Columnist Dean Juipe: Hard road led Cordova to Indians

Dean Juipe

Monday, May 21, 2001 | 10:05 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

I'm a little vague on the exact date, but it was shortly after the Gold Coast opened and almost certainly in the spring of 1989.

I walked in and approached the bar on the east side of the building, near the lounge, and there sat Marty Cordova.

There were a couple of open seats next to him, so I took one and happily struck up a conversation.

Cordova was receptive, in part because he seemed to have nothing better to do and in part because I had done a full-length feature on him two years earlier during his senior season at Bishop Gorman High School. We had an interesting talk and a solid rapport.

But he was down in the dumps to some extent that particular evening, which reflected the fact that he was a young man with major-league talent who was inexplicably out of baseball. His transfer from a junior college in California to UNLV had backfired when he failed to see eye to eye with then-Rebel coach Fred Dallimore, and Cordova was "voluntarily exiled."

I remember wishing him well, not knowing whether he would become something of a tragic figure in terms of unrealized potential in sports, or whether he would get himself and his career righted and attract a professional suitor.

As it turns out, Cordova would have no shortage of emotional (and physical) ups and downs in the ensuing years. He did attract that suitor, the Minnesota Twins, and in 1995 was the American League's rookie of the year. But he also was enveloped by injuries throughout 1997 and '98 and plagued by a chronically sore rotator cuff that limited his capacity as an outfielder.

From baseball's perspective, he was billed as a quick flame out whose injuries were going to curtail his career. The Twins let him leave as a free agent in '99, and brief stints in Boston and Toronto followed.

When Cordova was signed by the Cleveland Indians before the current season, the transaction passed with little notice even in Las Vegas. To some, he was on the skids and his zigzagging career had become inconsequential.

But lately you may have noticed a startling string of developments pertaining to Cordova. He's not just occupying a spot on the Indians' roster, he's within a few at-bats of being among the league's leading hitters and is looking like the comeback player of the year.

A .245 hitter last season, Cordova is currently batting .377 with eight home runs and has given Cleveland's powerful lineup a boost by spraying line drives around the field from his seventh spot in the order. While his 22-game hitting streak came to an end Saturday in Anaheim, Cordova looks -- with a stance he opened to quicken his bat speed -- as if he not only belongs but may continue to excel in the major leagues.

At almost 32, he has come off his professional deathbed.

I'm tempted to call him, of course, and maybe I will later in the season. But, given the recent stories written about him by the writers who cover the Indians, he's trying to keep a low profile and is almost afraid to say anything that may jinx the nice run he's on.

So we won't put him on the spot.

But he's a battler and his perseverance deserves recognition, and not just from his old drinking buddies.