Dreaming The Big Dreams

By Tom Callahan

Not since Yankee pitchers Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson swapped lives, wives, kids, dogs and bungalows in 1973 has baseball forecast such a sexy spring. Wade Boggs, the Boston Lothario, and the retired Padre Steve Garvey are proving that the movie Bull Durham, which featured only one Baseball Annie, was a little light on realism. In a stunning show of sportsmanship, Garvey's new bride has offered to adopt any children he has pending from two other relationships. Sensing that New York might be lagging in perdition, outfielder Rickey Henderson declared that the Yankees "were too drunk" last year to win the pennant.

Jimmie Reese sighs forbearingly at all this, camped on a folding chair behind a batting cage near an orange grove, counting pitches. "Spring and baseball," muses the California Angels' most seasoned coach, "don't change very much." Reese knows something about both. Seventy-two springs ago, he was the Pacific Coast League Angels' eleven-year-old batboy for "Peerless" Frank Chance. Playing with the Yankees in 1930, Reese and Lefty Gomez split a $2-a- day suite at the new Edison Hotel. On the road, Jimmie stayed with Babe Ruth. "I roomed with the Babe's luggage, mostly," he says in a tone of wake- me-when-a-better-carouser-comes-along. "He was up all day and at 'em all night. When it was Ruth in the peephole, the speakeasy doors couldn't open fast enough."

All around Reese, the musical clatter and chatter of baseball training have revived Mesa, Ariz. In the distance a tall rookie without a right hand, No. 60, is sprinting. "This may be the age of the $3 million pitcher," says the old coach, "but the kids just showing up still have the same stars in their eyes. They keep looking down at the front of their shirts. Any day in a major league uniform is great." When No. 60 crosses into view, Reese whispers, "You know, he has as good a stuff as anybody in camp."

Jim Abbott was born with just a rudimentary finger on his right hand 21 years ago to teenage parents. His father packed meat and sold cars. His mother educated herself, first to teach, then to go to law school. They raised a remarkable boy by never treating him too remarkably. "I had a hook," he says. "I hated it. They let me discard it." They let him dream of anything. "Growing up, I always pictured myself as a baseball player, but I can't remember how many hands I had in my dreams. I never thought to myself, 'Wow, I only have one hand. Can I eat with a certain fork?' I just did things."

Like playing quarterback for his high school football team in Flint, Mich., pitching for the University of Michigan, earning the 1987 Sullivan Award as America's best amateur athlete, winning the gold-medal baseball game in the Seoul Olympics and being drafted No. 1 by the Angels. Though he is expected to open the season in the AA or AAA minors, for now Abbott's shirt says ANGELS. "Just looking around at everything here," he says, "it hits you. A big- league camp."

The first hitter he faced in batting practice was Lance Parrish, a former Detroit catcher he had been partial to in Flint. ("I definitely didn't want to bean him.") The ball came flying back with a wonderful new timbre. "He was the first guy I ever faced with a wooden bat," says Abbott, too young to see the sadness in how far a player has to come these days to escape aluminum. After hitting against the rookie, Parrish moved behind the plate: "He probably has as strong an arm as any lefthander I've ever caught. His motion is so fluid, the ball just kind of explodes."

Abbott's way of juggling his glove amounts to legerdemain. He throws the ball and puts it on, catches the ball and takes it off. "The transfers aren't that difficult," he insists. "There's no dramatic story that goes with it. Just a matter of learning to do things a little differently. I never told myself, 'I want to be the next Pete Gray ((a one-armed outfielder who played the 1945 season with the St. Louis Browns)).' I said, 'I want to be the next Nolan Ryan.' "

For a roommate this spring, Abbott drew Rick Turner, the bullpen catcher, who partnered Angels outfielder Devon White through the Pioneer League but never made it past A ball himself. "As a kid, I used to hang out at the stadium," Turner says. "Now I'm a fan who gets to put on a uniform. It's not that I have visions of a comeback. I guess I dream of being a coach." Into the night, he and Abbott explore the minor leagues and the various levels of dreaming.

So far, Abbott has pitched five innings, allowing three hits and one run, striking out six (including A's terror Jose Canseco). One double-play ball got bollixed in his mitt, but he is under way. "You do wonder," he says, "if you're going to be the guy who was billed to make it, who never did, or if you're going to look back someday and say, 'This is where it all began.' But I've always dreamed, 'What if this happens,' and it always has. I've been lucky."

Incidentally, Pete Gray lasted just the solitary year because he hit but .218 one-handed. As a pitcher, Abbott is excused from batting chores by the American League's designated-hitter rule, though it may be the other pitchers who should celebrate. At Michigan he came to bat a total of three times. After grounding out to third, he singled in the infield and then cracked a clean hit to right. Two for three. That's .667 lifetime.