Chapter 1

I was a rookie relief pitcher for the Orioles that year. Twenty-four years old and getting my first taste of the Big Leagues. I'd gone 8-4 as a starter for Ottawa in Triple-A ball, but the Orioles told me right from the beginning that I'd be starting out as a long reliever in The Show.

Right-handed long relievers are not exactly the backbone of the ball club. It's a spot reserved for the guy the brass isn't all that certain can do the job. The long reliever doesn't come into games most every night, like the two or three guys the manager might call upon in the 6th or 7th innings. Those guys are the best relievers the club has -- guys who've proven themselves under pressure. Their job is to hold the opposition until the 9th, when, if your club's ahead, the "closer" will likely come in for the final inning.

Long relievers are the guys called upon when things go wrong too quickly -- when the starting pitcher can't even get through the early innings. Often the game is already out of hand when the long reliever is called upon. If it isn't already a lost cause, the long reliever is supposed to try to hold 'em down and wait for his club to make a comeback.

If you've got a bunch of bangers in your offensive lineup -- like the Orioles had that year, you might get lucky and pick up a win -- if you could hold down the other club long enough for your offense to come alive and get you back in the game. But if the long reliever comes in with his club behind, and they don't catch up, it's usually the starter who takes the loss on his record. All the reliever has to do is worry about his earned-run average.

So, as a rookie, and by definition unreliable, I was in the bullpen. I was kind of the last-resort guy, really. If things went well, I'd just sit there and wait until tomorrow's game. If things went bad early, the manager might turn to me to try and hold 'em until the sixth or seventh inning.

Not much glory for the long-relief guy -- but, hell, I didn't care. I was 24 years old and in the big leagues! Asking for more would have been like pouting on Christmas morning!

Sure, I had my dreams of being a starting pitcher, but I was determined to be patient, and to be a team guy. I was a rookie, after all. Rookies were like children -- they were to be seen and not heard.

Our manager was a rookie, too -- Paul Warren, just up to the Big Club after three years managing the Orioles' Double-A club in nearby Bowie, Maryland. Warren was about 40, a former Orioles utility infielder, and a Helluva good guy, from all I'd heard. My big goals in life were to win games for the Orioles and win the respect of the pitching coach, Arlie Stone, and the manager, Paul Warren.

There were lots of young pitchers starting for the Orioles, and most of them were question marks. They'd earned their spots as starters, but their hold on those jobs was often shaky. If one of them had three bad starts in a row, the club's brass would be looking for help wherever they could find it. I was hoping they'd be looking my way.

Unfortunately for me, at the moment they were looking elsewhere. When our fifth starter, Billy Maravich, got a sore arm and went down for the season, the Orioles didn't look to their farm club in Ottawa -- they pulled one right out of the General Manager's ass -- a Japanese guy named Shigeo Nomura.

None of us had ever heard of Nomura. It turned out he was from Yokohama by way of San Diego. The Padres had let him go in a trade for a minor-league third baseman and a passel of Orioles' cash. He had no major league experience, but the grapevine said he was a highly regarded 25-year-old lefty with almost four years of experience in Japan's major league.

Looks like my long-reliever days were going to continue.

Paul Warren, the manager, called me into his clubhouse office after the Mariners' game. I had been Billy Maravich's roomy, and I wasn't surprised when Warren asked me to room with the new guy.

"He doesn't speak any English," Warren said. "Maybe he'll pick it up later, but for now, you're going to just have to do the best you can to be friendly."

"How are you going to communicate with him?" I asked.

"We're going to hire a full-time interpreter," Warren said. "But that'll take a while to arrange. Meanwhile, we'll fake it."

"Good luck," I said, smiling.

"You're going to need some luck, too," Warren told me. "Just be friendly to the guy. He's a Helluva long way from home, and he doesn't know anybody."

"Hurry up and find that interpreter," I urged.