A "Money" Pitcher Comes Back

By Tom Callahan

If he never started another game, and for the past three seasons that seemed more than probable, Dennis Leonard would already be the most remarkable pitcher of the past twelve years. From 1975 through 1982, only Steve Carlton won more frequently, though only Kansas City appeared to notice. Thrice a 20-game winner for the Royals, Leonard was the most bankable starter in the American League, the most successful righthander in baseball.

But because he habitually began his seasons at about the same speed as the news departs Missouri, Leonard was never called to any All-Star games. Away at his quickest pace in May 1983, the invincible-looking pitcher with the pirate-red mustache was dispatching a routine strike to Cal Ripken of Baltimore when Leonard's left knee (his landing leg) imploded and he disappeared. As sport usually calculates these things, this scarcely qualified as tragedy, even when lengthy surgeries and lost summers followed one after the other. Besides the memory of nearly 2,000 honorable if unheralded innings, Leonard had a guaranteed long-term contract to fall back on: $900,000 a year through 1986.

However, the image of professional athletes as complacent money grubbers has lately been suffering. Michael Jordan, pro basketball's most sublime subject, missed 64 games this year with a wounded foot but declined the Chicago Bulls' invitation to shirk the remainder of the season. Jordan would not even let the Bulls curtail his court time. "I am a basketball player," he declared, and rejoiced in scoring 49 and 63 points even while losing to the Boston Celtics.

"When you're a pitcher," says Leonard, 35 next week, "your only chance at peace of mind is never to second-guess yourself. If someone cranks a home run off your fastball, you can't start thinking, 'I should have thrown the curve.' I felt an obligation not to quit, but it wasn't because of the money. Five years down the road, I didn't want to start second-guessing my whole career, wondering if I gave my best."

So he became the phantom of the Royals Stadium training room. Whenever the team was gone, he was there tormenting his patellar tendon, the worst "ball of spaghetti" his doctors had ever restrung. "Occasionally he'd call me up and say, 'I didn't go to the park today,'" smiles Mickey Cobb, the trainer, "but I knew by looking at the room that he went every day." A small, bald man of 44, Cobb began life at 2 lbs. in rural Georgia, polio-ridden and without benefit of physician. He started limping at four. "I couldn't play when my friends were playing," he says, "so I carried the Band-Aids."

For Leonard, Cobb carried a good deal more than that. "Mick doesn't think he's handicapped," says the pitcher. "That inspired me." Through four operations, three despairing journeys back to square one, Leonard required more than inspiration. Dick Howser, a congenial man but a practical manager, supplied a belief that was better than faith. "You can only sympathize and pull for him so much," Howser says. "Then you got to see it."

By last July, Leonard was pitching batting practice. He started over in the minor leagues with the Fort Myers Royals (A) and gingerly pitched his way to the Memphis Chicks (AA). In September, 28 months after his collapse, Leonard returned to Kansas City to pitch the eighth inning of the second game of a doubleheader against Milwaukee. He allowed one hit. "This spring," Howser says, "I told him, 'You're going to have to be a good pitcher to make our staff.' He told me, 'I don't want to be an average pitcher anyway. I don't want to just be around.' "

When Leonard looked around, he should not have been so astonished to see that all the Paul Splittorffs and Larry Guras had given way to Bret Saberhagens, that Leonard's entire class had graduated. "It doesn't seem that long ago," he thought, "when I was the young pitcher." Without any quarter, he made the team, but Danny Jackson had to sprain an ankle to secure him a start. On April 12 the Royals played the Toronto Blue Jays a game that for melodrama eclipsed all their October playoffs.

In a scene straight from The Monty Stratton Story, Toronto immediately tested Leonard's leg with a bunt, and might have kept it up if bulky First Baseman Steve Balboni had not dived to the bag in such a heroic frenzy that Second Baseman Frank White laughed out loud. "There are times," White says, "when a whole team reaches down for something that's even better than winning. I know it sounds impossible." On the subject of impossibilities, consider three hits, 18 men retired in a row and a 1-0 victory that ended on a strikeout. "When I struck Rance Mulliniks out," Leonard says, "it was like I finally was home. Everyone ran out on the field except Mick, and he was the one I was waiting for." In the dugout, the pitcher pressed the ball into his trainer's hand.

Leonard won his next start too, and while he lost the one after that to the New York Yankees, 2-1, neither his leg nor his arm was to blame. It was his glove. The following morning, he was greeted by his son Ryan, 8. "Dad, I heard you lost last night." "Yeah, I screwed up an easy double play, threw the ball over everything and ended up with three errors." Ryan laughed so hysterically Leonard had to join him.

The family is readjusting to having a ballplayer in the house. "When I packed up for the first road trip, they wondered where I was going." Around the neighborhood, he is better known as a Little League coach and groundkeeper. "Watching the kids play these last few years, I remembered how we all started out playing for the love of games. If you're lucky enough to make it to the N.F.L., the N.B.A. or big-league baseball, you start talking about 'a living' and 'a job' and 'having to go to work.' But I honestly think the majority of players in my position would have tried, and not one of them for the money. In the back of my mind, I know there are still no guarantees." On the other hand, he is overdue at the Ail-Star game. --By Tom Callahan