The Baby Dodgers’ Longshot Journey

T. J. Hilliker looks discouraged. The young catcher trudges back to the batting cage, his head hanging. At 6-foot-3 and 235 pounds, he is built like a jumbo jet, but right now his muscular 19-year-old body is in a funk. Playing here in Montana for the Great Falls Dodgers in his first season of professional baseball, Hilliker has been mired in a monthlong slump. As the team’s back-up catcher, he sees only occasional duty. His average has nose-dived to an anemic .096, and his towering fly balls are landing far short of Legion Park’s 18-foot-high fence. * As Hilliker takes his cuts, teammates critique his progress with hard-boiled ballpark humor. “It ain’t coming near the wall,” one hollers. “Easy out,” hoots another. Hilliker takes a big swing at the next pitch, the ball hooking foul, well short of the wall. “Hit the weight room, meat,” still another jeers. * Signed by the Dodgers out of Kennedy High School in Orange County, Hilliker is what they call a raw prospect--a wrestler and football star in high school who played only an occasional game of baseball. He’s only here because a Dodger scout saw him mashing home runs in a park league and thought he might be worth a gamble. As a catcher, Hilliker resembles a young Mike Piazza, but more for his head-banger personality than his hitting skills. A hard-rock fan, Hilliker has his Stevie Ray Vaughn and Van Halen tapes blaring over Legion Park’s P.A. system during batting practice. His massive biceps are decorated with broad, dark stripes that he says are Irish tribal-band tattoos--”Peace and harmony” on the left arm, “War and separation” on the right. Hilliker is of Irish descent, but the tattoos aren’t from a family album--he saw Mel Gibson wearing similar markings in “Braveheart.” * This first season of organized ball has been something of a warrior’s trial. “I’m supposed to be the big home run hitter, but so far, I pretty much suck,” he says glumly as he prepares for another night in the bullpen. “I just sit on the bench getting more depressed. I’ve had a lot of nights where I’ve gone home after a game thinking, ‘I’m outta here.’ It’s not working out. For a while, I was opening people’s eyes. Now I’m shutting them.” * Still, this young catcher isn’t quite ready to give up. The lure of baseball stardom has cast its spell. * For Hilliker and his teammates, most of whom earn $850 a month, Legion Park is more than just a rickety old ball yard, so weatherworn that a carpenter makes the rounds before game-time, nailing down warped planks of wood in the stands. It’s a field of dreams, the first stop on a longshot journey that could take them all the way to the beautifully manicured oasis known as Dodger Stadium. * This is Rookie League baseball, where players light citronella candles in the dugout to keep the mosquitoes away; where the outfield fence is plastered with ads for Prime Cut Restaurant and Bumper to Bumper Auto Parts; where, on Elvis Night, everyone dressed as The King gets in for free.

Here in Great Falls, you see professional baseball at its most humble beginning. It’s the bottom rung of the minor leagues, light years away from the glamour and seven-figure salaries of Chavez Ravine.

Eric Karros, the Dodgers’ first baseman, played here in 1988. Right fielder Raul Mondesi began his career here in 1990, center fielder Roger Cedeno in 1992. But they’re the rare exceptions. Of the 30 or so players on the Great Falls roster, only a handful will make it past the Dodgers’ Class A minor-league club in San Bernardino. Fewer still will graduate to Double A (San Antonio) or Triple A (Albuquerque). At best, one or two might make it all the way to the majors.

“I tell them there’s a pot of gold out there waiting for them, if they’re willing to work for it,” says Mickey Hatcher, the former Dodgers utility player and fan favorite, now in his second year as the Great Falls manager. “The guys that do it are the 1% that make it.”

In Little League, you dream the all-American boyhood fantasy--baseball stardom. In Rookie League, you still have the dream, but you see for the first time how much work it really takes. These players bear little resemblance to the polished stars celebrated on ESPN and the Fox Network. They’re Baby Dodgers, most just out of high school, away from home for the first time, taking ground balls till they drop while surviving on the road on $15 meal money a day.

“Isn’t it weird?” Hilliker muses, before taking another turn in the cage. “That’s what it’s all about--hitting a ball with a little stick. You hit it well enough, you can be a millionaire. It’s about what you can do with that little stick.”

*

For the fan, the spirit of the rookie league is far different: it has an intimacy that the most lavish major-league sky box can’t possibly supply. (“We have some cars parked in Kentucky Fried Chicken that have to be moved,” the Billings Mustangs’ public-address announcer warns between innings. “If not, you’ll be on the menu tomorrow.”)

