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Rookies provide a spark

By BRUCE LOWITT, Times wires

© St. Petersburg Times, published September 12, 2000

Who is the Angels' rookie of the Year?

Catcher Bengie Molina thinks it is second baseman Adam Kennedy.

Kennedy thinks it is Molina.

"The job Bengie has done every single day, handling the starting rotation? It's got to be him," Kennedy said. "With all the young pitchers we have, he can't be young any more."

"I have to say it's Adam Kennedy," Molina said. "The way he's played the whole year, he's got my vote."

Each had 102 major-league at-bats before this season. Each has emerged as a solid everyday player.

Going into Monday night's game against Baltimore, Molina, 26, was batting .278 with 57 RBI and 12 home runs, the most by an Angels catcher since Lance Parrish's 18 in 1991.

"Those are pretty good numbers for anyone, regardless if they're a rookie," Kennedy said.

Kennedy, 24, had five hits in his past 11 at-bats to raise his average to .267 with 59 RBI and was second in the AL with nine triples.

"I never set any goals as far as numbers were concerned," Kennedy said.

So who is the Angels' top rookie? The answer is simple.

"When you can have two young guys who compete like they do every day, that is so valuable," centerfielder Darin Erstad said. "I'll take them both."

OUT OF THE BULLPEN: With various starters injured, manager Mike Scioscia called upon right-handed reliever Al Levine to start Sunday's game against the Orioles. He responded with four scoreless innings; five other relievers followed him in the Angels' 2-1 win. "I think the luxury we had was with the expanded rosters," Scioscia said. "We had more fresh arms to get us in position to win early in the game. You couldn't ask for a better job than Al Levine and Mike Fyhrie gave us."

Fyhrie followed Levine with a one-hit shutout inning.

Oh, by the way, Molina's double followed by Kennedy's single in the seventh inning for the winning run.

HE WON'T LOOK: Pitcher Scott Karl hasn't seen a replay of his friend, Red Sox reliever Bryce Florie, getting hit in the face with a line drive. And if he knew the replay was coming, he would turn away.

Florie was struck in the right eye Friday night in a game against the Yankees. He faces surgery and the possibility he will lose normal vision in that eye.

"I'm hoping not to ever see it," said Karl, a teammate of Florie's in Milwaukee. "I'm sure the Yankee guys were sorry they did."

Pitchers are too vulnerable to the comebacker to spend emotion considering the consequences.

"You know why?" reliever Kent Mercker, Florie's teammate in Boston last season, asked. "Because you don't get hit in the face with the soft line drive. If it's soft, you catch it."

Two years ago, Karl said, while pitching for Milwaukee, he deflected a liner hit by the Cubs' Shane Andrews that otherwise would have caught him flush in the eye. He still thinks about it once in a while.

"You like to think you're invincible, that that can't happen to you," Karl said. "The fact is, you've got no chance of getting out of the way. It's hard to talk about and hard to watch. Like (the Rays') Tony Saunders breaking his arm, you try to fool yourself into thinking that can't happen."

Scioscia said injuries, even catastrophic ones, come with the competition, and that if athletes dwelt on the potential for harm, there would be no achievement.

"If you're a quarterback," Scioscia said, "do you need to see Joe Theismann (getting his leg broken by Lawrence Taylor) to realize it's a rough game?"

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