the American League in batting average and four other categories, set five all-time batting records for shortstops, and lost a bitterly disputed photo finish for the MVP award but was named baseball’s player of the year by the Associated Press and The Sporting News. Eleven men have made it to the big leagues by the age of 20 and gone on to win batting titles. Nine are in the Hall of Fame; a tenth, George Brett, will be.

The 11th is Alex Rodriguez, a tired smile and a shake of the head being all he can muster against Junior’s latest assault.

“Ozzie,” Cora says with a twinkle. Then, glancing at Rodriguez, he adds with mock begrudgement: “But he has a chance to be.”

This is all Alex Rodriguez is asking for, really. A chance.

A chance to be appraised on a body of work and not on his first - and still wet - masterpiece.

“I’m 21 years old,” he said. “I had a great year. But I’m going to judge myself after 10 or 15 years, not after two years.”

It doesn’t work that way anymore. Athletic idols must be fabricated quickly, possibly so there won’t be any residual guilt when they’re so blithely discarded - usually about the time their shoe commercials become passe.

In Rodriguez’s case, however, he was a co-conspirator in the crime of overnight sensation. His first full season in the major leagues was too sensational, his face too handsome, his values too good to be true, his numbers too extraordinary.

To review: a .358 batting average, 215 hits, 141 runs, 54 doubles, 36 home runs, 123 RBIs. Numbers that blow the doors off the metaphor “setting the bar high.”

“Well, but so did Dan Marino and so did Cal Ripken and so did a bunch of others,” Rodriguez said.

“As long as you’re consistent, I don’t think people are going to worry about it. Marino never threw 48 touchdowns again, or 5,000 yards, but I think you’ll agree with me that he’s still very well respected. The key is not where you set the standard. It’s going out and being professional on a daily basis and respecting the game.

“If I go out and respect the game and hit .290 and people want to trash me for that, go ahead and trash me.”

Rodriguez’s swing doctor is a stubby former infielder named Lee Elia, the M’s hitting coach, whose career average topped out at .203 in less than 100 major league games. But he must know something, for Rodriguez has a hitting session with him every day of the regular season.

Elia, for one, advises skeptics to save their breath.

“If you remember, he was better the second half of the season than the first, after clubs had a chance to get a read on him,” Elia said.

True enough. Rodriguez was hitting .336 at the All-Star break.

“I knew they were going to make adjustments,” Rodriguez said. “You have to stay one step ahead. Look, they’re not going to find something they didn’t already try last year. You just have to prepare and be ready for it.

“You know, in spring training I heard people say, ‘Well, I hope he isn’t in Tacoma by April.’ By the All-Star game, I was hitting .340 and I heard them say, ‘He’ll end up at .280 or .290.’ Now I hear I’m going to drop again this year. I just use that as motivation.

“I never felt - never feel - that last year’s task was over.”

So, Rodriguez is asked, he’ll be satisfied even if he doesn’t hit .350.

“Three fifty!” he scoffed. “I wish I had a Baseball Encyclopedia to look up who hits .350 for how many years. If we’re sitting right here in 15 years and you say, ‘Alex, you were only able to hit .350 once - what’s wrong with your career?’ then I’ll be able to look at you and say .350 once was enough.

“There are Hall of Famers who have never done it. What I’m saying is that last year was a magical season. It was a surprise to me, to my family and to you guys - and that was it. Now we’ve got to focus on winning a championship.

“That’s the encore. Expectations for the team are a lot higher than they are for me.”

The magical season came with two disappointments: the M’s finished 4-1/2 games behind Texas in the AL West, and when they tallied up the MVP votes, Rodriguez was three points behind Texas slugger Juan Gonzalez.

Two of those votes were cast by Seattle writers - for Griffey, at least in part based on Rodriguez’s own midseason assessment that Junior was the Mariners’ most valuable player. His respect and deference to veterans had, in this case, cost him.

“It hurt me, it hurt my family,” Rodriguez admitted, “but it’s something that’s behind me now.”

Maturity like Rodriguez’s is almost unfathomable in a young athlete. Across the locker room, Randy Johnson is carrying on a freeze-out of a reporter who wrote an unflattering column last year. Rodriguez chats amiably with the men who cost him the MVP. He has locked in a contract with the M’s through the year 2000, even though their early dealings with his agent were acrimonious.

What Rodriguez has not put behind him and cleaves to every day is the routine that brought him to this place. His sessions with Elia. His subtle mimicry of Martinez’ batting style (“When you’re around the best, why not learn from them?” Rodriguez said). The endless tee work and video work.

“I don’t want to just survive on natural ability,” he said. “I want to make an impact, and that takes work.”

Those values again. The ones that make it his duty to phone his mother four, five times a week. The ones that keep him polite - unfailingly so - with the press and public.

And the peons.

It was just last Wednesday that Rodriguez was taking extra batting practice - after the M’s exhibition game with San Diego - when a few of the minor-league players in camp came by the cage to watch. Rodriguez asked them to dinner, telling them to meet him outside the clubhouse.

An hour later, Rodriguez emerged to find 27 players waiting - none of them with cars.

So he recruited backup catcher John Marzano to help shuttle the mob to a Phoenix restaurant - where they snarfed down some 600 buffalo wings and at least one entree apiece - and back to their hotel.

Rodriguez took care of the tab - about $1,100 worth.

You’re sure those things will change - the kindnesses, the courtesy, the attention to detail and duty. Money and fame change the landscape the same way a river does, in a fraction of the time.

And Alex Rodriguez is just as certain that you’re wrong.

“If you forget them,” he said, “you forget who you are.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color Photos

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review