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Friday, August 15, 1997

Have glove, will travel: motto of a minor league journeyman

By DAVID KING / San Antonio Express-News

SAN ANTONIO - Jay Kirkpatrick doesn't simply carry 236 pounds on his 6-foot-4 frame.

Those 236 pounds have been sculpted onto him by hours of sweaty, artless work. He is the best-conditioned player in the San Antonio Missions' clubhouse.

When Jay Kirkpatrick gets hot at the plate, he is, in his own words, nuclear. He hit .488 in July, including a 12-for-15 stretch, and set a team record with eight RBIs in a game at Tulsa in May.

He's a manager's dream, a player who will do anything asked of him without complaint. He's an organization's dream, playing at any level, taking any assignment.

Kirkpatrick has come a million miles since leaving Tallahassee, Fla., and Methodist College as a 33rd-round draft pick of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1991.

He also is 28 years old and in his seventh season of professional baseball. He is no longer a "prospect," no longer the guy scouts come to evaluate and the parent club watches with interest. He is stuck, the victim of a baseball system that isn't heartless, but simply can't accommodate every young athlete with a goal.

Even a guy whose work ethic leaves teammates shaking their heads in admiration.

Kirkpatrick knows it. He hit .296 in San Antonio in '94, with 40 doubles, 18 homers and 75 RBIs a monster year at Wolff Stadium, where the ball doesn't carry well then spent '95 at Class A San Bernardino.

He helped San Bernardino's young team win a California League championship in '95 and became a part-time player last year. He spent the first part of the season tutoring his replacement, hitting sensation Paul Konerko, in San Antonio before going off to Triple-A Albuquerque to play in 51 games. He has appeared in 47 games for the Missions this season.

Through it all, Kirkpatrick works. And manages a smile.

"If he had a bad attitude, he wouldn't be here, I can assure you of that," said Missions manager Ron Roenicke, who was San Bernardino's manager in '95. "Jay is here because of the kind of person he is. He's just a great example to anybody at any level."

That's not his aim, but that's how he is.

"I don't do it for other guys to look up to," said Kirkpatrick with a drawl that shows his part of Florida is still in the Old South. "I do it for me. If working hard helps the team, that's good. If it's contagious, that's even better.

"But I'm responsible for me, for getting me better. I hate to sound selfish, because it's a team game, but you have to do good yourself to help the team."

He was raised to work hard. In his lifetime, he's bussed tables in restaurants. He's spread asphalt in the summer heat. And he's played baseball. At North Florida Christian High School in Tallahassee. At Division III Methodist College in Fayetteville, N.C. And at every level of the Dodgers' organization.

And now, as a part-time player in Double-A. For a guy on a year-to-year contract, the future is always a question. When you're Jay Kirkpatrick, the questions look bigger.

"It seems like the more you worry about it, the more sleep you lose," Kirkpatrick said. "If they want me to come back and play, I'll play. If some other team picks me up in the winter, if (the Dodgers) pick me up, if they turn me into a coach, if I drive a truck or dig a ditch for the rest of my life, it's just one of those things.

"I think I could be happy and stable no matter what comes along my way."

It's that attitude that has endeared him to the Dodgers and his teammates.

"He always seems to be having fun," Missions teammate Keith Johnson said. "He never shows anger, and I've played with him a couple of years. There's never a dull moment around Jay. He's got an offbeat way of looking at things."

That offbeat approach includes the way he deals with the omnipresent failures of baseball, failures on the field and off.

He'll strike out on the pitcher's best effort of the night, collect himself and head back to the dugout. Halfway there, he'll stop, look the pitcher in the eye, and say "Cheater!"

And even with that relaxed approach, he understands the game, how it can be fickle, how it can mock the best of players and the hardest of workers.

"Throughout my whole career, I've been a hot-and-cold kind of guy," he says. "I'll just be crazy hot, nuclear, for a while and then I'm ice-cold. Just overnight I can fall out of bed and forget how to stand in the box.

"And then if I press to get out of that cold spell, it'll last even longer."

So instead of worrying, he works. If he's not in the lineup, he may throw batting practice or help out in the bullpen (he was drafted as a catcher). He knows all the places to lift weights on the road and often takes willing teammates with him on his morning trips to the gym.

That pied-piper part of his character has him thinking about getting into coaching after his playing career is over.

"I'd like to coach the younger guys, first- or second-year guys " Kirkpatrick said. "Teach 'em to work hard, leave it all on the field every night, do whatever they can to get themselves ready."

But he quickly adds that he doesn't want to stay in the game forever. Not when he's away from his wife, a crime scene investigator with the sheriff's office in Tallahassee, and his two daughters, who are 8 and 11, for seven months a year, with few visits in between.

Still, the game has a hold on him, even if he doesn't always have a hold on it. And he still thinks about the majors, about walking through a big-league clubhouse and seeing years of work pay off.

"When you're hot, you think about it a lot," said Kirkpatrick, coming off the end of the best month of his career. "It doesn't matter who's on the mound, you're going to put wood on the ball. When those days come around, you're a world-beater.

"But, hey, you can wake up the next day and your wife can get you out, jam you, break your bat, make you look like a fool."

He tries not to worry about making it to the majors. Not with a lineup of stars at Dodger Stadium, not with hot prospects throughout the minor-league system, not for a guy who's 28 and playing part-time in Double-A ball.

"The obvious answer is that I'd like to be in the big leagues," he said about his goals for the next few years. "But I'd be happy playing every day somewhere. I don't care if it's A ball, Triple-A. It doesn't matter, as long as I'm playing and getting at-bats, that would be fine with me.

"Have glove, will travel, I reckon."

But no matter where or when it ends, when that glove no longer travels, Kirkpatrick will be happy.

"If I make it, I'm lucky," he said. "I'm the first one to tell you I'm lucky to get this far. Coming out of a Division III school, a nobody - shoot, I was happy to get drafted, happy to get to Triple-A. I've been happy the whole ride.

"If you come out here and you bust your tail every day, then you can look at yourself in the mirror and it doesn't matter if you played one year or 10 years, you can say "I laid it all on the table.'

"If I didn't make it, I didn't make it. That's just the way it goes."

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