The sound and the fury

Sporting News, The, May 5, 1997 by Michael P. Geffner

They are all around Carlos Baerga. A black swarm floating on all sides like an army of tiny helicopters. God knows what they are -- flies, beetles? the locals refer to them only as love bugs, since they travel in intertwined pairs, legs wrapped as if in amorous embrace. But no matter what they are, they are as annoying as any insects on the planet. Flitting about your face without a hint of conscience, creeping sneakily down the small of your back, and, occasionally, even having the audacity to sail straight into your mouth.

Baerga, dripping with the salty lure of sweat from his nose and chin, after a seemingly inspired, though uninspiring round of batting practice, is the perfect bug magnet.

"Man!" Baerga finally releases in total exasperation, quickly swiping by his nose and ducking away so sharply he nearly falls off the dugout bench. This is terrible. Really. It's crazy, man." Which, for the last year or so, is a feeling Baerga has become all too acquainted with.

It is near the end of spring training, a sunny-clear but thickaired Thursday afternoon in late March, and Baerga, in a damp corner surrounded by shadow, is the only player sitting inside the long stretch of the Mets' dugout in Port St. Lucie, Fla. As his teammates wait in the clubhouse for the start of a game, the former All-Star second baseman just sits there, breathing deeply, with his narrowed eyes sparkling like polished black gemstones, trained straight ahead at the field.

Though nothing would indicate it this spring (.200 average and no homers in 15 exhibition games), or through the first month of the regular season (.167, no homers, one RBI through April 23), Baerga insists that, in so many ways, he's definitely a changed man from last year, when, inexplicably and without warning, his play dipped so dramatically he all but disappeared from baseball's radar screen. He claims he's hungrier and more focused than he has been in years, and that, to that end, he swore off alcohol the day after last season, worked with a conditioning coach all winter, and, after breaking down uncontrollably during a pastor's Sunday sermon, became a born-again Christian.

"I'm also healthy now, that's the biggest thing," the Puerto Rican native adds in a heavily accented English. "I'm comfortable now, confident, positive. I'm a very confident guy now." But he says all this so automatically it's as if he has put these very words to memory and uses them as some sort of feel-good mantra, that by just repeating the words out loud it makes it all seem real somehow. Or maybe, just maybe, if he says the words enough times, he'll convince himself.

There are two things anyone close to Baerga, 28, will tell about him these days: First, he was significantly damaged, maybe forever, by the events of last year -- the trade from this "family" in Cleveland to a floundering team in another league; the public assaults on his character; the soul-ripping rips from Indians management that his skills as well as his dedication to the game were fading -- and, second, he has approached this season like a man on a mission, wanting desperately, with some kind of jilted-lover's vengeance, to not only prove the Indians wrong for giving up on him, but to show the baseball world he can still play.

"I just played hurt all of last year, that's all that it was,' he says in a strained voice, listing injuries to his ankles, groin, and left wrist. "I played hurt and I never complained about it, I thought I was doing the right thing."

It seems such a long time now, but strangely, it was only two seasons ago that Baerga was considered to be one of the best second basemen in baseball, if not the position's best all around hitter. A bad-ball inclined switch hitter with stunning recovery power and line-drive pop from both sides of the plate, he was the No. 3 man on, arguably, the game's best offensive team, well on his way to a career of at least 3,000 hits. in 1992 and 1993, he accomplished something no second baseman in the history of the game, other than Rogers Hornsby, ever could-putting together back-to-back seasons of at least a.300 batting average, 200 hits, 20 homers, and 100 runs batted in; Ryne Sandberg never did that and neither did Joe Morgan nor Jackie Robinson.

Baerga's encore: two straight seasons at.314.

"Carlos was always dangerous, always hitting the ball hard somewhere," says John Olerud, who was traded to the Mets during the winter and, like Baerga, is looking to recover a lost reputation. "I was also always amazed at how far up he stood in the box, with his back foot even with the plate, and yet he could still get around on the good fastball."

But last season, after showing up to spring training nearly 30 pounds overweigh, Baerga, in essence, lost everything. With his batting stroke collapsing into a painful-looking, disjointed heap, he batted more than 40 points under his career average at.254, produced mostly weak ground balls and loopy popups, and had nearly 100 bats broken by fastballs jammed inside. In the field, too, he started booting routine plays, and his range, which was never great to begin with, especially up the middle, was reduced to nothing more than a slogging two-steps-and-dive in either direction.