The travelin' man

Sporting News, The, March 16, 1998 by Jim Armstrong

Everyone says Marquis Grissom is a gamer, a real professional, the kind of player any team would covet. If he's so respected, why is he playing for his fourth team in five years?

So far, the coast is clear. Marquis Grissom has been in the Brewers' Arizona spring training camp for four weeks and nothing has happened. No, really, we're not kidding. You can't even find a good rumor surrounding the guy, much less a trade.

Brewers G.M. Sal Bando dutifully carries his cellular phone every waking moment--except during a golf game--but he might as well have left it in Wisconsin. This year, Grissom is staying put. Not only that, he wants to keep it that way for years to come.

"I want to stay in Milwaukee for the rest of my contract," Grissom says. "One spot, one team. I want to know where I'm going every spring training. I want to get to know the city I'm playing in. That's a big part of being comfortable and relaxed. Then you can just go out and play."

Sounds like a plan. But then, nobody knows more than Grissom that, in baseball, plans have a way of getting disrupted. Since the 1994 season, he has been traded three times.

Marquis' weird adventure started in the spring of 1995, when he became the latest member of the Expos' graduating class to go on to bigger and better things--as in bigger paychecks and a better market to play in. It's a way of life in Montreal. You draft a player, you develop him, and then, just as he's approaching his prime, you unload him because he costs too much.

For Grissom, a Georgia native, being traded to the Braves seemed almost too good to be true. As things turned out, it was. A week before the 1997 season started, he and David Justice were sent to the Indians for Kenny Lofton and Alan Embree in one of the biggest trades of the decade, a deal that swept through the baseball establishment as if powered by El Nino.

Grissom never saw it coming. He had just put together a season in which he hit .308, scored 10 6 runs, hit 23 homers and won his fourth consecutive Gold Glove. Not only that, he had gone through five weeks of spring training before the deal came down.

"One thing I've figured out is that you can never figure this game out" Grissom says. "I had one of my best seasons in Atlanta, and boom. I was gone. I was surprised as hell when I got traded to Atlanta and surprised again to leave. But when I got traded here, I wasn't that surprised."

The obvious question is why. Why has Grissom, a two-time All-Star, become seemingly as disposable as a 15-cent razor? Let's start with why not. It isn't like any of the general managers who've traded him were in a hurry to get rid of him. He hasn't traveled the Jose Canseco Highway, a road reserved for players whose talents aren't worth the torment.

Grissom is one of the game's most solid citizens. He's a steady influence in the clubhouse and the ultimate garner on the field. He's a throwback, a Pete Rose without the dark side. And Grissom is at his best when the games count the most, witness his .390 career batting average in the World Series, the fourth highest in the history of the game.

Rewind the tape to last October, when the Indians were in the playoffs. It was Grissom who singled and scored the winnning run in Game 5 of the division series against the Yankees. And it was Grissom, weakened by a nasty bout with the flu, who won Game 2 of the ALCS with a three-run homer off Baltimore's Armando Benitez. The day before, Grissom crashed into the wall at Camden Yards trying to make a catch. He didn't come away with the ball, but those who watched his effort came away with an indelible impression.

"This guy is the ultimate professional," says John Hart, the Indians' G.M. "He's taking IV treatments, he's throwing up and having diarrhea up to a half-hour before Game 1, then he crashes into a wall trying to catch a fly ball. I'll go to war with Marquis any time."

Two months later, Grissom was gone again.

Why? It's a '90s thing. Every time Grissom has been traded, money has been the overriding factor that drove the deal. The Expos were forced to unload him because he was approaching free agency and they couldn't afford him. The Braves traded him because they had a chance to get Lofton and wanted to dump Justice's salary so they could keep the game's best pitching rotation intact. The Indians, meanwhile, felt they had to get rid of Lofton because he was a year away from free agency and hadn't shown a willingness to negotiate with the Cleveland front office.

That takes us to the latest trade, the one that sent Grissom and Jeff Juden to Milwaukee for Ben McDonald, Mike Fetters and Ron Villone. The Indians made the deal because Lofton, the game's best leadoff hitter, was willing to re-sign for less money and two fewer years than he had turned down nine months earlier.

"It remains to be seen if (the Brewers) trade Marquis or not," says a player development director. "I think if they are in the race, they will keep him; if they are not in the race, somewhere down the line, they are going to let him go. The money factor, I'm sure, is a big, big thing with the Brewers."