CARLTON FISK HAS NOTHING TO HIDE : After Suffering a Dismal Summer of ‘84, the 37-Year-Old White Sox Catcher Is Having a Delightful ’85 and Thinks His Best Years May Still Be Ahead of Him

CHICAGO —  The moment is frozen in the camera of the mind.

It is Oct. 21, 1975, the 12th inning of a memorable sixth game of an equally memorable World Series between the Boston Red Sox and Cincinnati Reds.

Boston catcher Carlton Fisk, leading off the inning with the score tied, 6-6, his team trailing in games, 3-2, the night of the 21st having become the morning of the 22nd, hits a towering fly ball toward the left-field corner at Fenway Park.

Fisk is seen near the batter’s box, arms over head, waving and imploring the ball to stay fair as he bounds up and down.

The ball sails into the dark, misty distance and caroms off the foul pole for a game-winning home run.

The exultant Fisk, eyes still fixed on the corner, arms still raised overhead, side steps up the base line, his feet more often off the ground than on. The Red Sox are still alive for a climactic seventh game.

Now, almost 10 years later, at an age when most catchers have moved to a less demanding position or even to a full-time position in front of the television, Carlton Fisk again has reason to be exultant.

Now, at 37, having already achieved a career-high in homers, Fisk is bidding to become the first catcher ever to lead the American League in them.

For Fisk, a man of pride and ego, the satisfaction goes beyond the statistics. This is not a fluke development in the twilight of a distinguished career. This is a tribute to tenacity and dedication in the wake of a painful summer that had Fisk thinking he might be through.

Now, about to become a free agent for a second time, Fisk is thinking that his best years may still be ahead of him.

He is a 10-time all-star and a 15-year veteran who said: “In a lot of ways, this could be the most rewarding year I’ve ever had.”

He is measuring it, of course, against the unhappy memory of last year, which was easily his most difficult and frustrating.

“It’s rewarding to work as hard as I did to prepare myself and to be able to see the fruits of that work,” Fisk said, sitting at his locker in the Chicago clubhouse at Comiskey Park.

“The fact that it’s happened at the age I’m at, that it’s happened at this stage of my career and following the type injury I had . . . all of that contributes to the reward.”

A career .278 hitter who will emerge from the 1985 season in 12th place on the list of games caught, Fisk had appeared in 138 games with a .289 average, 26 homers and 86 RBIs as the White Sox won the title in the West in 1983.

On the first day of the 1984 season, however, he suffered a mysterious abdominal injury and ultimately appeared in only 102 games, catching 86. He hit 21 homers, but drove in only 43 runs and batted .231, a career low.

Hopeful now of signing a three-year contract, Fisk said, “Another year like last year and I’d be calling it quits now. I really thought it was the beginning of the end.”

If he thought it, though, he didn’t accept it.

“If someone had told me at the end of last season that I’d hit as many home runs as I have and catch as many games as I have, I’d have called them crazy and said it to their face,” he said. “But I also knew that I’d do everything in my power to get ready to play, and I did.”

Fisk was born in Vermont and grew up in New Hampshire. He has always adhered to a New England work ethic. He is precise, disciplined, unmindful of the clock--on or off the field. A Yankee in mind, spirit and outspoken convictions but never, heaven forbid, in uniform.

Work? Yes. Fisk had always accepted work and conditioning as his means of surviving as a catcher, a position he once described as the “Dorian Gray position” in that you can look young on the outside while turning to dust on the inside.

Dorian Gray didn’t just get a face lift last summer, he got a complete overhaul. Fisk’s work ethic took on new meaning and intensity. Phil Claussen, a Chicago-area chiropractor and trusted friend, devised a training regimen that put Fisk in the gym more often than Jack LaLanne. Free weights replaced Nautilus. Salads, fish, chicken and pasta replaced salt, fats and red meats. No more dipping or chewing tobacco, Claussen said.

“Grim,” Fisk said in reflection.

At an age when most athletes are fearful of adding weight, the 6-2 Fisk went from 202 pounds in October to 230 in January. He is still, and forevermore, Pudge, a nickname coined by his father when Fisk was a hulking youngster.

The regimen started in mid-October for two hours a day, four days a week. It graduated to four and five hours a day, often seven days a week. He skipped Christmas, but not Thanksgiving.

Said White Sox Manager Tony LaRussa: “There were times that he’d call me from the gym during the winter to say he’d been working out all day and was so tired he didn’t know if he could make it home.

“He’s a tough man--physically and mentally.”

Said Fisk: “You can’t conceive of what I went through. There were times I was so tired that it was comparable to being brain dead.”

The first task was to identify the injury that had resisted repeated attempts at diagnosis. Fisk was tested for tumors, cancer, kidney stones, “just about everything short of pregnancy.”

