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Updated: August 25, 3:25 PM ET Six years later, Rijo enjoys 'biggest moment of my life' By Jayson Stark ESPN.com | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The last time Jose Rijo pitched in the major leagues (before last week), Jody Reed was in the opposing lineup, Lou Gehrig still held some kind of iron-man record and Brett Butler was leading off for the Mets. The last time Jose Rijo pitched in the major leagues, "Forest Gump" was just hitting the video stores, "The Single Guy" was one of the highest-rated shows on television and Congress had just decided to kick off an investigation of something called "Whitewater." So what we're getting at here is this: It was a long time ago, all right?
And then, a week ago in Cincinnati, Jose Rijo made us all believe in reincarnation. Or at least baseball reincarnation. Once, he pitched on five days' rest. Now, he pitches on five years' rest. Uh, make that six. Six years and 30 days after he last threw a pitch in the big leagues, eight months after he'd actually gotten a Hall of Fame vote, Jose Rijo came back to the Cincinnati Reds last weekend. At age 35. After five Tommy John surgeries. After the GM of the Reds, Jim Bowden, had pleaded with him, "Retire already, will you?" "He kept saying, Jose, you need to retire, because we need to have that ovation for you when we retire your number,'" Rijo told Week in Review. "And I said, 'Bo, just give me more time.' " So the Reds gave him more time -- six years of it. No pitcher had been completely out of baseball for this long and then made it back since a forgettable, 5-foot-8, 150-pound left-hander named Danny Boone pitched his way out of the late, great Senior League and onto the Orioles in 1990. "Yeah, but how many surgeries did he have?" Jose Rijo wondered. "I bet he didn't have five major surgeries." OK, so he'd have won that bet. Danny Boone had one surgery -- and won two games in his whole big-league career. Jose Rijo, on the other hand, was once a special pitcher (111-87, 3.16 ERA lifetime) -- and a more special human in this sport. Seventeen years before he became a teammate of Ken Griffey Jr. this month, he was a teammate of Ken Griffey Sr. on the Yankees. At age 18. Eleven years before he made his heroic comeback and pitched against Tony La Russa's 2001 Cardinals, he was the MVP of the 1990 World Series, pitching against Tony La Russa's Oakland A's. That postseason was so long ago that Sean Casey -- now Rijo's teammate in Cincinnati -- remembers being a sophomore in high school in Upper St. Clair, Pa., hanging out at his buddy Tony Raspani's house, watching Rijo's Reds ruin October for Casey's beloved Pirates. "I still remember Carmelo Martinez almost hitting a home run and Glenn Braggs making a great catch to rob him and Tony Raspani ripping his hat in three pieces," Casey said. "But when Jose pitched, he was so dominant, we didn't rip anything. We expected to lose to him." That's how dominant a pitcher Jose Rijo was back in that other baseball lifetime. But then his elbow started aching, and the slider and splitter stopped snapping, and the fastball stopped hopping. And his career seemed every bit as defunct as Tim Pugh's or Brad Pennington's or Matt Grott's. Until the third Friday in August of 2001. In the sixth inning of what would turn into a 5-1 loss to the Brewers, the occupants of Cincinnati's Cinergy Field began chanting: "We want Rijo. We want Rijo." "I was sitting in the bullpen, and I thought, 'They're gonna get me in trouble here. Shut up,' " Rijo laughed. Instead, those chants just convinced manager Bob Boone to call the bullpen and say, "Get Rijo up." Whereupon, for the first time we can ever recall, the ovation for a relief pitcher throwing his first warmup pitch in the bullpen was so thunderous, it forced a fellow named Junior Griffey to step out of the batter's box and wait for it to subside. "That moment was unbelievable," Rijo said. "When you've got that guy at the plate and he's a legend, and he's got to step out because the people are so loud just from seeing me warm up, what does that tell you?" Well, it tells you this was not just another comeback by just another old-time pitcher. This was Jose Rijo -- World Series hero, human hero. "This guy spreads so much joy," said his agent, Tom Reich, "he's like the Pied Piper. He's like the Dominican Willie Stargell." Jose Rijo is a man who was once asked, "Is the ball juiced?" and replied: "Not when I'm pitching." He's a man who once described the freefall of the post-World Series 1991 