The Baseball Whisperer Page 15

  He had started his baseball career at Castle High School on the junior varsity team, but was called up to varsity during his sophomore season when an older player was injured. He did reasonably well and was starting to gain more confidence as a player. Carroll was primed for his junior year—the most important in terms of college recruiting—and had hopes of drawing interest. And even some major programs did show some interest. But while he was playing pickup basketball with friends, just weeks before the season was to begin, he took a turn jumping on a trampoline to give himself enough lift to soar above the rim and jam the ball through. It was the only way a young man of his height could dunk. He missed the rim and fell to the ground, suffering a compound fracture of his right arm, his throwing arm, and it looked as though his playing days might end in high school. His doctor told him he would never play baseball again.

  Carroll was accepted at Indiana University and planned to head north to Bloomington, probably to study business. It was simply what fate had dealt him. By the summer after his senior year, his arm had healed enough that he could play one last season of American Legion ball. When he played well enough in a couple of tournaments to catch the attention of the coach at John A. Logan Junior College in Carterville, Illinois, about an hour west of his home, Carroll decided to take a shot at it. Junior colleges are proving grounds for some players who are overlooked by Division 1 programs and professional scouts. Carroll’s play at John A. Logan attracted the attention of Jim Brownlee, the head baseball coach at the University of Evansville, and the same man who had coached Andy Benes and Rob Maurer. Brownlee offered him a partial scholarship, and Carroll transferred to the university, which was about ten miles from his home.

  In his first season with Evansville, Brownlee said, Carroll proved to be “the best shortstop I ever had.” He knew that Carroll wanted to play professional baseball, but scouts had told him that they thought Carroll was simply too small to play. Brownlee knew there was at least one good way to see if the scouts were right. As he had done for Benes—who was now a starting pitcher for the San Diego Padres—and Maurer, Brownlee sent his shortstop to Clarinda for the summer.

  When Carroll arrived in Clarinda, he had teammates from San Diego State and Big Ten schools. It was rather intimidating at first. Always trying to be honest, he asked himself, What do those guys have that I don’t have? Though Carroll came from a region that had produced a couple of major league superstars like Mattingly and Scott Rolen—who starred for the St. Louis Cardinals and the Cincinnati Reds—no one would have said Carroll’s name in the same breath with those two. But even though he didn’t possess exceptional physical skills, what scouts call “plus tools,” Carroll had something at least as important—a “plus” heart. He worked hard and could do almost anything on the field with better-than-average skill, and he did the one thing any player can do right on every play and yet most don’t—he hustled, relentlessly.

  “I didn’t know any better, or anything about it, I just wanted to play,” Carroll said. “I hopped into the car and drove to a town that was even smaller than the one I had come from.” Maybe Clarinda just looked that way. His hometown of Newburgh was actually smaller by a couple thousand people.

  Unlike players who arrived in Clarinda and wondered at first if they had made a grave mistake, Carroll took one look at the surroundings and thought it was almost perfect. “You knew you were out there in the middle of nowhere playing baseball, and you are playing every day, traveling on buses—it was my first experience traveling that much—with a bunch of guys, and it was just baseball.

  “You find out how much you love the game of baseball when you are out there,” Carroll said. “There’s not a whole heckuva lot else to do.” Which was precisely what so many players came to find was Clarinda’s virtue. Their coaches knew about it after sending players there, and professional scouts who toured the Jayhawk and MINK Leagues appreciated it, and the number of players who arrived in Clarinda with potential and left as professional prospects validated it. What Clarinda offered young players was all a matter of opportunity—getting a chance to play every day, to develop their game, and to be renewed with a sense of the possible.

  Players such as Carroll are easily overlooked if they have not been able to play in Clarinda, where the everyday commitment to development pays off. There are thousands of college baseball players, and only hundreds are selected in the major league baseball draft. Of that elite group, only a few will ever step onto a big league diamond. In that context, Carroll’s odds of making it were decidedly slim.

  Yet Clarinda, as it had done for others, afforded Jamey Carroll the chance to test his limits. During the day he was on a painting crew that Merl had assembled; by the end of his first summer in Clarinda, he felt like he had painted half the town. Merl rode players about their work as much as he did about their play. He told them over and over that effort was important, that they were representing the A’s to the town. If he thought they didn’t deliver a quality paint job, they did it again, until he was satisfied. Not every player bought into the system, but Jamey Carroll did.

  Carroll would get up in the morning, work on the painting crew with four or five of his teammates, and put in about eight hours. Then they would go to their summer home, rest for an hour or so, and head to the ballpark. Not that Carroll, who was hosted by the family of a well-to-do doctor, Bill Richardson, really had to rough it at home. Dr. Richardson’s home sat at the end of one of Clarinda’s boulevards and was one of the town’s landmarks, a mansion by any standard. It also had the amenity of a swimming pool, the value of which could not be overestimated during the steamy days of an Iowa summer. But Carroll spent most of his time working, as an amateur painter and as an aspiring professional baseball player.