Claussen ultimately decided that it was a strain of the external oblique stomach muscle. Much of the training regimen was designed to strengthen the abdominal area. Fisk, however, was still experiencing discomfort in January.

“I still didn’t know if it would heal enough to allow me to to play,” he said. “But I didn’t let it prevent me from preparing to play.”

The injury faded as mysteriously as it had arrived--silenced, Fisk believes, by the battery of bench presses and squats, the relentless pumping of 300 pounds and more, the program he has maintained through the season.

There are not many American League stadiums at which Fisk does not know the custodial and security help by their first names. He is often still in the clubhouse weight room three hours after the last pitch. He is often still in uniform when David Letterman has finished his monologue. He has turned the garage of his suburban Lockport home into a gym just in case the White Sox decided to charge him for keeping the lights burning in the clubhouse.

Said LaRussa: “I have to think the man was stung by what happened last year and felt he had something to prove. There’s a lot of pride to Carlton Fisk.”

Fisk agreed.

“I do have a lot of pride,” he said. “I probably have a big ego. I don’t accept any less from myself just because I’m older. I can’t tolerate mediocrity. I felt I could still play at a major league level and was determined to prove it.

“The coaches and managers here asked me at the end of last year how many games I thought I’d catch this year and I said 130.

“They said, how are you going to catch 130 when you didn’t even catch 90 this year.

“I told them I’d do anything it takes. I told them I’d be ready. I’m sure they didn’t expect me to be as much a part of it as I have. Maybe I’ve even thrown a monkey wrench into their future plans. Maybe I’ve thrown a monkey wrench into my own.”

Fisk has already caught more games than any 37-year-old catcher previously, although he will not catch as many as the Angels’ Bob Boone, who is also 37.

Fisk has appeared in 139 games, a number he exceeded only three times in his previous 13 full seasons. He has caught 115. Boone, who set a record last year by catching 137 games at 36, has already caught 134 at 37 and is expected to catch the Angels last 13 regular-season games as well.

Only two other catchers in baseball history caught 100 or more games at 37. The Yankees’ Elston Howard caught 100 in 1966. The White Sox’s Sherm Lollar caught 107 in 1961.

A battered Johnny Bench, who may have been the best ever, was only 32 when he shed a mask for the last time. Yogi Berra caught only a total of 100 games after he was 32.

Weightlifting has supplied Fisk with new stamina just as a martial arts conditioning program has given Boone the physical endurance and mental discipline to continue averaging more than 140 games a season with the Angels.

“Carlton Fisk is a pretty good catcher who’s conscientious about training,” Boone said. “If you put the kind of numbers on the board that he has, you’re going to be in there (the lineup) a lot.”

Fisk’s numbers include 21 doubles, 97 RBIs and 35 home runs, nine more than his career high. He now has 265 homers and ranks third on the all-time catchers’ list, behind Bench with 389 and Berra with 313. Of this year’s 35, 31 have been hit while in the lineup as a catcher, one shy of Lance Parrish’s league record, set in 1982. He is also one home run behind Darrell Evans in the battle for this year’s home run title.

Bench is the only catcher to have led the National League in homers, having done it at 22 and 24, while still physically sound.

“I never considered the possibility of winning a home run title,” Fisk said. “A catcher generally doesn’t play enough games to compete and because he’s generally bruised, beat up and beaten down by this time of the year.”

The restyled Fisk is none of those now, but he knows the feeling. He’s come back from three injuries that cost him a half season or more. He lost 34 pounds while catching 154 games, one shy of the American League record, in 1978. He remembers how Boston owner Haywood Sullivan, a former catcher, expressed doubt about Fisk’s ability to continue catching and maintain his productivity, a factor in the Red Sox’s decision to let Fisk, then 32, become a free agent after the 1980 season.

The doubters and cynics have intensified Fisk’s desire to do something a catcher has never done, though he has done plenty already. His 35 home runs are already nearly double the previous best total for a 37-year-old catcher.

Ernie Lombardi of the New York Giants was 37 when he hit 19 in 1945. Walker Cooper of the Boston Braves was 36 when he hit 18 in 1951. Berra was 36 when he hit 22 in 1961, but he caught in only 15 of his 119 games that year.

Berra, of course, mixed metaphors instead of pumping iron, which was also foreign to Lombardi and Cooper. Fisk, however, doesn’t attribute the 35 homers to his new strength. He tends to believe it’s more the result of continued refinements in a relatively new batting stroke that he learned from the late Charlie Lau, the White Sox batting coach when Fisk came from Boston.

Fisk had always chopped down on the ball, but Lau elevated his arc and asked for greater arm extension.

“I may not have to hit the ball on the head to drive it out anymore,” Fisk said. “But strength doesn’t contribute to home runs as much as good swings do. It may be a combination of good swings and good strength.”