Reds by announcing: "We have reached the height of embarassivity." He's a man who once went to the doctor because of elbow pain, came away with a prescription for the famed horse drug, Butazolidin, and quipped: "A horse can win the Kentucky Derby on Butazolidin, and I can't even pitch a game. Only in America." And only in America can a guy essentially vanish for six years, then come back to put on a uniform and get a bigger ovation than Junior Griffey. But in Jose Rijo, we have a man who appreciates every aspect of what that means. "I just love the game of baseball," Rijo said. "The day when I get to pitch is the best day in the whole world for me. So now, for me to get a chance to do it again, it's the greatest thing that happened to me in my life." He began walking to the mound from the bullpen before the top of the eighth inning last Friday night. The ovation revved up again. It's amazing it has stopped now, a week later. Even his teammates -- who have seen him pass through their ballpark from time to time, a ghost of Reds past like Bench and Morgan and Perez -- applauded at this sight, of this ghost coming back to life. "It was like a miracle to see him going out there," Casey said. "It was one of the best moments I've ever had in baseball, seeing him come walking in from the bullpen. And then, to strike out two guys with the bases loaded in the ninth inning, I felt like we just won the World Series." If you didn't believe in miracles before, Rijo is enough to make you believe now. He never hit 90 mph on the gun in his minor-league rehab outings. But he was repeatedly throwing 92 and 93 back in the big leagues. Figure that out. And a ridiculous 2,222 days after he'd last thrown a big-league pitch, he pitched two shutout innings, even struck out Richie Sexson and Jose Hernandez with the bases loaded in the ninth, then called it "the biggest moment of my life." "The World Series in '90 was just a game," Rijo said. "But this moment, knowing how difficult it was to get back here and in how many people's minds it was impossible to do what I did, this was better. What are the odds of beating five surgeries and a six-year layoff when you have to quit at 29 years old? The odds are unbelievable. "I feel like a god, because God must have been with me. He did something to touch my body and my mind and let people know I was still living. And now a lot of people know what's possible if you believe." Minnie Minoso came back to the big leagues after getting a Hall of Fame vote, but that was just a gimmick. Jim Palmer tried to come back after being inducted into the Hall of Fame, but he couldn't make it. Jose Rijo, on the other hand, got a Hall of Fame vote last winter and two bases-loaded strikeouts in August. So who knows what this could lead to? "The Hall of Fame might be empty next year," Rijo chuckled. "They'll all be trying to come back." Hey, if he can do it, who knows who's next -- Mario Soto? "Nawwwww," Rijo laughed. "He's like 60 years old." OK, so there are limits. But Rijo makes you wonder what they are. He may not know what's ahead. He may be enjoying this for what it is and worrying about tomorrow when tomorrow arrives. But what he's doing today, right now, is as cool as it gets. Hey, it must be pretty cool. After his first game, the president called. Uh, the president of the Dominican Republic, Hipolito Mejia. But given how cool this whole thing is and how much attention our local president pays to events of the diamond, it's an upset he didn't call, too. "He's the one who should have called me," said Jose Rijo. "I mean, he's the one I pay all my taxes to."
Pre-teen of the Week If you're trying to reach out to that formidable youthful, 8-12-year-old market, you just can't beat a kid who may make it onto the cover of Sports Illustrated before he's even eligible for the cover of Teen magazine. Yes, he's baseball's most charismatic 12-year-old ever -- the one, the only Danny Almonte. And we're not sure how he's going over down at the day camps and skateboard parks. But he's sure the talk of major-league clubhouses everywhere. "Has there ever been a Little Leaguer who got this much hype?" wondered Astros star Jeff Bagwell this week, as he and his teammates huddled around a 90,000-inch clubhouse television to watch (what else?) the Little League World Series. "You turn on SportsCenter, you see Danny Almonte." Well, we asked, who would you lead SportsCenter with -- the Astros or a 12-year-old who strikes out everybody in Williamsport except Harold Reynolds? "Oh," Bagwell said, instantly, "I'd lead with him."