Great Falls plays in the northern division of the Pioneer League, an eight-team branch of the Rookie League with a 72-game season that begins in mid-June and ends in early September. The league stretches as far south as Ogden, Utah, as far north as Medicine Hat, Alberta, and into Idaho and Montana. The ballparks are tiny, the players sign autographs, the fans are friendly and vocal. And the price is right: For $5, you can have the best seat in the house.

Great Falls’ annual operating expenses total $260,000, about what a rookie major leaguer makes in a year. Dave Endress, the 26-year-old general manager, is one of two full-time team employees. Although the team’s been playing well--the Dodgers won the first-half championship--it’s been a tough year for Endress. This day, long before fans begin to arrive, he’s in his office under the first-base grandstand, phoning around town, looking for a new groundskeeper; the old one has quit to take a better job. Endress has also been scrambling to replace the parking spaces he lost to Pasta Montana, a new food factory built next door to the ballpark. Legion Park’s capacity is 3,800, but due to parking difficulties, the biggest crowd the team had drawn by midsummer was 3,052 for its Fourth of July fireworks.

“We only have 36 home games to cover our expenses,” says Endress, who played high-school baseball before getting a business degree at Northern Iowa University. “So if we get rained out--we had two last year--that’s 5% of our possible revenue. It’s hard to make that up.”

The community-owned Great Falls team has been affiliated with the Dodgers since 1984. Its ballpark was built in 1940 by the Works Project Administration, and progress has been slow in accumulating $1.3 million for a renovation project, despite a recent fund-raising dinner that featuring former L.A. manager Tom Lasorda. The Dodgers pay $85,000 in player and coach salaries and foot the bill for uniforms, equipment and clubhouse food and supplies, including 16 cases of Gatorade and nearly 2,000 baseballs; the used ones become batting-practice balls, each branded with a “GF” so it doesn’t find its way into an opposing team’s ball bag.

Promotions help draw a crowd, but it’s the Rookie League’s unadorned informality that provides a unique charm. One night, hitting coach Tom Thomas’ wife sings the National Anthem. Another night, pitcher Jason Baker plays it on his violin. Hours before game time, Endress can be found watering the outfield, pocketing errant golf balls from the driving range next door.

For other fans, the pleasure is in seeing such raw, unformed talent, something akin to hearing a raucous young band in a smoky club and wondering if it might be the next Pearl Jam. Can Bernie Torres, the team’s slick-fielding 17-year-old shortstop, be the next Ozzie Smith? Will Aaron Dean, the team’s batting leader, be Eric Karros’ successor at first base? Can outfielder Rafael Gomera’s combination of power and speed help make him the Dodgers’ right fielder of the future?

Most important, these Baby Dodgers offer an enchanting reminder of the lost innocence of professional baseball--a game now soured by ego and greed. An 11-year major-league veteran, Hatcher knows why today’s big-leaguers are teammates on the field, strangers off it.

“It’s the money, not the different cultures,” he says, sitting in his clubhouse office after losing a close game. “The money changed everything. In ‘88, we did everything together, but it’s just not the same anymore. The guys have their own lives; they go their separate ways.”

He interrupts the monologue when a young player stops by the office. He’s a dejected relief pitcher who gave up a critical home run that night. “You’ll be out there again tomorrow,” Hatcher says with an infectious grin. “I haven’t given up on you, bonehead!”

The fiery skipper inspires his youthful charges in other ways as well.

“Unbelievable! F - - - - - - unbelievable!” Hatcher barks, standing in the dugout, staring at the home-plate umpire. “He’s got no strike zone at all.” The first inning isn’t even over yet, but the Great Falls manager is already seething about a series of questionable calls in a showdown between his team and the Ogden Raptors.

It is especially aggravating since on the mound is the Dodgers’ ace, Capistrano Valley High School graduate Peter Zamora, who began the game with the league’s best earned run average. At 21, and with three years of baseball at UCLA under his belt, Zamora acts like a veteran; he has the poise and polish his younger, inexperienced teammates lack. But tonight, the umpire is squeezing his strike zone, and by inning’s end, Zamora has walked two batters, hit another and given up four runs.

Between innings, Hatcher has a terse exchange with the umpire: “That’s a bunch of crap!” the manager barks. The ump doesn’t give an inch. “What’s a bunch of crap?” he says. Hatcher responds with an icy stare: “The way you’re calling this game.”