  Summer programs have to strike a delicate balance. College coaches love the idea of their players getting additional competition and exposure. But they also don’t necessarily want summer coaches changing a pitcher’s mechanics or a batter’s swing. Merl honored that, but he also commanded the kind of respect among both coaches and players that they rarely complained if he weighed in to help correct a player’s flaw.

  What’s more, he had routines that Carroll came to embrace as vital to his development, even as his teammates moaned. Merl made Carroll and his teammates run ten sprints after games, which often ended shortly before midnight and came after a full day’s work. Carroll is convinced that doing those sprints—with a purpose—made him a better base stealer.

  He and his teammates also had to learn how to hit with wooden bats. Colleges made the switch to metal bats to save money. Metal creates the illusion of more power, but at the same time it allows mishits that lead to base hits—offense brought to you by better technology. The switch to wooden bats in the summer leagues (the A’s switched in 1993) created tremendous separation between the real hitters and those who only thought they were.

  Merl was ready to help players make the transition, and Carroll was ready to learn. Merl would put a batting tee slightly in front of home plate, and Carroll would take hundreds of swings. He learned how to really achieve extension in his swing; once he was successful at that, he could hit with a wooden bat and, in turn, could hit even better with a metal one. Carroll would go on to use Merl’s drill throughout his career whenever he found himself in a slump.

  Merl also emphasized the importance of learning how to bunt, how to hit to advance a runner on base, and where to position yourself on a cutoff. It was all part of becoming a complete player—and perhaps the only way someone like Jamey Carroll was going to make it to the big leagues. All the work only served to stoke his desire. “It made me realize how much I love the game of baseball,” Carroll said.

  “One part that I realized, [that] I took from being there, is that I am not the strongest or the fastest guy in the world. But one thing I can try to do is try as hard as I can and respect the game, and what I did learn out there was that by playing hard and respecting the game, and not wanting to let your coach
down, learning that if you did not have a good day, you could add something and bring it to the team. I left there with a whole different appreciation for the game.”

  Merl’s presence added to that feeling. The old coach had an aura about him, a combination of fortitude, elegance, and athleticism, even as he reached his sixties and seventies. He was a player’s coach, and for three months he was also like their father. He carried himself with a sense of calm, and he passed baseball wisdom down like heirlooms, hoping that his players would do the same. Carroll and many others credited Merl with helping them become a man. Players also saw how other baseball people—whether an opposing coach, a general manager, or even an umpire—regarded Merl when they traveled to other parks. Merl didn’t mind the attention, but he also saw it as an opportunity for people to get to see what his hometown was all about. He wanted baseball people to think of Clarinda when they thought of him.

  “He had an understanding that families were sending their kids out there, that their kids were his responsibility,” Carroll said. “And the town made it special. When you have something where people are volunteering their time, you realize how selfless these people are, how true-hearted they are, probably why I still have a relationship with my host family and with Mrs. E. Getting older and looking back, it’s an incredible selfless act that shouldn’t go unnoticed. They are caring people, and they loved to help out.”

  But that year also brought great tension. In 1994, the team had finished under .500 for the first time since 1957. Just as they were to begin competition in the National Baseball Congress regional tournament, a half-dozen players came to Merl and told him they were willing to play in the regionals but would not make the trip to Wichita if the team qualified. They wanted to go home. Merl’s response was swift and clear. “Go to the clubhouse and pack your bags, you’re done now.” Merl could not tolerate their selfishness. He filled the roster with players from the 1970s, including his son Rick, Noel Bogdanski, Paul Homrig, Jeff Nichols, and, almost unbelievably, Von Hayes, who was willing to help his old coach after his own professional career had ended. (The NBC rules permitted former pros.) If Merl couldn’t always rely on all of the young men who came to Clarinda, he had a core group who would always answer his call.

  Pat Eberly, always a surrogate mother to the players who passed through Clarinda, completed the notion of family. She was the ear they needed, the hug they needed, and sometimes the truth-teller they needed. She also tolerated their many superstitions. For Carroll, it was a ritual with baseball-shaped bubble gum. When the A’s were in the NBC tournament in Wichita, he would buy three pieces of gum from Pat for 15¢. When Carroll boarded the team bus, Mrs. E was there, and the transaction ensured that the ritual endured. “Stuff like that I love about the game of baseball, and that one thing made me bond with Mrs. E,” Carroll said.

  The A’s were a family enterprise in other important ways too. Playing alongside Carroll were Ryan Eberly, who had been released by the Yankees, Rod Eberly, the youngest of the Eberly children and the one with the most baseball potential, and B. J. Windhorst, the first Eberly grandchild to play on the team.

  Windhorst and Rod Eberly were both gifted athletes, and in the summers they played with Carroll they were also better hitters than him. In fact, Carroll was maybe the fourth- or fifth-best player in the A’s lineup. Still, he was among the most valuable to the team because, as a leadoff hitter, he always seemed to find a way to get on base. “He was the best leadoff hitter I ever played with,” Windhorst said. “If he didn’t get on base—which he often did—he almost always saw as many pitches as you could as a hitter. It seemed he always ran the count to a full count before walking, getting out, or getting a hit. My grandpa loved that about him! He made pitchers work, and he was a tough out! Jamey was the kind of player that exemplified what my grandpa wanted in a ballplayer wearing an A’s uniform and representing Clarinda.”

