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Rays/MLB

Baldelli's star status stays barely out of reach

By GARY SHELTON
Published May 14, 2006

ST. PETERSBURG - There was something familiar about the rightfielder. You might swear you had seen his face before.

He stepped through the red dust toward the plate, and it was as if he had been there before. His legs were long, the way you remembered, and his hands were high, just the way they used to be.

Gee, you wanted to say.

Didn't you used to be Rocco Baldelli?

In a game without meaning, on a field without noise, on legs without speed, the latest in a series of comebacks began Friday for Baldelli, the player time forgot. It was the tiniest of moments, and the most ordinary of results. He grounded out twice. He popped up once. He caught a fly ball. There was no reason to applaud and no one to do it.

Still, it was baseball, and Baldelli played. Not only that, but he managed not to spontaneously combust.

Given the last couple of seasons, it's a start.

Baldelli has been gone for an eternity, it seems, so long that you no longer glance toward centerfield and expect to see him there. Today, the Rays play their 200th consecutive game without him, an enormous gap for a player who has had only 292 games in the majors.

When will he be back? Throw a dart at a calendar. It's as good as guessing.

"It seems like so long since I played," Baldelli said. "For a while, not playing is a weird feeling. Then, when you start playing again, being out there feels more weird than not being out there. You feel almost out of place. You start second-guessing yourself. Is this where I'm supposed to be standing? Because you haven't been out there for so long."

By now, Baldelli was supposed to be a star. He was one of those effortless athletes who could do something every day - a hit, a catch, a throw - that would grab your attention. Back when Rays manager Joe Maddon was a bench coach for the Angels, he remembers his first reaction upon seeing Baldelli: "All-Star," Maddon thought.

Instead, the body that made Baldelli special betrayed him. Even now, asking about his health is a multipart question. It's like taking a car in for a safety inspection. The knee he blew up? Check. The elbow he ripped up? Check. The recurring hamstring problems? We'll see.

In some ways, the hamstring may turn out to be his most troublesome injury. Oh, tearing the ACL in his left knee and having Tommy John surgery on his right elbow are more serious, but there is a struck-by-lightning component to them. Hamstring injuries tend to hang around.

Say what you will about a baseball player's tools, his size and his speed and his arm and his power and his glove. But durability is a tool, too. Professional sports is not part-time work.

At this point, Baldelli's ability to stay on the field is a question he must answer. For himself, too.

"That's the first thing I have to prove to myself," Baldelli said. "Can I go out there and play every day? Can my body handle it?

"I think it can. My arm feels fine. My knee has felt fine since last summer. It makes it more than a little frustrating to miss time with a hamstring."

Baldelli can tell you all about frustration, about the first few nights after an injury when he didn't eat or sleep, about the pain and the disappointment. He has been in rehab, for one injury or another, for 18 months now. "Eighteen months of being miserable," he calls it.

He remembers. His last game was Oct.3, 2004. Baldelli flied to center for the Rays' last out of the season.

"It was a day game, against Detroit," Baldelli said, his eyes going faraway. "The pitcher was Nate Robertson. I had a double down the line. I struck out on a pitch I thought was a ball. I had an infield hit. I hit a sacrifice fly to left that I thought might be a home run. You remember the last game you played."

Others forget. With every game Baldelli misses, a bit of his memory fades like an old photograph.

For a player, being injured is like being on the wrong side of a toy store window. Most of his work is the same bit of drudgery as the day before.

"You show up every day, and all you can do is rehab," Baldelli said. "You do cuff weights, or one-legged squats, or pole running. You can't play in the games, but you watch everybody else play. It's like holding candy in front of a kid and telling him he can't eat it.

"I'm not saying this for sympathy, but it's all monotonous work. There is really nothing enjoyable, nothing fun. The only thing you can think of is getting back playing. It's like turning on PBS and watching it all day."

His three-inning stint completed, Baldelli sat on a bench outside the Ray Naimoli complex and stared into the distance. A few more games like this. Maybe a rehab stint. Maybe he could be back in a couple more weeks, he said.

It is places such as this, on forgotten afternoons and empty parks, in mock games involving the wounded and wayward, that careers are rebuilt. It is here, a million miles from the majors, that players try to catch up to a game that left them behind.

Sometimes, the going is slow. Take Baldelli's first groundout, a high chopper to short that he would have beaten out two years ago. This time, Baldelli pulled up, surrendering the out. It was the smart play, given the risk of another setback, but the slower Baldelli ran, the further away he seemed to be.

"It feels funny (jogging)," Baldelli admitted. "That's not how I play. It kind of messes with your head. Going half-speed is not something I'm familiar with."

For now, however, direction seems more important than speed. However slowly, Baldelli was moving toward the majors again.

If he can get there, if he can stay there, perhaps people will remember him, after all.

[Last modified May 14, 2006, 00:52:03]