Crossing Fine Line
Big-league ballplayers don’t carry their own suitcases. It’s not a choice, it’s a commandment.
On the Florida Marlins, the fine is $100 if a player catches a teammate in the act.
In all probability, it’s fallout from the last million-dollar pitcher who wound up on the disabled list with a shoulder he strained playing Samson with his Samsonite - and not another example of the overcompensated and overindulged professional athlete. But believe what you want.
Whatever, it was the funniest thing Mike Redmond had heard since the last funniest thing he’d heard.
“I went to Gonzaga Prep with Pat Shine and he was visiting me when we played in Milwaukee,” Redmond recalled. “I was about to jump into the shower and I told Pat, ‘Call the bellhop for me’ and he just sort of stared at me.
“Two 27-year-old guys and we’re calling a bellhop to carry my one little bag.”
The pinch-me aspects of big-league life continue to pile up for Mike Redmond - now a Florida Marlin for 30 days and counting - and for his friends and family.
The disbelief itself is mountainous. Mike Redmond was always a damned fine baseball player at Prep and later at Gonzaga University. But there’s damned fine and then there’s call-the-bellhop-for-me.
The thought of him in a major league uniform seemed, with each passing year, more reach than realism. The local reference point, Tampa Bay shortstop Kevin Stocker, was highly regarded enough to be a second-round pick in the 1991 amateur draft and found himself in the big leagues within three years. Redmond, a steady, dependable catcher, went undrafted in 90-odd rounds a year later - and this spring opened the season in Class AA ball for a third time.
“Two years ago, one of our scouts - I don’t remember his name - told me, ‘Hey, I saw you at Gonzaga your junior year. I didn’t think you could play,”’ Redmond said. “Well, I’m still playing.”
And he’s too polite to wonder why the other fellow is still scouting.
It is part persistence, part payroll burlesque that put Redmond in a Marlins uniform this spring. Officially, he is the backup to catcher Geoff Zaun - though if Zaun’s batting average falls much lower than its current .160, that could change.
Symbolically, he’s a good deal more.
He’s the man who replaced Mike Piazza.
In their fire-sale rush to downsize, the Marlins managed to make the Trade of the Century twice in the same week. First they acquired Piazza from the Dodgers for hometown favorite Charles Johnson, Gary Sheffield, Bobby Bonilla and Jim Eisenreich. Then they swapped the slugging catcher to the Mets for a couple of warm bodies.
Total savings: $17 million - and Mike Redmond’s career.
“Starting the season in Double-A, the big leagues seemed farther away than ever,” Redmond said. “And after missing last season because of shoulder surgery, I was starting to think maybe it’s time for me to move on - to start coaching or doing whatever I’m going to be doing.
“When they got Piazza, I knew they were definitely going to trade him. I thought to myself how nice it would be if they got rid of him now, but I didn’t think that would happen. I was just kind of dreaming.”
When he woke up, he was in Miami.
It was a long, strange trip.
The shoulder surgery Redmond spoke of limited his action in 1997 to just 43 games spread over three teams - from AAA Charlotte to a rehab stint in rookie ball. While the Marlins went to - and won - the World Series, Redmond went to the Arizona Fall League for more rehabilitation, and watched history unfold on TV. In spring training, the Marlins promoted two catchers ahead of him to Charlotte and returned him to Class AA Portland.
But a month into the season, one of those catchers broke a hand and Redmond was moved up to Charlotte. Three weeks later, the Knights were playing Norfolk when manager Fredi Gonzalez pulled Redmond out of a 3-2 game in the seventh inning.
“I was kind of upset,” Redmond said. “I asked him what was going on and he just told me, ‘Sit down and relax.”’
The buzz on the dugout bench soon reached an obvious conclusion: Redmond was going to Miami. The buzz got louder when Rodriguez asked Redmond where he could be reached that evening. When his teammates headed out to dinner, they persuaded Redmond to stay by the phone so he wouldn’t miss the big call.
“I sat there the whole night,” Redmond said. “No call.”
By the next afternoon, he was the target of some merciless ragging - Gonzalez even joining in. At 2:30, while lifting weights, Gonzalez finally broke the news - and then told Redmond he had a 3:30 flight out of town because he was due to suit up against Pittsburgh at 7 that evening.
