By Larry LaRue
The News Tribune
PEORIA, Ariz. – When photographers raced across the practice fields Thursday, it was easy to assume they were chasing the usual suspect – Ichiro Suzuki.
It wasn’t Suzuki, however, but a dreadlocked Mark McLemore, walking through a sea of appreciative fans, cracking wise and doing what he does as well as any Seattle Mariner.
Having fun.
“I enjoy spring training, I enjoy the fans down here,” McLemore said. “I’ve been to enough of these now that I know when to work hard and when to have fun. What’s it take to spend 60 seconds talking to somebody, teasing someone in the stands, making somebody laugh?”
At 37, McLemore’s career has been reanimated by a marvelous 2001 season, by a year few people outside his immediate family thought he was capable of.
A veteran of 13 big-league seasons, McLemore last year played six positions for Seattle, batted .286 and stole a career-high 39 bases, helping lead the team to a record-setting season.
And it almost didn’t happen.
On Thursday, McLemore was happy to spend a few minutes clowning for the fans and the cameras – taking batting practice in those crazed dreadlocks, hamming it up.
A year ago, there was a morning when he decided to drive to the airport instead of the Mariners complex. McLemore was going home. He’d had enough.
“I didn’t see myself as a bench guy, and going into a free agent year, I knew how the game was played – if I couldn’t play for the Mariners, what kind of offers was I going to get when the season was over?” McLemore said.
Seattle had signed free agent Bret Boone, installed David Bell at third base and had veterans Stan Javier and Al Martin in left field. McLemore was odd man out, and one morning last spring it just didn’t seem fun, anymore.
“I was on my way to the airport and I called my wife,” McLemore said. “She told me, ‘You’re not finished with baseball. It’s not out of your system, yet.’ “
It was, McLemore said, a life-altering conversation.
“Emotional? Yes,” he said. “I knew I could still produce, still help a team win – not just one game but over a season. Then I proved it.”
When Mariners players last year were asked to pick a team MVP, they wrestled with the obvious choices of Ichiro and Boone. But a good many of them named McLemore on their ballot.
“Anything that had to be done, Mark did,” manager Lou Piniella said. “He played third base, shortstop, everywhere in the outfield, second base – and everywhere he played, he hit.”
Shortly after that conversation with his wife, McLemore had another with Piniella, and the two men made each other a promise.
“Lou told me if I hit, I’d play,” McLemore said. “I told him I’d hit. We both kept our word.”
As for Capri, McLemore’s wife of a dozen years, McLemore smiles when asked about her.
“We met in Chicago in 1988 and got married in 1989,” he said. “Three kids and 12 years and numerous other things later, we’re still together.”
Someone asked if, since she talked him out of giving up the game, she got most of his new two-year contract. McLemore laughed.
“She always got all my earnings,” he said.
What Capri and Mark McLemore knew last spring – that he had more to offer the game – McLemore bore out. He doesn’t think much has changed since then.
“I had to prove I could play at age 36, now I’m going to have to prove I can play at 37,” he said. “Next year, I’ll prove I can play at 38. It never ends.
“There are people who think Edgar (Martinez) isn’t going to hit .300-plus this year because of his age, or that Jamie (Moyer) won’t win 15 games. I won’t be playing at age 43, like Rickey Henderson, but I can tell you this – no one else is going to know before I do when I’m done.”
McLemore has read that he is in decline now for close to a decade.
“We’re all dying, does that mean we should stop living?” he asked. “No one knows when it will happen, and no one can tell a Nolan Ryan he shouldn’t still be pitching when he’s 40.
“Last year was the best season of my career, all those wins, the fans, the post-season.”
Now, McLemore and the team want to follow it up with something as special. Not everyone believes they can.
“In this game, everyone has to prove something every year,” he said. “You take that as a challenge, you’re fine. You want me to prove I can still play? Here I come. You think this team was a fluke last year?
“Here we come.”
Dreadlocks and all.
Second doctor tells Heaverlo he needs surgery: Jeff Heaverlo was back in camp Thursday, having received a second opinion that shadowed the first – he’ll need season-ending shoulder surgery to repair fraying in the labrum.
“The thing I love to do more than anything in the world – pitching – is being taken away from me, and that’s tough,” Heaverlo said. “But I won’t say it’s a setback, because that’s negative. It’s an obstacle.”
Heaverlo, 24, will spend the summer rehabilitating his shoulder in Peoria.
“I just extended the lease on my apartment from the two months of spring training to 14 months,” he said. “When the team comes back next spring, I’ll be here. And I’ll be ready to pitch.”
Highlight video: Before the workout, the whole team gathered around television sets in the clubhouse to watch the highlight video of the 2001 season – dropping comments after each moment. When John Olerud was shown hitting for the cycle against San Diego, catcher Ben Davis was the man behind the plate for the Padres. “I put down the right fingers that day,” Davis said, shaking his head. Olerud had a single, double, triple and home run – all on pitches Davis called.
Travel plans altered: The events of Sept. 11 carried over into the off-season for a number of players, those who’d planned to visit Europe but changed their minds. John Halama had planned a European honeymoon but decided against it.
“We talked it over and it just didn’t seem comfortable,” Halama said.
Similarly, Mark McLemore and his wife wanted to visit Spain. “It just wasn’t the time to go,” McLemore said. “I’m not sure there will ever be a time to go, now.”
When McLemore took off his dreadlocked baseball cap during batting practice, he offered it to John Olerud, who studied the thing as if it might be alive. “Don’t think so,” Olerud said.
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