Good answer. The way we see it, you just can't have enough prepubescent superstars in this day and age. Think hard now. Who's the last 12-year-old in America who got this famous? Macaulay Culkin? "Nah," said Rockies coach-witticist Rich Donnelly. "He's way more popular than Macaulay Culkin. And he's got a better slider, too." Yeah, this Danny Almonte has it all, all right -- the slider, the heater, the most disputed birth certificate in baseball since El Duque's and, most of all, the numbers. This kid has numbers that make Randy Johnson look like Dan Serafini. Danny Almonte's Little League World Series numbers alone look like something you make up to put on the back of your kid's phony baseball cards. Check them out: 3 starts, 18 innings, 1 hit, 0 runs, 1 walk, 48 strikeouts, exactly 7 balls put into play. Yikes. In his already world-famous perfect game last Saturday, our favorite feat was this: All the balls hit fair against him (all two of them) traveled a combined distance of, oh, about 1½ feet. Two bunts. Neither of which was in much danger of injuring anybody in the bleachers. "You realize no fielder touched the ball in that game except the pitcher and catcher," said Astros catcher Brad Ausmus. "He (Almonte) fielded both bunts. I guess the first baseman had to catch both throws. But the outfielders could have put their gloves down on the grass and enjoyed the game like the people on the hill." Huh? You mean they didn't? How do we know? Did we ever even see an outfielder on TV? How do we know this team even has outfielders? About 99 percent of living American sports fans couldn't tell you the name of a single other player in this Little League World Series. But in a mere week and a half, Danny Almonte has become such a superduperstar, we gathered many of our regular Week in Review cast of characters, plus special guest stars, and asked what they thought of this fuzz-faced phenom. So here goes:
Somehow, though, we foresee a brighter future for Danny Almonte than Oats DiBacco. And that future ought to arrive, oh, about Monday, when approximately 37 agents will be hanging around his front door to buy him an ice cream cone. "If I'm Danny Almonte," said Astros broadcaster-witticist Jim Deshaies, "I'd move back to the Dominican (Republic) so I don't have to go through the draft. Then I'd sign a 10-year contract -- at 12 -- with all sorts of pizza clauses." Ah, but for now, those pizza clauses will have to wait. This kid has one more championship 16-strikeout game to pitch, amid other obligations. "After the game (Thursday), they asked his coach if he was pitching Saturday," Donnelly said. "I said, 'No. ... He'll probably do a card show.'"
Wacko Game of the Week "That," everpopular Reds first baseman Sean Casey told Week in Review, "was one of the weirdest things I've ever been a part of." That was the Reds' 5-4, 11-inning victory over the Cardinals on Monday. It was a game won on the Reds' first walkoff, extra-inning, inside-the-park home run since 1916, a game in which the Cardinals used almost as many pitchers as players, a game so wild even the participants weren't sure whether to laugh or cry. Here's our full report, which begins with the ninth inning already in progress:
The ninth inning But with Reds on first and third, a funny thing happened to Fernando Vina on the way to fielding what seemed to be a routine ground ball by Junior Griffey. He got flattened by Reds right tackle Wilton Guerrero, as the tying run scored. After about a 20-minute delay for a Congressional subcomittee investigation, the umpiring crew ruled that Vina had somehow interfered with Guerrero's right to run to second base. So the game remained tied. And a bunch of players were looking at each other, asking: "What the heck just happened?" "I think they were getting ready for the football preseason," Casey said. "I think Wilton and Vina were just upset they don't play football in our stadium anymore."
The 10th inning First, the Cardinals scored two unearned runs in the top of the 10th to retake the lead, 4-2. But out of the bullpen came the eighth Cardinals pitcher to appear in this game just in a span of the last 10 outs, Andy Benes. (And just for the record, the Cardinals are the only team this year to run eight pitchers out there by the 10th inning of any game.) Benes did get one out without incident. Then, however, he gave up back-to-back homers to Todd Walker and Kelly Stinnett. So as fast as you could say, "Uh-oh," this game was tied again. And getting stranger every moment. Naturally, D.T. Cromer's wife picked this day to have a baby. So the Reds were already out of players. And that meant manager Bob Boone wound up sending up a pinch hitter who was (we kid you not) 1 for 35, with 16 strikeouts, in his career and hadn't gotten a hit since 1998 -- pitcher Dennys Reyes. And, of course, Reyes promptly reached base -- because Edgar Renteria threw away his tapper to short for a two-base error. So Boone's managerial wheels kept on turning. This time, he sent in a pinch runner who had scored exactly two runs in his career -- fellow pitcher Lance Davis. Could this sequence have gotten any nuttier? Sure. Pokey Reese then backed Jim Edmonds to the wall in deep center field with a fly ball that should have been the second out. Except Edmonds -- understandably -- had lost all track of the outs by then and thought it was the third out. So Davis attempted to tag up from second base and score the winning run -- until Edmonds got word the inning wasn't quite over yet and unloaded the baseball back toward civilization. Whereupon Davis tried to hit the brakes, lost a hubcap and got tagged out. "We were all screaming, 'Run, run, run,' " Casey reported. "But I don't think Lance knew what to do. So he just fell down."
