Ex-Indians Making Marks Reichert Fights Battles On And Off Baseball Field
Here you are, a member of the Olympic team, an All-American, a first-round pick in the major league baseball draft.
You sign a contract, bank a fat bonus, pitch a few games and get noticed by the parent Kansas City Royals, who name you their minor league pitcher of the year.
Life looks good. On the upswing, you might say. So, Dan Reichert found out, was his blood sugar.
Barely a year out of the University of the Pacific, where he once struck out 22 Washington State Cougars, Reichert finds himself at Double-A Wichita, adjusting to the regimen of a Type A diabetic and itching to pitch again.
Reichert, who made his professional debut with the Spokane Indians last summer, has been on the disabled list for a month.
“It’s just going to be a part of life,” Reichert said of the dietary restrictions and medication that go with diabetes. “There are a lot of professional athletes who have it. I’ll adjust.”
The tall, thin right-hander (6-foot-3, 165 pounds) from Turlock, Calif., has come to grips with some ugly numbers. His record is 1-4 with a 9.75 earned-run average. His blood sugar, unchecked when his pancreas essentially quit producing insulin, zoomed into the 300s (milligrams per decaliter). His weight fell to 141.
“In spring training, we had blood work done and my blood sugar was a little high, but nothing to worry about,” Reichert said. “Then, about two months ago, I just keep losing weight, losing weight, losing weight.
“I knew I had what it takes to throw at this level, but it just kept getting progressively worse. That was real frustrating.”
In the last start before he went on the disabled list, he lasted only four innings and his fastball topped out at 84 mph.
Finally, his girlfriend came to town, took one look at his scrawny frame and sent him to a doctor. Now, he takes four insulin shots a day.
“I threw live batting practice Monday and hit 92 and 93 (mph) a couple times,” he said from the team hotel in Midland, Texas. “I’ve pretty much got my strength back and I weighed in this morning at 167. I could pitch tomorrow, if I needed to, but they’re the boss.”
The Wranglers returned from their road trip to begin a six-game series against El Paso on Friday.
Clear the tracks
There’s little doubt that Jeremy Giambi, who played for Spokane just two seasons ago, has joined Las Vegas pitcher Matt Clement on the list of former Indians who may be considered can’t-miss prospects.
Giambi batted a modest .273 in the Northwest League, but the Kansas City outfield prospect is going great guns in the Triple-A Pacific Coast League. The younger brother of Oakland’s Jason Giambi ranks third in batting with a .364 mark, two spots ahead of Oklahoma’s Warren Newson, another former Indian. Giambi, who led the NWL in walks and on-base percentage, tops the PCL in on-base percentage with a lusty .451. Newson is second.
Clement, who’d be in the big leagues if the parent San Diego Padres weren’t already leading the N.L. West, waits in the wings at Las Vegas. San Diego’s 1997 minor league pitcher of the year, he stands seventh in the hit-happy PCL with a 3.26 earned run average and 93 strikeouts in 94 innings.
A high standard
The hubbub over Juan Gonzalez’s race to reach 100 RBIs before the Fourth of July takes older Spokane fans back to 1940, when legendary slugger Smead Jolley led the Indians to the Western International League pennant.
Jolley, in the next-to-last year of an astonishing career, drove in his 100th run in Spokane’s 68th game on July 1. He wound up winning the batting championship with a .373 mark and set the WIL record with 181 RBIs.
Gonzalez and the Texas Rangers reach the 81-game mark today.
Presidential privilege
When Dewey Soriano, who had been president of the ill-fated Seattle Pilots and a longtime Northwest baseball figure died in April, many Spokane fans remembered his role in one of the city’s most unusual sports incidents.
On July 6, 1963, in a Pacific Coast League game with Hawaii, Spokane’s Bob Radovich, a hard-throwing right-hander, no-hit the Islanders through eight innings, then walked Ron Samford to open the ninth. Stan Palys, who had played for the Indians himself in the early ‘50s, pinch ran.
After Radovich retired the next two batters, Brown Taylor bounced a grounder wide of first base. Palys danced around in the basepath until the ball hit him, giving Taylor an automatic hit under the scoring rules, and made him the third out.
