Chapter 2

So February finally came and I set aside my dreams of working out with the Oakland A's in Arizona and headed for the Orioles' Florida minor league training camp.

It turned out to be a pretty well-organized place, with some coaches and trainers who seemed to know what they were doing. I got all sorts of physical examinations in the first three days, taking up practically all my off-field daylight-hours free time. Maybe the Orioles were making certain the Athletics hadn't palmed off some kind of broken-down steroid junkie on them.

The idea of my being on steroids made me laugh. "Juice me up, Doc, so I can hit the ball so hard it'll roll all the way to the warning track."

I passed everything, of course. I was nothing if not a demon for physical fitness. When you're smaller and lighter than everybody else, and still looking for your first home run since seventh grade, you do your best to stay strong and healthy. I'd worked out all through the off season -- not so much to gain strength as to ensure that I maintained my foot speed.

I also worked tirelessly on my fielding. Unfortunately, I'm not exactly a Gold Glove candidate at second base. I've got good-enough hands and can make the pivot, but I lack range as a fielder, and my throwing arm is only average. Second base is a good place to hide a mediocre throwing arm, but the lack of range was a real problem, and something I haven't been able to do a whole lot to fix.

Like I told you, I run pretty good in a straight line, but quick starts toward a ground ball to my left or right are something else again. I just ain't that quick at getting underway. I'm not even as quick as my body structure might suggest I would be. This shortcoming had probably done as much as anything to slow down my march to the majors.

It didn't help that the Orioles had one of the best second basemen in the league -- a guy who could hit, and whose range around second was far superior to mine. He also had 19 homers last season -- 19 more than You-Know-Who.

Maybe I would become the first Punch-and-Judy guy to be a full-time Designated Hitter. Well, I didn't have any moral objections to that. Just put me in, coach! DH would do.

I got what I felt was pretty adequate attention from the coaching staff in the minor league camp, and when we headed for Ottawa to start the season, I was reconciled to more time in the minors, and feeling pretty decent. When we got there, it was still cold as hell in Ontario in early April, and we ran into three rainouts -- one of them a combination rain- and snow-out -- in the same week. Two of the postponements were at home and one was in Rochester.

I was a southern California boy, educated in Florida, and would have preferred 83 degrees and sunny.

It didn't much matter, though. After two weeks -- eleven games -- with the Ottawa Lynx, I was hitting .437.

The Lynx had me batting seventh, so the opportunities to drive in runs were a little limited. Still, I had eight ribbies in those eleven games. Pretty good for a guy like me who hit the ball with a rolled up copy of "ESPN, The Magazine."

Our manager -- Carlo Hernandez -- was nobody's fool. Pretty soon he had me hitting in the fifth spot. By June, Hernandez had moved me to third in the lineup. I had maybe four doubles for the year, and the rest all singles, but I'd driven in 29 runs -- tops on the club -- and was still hitting at .427.

I could only hope that Mike Flanagan, back in Baltimore, was receiving glowing reports daily from the Lynx.