“I had no clothes, no credit card,” Redmond said, “and I didn’t care.
“It was such a relief - all the frustrations, all the tough seasons kind of melted away. Now I could say I’d played in the big leagues and so many guys don’t get that opportunity.”
Just one problem. Redmond didn’t play that night, nor the next night, nor the next.
He didn’t play when the Mets moved in for two games, and he didn’t play in the first two games of Florida’s trip to Milwaukee.
“I went nine days without playing,” he said. “I started to worry, ‘What if I never get in? What if my name never goes in the books?”’
Marlins manager Jim Leyland had him warming up to pinch hit in the ninth inning on May 30 if any of the Marlins reached base. None did.
“Then he told me: ‘Red, you’re starting tomorrow,”’ Redmond recalled.
By this time, Shine had rolled into town for moral support. From the stands at County Stadium, he watched Redmond come to the plate in the second inning on a Sunday afternoon and slap a single.
“I looked up in the stands where he was sitting,” Redmond said, “and he’d just be shaking his head. When I came up the next time and got another hit, he was still shaking his head. The next time up, I hit a home run and I look up and he’s got his hands up around his eyes, telling me to stay focused.
“Like I wanted to go up there and give him a hug or something.”
That’s right. In Redmond’s first major league game, he went 3 for 3 off Milwaukee’s Scott Karl and smoked a 3-2 fastball over the fence in left-center.
In fact, in his six starts, Redmond has faced Karl, Cubs phenom Kerry Wood, Toronto’s Woody Williams, Hideo Nomo and Atlanta’s Danny Neagle and Tom Glavine. Throw out Nomo’s sub-par stats and their collective record is 36-15 with a 3.32 earned run average.
And Redmond is hitting .421, with a pair of three-hit games.
“Half of the secret up here is just getting over the fact that you’re standing in against Tom Glavine and Roger Clemens and that that’s Mark Grace and Sammy Sosa coming up to hit,” Redmond said. “Getting over the awe is a big battle.”
But not nearly the battle Redmond has already fought. When he didn’t get drafted at GU, he hustled himself a job in Kansas’ Jayhawk League over the summer to get himself noticed. When he found himself stuck behind the gifted Johnson his first year as a pro, he camped next to manager Carlos Tosca on the bench and went to school on the game.
“I think I got 100 at-bats in five months,” Redmond said. “I must have caught a million bullpens.
“But the funny thing is, I got to be a better catcher. When I came out of Gonzaga, I don’t think I had the best work ethic. I was a little lazy and maybe baseball wasn’t at the top of my list. When I got to pro ball, I finally realized how hard this game was and how good everybody was and that if I was going to stay, I had to dedicate myself. It felt like starting over.”
Fully aware of the realities that brought him to the big leagues, Redmond nonetheless is trying to forge an identity out of the franchise’s ashes. The deconstruction of the Marlins now complete, he doesn’t know if he’ll have a role in the reconstruction.
So each opportunity to play is approached as if it’s his last.
“I’m just trying to trust my ability,” Redmond said. “I tell myself that I’m a good player and that I deserve this. I belong up here.”
And if he doesn’t quite believe it, a call to the bellhop should remind him.
THE MIKE REDMOND FILE Attended Gonzaga Prep and Gonzaga University. Signed as a non-drafted free agent by Florida on Aug. 18, 1992. Year Team G AB R H HR RBI Ave. 1993 Kane County (A) 43 100 10 20 0 10 .200 1994 Kane County (A) 92 306 39 83 1 24 .271 Brevard County (A) 12 42 4 11 0 2 .262 1995 Portland (AA) 105 333 37 85 3 39 .255 1996 Portland (AA) 120 394 43 113 4 44 .287 1997 Charlotte (AAA) 22 61 8 13 1 2 .213 Melbourne (Rook) 16 55 7 19 0 5 .345 Brevard County (A) 5 17 2 0 0 0 .000 1998 Portland (AA) 8 28 7 9 1 7 .321 Charlotte (AAA) 18 58 4 14 2 7 .241 Florida (NL) 6 19 3 8 1 1 .421