Looking rattled, Zamora hits another batter, then gives up a two-run moon shot over the left-field wall. After two innings, Great Falls is down 6-0. Each questionable call prompts another outburst from Hatcher. A clump of players gathers at the far end of the dugout, everyone picking a number. It’s a pool--they’re betting which inning the ump will throw their manager out of the game.

*

As a player, Hatcher was known for his flaky antics, which included giving a hotfoot to his teammates in the dugout, cutting manager Lasorda’s clothes in half during spring training and galloping in the outfield when the stadium organist played “Charge!” But he was also old-school, never complaining about injuries, playing wherever needed (five different positions in one season) and cheering his teammates, even while he rode the bench. And in the clutch, he excelled. In the 1988 World Series, he hit .368 with two home runs, one more than he’d hit during the entire regular season.

As a manager, he’s the glue that holds this team together. With untested players who are anxious and easily discouraged, he is patient, quick to build up their confidence. After pitcher Melido Dotel has a bad outing, Hatcher beckons him into his office. The young Dominican eyes the floor, looking bereaved.

“You pitched good,” Hatcher says, radiating enthusiasm, as pitching coach Joe Almaraz translates into Spanish. “We’re not giving up on you. You’re still a Dodger prospect. You’ve got a great arm, and you’re going to get a lot of innings with us.”

As a player with the Dodgers and the Minnesota Twins, Hatcher spent a lot of time on the bench, watching Lasorda and Twins manager Tom Kelly. One man was a colorful extrovert, the other a quiet tactician. Both left an imprint.

“The big thing is understanding your team and what they’re capable of,” Hatcher says, watching the players practice on the day after a tough loss. “In the majors, it’s about winning. At this level, it’s all about development. You can’t beat these young kids down with negatives. They’ve got to want to get back into the tough situations to prove they can do the job.”

Hatcher’s players view him as a father figure; he’s sensitive to their insecurities but no pushover. Mikal Richey, a 19-year-old outfielder from Atlanta, once missed the team’s 1 a.m. curfew. “I got fined,” he says. “And I don’t make enough money to get fined. Hatch lays down the law.”

The same thing happened to catcher Bobby Cripps, the young catcher traded by the Dodgers to the Toronto Blue Jays Aug. 12 for outfielder Otis Nixon. Cripps stayed out until 2:30 a.m. after a terrible night at the plate. “Of course, Hatch caught me,” he says. “You can’t fool him for a second.”

For Hatcher, breaking curfew is as much a sin as not running out a ground ball; it shows a lack of respect for the game. These kids may be Baby Dodgers, but they had damn sure better learn to play the game the Dodger way.

Earlier in the year, Rafael Gomera hit a “bomb.” But before he started his home-run trot, he stood at the plate and admired the blast. That may work for Barry Bonds, but when you play for Hatcher, you play the old-school way. Gomera circled the bases, received a round of high-fives when he returned to the dugout--and was promptly pulled from the game. Afterward, Hatcher delivered a terse lecture on baseball etiquette. “He got the message,” Hatcher says. “That’s not the way you play the game.”

In tonight’s game with Ogden, his team plays hard. Despite the erratic umpiring, Hatcher avoids a full-blown tantrum that would get him ejected. Down 7-2, Great Falls stages a spirited comeback, only to fall a run short, losing 8-7. As the players shower, Hatcher retires to his office, where he phones in his nightly game summary to the Dodgers’ minor-league operations staff. When he’s done, Hatcher and Almaraz go over the game with their starting pitcher.

“I was in a funk out there,” says Zamora, who’s already changed into street clothes. He’s still unhappy about the umpire’s stingy strike zone. “Something was off. I think the ump took me out of my game.”

Hatcher is more blunt with Zamora than with other players. As a seasoned college player, the pitcher--and occasional designated hitter--is less unnerved than most by a tough loss. “I know what you’re going through,” Hatcher says. “But you’ve got to figure out what the ump’s strike zone is and adjust to it. Your tempo got real slow, and the rest of the team drags when you slow down--it affects everybody. You saw what happened when we made a comeback. Everyone picked up the pace.”

Zamora nods his head in agreement. It’s what Hatcher says next that gives his spirits a boost. “If you can keep focus and adjust your game plan, you’ll do fine,” Hatcher assures him. “You’re going to have umpires like this everywhere. It’s going to happen in the majors, too.”

Hatcher makes the point so casually that you don’t realize what he’s said until you replay the conversation in your mind afterward. It’s his subtle way of delivering the ultimate compliment: Hey, kid, we’re expecting you to go all the way to the show.

Zamora gets the message. On his way out of Hatcher’s office, his feet barely touch the ground.

