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Delvin James says failing to get called up last season taught him to keep working.
By KEVIN KELLY, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 25, 2002
ST. PETERSBURG -- He read the newspaper articles and listened to the experts.
After six seasons in the minors, Delvin James was going to the majors.
All that remained before his promotion to the Rays in September was Triple-A Durham's final game of the season, a Sunday afternoon game in Fort Mill, S.C.
Players gathered to see who would be called up to the majors. "We were waiting until it was over to see who was going to do what, who was going to go where," James said. "Then everybody was like, 'See ya. Have a nice offseason.' "
"Everybody looked at each other like, 'Nobody?' "
Nobody.
He waited in the clubhouse, waited long enough to see attendants packing up equipment.
Whether it was a matter of playing time, roster manipulation or financial considerations, the Rays didn't recall James. The decision didn't seem performance-based.
"I felt like it was going to happen," said James, who saw nearly half the 29 pitchers Durham used last season promoted to the Rays. "But if you think it's going to happen and it doesn't ... that was probably the most disappointed I've felt at one time. It hit me all at once."
He paused. He prayed.
Then got on with life.
"There's been many times I thought it wasn't going to pan out," the 24-year-old said. "I'm giving it all I got, and while I'll never walk on the field and not give 100 percent, there have been times where certain things happened that made me feel like I was fighting a losing battle.
"I always went home, said a prayer and the next day I had the strength to come back and just keep fighting, keep trying to scratch and claw and anything else I could do."
A standout linebacker at Nacogdoches High School in Texas -- good enough to get offered a scholarship to Oklahoma State -- James didn't start playing baseball until his junior year.
Rays scouts discovered a raw talent who could throw a baseball 93 mph. Tampa Bay drafted James in the 14th round of the 1996 amateur draft and gave him a $50,000 signing bonus.
"I came in pretty much way behind everybody," said James, who's listed at 6-4, 222 pounds. "I learned everything I learned about baseball pretty much here in pro baseball. It's been a long road."
Jackie Brown, the Rays minor-league pitching coordinator in 1996, was among the first to work with James.
"What showed up was a linebacker," Brown said. "He attacked. He grunted. He did everything a linebacker does to make a tackle, to fight through.
"And that's kind of what he looked like on the mound. He was going to fight through everything to make a pitch."
It wasn't until a bullpen session in James' second season that Brown glimpsed the player that since has emerged.
"All of the sudden I say something to him and ... pop!" Brown said, smacking his hands together. "The ball went from thud to pop!
"His eyes got real big and I said, 'Can you repeat that?' He repeated it approximately seven or eight times and then, boom, he lost it and went back to thud."
Four years later Brown is back in the organization as major-league pitching coach and is astounded at the progress: James has added a changeup, curve and slider to complement his two-seam fastballs.
"There's guys that are coachable that don't have his desire to learn," Brown said. "He wants to learn. He's hungry for it. He also is intelligent enough to know that he doesn't know pitching. That's why he's hungry for it and asks a lot of questions."
James has thrown 6751/3 innings, struck out 412 batters, walked 186 and has a 39-43 record with a 4.17 ERA in his six minor-league seasons.
Last season arguably was his best.
He went 2-0 with a 1.65 ERA in seven games with Double-A Orlando, earning a promotion to Durham where he finished the season 3-7 with a 4.80 ERA in 31 appearances.
"He's still not as good as he's going to get," said Chuck Hernandez, minor-league pitching coordinator. "When you have a player like that, and when he's still young, that's what gets you excited.
"Every year that Delvin James has been a Tampa Bay Devil Ray, he's improved. Sometimes it takes a little bit longer to get people to believe, but what I really admired and liked about him is his work ethic and toughness. ... He's very close."
Already this spring, James has impressed at least one veteran.
When pitchers threw batting practice to Rays hitters last week, Greg Vaughn pulled James aside to both laud and advise after his 10-minute session.
"He's got big-time stuff," Vaughn said. "The guy upstairs must have said, 'You're going to have a good fastball.' "
Good enough, he hopes, to make it to that elusive final destination this season. Only then can he be totally sure that he made the right decision by choosing the diamond ahead of the gridiron.
"I wouldn't change anything," James said. "After what I've gone through and where I've come, I think I made the right decision."