It’s a clubhouse life for me

  • By Larry Henry / Special to The Herald
  • Tuesday, March 21, 2006 9:00pm
  • Sports

PEORIA, Ariz. – Pete Fortune used to live in the New York Yankees clubhouse.

Larry LaRue / The News Tribune

Pete Fortune – aka the “Mule” – is going on his 14th season as a member of the Mariners clubhouse staff.

He was a Yankee clubhouse boy, he wasn’t making much money, he didn’t know anyone outside the Yankee family, and he had everything he needed inside that room where the players dressed and relaxed.

Every morning, he would walk through the monuments to Yankee greats in left-center field on the way to get the newspapers. “That was a good experience,” he said.

He was a smalltown kid from the Northwest learning about life in the Big Apple.

Life with the Yankees wasn’t much fun at the time. “Those were bad years because they (the Yankees) were awful,” he said.

Then life got worse for Pete Fortune. Owner George Steinbrenner cut the team budget, costing Pete his job.

As you all know, the money Pete was being paid saved the Yankees, allowing Steinbrenner to sink millions into the team in later years.

So what happened to Pete?

He came back to his hometown of Edmonds. Back to the Seattle Mariners, with whom he had begun his career as a clubhouse boy.

Fourteen years after leaving the Yankees, Pete is still with the Mariners – faithfully carrying out his duties. On a recent morning, he was folding towels and stuffing uniforms into large washing machines in a backroom of the clubhouse at spring training. “There’s always a load in the morning from the guys who come in early,” he said.

There would be several more loads in the afternoon following the first exhibition game, making for a long day.

“Short days are from 6:30 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon,” said Ted Walsh, the team’s equipment manager. “When the games start, we don’t get out of here until 6:30.”

During the regular season, a typical day for Fortune – whose main job is to wash and dry those uniforms and underclothes and hang them in the players’ lockers – begins at 1:30 in the afternoon and doesn’t end until midnight or later.

Is he complaining? Not on your life. “I’m definitely lucky,” he said. “You can’t get a much better gig than this one.”

He thrives on hard work. “He works like a mule,” said Henry Genzale, the visiting clubhouse manager.

Thus, his nickname – “Mule” – given to him by former M’s third baseman Jim Presley.

The Mule stands about 5 feet 4, weighs 107 pounds.

He is everything you could want in an employee. Besides the good work ethic, he’s dependable. “I don’t think he’s ever missed a day,” Genzale said.

He also has a sense of humor. He has to survive in an environment such as a clubhouse where there are always pranksters and needlers.

“My first year or so, I was a little naive,” he said. “Then I figured out how to play the game.”

Pete first came to the Mariners in 1985, after graduating from what was then Edmonds High School and a year at Edmonds Community College. He was the manager of the baseball team at both places.

He was with the Mariners for four years, then went to the Yankees from 1989 to 1992, before returning to the M’s a year later after Steinbrenner cut expenses. “That was exactly what they told me,” Pete said. “That’s water under the bridge. I’m better off here.”

He’s a popular figure in the M’s clubhouse. “He’s great,” pitcher J.J. Putz said. “He’s the best.”

Putz might be a little biased. His billfold is a little fatter because of Pete.

Slugger Richie Sexson came up with an idea to have some fun and to make a little extra money for Pete. The idea was to see how much Pete, all 107 pounds of him, could bench press. Players bought numbers in a blind draw and whoever got the figure Pete lifted would split the pot with him.

Putz drew the number 85, figuring he had a good shot at winning because he had seen Pete struggle to lift 75 pounds the day before the official lift. On the day of the competition, all the players gathered in the weightroom to cheer on Pete. Eighty-five was the exact weight he hoisted. He didn’t want it known how much money he pocketed, but Putz said it was several hundred dollars.

“I was hoping I would get to 100 pounds,” Pete said. “I went in cold. If I’d trained, I probably could have done more.”

Putz was happy, saying he would buy dinner for Pete.

Pete seemed happy to bring some diversion to the monotony of spring training.

He’s a good-natured guy. Takes his share of ribbing. And can give as well as he takes.

Ask his fellow workers for “Pete stories,” and they say “there’s nothing that you can print.”

Then they come up with some.

There was the time former Mariner pitcher Milt Wilcox stuffed Pete into a clothes dryer. “I always fight ‘em,” Pete said. Trouble is, the players always outweigh him by 100 pounds or so.

Fortunately,Wilcox didn’t turn the dryer on.

Another time pitcher Mike Moore taped Pete to a situp board and hung it over the whirlpool in the clubhouse on a trip to Minnesota. Moore knew that Pete was terrified of water. “My face was about that far from the whirlpool,” Pete said, holding his fingers about an inch apart.

This was payback. Pete had charged about $20 worth of food to Moore, forging his name to the bill.

On another road trip, Moore and fellow pitcher Mark Langston took Pete to a Water World and coaxed him onto a slide. Pete ended up in about 5 feet of water, panicked to the point that lifeguards had to rescue him.

That wasn’t the end of his miseries.

It was a horribly hot day, with the temperature around 110, and so Pete lay down beside the pool – and got a scorching sunburn.

Yet for all the agony they caused him, he considered Moore and Langston good friends.

It would take an unusual person not to like Pete Fortune.

Deion Sanders liked him. So did Don Mattingly. Pete got to know both men when he was with the Yankees.

“Mattingly was a total class act,” he said.

Pete would make CDs for Sanders, even after the multi-talented athlete moved on to the NFL. Then Sanders would repay him with Nike outfits. “He was really good to the clubhouse guys.”

As Pete did his work during an interview one morning early this month, fellow clubhouse chums came through, making wisecracks that bespoke of their fondness for the little guy.

“Did Pete tell you our favorite saying for him?” said Billy Sepich. “That’s OK, Pete. We got it.”

His co-workers have been known to pull pranks on him.

Pete lives a very regimented life. He likes order, routine.

“They call me Rainman,” he said. “I like doing things at a certain time. I do like things scheduled.”

Knowing this, Rob Reagle – the guy who lockers next to him – every day for a year moved the chair in front of Pete’s locker to another place in the room. Pete would come in the next morning, simmering because his chair wasn’t in its proper place. He thought the night cleanup crew had moved it.

“I’d get mad every day,” Pete said.

He laughs about it now.

And the M’s laugh with him.

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