*

“I’m a sun devil, man!” one player hollers. “I love black people!” another shouts. In unison, they chant: “Show me the money!”

The Baby Dodgers are riding the bus from Billings to Great Falls, a four-hour journey past towering grain silos, waving cornfields and tiny hamlets dotted with prefab houses and backyard satellite dishes. They’ve just won the final game of their eight-game road trip. To celebrate, they’re guzzling soda and candy while watching “Jerry Maguire,” loudly heralding favorite lines of dialogue.

Early in the film, when Tom Cruise has a crisis of confidence about his win-at-all-costs attitude toward sport agentry, he decides to end his relationship with his girlfriend. Furious, she floors him with a flurry of punches. “Loser!” she hisses with contempt as she stalks away.

The players view this scene with a hushed silence. This confrontation between a formidable woman, spurned by a man unsure of his new career path, is as freaky as anything they’ve ever seen on “The X-Files.” It hits too close to home--for these young athletes, women are as hard to fathom as an umpire’s strike zone.

Cripps, 20, from the tiny British Columbia town of Powell River, had a girlfriend he met in Florida during spring training, but he broke up with her when she insisted that she come before baseball. Hilliker was engaged to a girl who demanded that he, too, choose between her and the game. “I think she was surprised I chose baseball,” he says. Gomera’s girlfriend has moved to New York but without giving him her new phone number. Zamora has had several relationships, but he’s noticed that “I stop short of anything serious, because I don’t want anything to get between me and my dream.”

During a game, a couple players sit on the bullpen bench, checking out a striking young woman they’ve seen parading back and forth in the stands. At first they’re fascinated by her olive skin and long, dark hair. But when they get a closer look, they start to have second thoughts: Something is wrong. One notices that she has vivid blue veins in her arms. Another studies her holding a Coke: “Look how big her hands are.” The guys look at each other in horror: Maybe she has an Adam’s apple!

Another day, watching from the bullpen, Hilliker points out a trio of young women far away in the stands. “They’re Annies,” he says. Hilliker is referring to Baseball Annies--made famous by Susan Sarandon in the film “Bull Durham”--who hang around the exits, trying to catch the eyes of players when they leave the park. He saw some of them a few nights earlier. “Morally, you don’t want to fall in love with a girl you meet outside a ballpark,” he explains. “You’ve got to think that if they’re out there this year, they’ll be out there next year. They’re trouble.”

Away from the game, the Baby Dodgers stick together, eating at fast-food joints, playing pool, going to movies. On a rare day off, a bunch went fishing at a lake near Helena and didn’t get a bite all day, perhaps because they used marshmallows for bait. Next time, they’re going to try worms. “There’s nothing to do,” says Jeff Auterson, a 19-year-old outfielder from Riverside. “That’s probably why they put you out here.”

There are so many mistakes to make the first time you’re away from home. When third baseman Mike Balbuena, 18, from Key West, went grocery shopping with a teammate, they loaded up their cart with everything their hearts desired. “By the time we got to the checkout counter, we had a $200 tab,” he says. “We looked at each other and went, ‘Uh-oh.’ So we’ve kinda cut back.”

Hatcher’s job is as much child psychologist and platoon leader as manager. “You’ve got to be these kids’ parents,” he says. “This is their first job in the real world. We’ve had to take these kids out to breakfast, take them to the mall. They can’t be out chasing women or playing video games. They’ve got to be at the ballpark, taking ground balls until they can’t do it anymore.”

Hatcher, who always gave 100%, expects at least as much from his players. When Bernie Torres pouts after a bad at-bat, tossing his helmet across the dugout, Hatcher yanks him out of the game. With Hatcher’s young Canadian catcher, ex-hockey player Cripps, the manager’s problem was different. Cripps was new to the game; he’d never played until he was 17. Like Hilliker, the team’s other catcher, Cripps had a major-league body but a minor-league psyche. “I like those guys,” Hatcher said, watching his catchers fielding bunts one day. “But I think they’ve got about one brain cell between ‘em.”

Hatcher had encouraged Cripps to subdue his fiery hockey attitude. “You can’t cross-check guys and knock their teeth out in baseball,” Cripps admitted. “You’ve got to stay focused. If a guy hits a bomb off you, you can’t go out and beat the s- - - out of him.” Cripps said Hatcher had considered installing a punching bag in the clubhouse so that after Cripps struck out, he could “hit the bag for a couple of hours instead of hitting someone on the other team.”

*

There is not much of a language barrier in Great Falls, even on a team with players from six countries.

