Jeff Cirillo makes himself at home with Mariners: third baseman looks to blend in with Seattle's championship caliber team and help it return to post-season play

Baseball Digest, May, 2002 by Larry Stone

WHEN JEFF CIRILLO'S IN-LAWS visited the third baseman in Colorado last year, the Seattle-area residents would follow their beloved Mariners on the Internet. On the rare occasions Seattle lost, Cirillo would listen incredulously as his wife's parents bemoaned the defeats.

"I'd say, `Geez, we are 10 games under .500,'" Cirillo said of his Colorado club. "What the Mariners did last year, finishing 70 games over .500, is amazing. Hopefully, I can come in, do my part, and help keep going the success the Mariners have had the last two years. I don't want to screw up the things that are going on in Seattle."

Cirillo, a two-time All-Star who has a .311 career average and had the highest fielding percentage in the major leagues at third base last year (.982), came to the Mariners from the Colorado Rockies in exchange for three pitchers -- right-handers Dennis Stark and Jose Paniagua and left-hander Brian Fuentes.

It's a homecoming for Cirillo, who met his wife, Nancy Granston, while a senior at USC. In 1991, they settled in her hometown of Redmond, where Jeff, Nancy and their three sons -- Cole, Carson and Conner --live, just a 25-minute commute to Safeco Field.

"My wife and I couldn't be happier with the situation we're now in," he said. "I had a feeling last August I would be traded in the wintertime, and I was just hoping it would be to the Mariners."

Jeff, 32, had always assured Nancy that his career would someday take him to Seattle, but he admits it was more of a hunch than anything else.

"It just seems like Seattle has a way of bringing home people who live in the area," he said. "They're big on that connection. I thought I would play for Seattle. I just didn't know it would be this early."

The Cirillo boys may be too young to fully appreciate their new circumstance, but Jeff is grateful that they will no longer be uprooted each summer, especially with their school years beckoning.

Cirillo possesses a vaunted intensity on the field. He has always been known as a player who dwells on his failures, one who has thrived on proving doubters wrong. That dates to his dominating prep baseball days at tiny Providence High School in Burbank, California, where some thought his gaudy numbers (he batted .553 with 56 runs batted in and went 10-3 as a pitcher his senior year) were merely a byproduct of a sub-par league.

USC thought enough of Cirillo to give him a pitching scholarship, and he found himself one of the leading performers on a power-packed Trojans team that also included Damon Buford and Bret Boone.

Cirillo calls Boone "one of the most competitive people I've ever met, and very confident in his ability. Even when he was in college, Bret thought he was better than second basemen in the big leagues. I admire that confidence. You don't meet too many people like that.

"I wouldn't say Bret is a show off -- yeah, I'd say he's a show off," Cirillo said. "In my very first college game against Cal State Fullerton, he was taking grounders at shortstop. The first ball he threw hit me right between the eyes."

Cirillo's confidence was tested when he wasn't drafted after his junior year, and it became apparent that his baseball future was not in pitching -- if at all.

"It was like getting hit in the face with reality," he said. "I put more of an emphasis on school. I kind of just said, `Well, it doesn't look like baseball is going to be much of a future, so I'd better get serious about school.'"

Cirillo obtained an internship his senior year With the Prime Ticket cable network. He had met Nancy at USC and was fully prepared for life without baseball.

"I knew I was going to have to do something in case I wasn't drafted again," he said.

But baseball still gnawed at him. Before the draft, a San Diego scout had given Cirillo a workout at third base. Before his senior year, Cirillo went to a summer league in Michigan to learn third, a position he hadn't played regularly since he was a kid. Cirillo, in fact, recalls being moved from third to left field on a Little League all-star team because the coach thought he was afraid of the ball.

"All I wanted was an opportunity to play a little pro ball," Cirillo said. "I knew I always could hit with the guys I was playing with, and gays who were getting drafted ahead of me. But the scouts, you always put a little too much emphasis on what they think. Shoot, if they don't draft me, they must see something I'm doing that doesn't work in pro ball."

The Brewers drafted him as a third baseman in the 11th round after his senior year, and small-market Milwaukee turned out to be the perfect organization. Strapped for funds, the Brewers were more than willing to take a chance on a young infielder who hit over .300 on each step up the minors and to stick with him when he struggled to a .238 average during a 39-game stint in the big leagues in 1994.

One day that season, when he was starting one of his first games for the Brewers at second base, a position he occasionally played early in his career, Cirillo couldn't help but marvel at what a turn his career, and life, had taken.