On Center Stage in Center : New Angel Junior Felix Can’t Escape Comparisons to Devon White

Junior Felix was 18 when a man from his village in the Dominican Republic offered to take him to Santo Domingo, on the other side of the island. There, at the Toronto Blue Jays’ baseball complex, Felix was signed by Epy Guerrero, the team’s coordinator of Latin American scouting.

It was the familiar beginning of a happy story: A young man making a better life for his family by going north to play baseball. But the wealth was not immediate for Felix, who said his signing bonus, $3,000, was stolen by the man who took him to Santo Domingo.

“I told him to hold my money,” Felix said. “You can’t be keeping money in your pocket. I told him to hold it till I give it to my mother. I never get it back.”

Nor did he ever do anything about it.

“Nothing,” Felix said. “What for? You call the police, they don’t do nothing over there. What you going to do, you going to kill him?”

Felix, blessed with speed and natural ability, had his contract. He figured the money would come.

“I have it all,” Felix said. “I don’t need no money. Just let it go. But I told him, if I ever see him and I’m out of baseball after two years, I will go for him.”

Felix made it to the major leagues after 2 1/2 seasons in the minors, which was good news for the self-appointed agent of Laguna Sabada, Felix’s home town.

Felix used to play baseball mostly on Sundays. “Just in the street,” he said. Now his town of about 3,000 is missing one of its best players. The switch-hitting Felix, 23, is playing center field for the Angels almost every day.

He was acquired with second baseman Luis Sojo from the Blue Jays in exchange for reliever Willie Fraser and Devon White, the center fielder whose unrealized talent exasperated the Angels.

Now, a somewhat exasperating development is that White is thriving in Toronto, hitting .298 with a triple and 11 doubles.

Sojo is playing excellent defense, though batting only .227, and Felix, who batted .263 and hit 15 home runs with the Blue Jays in his second season in the majors, has handled the defensive assignment but struggled more at the plate as an Angel.

Before raising his average to .209 by going three for four Wednesday night in only his second multi-hit game of the season, Felix had been batting .183.

“It’s not me. I all the time try to do my job, but I’m really struggling right now,” Felix said. “It is important to me to step out of the hole and do my job, that’s it.”

The comparison of his and White’s statistics is unavoidable--to everyone but Felix.

“I don’t care about him; I just care about me,” Felix said. “Everybody just have to care about doing their job, don’t pay attention to someone else’s. I don’t care who was here before. Only the present, now.”

After losing the first $3,000 he made in baseball, Felix continued to endure lean times. He spent his first season in baseball in Medicine Hat, Canada, with the Blue Jays’ rookie league team.

“The money they give you just pays for rent and for food,” Felix said. “So I take back $15. So that’s what I pay from the airport to get home, $15.

“My second year, I have like $50.”

His third year, he didn’t last the season, suspended in July for insubordination in one of the incidents that labeled him as a player with an attitude problem in an organization where such charges have been frequent.

Felix, who played for double-A Knoxville, Tenn., in 1988, said he was suspended after one of several run-ins with management, the last for being late in rejoining the team after a trip, even though he said he called.

“I don’t know, they (were upset),” he said. “They said, ‘Oh, you want to do whatever you want?’ I say, no. I just called and said I’d be late.”

Felix was sent home for the rest of the season.

“They were laughing,” he said. “I told them, you can laugh now, but I will come back. But not in the same league.”

The next year, after a strong spring, he was assigned to triple-A Syracuse, N.Y., and 21 games later, he was promoted to the big leagues. He stuck the rest of the season, hitting .258 with nine home runs and 18 stolen bases.

In his first major league at-bat, he homered on the first pitch from his future teammate, Kirk McCaskill, becoming only the 11th player to hit a homer on his first pitch in the majors.

In a three-game series against the Boston Red Sox that June, he went eight for 16 with two home runs and 11 runs batted in. For the month, he led the major leagues with 26 RBIs.

That kind of production was part of his appeal to the Angels. Here was a player with the speed to play center field, plus evidence of ability to hit for power and steal bases.

“Felix probably has the God-given ability to hit third,” Angel Manager Doug Rader said when Felix was acquired. “His speed and power are the classical qualities for him to hit third.”

Dan O’Brien, senior vice president for baseball operations, said his research during contract negotiations indicated that Felix was among the top outfielders with fewer than two years of major league service.

“I have to tell you, he came out at or near the top of his class for outfielders. That’s really impressive for a young man who hadn’t played any more than that,” O’Brien said. “I think if Junior Felix does what he has done for the last two years or so--if he hits .260, .265, .270--and continues to learn and advance as a center fielder, I think we’re going to be fine.”

Rader remains convinced of Felix’s talent. “He’s got tremendous abilities,” he said. “He’s got to make some changes that are difficult to make. The changes he has to make are the ones every other player has had to make who has ever played this game.”

Felix said he had been battling flu recently, and he knows he will “step out of the hole” soon.

In the meantime, after a slow start, baseball has been good to him. During his season in Myrtle Beach, S.C., with the Blue Jays’ Class-A team, he met Paula Treadway, whom he married last October.

“I got a new house in Santo Domingo--five bedrooms, five bathrooms, every room with a balcony,” Felix said. “A swimming pool, a gym, basketball.”

And every once in a while, he sees the man who gave him his start in baseball--a ride to Santo Domingo for a 100% commission.

“Whenever I see him,” Felix said, “I only laugh.”