He doesn’t sweat it

ARLINGTON, Tex. — Clint Nageotte will make his third major league start for the Seattle Mariners tonight, which means the busiest man in the ballpark will be equipment manager Ted Walsh.

Nageotte made 27 starts for Class AA San Antonio last year — a good many of them in the heat of a Texas summer. That forced the Missions to scramble to keep up with him.

“I sweat,” the 23-year-old rookie said. “I always have.”

As a high school basketball player, Nageotte said he perspired so heavily than any time he went to the free throw line, someone had to scramble onto the court immediately afterward to towel off the floor where he’d stood.

“There’d be puddles where I’d been,” he said.

It had nothing to do with stress or tension — checked out by a doctor in school, Nageotte was told he had large pores.

He brought those pores with him to baseball.

“In San Antonio, I’d go through three uniforms a game and sometimes I’d have a different number on my jersey at the end of the game than I had when it started,” Nageotte said. “Guys had trouble getting one jersey dry between innings.

“I went through three hats a game, maybe a shirt an inning.”

It is sure to be the angle for most stories on Nageotte over the weeks and months to come — it may become a signature feature in his major league career.

Nageotte doesn’t sweat the perspiration factor. Five years ago, he was in high school. Today, he’s in the big leagues.

What happened along the way is more remarkable than whether he sweats so much on a mound he occasionally cramps up because of loss of fluids.

“I’d heard good things about him when we drafted him, and I went to his first Instructional League in ‘99,” pitching coach Bryan Price said. “He was there a couple of days and then left — he just went home.

“I thought at the time, he might not have a huge commitment to the game.”

Nageotte was 18 that September, three months out of high school.

“I didn’t know anyone in Arizona. It seemed like all the young Latin players didn’t speak English, and the other guys were college picks who talked about how Instructional League was no fun,” Nageotte said. “I started having second thoughts.

“I’d never been away from home on my own. And there were some family issues at home, too.”

Emotionally torn, Nagaeotte went home. That was the extent of his long-term plan — go home, see if he could help ease the crisis there, figure life out along the way.

“I spent a long off-season doing nothing. I got real bored. I’d made an irrational decision, and I knew it,” he said. “I loved the game and I’d been given the chance to play it and had walked away from the opportunity.

“I dedicated myself to the game. I turned a page in my life and moved on. It was never baseball’s fault. I wasn’t ready.”

Nageotte went about getting ready.

Manager Lou Piniella was never a huge fan of minor league statistics, but the one category that he used to judge pitching was the simplest — win-loss records.

Piniella believed if a young pitcher won in the minors, he’d expect to win in the majors. And if he hadn’t won, why would that change?

Nageotte won — at every level the Mariners put him. In four minor league seasons, he went 35-22. In camp this spring, Price was surprised by the pitcher he saw.

“He’s done a lot of self-prioritizing, and become a very good pitcher. He knows what he wants to do and how he plans on getting there,” Price said. “He’s not the guy he was in ‘99. This kid loves to work. He’s changed my opinion completely.”

Called up from Tacoma, Nageotte made a relief appearance early this month and then slid into the starting rotation spot vacated by Gil Meche. In his first three appearances — two starts — Nageotte is 1-2 with a 3.60 earned run average.

He’s learning fast.

“My first game against the Astros? I’d watched Jeff Bagwell my whole life, seen him hit home runs everywhere he went,” Nageotte said, laughing at himself. “I faced him the first time, I left a pitch over the middle of the plate and he hit it as hard as a ball can be hit — for an out.

“I thought, ‘This is different than watching on television.’ “

Off the field, Nageotte is making another transition. As the youngest rookie on the team, he has no peers in the Mariners clubhouse.

J.J. Putz is the next youngest Mariner — and until Nageotte was called up this month, the two had never played together.

“These guys couldn’t be more supportive,” Nageotte said. And then he laughs again.

Nageotte is the official carrier of reliever Eddie Guardado’s silver-cased poker chips — taking them from the clubhouse to the plane, from the plane to the hotel, the hotel to the ballpark.

Anywhere Guardado wants them, Nageotte carries them.

“I’ll carry poker chips the rest of my life if it means I’m in the big leagues,” Nageotte said. “You get a taste of this life, you don’t want it taken away.”

And manager Bob Melvin, for one, isn’t about to hold a little thing like perspiration against the young right-hander.

“I’m a sweater, too,” Melvin said.