The 11th inning This one flew just past Edmonds' outstretched glove, thunked off the wall, deflected off Edmonds' foot and ricocheted wildly in the general direction of Lexington, Ky. "I couldn't figure out how the ball could carom that far, so I asked Edmonds the next day," Casey said. "He said the ball just hit his toe. Man, he must have steel-toe boots, like Tom Dempsey. He kicked it like Tom Dempsey." Yeah, they both kicked one about 63 yards. But in this case, it made for quite the zany scene. Griffey was just approaching second when the ball started hopping along toward the left-field corner, with left fielder Kerry Robinson in madcap pursuit. So they seemed, for a moment there, to be performing baseball's first-ever synchronized sprinting exhibition. "It was crazy to watch," Casey said, "because you could see Junior running to third. And behind him, there was Kerry Robinson running after the ball. And they were exactly parallel to each other. You could see Kerry Robinson running, and you could see Griffey running. It was like a race. I looked at Junior and I said, 'Man, that hamstring better start kicking in.' " It kicked in, all right. So Griffey made it around the bases for his first inside-the-park homer since 1990 (he'd hit 426 outside-the-park homers in between). But even more staggering, it was the first extra-inning, inside-the-park walkoff by a Red since Hal Chase did it in 1916. By a guy who was supposed to need an operation to sew up a torn hamstring yet. So, if nothing else, at least these 3 hours and 58 minutes of goofiness had taught us one thing: how to cure a bum hamstring. "Just hit an inside-the-park home run," said Sean Casey. "That'll take care of it."
Rematch of the Week
But out there in the elusive universe known to EverQuestionaires as, well, Everquest, there will be no bigger rematch in the history of baseball than Sunday's epic return meeting between Phillies center fielder Doug Glanville and Diamondbacks co-ace Curt Schilling. The last time these two met, you'll recall, it was way, way back on May 11. That night, in Arizona, Glanville mugged his former Phillies teammate for two home runs in one game, then revealed the true reason for this eruption. "Curt's a friend of mine," Glanville said after the game. "We used to play video games together. He killed one of my characters one time. I never forgot that." That game was EverQuest, an addictive online version of "Dungeons and Dragons." That character was a Paladin dwarf known as "Bingbong" (often referred to since by Schilling, derisively, as "Billagong"). And you could feel the emotion dripping from Doug Glanville as he uttered the immortal words, "I vowed revenge for the soul of Bingbong." Immediately, it occurred to us this was a much different explanation for a two-homer game than, say, "He hung a splitter in my wheelhouse. I was seeing the ball great tonight. And I was able to keep my front shoulder tucked." So we began to investigate further. The result was about a 17-part series on EverQuest atrocities Schilling and Glanville seemed to believe the other had committed. We won't recap those atrocities here. (And you can thank us for that later.) But suffice it to say they lead us to Sunday in Philadelphia, where Schilling finally will pitch against Glanville again for the first time. We don't know what kind of ratings that confrontation will get anywhere else. But Glanville knows at least one demographic group that will be tuned in. "Let's just say there are going to be a lot of Paladin dwarfs watching this game," he told Week in Review. "They'll be watching in their taverns all over Norath. They'll be glued to their TVs in Norath. I guarantee you that. They've got cable there now. Some of them even have DirecTV. I guarantee you they'll be watching, because they're very upset. The Paladins are a noble group of people, and they've stood for a lot of things -- all of which are noble and good and great." Personally, we've never met any Paladins. But we were hoping to meet some Sunday, because Glanville has been hinting he might leave tickets for a several thousand of them. Now, though, he's backing off, out of respect for Schilling and the sanctity of Paladin-free baseball. "But at some point," he said, "there will definitely be off-the-field repercussions. I'll let him do his thing on the mound. But I'm working on a side project, and it could lead to big things." One big thing we know is up is that the EverQuest leaders in a land known as Sony have actually scheduled a postseason duel between these two bitter combatants in San Diego, to be broadcast online worldwide. To the hard-core EverQuestionaires, we're sure, this battle will be bigger than Tyson-Lewis. But in the meantime, Glanville is suggesting there might be another big event. "People underestimate the amount of Paladin dwarfs that exist in the world," he said. "From what I've heard, and I talked to Bingbong about this last week, he told me they're planning a Million Paladin Dwarf March. They're going to do it at Bank One Ballpark, in fact. Apparently, Snow White is going to be the guest speaker. They need to pull out all the stops. "I don't know if Bank One Ballpark can hold them all. But usually, two dwarfs will fit in every seat, so they should be able to do it. And the rest will be on the roof, I think." Schilling, so far, has been mum on what he and his character, Cylc, might have in mind. But there will be no hiding what takes place on the field Sunday in Philadelphia. The whole world will be watching. The taps in Norath will be flowing. And here at Week in Review, we'll be taking copious notes. This, friends, is what baseball is all about. We're pretty sure Connie Mack said that. Jayson Stark is a Senior Writer at ESPN.com. Week in Review appears each Friday. |
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