Now, with two weeks left in his pursuit of the home run title, there are those who suggest Fisk has become too wrapped up in it. Gene Mauch watched Fisk go hitless in 11 at-bats against the Angels in Chicago last week and said:

“As good a hitter as he is, I’d prefer to see him hit .270 with 20 home runs. I’d prefer to see him put the ball in play more often. Right now it looks like he’s playing home run or no count, but then that seems to be the new thing. Hit 30 homers and drive in 90 runs. It sells.”

Fisk flied out five times against the Angels. He has hit only three homers since Aug. 14, and his average has fallen to .239, almost 40 points below his lifetime mark.

“Carlton takes pride in his career batting average and is probably more concerned about it than we are,” LaRussa said. “The key statistic to me is his 96 RBIs. He’s done what a guy who hits in the middle of the lineup should do.”

Fisk doesn’t seem sure. He has expressed a willingness to trade some of his homers for some singles. Asked about the average in relation to home runs, Fisk shrugged and said: “Why talk about the would haves and should haves? I can’t change it either way. It’s not even worth commenting on.”

Seldom does Carlton Fisk refrain from comment. He is a New England Yankee who speaks his mind and moves at his own pace, ignoring critics who contend that his precise style slows the game’s tempo to the detriment of pitchers who are equally hurt by his demand for precise location, ultimately translating into longer counts, which ultimately benefits the hitter.

Said Chicago pitching coach Dave Duncan: “I think Carlton approaches the game without concern for time. His concern is to do what’s best for the team, and if that’s slowing the game down or slowing the pitcher down, that’s what he’s going to do.”

Say what you will, because Fisk is certain to as well. He is willing to lead, willing to say and do what he believes is necessary--for the team and for himself.

He was a mere Boston rookie, for example, when he criticized Carl Yastrzemski and Reggie Smith for lack of leadership. He argued with, then threw a batting helmet at, former Boston manager Darrell Johnson for questioning his pitch selection. He had a heated and running feud with the late Thurman Munson as to which of them was the American League’s best catcher. He threatened to tear down the door to Haywood Sullivan’s office, accusing the Boston owner of reneging on a negotiation promise.

He argued with LaRussa when he thought the Chicago manager was being too critical of the offense early in 1983, and he argued with the manager again last year when rookie catcher Joel Skinner was employed at a time Fisk thought he was healthy enough to catch.

He ripped the front office when LaMarr Hoyt was traded to San Diego last winter for Ozzie Guillen, Luis Salazar and Tim Lollar, and he ripped LaRussa when Guillen was handed the shortstop’s job last spring over his friend, Scott Fletcher.

Fisk has since apologized for that one, but LaRussa has said that he wished Fisk would stay out of the area of talent evaluation.

“I’ve never been afraid to speak my mind,” Fisk said. “I believe it, I say it.”

Said LaRussa: “I accept Carlton for the way he is. He speaks his mind, which means sometimes I have to speak mine. We’ve always gone in the same direction, though sometimes we disagree as to how that should be done.”

Chicago’s new direction is expected to affect Fisk in two ways:

--There will be a sincere attempt to satisfy his interest in a three-year contract. The White Sox are already in the market for a proven hitter, they don’t want to be in the market for two.

Asked about Fisk, General Manager Roland Hemond was unusually effusive, considering they will soon begin negotiations. He said that the catcher’s 1985 statistics were remarkable, amazing. “People have to start thinking of Fisk in terms of the Hall of Fame,” he said.

--If re-signed, Fisk will probably be asked to move to a new position, probably left field. Ron Kittle would be the designated hitter, with Skinner becoming the catcher. There are also still rumors that Chicago will trade Tom Seaver to New York for catcher Ron Hassey. The loss of Seaver’s salary would make it easier to compensate Fisk.

A new position?

“I still believe that I’m as effective a catcher as there is in the league,” Fisk said. “Would you take one of the league’s most effective catchers and put him in left field? What do you do then with the catching position, which is one of the most important?

“I came here at 32 and people said, you can’t sign a 32-year-old catcher because no one can catch effectively at that age. Now there seems to be the same question, but now they should know better.”

Among the things Fisk knows is that he will be using the same training regimen as last winter.

“The difference is that I’m that much stronger,” he said. “I’ll be starting from a higher rung on the ladder. Next year, conceivably, I’ll be even better than this year. Who’s to say how many more years I can play? Maybe I’ll even play eight more. Maybe 10.”

The moment is still frozen in the camera of Carlton Fisk’s mind as well. The home run in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series, he says, is his most memorable, the highlight of his career.

“The hardest thing to come to grips with is that it has been 10 years,” he said. “Sometimes it feels like it hasn’t been nearly that long. Sometimes it seems like it didn’t even happen to me, that it wasn’t me. I guess in some ways I’m not that same person.”

His performance has illustrated that he is not even the same person he was a year ago.