Sep 02 2007 06:31 AM
Because what's September without them?
A Pitcher Refuses to Forget His Crew
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: September 2, 2007
There probably is not a major league groundskeeper who has not thought to himself after seeing a struggling pitcher labor through an inning that he can pitch better than that.
Cincinnati Reds pitcher Tom Shearn may be the only major leaguer who watches the grounds crew pull out the tarp, line the batter’s box, groom the mound or drag the infield and thinks that he does that better than they do.
Shearn, who won the first major league start of his career last Sunday after 11 years in the minors, may be a big-league first: from a grounds crew member to a game-winner.
An outdoors lover who enjoys being around ball fields all year, Shearn has worked since 2000 as a groundskeeper for the Class AAA Round Rock Express in Texas when his season ended. Fields must be tended to when games are not being played, so there is work to be done nearly 12 months a year.
“Shearny knows how to pick up a shovel, so somebody must have raised him right,” Dennis Klein, the Texas Rangers’ grounds director, said Thursday.
While pitching at Class AAA Louisville this season, Shearn lived briefly behind the outfield wall in a camping trailer owned by the Bats groundskeeper Tom Nielsen.
Shearn was known to pick up a rake or a shovel as the field was being worked on the morning of a game.
“Tom had a camper out there and I said, ‘Do you mind if I stay in that, if it’s not being used?’ ” Shearn said. “He said, ‘Go ahead.’ I was only there for 10 days.
“But I had to get out of there so fast last weekend, I didn’t have time to pay him. I still owe Tom some money.”
So goes the life of an aging pitcher who has toiled in pro ball since he was a teenager and, with an infant daughter, was trying to save money.
But the right-handed Shearn no longer fits that career minor leaguer profile. Called up hastily to make a spot start against Florida last Sunday, two days before his 30th birthday, he limited the Marlins to four hits and three runs in seven innings for a 9-3 victory.
The performance earned Shearn another start Friday night in St. Louis; he did not get the decision in an 8-5 loss. After previously pitching in the minors since 1996 without a call-up, that 1-0 is something Shearn said he long wondered if he would ever see after his name.
“I just tried to go out year by year and throw up numbers and get my shot here,” Shearn said. “It’s nice to get up here finally and see what I can do.”
The difference between Shearn and other major leaguers is that he knows how to groom a field as well as play on it.
Shearn and Klein became friends when they were at Round Rock, which was Houston’s Class AA farm club at the time and now is a Class AAA team co-owned by the Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan. Each explained his craft to the other.
Klein showed Shearn the tricks of building a mound and mowing the grass, and Shearn taught Klein how to catch a curveball and a cutter.
“I’d show him a few things and he’d say, ‘So, that’s how mounds are done,’ ” Klein said. “He got to see the other end of the spectrum. All of a sudden, he knew what went on behind the scenes. When we’d talk about how to make the mound slope right, Tom had an understanding of it.”
As Shearn sat out the 2003 season after elbow reconstruction surgery, he helped Klein tend to the field before the two went to the bullpen for throwing sessions.
“I always liked to hang out with the grounds crew,” Shearn said. “I enjoy being outdoors and working on the fields.”
Thanks to Shearn, Klein received a firsthand look at how difficult it is to be a player.
“I’d never played baseball, and I got to see it from his end,” Klein said. “We used to throw the ball around in the outfield, and that turned into me catching him in full pads in the bullpen. He’d throw curveballs and I’d get drilled and cut fastballs that nearly broke my thumb.”
Shearn worked full time on the grounds crew during that injury layoff, although he would not go on the field during games because he often knew the opposing players.
Shearn’s wife, Kelli, still works at Round Rock entering computer data for the stadium video board.
Klein became the first of the two career minor leaguers to receive a major league promotion when he was hired last off-season by Texas. He called Shearn and said, “Now you’ve got to get up here.”
Shearn got his call Aug. 25, and Klein was among the first people to learn the news. The next day, Klein watched the Rangers’ game from the umpires room so he could also monitor Shearn’s major league debut.
If they ever make a movie about Shearn’s story, maybe they will call it “Well-Groomed Field of Dreams.”
“It was definitely worth it, all the years in the minor leagues, all the bus trips and all the early-morning flights,” Shearn said. “If they sent me down again, I’d go down and still have a smile on my face. I’m enjoying coming out early and looking at all the new ballparks and all the places I haven’t been. This is what I worked for my whole life.”
When Shearn is done pitching, Klein says he has another career in baseball.
“I told him, ‘Hey, man, when you’re in my job you can stay in the game until you’re 60,’ ” Klein said.