Before one game, several players clump on the bench, exchanging playful insults. Pedro Flores, a 20-year-old bilingual pitcher from Baldwin Park, serves as translator. Edwin Falcon, a first baseman from Puerto Rico, has his eye on Zamora’s baseball shoes. He asks, in Spanish, if he can try them on. After Flores translates the request, Zamora says, “Tell him I don’t want his funky feet inside my shoes.” Pointing to his batting helmet, Falcon responds in Spanish, with Flores providing a rough translation: “He says you can’t put your big f- - - - - - head in his helmet either.”

Great Falls’ players hail from Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Canada, Puerto Rico, South Africa and the United States. When Hatcher confers with the Latin players, pitching coach Almaraz serves as an interpreter. Between innings, when Hatcher exhorts the troops, he will holler, “Let’s go! Rapido!”

For Nick Dempsey, an aspiring first baseman from South Africa, language isn’t the problem--it’s learning the subtleties of the game. Until he arrived in America for extended spring training, he’d never seen a major-league game; he still hasn’t seen one in person. Baseball is very different in South Africa, where it’s played by about 5,000 enthusiasts in a country of 40 million people. Instead of outfield walls, the ballparks have orange traffic cones--known as “beacons”--to mark the distance for a home run. Because minor league rules limit the number of foreign visas in each organization, Dempsey isn’t on the Great Falls active roster. But he practices and travels with the team.

His biggest adjustments have been off the field, where he’s still learning to drive on the right side of the road. “The traffic lights are a problem,” he admits. “I couldn’t find them at first, because they’re suspended in the air--ours are on the ground.” He’s also not used to Montana’s Big Sky-sized bugs: “They’ve got a lot of mosquitoes here--big ones.”

His teammates find it fascinating that South Africans spell color like flour and tire like pyre. When the team bus pulls into Great Falls at the end of a long road trip, it accidentally crushes a pair of traffic cones in the parking lot. “Oh, no!” several players gleefully exclaim, “We’ve run over another beacon.”

For the Latin American players, it’s a huge culture shock to be in a new country. The Dodgers provide English classes, but the adjustment isn’t easy. “It’s hard being away from home,” says Rafael Gomera, a Dominican outfielder who has already learned enough to do interviews in English. “I miss everything--my family, my friends. But this is the sacrifice I need to make to play baseball.”

Venezuelan Bernie Torres says he often gets a craving for home cooking. “I haven’t had a good steak in six months. That’s the first thing I want when I go back home--steak, plantains, black beans and rice.” Flores often helps Hatcher communicate with Latin players. “The whole lifestyle is different for them--the way people dress, the way people talk to each other. It’s frustrating, because you think you’ve learned something, to order chicken or hamburger, but if you don’t say it right, you get uncomfortable and you go back to Spanish.”

Catcher Cripps had already mastered a key Spanish phrase he often used with his Latin pitchers: “How’s your velocity?”

The players have an easy camaraderie, both on and off the field. It’s a rugged summer of baseball, when many players discover athletic mortality for the first time. In high school, everyone batted .400; now they’re struggling to stay above .220. It’s like the country song that blares on the P.A. before a game. “The closer I get,” the chorus goes, “the further I fall.” While stretching, the players boisterously sing along--it’s their baseball mantra.

“It’s definitely humbling,” says Balbuena, a high-school star who’s been in a long slump. “It’s tough dealing with failure for the first time.”

Hatcher is too tactful to predict which Baby Dodger has the talent--and mental toughness--to make it to the majors. But when he touts favorite players, such as pitcher Zamora or third baseman Luke Allen, he doesn’t dwell on their physical skills. He talks about their belief in themselves: “It’s about having confidence. ‘You put me in, I’m going to win the game.’ ”

On the bus from Billings one night, Zamora says he owes much of his confidence to his father, who coached him in high school and gave him a first baseman’s mitt when he was 5. “I was born to play major-league baseball,” he says. “I’m not the greatest athlete, but I have the heart and the mental strength to beat my opponent. Some people might think I’m cocky or arrogant, but I think I can pitch in the major leagues right now and get some guys out.”

For now, Dodger Stadium is a long way off, and there are a lot of minor-league hitters to get out first. Zamora stares out the window at the wide-open Montana landscape, imagining the possibilities. “I’m a lucky guy,” he says softly. “I think if I get my opening, I’m going to take it all the way to the top.”

He grins, wiggling a bat in his hand like a magic wand he doesn’t want to let go of. “It feels good to hold a bat in your hand,” he says. “It’s like it belongs there.”