This Could Be Hitter’s Last Try for Big Leagues

Infield grass has a brown hue now. Like the game of baseball, it is dormant.

These are dog days for Ted Holcomb, a time when minor league baseball players contemplate their futures.

Released by the Dodgers about four months ago, Holcomb is now the property of the Atlanta Braves, where his skills as a second baseman are soon to be assessed by the club’s AA affiliate in Greenville, S. C.

Greenville could mean the rebirth of a promising career, or it could be the end of the line. By the time March 10 rolls around--that’s the day Holcomb reports to spring training camp in Florida--the dark-haired, 5-foot-10, 170-pound second baseman will have mulled over his chances thousands of times.

The odds against success--”making it to the bigs,” as ball players like Holcomb refer to the major leagues--are stacked against him.

“It’s tough to make it as a released player,” he conceded the other day, seated on an old couch in his modestly furnished Redondo Beach apartment in the hills overlooking the stormy Pacific.

Holcomb’s career is on the line--in game terms, he’s looking down the barrel of a bat with an 0-2 count, trailing by a run with no one on and two out in the bottom of the ninth. But like most contact hitters, he’s hanging in there.

“I think ‘my release’ will be a good omen for me,” he concluded in a surprisingly upbeat tone.

It would be difficult for Holcomb to exist without baseball. As a child he was weaned on games of Whiffle Ball in the streets of Westchester. Later he starred at shortstop at Westchester High School, twice being named to an All-City team.

He turned down a scholarship at USC and instead signed a $50,000 bonus contract with the Dodgers. Basking in all the accolades bestowed on a rising teen-age star, he batted .332 as a rookie.

Three-thousand at-bats later, and after four minor league seasons, he was released by the Dodger organization--and the dreams of glory came crashing down hard. They fell like many of the catchers he often barreled into at home plate because he felt he had to hustle more than other players to be noticed.

A veteran player at only 21, Holcomb has battled boredom and bus rides, injuries and homesickness in his minor league career.

He thought he had mastered the minor league life style. He thought he was better than those who were promoted over him.

He spent his final three seasons at Bakersfield, a Class A farm club. Each year he thought his performance was worthy of advancement. In 1985 he hit .283. A year later he was the team’s most valuable player and a California League all-star.

In 1987, a hamstring injury and a bout with hepatitis cut his season short.

Holcomb was preparing to return to play in the fall when he received a letter from the Dodgers. It said simply that he had been released. For the first time in his life, Holcomb wondered what he would do.

“I was pretty bitter because I’ve seen players around now that I started with the same year. . . . I outhit them by 50 points,” he said. “They’re still around and I’m not just because I had one bad year.”

Holcomb says he’s not sure why he was let go. Maybe it was the leg injury, which sidelined him for nearly two months.

He thinks it’s more likely that it was his friendship with a roommate while he was in training camp a few years ago. The roommate broke “damn near every one” of the training rules at Dodgertown in Vero Beach, Fla.

“I wasn’t like that,” Holcomb said. But he feared that the Dodgers may have thought he was.

A Bakersfield teammate was also infected with hepatitis. Health officials never concluded how the two of them contracted the disease. But Holcomb says he probably got it from a fast-food restaurant on a road trip through Fresno.

Holcomb spent three weeks in bed at his mother’s home in Westchester. He lost 20 pounds during the ordeal. At that point, he said, he felt the Dodgers were questioning his character and the fact that he might not fully recover from the disease.

“They were probably thinking that my off-field activities had caused me to get hepatitis,” he said. “A lot of people catch hepatitis from drinking, but that was not the case.”

Holcomb looks back on all that now and talks about it with a smile.

“After you get released the first thing you wonder is, is it over?” he said. “Then you wonder if anyone is going to pick you up.”

Holcomb did his best to see that other clubs would become interested in him. He frequented an off-season baseball league in Compton, where major league teams sponsor winter games between minor league players living in Southern California. He performed well and drew the attention of both the New York Mets and the Braves. He chose Atlanta because “my chances are a lot better” there.

In high school, Holcomb had many suitors.

“He had it all. He could run, he could throw and he could hit,” recalled Dodger scout Bobby Darwin, the man responsible for signing Holcomb.

“The last couple of years he has had injuries,” Darwin said. “But it’s just a matter of time for him. He’s still got good potential.”

Of Holcomb’s character, Darwin said simply, “He’s a good kid.”

School never meant much to Ted Holcomb. “I wasn’t a very good student in high school,” he said. The classroom was always a distant second to baseball.

“But when I got released it was like, ‘geez, I guess I better start thinking about something else.’ ”

He’s cracking the books now. A $12,000 education bond given to him by the Dodgers as part of his signing is paying his tuition at El Camino College in the off-season.

“I’ve grown up a lot,” he said.

Much of his schooling, however, came on the dusty roads of small towns he passed through on countless minor league road trips.

“You’ve got to be tough--mentally tough--to make it through the minors,” he said.

Life in the minor leagues is a humdrum affair, he said, not much of a picture for the average Little League player to dream about. It is cold meals and three lonely ballplayers stuffed into a sparsely furnished apartment. It’s 10-hour days in blistering sunshine, followed by late games that last past midnight. Holcomb seldom gets to sleep before 3 a.m., even in the off-season.

“It’s a terrible schedule to be on. You try not to be that way, but I don’t know any ballplayers that get up much before noon,” he said.

In his rookie year he got homesick.

“You have to swing your bat in the room at night when you’re sitting in a little town like Butte, Mont. . . . You start to wonder where the hell you are. . . . You just start swinging your bat in the room and think of a baseball situation to keep your mind off of where you are--keep your mind off home.”

Baseball professionals, like Darwin, have been impressed by Holcomb’s ability to play hard.

“Wherever he goes, he’ll hit .280 or .290. He’s a good contact hitter,” he said.

As a high school player, Holcomb “could fly,” said Darwin of his running ability. But in the minor leagues he did not use his speed well. He stole 20 bases once in four seasons.

“That has been the one flaw in my game,” Holcomb said. “I should steal 50 bases a year.”

Holcomb is a slap hitter. But his first hit as a pro was a home run. It became the only one of his career. As he crossed the plate, he fancied a career as a slugger. That never materialized.

Now he’d like to connect with Atlanta. He’s heard good things about his play this winter, but “I’m not going to listen to anything anybody says any more. I don’t want to get my hopes up.”

And if he doesn’t reach the major leagues by the time he is 25, he will quit baseball, he said. At which time he’ll most likely face those dog days all over again.