  Windhorst was nearly six inches taller than Carroll and outweighed him by forty pounds. Any scout looking at them side by side would naturally be drawn to the bigger player. But Windhorst saw in Carroll something major league scouts would eventually see: Carroll played with ferocity. He never took a play off, never assumed an out or a hit. And in the dugout he was a great teammate.

  “He was small, not all that fast, and relied on instinct and smarts to be a great player,” Windhorst said. “By no means at all did anyone ever see him making it to the big leagues.”

  It was Rod Eberly’s first season playing for the A’s after attending their games for the first eighteen years of his life. Like his brother Ryan, he had served as a batboy and taken many bus rides with the team, an experience that helped make him even closer to his father. Rick and Ryan Eberly had both signed professional contracts and played a year of organized ball, but Rod probably had the highest potential to go to the majors. He could hit the high-caliber pitching he faced that summer, but he clearly was still learning the game. And one of the people he learned from was Carroll.

  “He played second or short, and everything he did was at full speed,” Rod said. “And he could do all the little things, the intangibles.” Every starting position player on the team that year went on to sign a professional contract, but Rod admitted that he wasn’t sure at the time that Carroll would be one of them. “He embodied everything my dad preached,” Rod said. “Discipline, fundamentals, control your effort, because effort is the one thing you can control. You can control how you show up every day on the field. He was a 110 percent guy all of the time. He was very competitive. He hated to lose, a lot like my dad. He didn’t just say you need to hustle, he did it.”

  For Rod Eberly, the season was important in another way: it was the first time he had been coached by his father. In Iowa at that time high school baseball was played during the summer to avoid the cold weather of spring, and because Merl was always with the A’s, his youngest son rarely saw his father in the stands for his games—maybe twenty times in four years. Rod was not resentful. In fact, he had felt spoiled by coming from a baseball family. Going to a playoff or World Series game or talking to a professional baseball player was as familiar to him as a row of corn. Not only did he understand his father’s obligations, he said, but “I wasn’t playing because I needed Dad’s approval. I loved the game.”

  Because Rod played most of his high school baseball in the summer, he was not scouted as a professional prospect, even though he had that kind of talent. So he decided, like a lot of top players, to attend junior college, at Highland Community College in Kansas, where his brother Rick was the head coach. He had an exceptional freshman year and thrived under his oldest brother’s direction. Rick Eberly was extremely competitive and had lived the game the way Merl had taught him. That season clearly prepared Rod for playing that next summer for his father.

  Still, he welcomed the chance to finally have the experience his brothers had had with his dad in the dugout. Rod was probably more talented than his brothers, but less intense; he actually enjoyed being coached, even if it happened under the sometimes harsh glare of his father. “I saw the fire he coached with,” Rod said. “He was very intense. He wanted it done his way. Even looking at him as my dad, as a coach, his demeanor was so impressive to me. I remember being pretty in awe of my dad and wanted to please him, but he demanded it of all the guys.”

  Rod started that season in an unfamiliar place—on the bench, watching players like Carroll. Every regular position player but one on that team ended up playing professional baseball at some level. “That was a new experience for me,” Rod said. “I had always been ‘the guy.’ I had to learn how to speed my game up. I learned a lot from Jamey Carroll that summer. I realized you had to work every single day to get better. That really opened my eyes to how many good players there are out there.”

  Carroll played in Clarinda in the 1994 and 1995 seasons, and he could not have come at a better time for Merl. Over the years Merl had seen the game change. Players were more selfish and less likely to go along with wh
at he saw as the game’s essential folkways. There weren’t many guys like Scotty Kurtz anymore who played the game out of a pure love for it.

  When Carroll reflects back on his time in Clarinda, he sees that it had an even greater impact than he thought as a young man. He has come to appreciate that Merl was treating the college players almost as a professional coach would. You did your work as a player, but how you developed beyond that was your responsibility. Help was there, but you had to seek it out. The message to Carroll was clear: This is your career. How bad do you want it? “I felt like I got that type of discipline, and looking back now that was really incredible,” Carroll said.

  Merl knew that Carroll would not stand out to professional scouts for any single aspect of his game. He also knew that scouts could see desire and maximum effort, which, if combined with all-around skills, meant that a guy like Carroll could sometimes make it.

  The year after Carroll left Clarinda, he returned to the University of Evansville for his senior year, still trying to show scouts that he was a professional-caliber player. Even though Brownlee tried to promote him, “scouts kept telling me he was too small to play.” But a scout for the Montreal Expos, Bob Oldis, was finally convinced when he watched Carroll play a game against Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. First Carroll hit a ball to the hole at shortstop and made it down the line to first base in a blazing 4.2 seconds, beating the throw. Then Oldis’s impression was sealed with his last at-bat. Carroll hit a weak tapper right back to the pitcher, one of the most routine plays imaginable. Oldis clocked Carroll running to first base. His time: 4.2 seconds. “Nothing stood out,” Oldis said. “He just knew how to play the game.”