Maddux: Baseball in P.R. a hybrid

Tuesday, April 22, 2003 | 9:33 a.m.

Reached in his San Juan hotel room one morning last week, Greg Maddux said beisbol in Hiram Bithorn Stadium in April is intriguing.

"It's almost between a minor league stadium and a big league stadium, or a really nice big league stadium," Maddux said. "It has a lot more of a Cashman Field flavor to it than Dodger Stadium. And Puerto Rico is kind of like Florida, or Hawaii.

"It's good, a new experience. We've been going to Montreal for years, so it's nice to go to someplace different."

During the Expos' first stretch in their transplanted home field, the bright green artificial turf hit 136 degrees for one steamy game. The metal bleacher seats couldn't have been very comfortable that day, and white plastic lawn chairs served as field-level box seats.

A roving five-piece pleneros band entertained the crowd, and the players ... and Maddux.

"Just the way the fans act, it's different than they do in the States," he said. "They're a bit louder. They they play. They have a good time.

"They appear to have a better time than people in the States, in a good way."

Once the Braves headed south, Maddux responded in a good way.

In Miami two Sundays ago, he was 0-3 for the first time in his career and Marlins marketing personnel trumpeted the Las Vegas resident's start with newspaper ads inviting locals to come out and see batting practice against Maddux and the Braves.

Didn't work. Maddux yielded two hits in six innings of a 7-1 victory for Atlanta.

He gave up eight hits and three runs in less than six innings Friday of a game that the Braves eventually came back and took from Philadelphia.

That he still shaved his earned-run average from 8.27 to 7.52 showed how much he got tagged in those first three starts.

"I was just terrible," Maddux said. "My location was bad and my mechanics were messed up. Hopefully, I'm fixing them. When my mechanics get more consistent, my control should be more consistent."

Maddux, who celebrated his 37th birthday a day after beating the Marlins, adamantly denied a report in which he allegedly told a New York reporter that he has lost speed in his fastball and stamina.

"I didn't tell 'em that, maybe it's just New York," he said. "I never said that."

In February, Maddux was very confident about Atlanta's new-look staff. The Braves lost Kevin Millwood and Tom Glavine in the offseason, adding Mike Hampton and Paul Byrd.

Byrd is out indefinitely after having a bone spur removed from his throwing elbow, while Hampton, shelved with a calf injury, started for the first time Saturday and lost to Philadelphia.

For insurance, the Braves picked up veteran hurler Shane Reynolds, who gave up only two hits to the Phillies over 7 1/3 innings of a victory Sunday. Not bad for $300,000.

Atlanta starters are 4-8 with a 5.20 ERA. For now, Maddux has only one person to worry about.

"I got into a bad habit or two, and I'm trying to correct them," he said. "My head and hands, they were off. I'm working on it, trying to get them where they should be. When I do that, my control should get better and I should have better results."

"We're hitting a combined .250!" Pierzynski proclaimed of his then-batting average of .160 and Hocking's .090.

It sounded like Wayne and Garth, from the Saturday Night Live skit "Wayne's World" that morphed into a movie, straight from Aurora, Ill. That was driven home when one of the first calls they took was from Doug in Minneapolis.

That was Doug Mientkiewicz (pronounced man-KAY-vitch), an infielder for the Twins.

"Don't forget who leads the team in homers!" Mientkiewicz told them.

Asked about Kyle Lohse's solid effort against Detroit the previous night, Pierzynski said it was even better, considering Lohse had been sick.

"It might be SARS," Pierzynski said. "We WERE just in Toronto."

The Canadian city has had a rash of SARS cases recently.

An all-you-can-eat Pizza Hut buffet deal, bad eggs in the South Side of Chicago that have created some ugly scenes in Comiskey Park -- site of this season's All-Star Game -- and two crude references to a male body part were all part of the show.

At worst, they were vulgar and insensitive. At best, they were parochial and goofy, like two young brothers chatting into a tape recorder. Good thing the boys have day jobs.

Anaheim also misses Mike Mussina and David Well, two of the top pinstriped hurlers, in the New York rotation.

Then again, the club that Forbes recently valued at $849 million has a staff full of ace starters. And Andy Pettitte, who beat the Angels twice last season, is scheduled to start at Edison on Thursday.

Fans of the defending World Series champions can take solace in the fact that their team has a better record (9-10) than it did at this point a year ago (6-13).

This is also when, in 2002, the Angels won 33 of their next 42 games. That momentum carried through their Game 7 victory against San Francisco in the World Series.

And with only 25 more titles, the Angels will catch the Bronx Bombers in World Series trophies.

Last season, Sturtze, a 32-year-old native of Worcester, Mass., didn't get his first victory until his 16th start. He finished 4-18 with a 5.18 ERA. He became the first pitcher to lead the American League in losses (18), hits allowed (271), runs (141) and walks (89).

In major-league history, the only other opening-day starter to go through a longer drought before winning his first game was Atlanta's Carl Morton, who didn't get victory No. 1 until his 18th start in 1976.

Sturtze's lifetime record is 24-34, but the Blue Jays obviously saw some promise in him -- they're paying him $1 million this season.

If his rotator cuff caused him so much pain, though, how did he hit .377 with the big club in September? This season, his average sank to .167 after going 0-for-4 on Sunday in Denver. He has hit a home run and driven in six runs, striking out 12 times.

Had Toronto third baseman Eric Hinskie, last year's A.L. rookie of the year, not gone 4-for-5 on Monday to boost his batting average to .243, he would have been the sole occupant of this spot.

Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa ran his hitting streak to 10 games Sunday, before getting tagged in his batting helmet by Salomon Torres of Pittsburgh. Sosa was shaken but not injured. Look for him to capitalize in the mile-high launching pad this weekend.

This is the debut of a weekly feature by sports writer Rob Miech designed to take readers behind the scenes in major-league baseball.