Soriano, in the midst of his long tenure as PCL president, happened to be in the stands. He trudged up the catwalk to the Indians Stadium press box and ruled that Palys had committed an unsportsmanlike act and should be called out for interference. That nullified the basehit and preserved Radovich’s astonishing 18-0 no-hitter.
Soriano had well-developed sympathies for pitchers. The portly right-hander, who had made a few appearances for Spokane in 1940, spent most of his pro career with the Seattle Rainiers. In 1949, he was the pitching ace, president and general manager of Yakima’s WIL club.
Rocky, not so rocky
Outfielder Dermal “Dee” Brown, who won Northwest League MVP honors for Spokane last summer, continues to struggle for the Wilmington Blue Rocks of the Class A Carolina League.
Brown suffered through an 0-for24 skid that dropped his average to .154 at mid-May. Currently, the 1996 first-round draft choice is batting .204 with four home runs and 21 RBIs. He has struck out 60 times in 201 at-bats.
Conversely, ex-Indians pitchers Scott Mullen and Aaron Lineweaver, Brown’s Wilmington teammates, are 1-2 in earned run average. Mullen is 8-4 with a 2.21 ERA; Lineweaver stands at 6-2, 2.48.
Prep parade
Shadle Park grad Rob Ryan may soon be wearing the uniform of the parent Arizona Diamondbacks. Playing for Tucson, the left-handed-hitting outfielder ranks fifth in PCL batting with a .335 mark and nine home runs.
Among other area high school grads, pitcher John Thompson (Shadle Park) has a 3-3 record as a long reliever at Double-A Orlando, and former Ferris star Matt Sachse is hitting .248 as a platoon outfielder at Class A Lancaster of the California League. Both belong to the Mariners.
Gonzaga University product Darin Blood (Post Falls, Central Valley) is only 2-2 in 12 starts for the Giants at Fresno of the PCL, and former Coeur d’Alene slugger John Schroeder, who missed last year with injuries, is batting .219 with seven homers for the Minnesota Twins at Class A Fort Myers.
The Kansas City Royals have shifted second-year pitcher Jeremy Affeldt, a Northwest Christian grad, from Lansing of the Midwest League to the Gulf Coast League, where he pitched well in his recent debut.
Honors for ex-Vandal
Bill Stoneman, vice president of baseball operations for the Montreal Expos, was one of six distinguished alumni inducted into the University of Idaho Hall of Fame during recent commencement ceremonies.
The most successful pro baseball player in school history, Stoneman pitched no-hitters for the Expos in 1969 and 1972 and still holds several franchise records. He has been a club executive since late 1983.
Former Indian a headliner
Longtime former Giants, Angels and Twins manager Bill Rigney, who began his professional playing career with Spokane in 1938, was the featured speaker at Saturday night’s awards banquet during the Society for American Baseball Research convention in Burlingame, Calif.
Rigney, now a consultant to the Oakland A’s, played for the Giants after World War II. The Sporting News named him major league manager of the year in 1962.
This sidebar appeared with the story: NOTES Former Washington State University star Mike Kinkade continues to hack his way toward the big leagues with the Milwaukee Brewers. Kinkade, with a .345 average for his first three pro seasons, is batting .297 with Louisville of the International League… . When Kansas City manager Tony Muser served his recent suspension for the beanball war with the Angels, another ex-Spokane Indian, bullpen coach Jamie Quirk, took the reins… . Veteran minor league slugger Tate Seefried, who spent a year at Central Valley High, has joined Double-A Birmingham in the White Sox organization. Seefried, who hit 32 homers last season, started the year at Ottawa… . Scott Sanders, whose career took an abrupt turn for the worse last year, is working out of the bullpen for Las Vegas, where he has fanned 35 in 28 innings… . Former Spokane standouts Dwight Aden, Pete Jonas and Mike Budnick, as well as veteran scouts Red Adams and Al Ronning, a former Spokane Indians player-coach, were among almost three dozen former players who attended the second Western International League reunion in May.