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PAGE 2


Alan Schwarz
Thursday, June 14
From the Clubhouse:
Zany Zito
By Alan Schwarz
Special to ESPN.com


Welcome to the Sheffield-free zone, a place where Frank Thomas' name will never appear, except of course derisively. There will be no salary squabbles in this column, no labor strife. Every Friday, we'll give you the funny and frivolous from clubhouses across the majors. Call it the importance of inconsequence. Hey, it's a game, remember?

Barry Zito
This image would fit nicely on www.barryzito.com.

Barry funny
Even after 14 major league starts, A's lefthander Barry Zito already has grown in reputation into possibly the most eccentric player in the majors. Talking to your pitching arm and carrying stuffed animals on the road can do that to a guy.

Satin pillows, scented candles, new evidence arrives as consistently on the mark as Zito's renowned curveball. Take, for instance, his web-shopping habits.

Turns out that Zito has traveled to ebay not in search of the latest Beanie Baby but for his own baseball cards. His hottest pursuit was one, naturally enough, signed by Barry Zito. Why? "They're authenticated," he explained.

We are not making this up. A's ace Tim Hudson buys sporting-goods equipment online even though he's signed with Nike because "I don't want to be a pest." But Zito doesn't seem to be aware that he has a mint on the end of that chatty left arm.

He can find a bargain, though. Zito decided to register www.barryzito.com this offseason but discovered that some yutz had squatted it -- along with most other 1999 first-round draft picks. (www.larrybigbie.com, anyone?) Zito got it from the guy for $375.

"Serves him right," Zito said. "I would have paid 10 grand."

Ante up
Manny Ramirez will feel right at home with the Red Sox -- not because of the American League pitching or Boston's large Dominican community, but because of his teammates' cash-carrying habits.

Legendary in Cleveland for keeping $10,000 in legal tender stashed in his glove compartment, Ramirez should have no problem joining the Red Sox' airplane poker games. Sounds like they don't take Visa.

"There are guys with literally bags of 100s -- they go to the bank and take it out," says one pitcher, basically incredulous. "Let's just say they don't play with twenties."

This pitcher, who doesn't play, estimates that some players in Boston's A game -- there's a B game for the less intestinally fortified -- board the plane with between 10 and 20 grand. (For those who are curious, yes, it's illegal to leave the country with more than $10,000 in cash undeclared.) Poker, hearts, spades, it's basically dealer's choice.

"This team plays in cash," the player says, "but I've seen bigger pots with paper. When I was with another team, a rookie if he'd lost this particular hand would have been out $78,000. It was like a year's pay for those guys. So we had to set a limit."

High stakes aren't the province of just large-market teams. Twins manager Tom Kelly says that he's had to monitor card games on his club because a rookie lost too much money, affecting his play.

A few random observations...
  • Go figure: The Yankees charge $5 for their media lunch while the Twins provide it free. Hey, someone has to pay Sojo's salary.

  • Discussing how he likes watching players duel for jobs during spring training, A's manager Art Howe was asked what his first baseman has to show him. "That he can sign his name," Howe said.

  • Advice for young pitchers: Don't let The New Yorker's Roger Angell attend a game with your parents. The author of a forthcoming book on David Cone has sat in the stands with Mr. and Mrs. Cone twice the last two years -- the game in which Cone dislocated his shoulder in his hometown of Kansas City last September, and Tuesday's spring-training start when he hurt his shoulder.

  • This from Brian Kingman, the last major-league pitcher to lose 20 games: "If Rick Ankiel and Chuck Knoblauch played catch, would it make a sound?"

    P2P: Player to Player
    Players face the same questions every day -- How are you feeling? How's the higher strike zone? What's Frank's problem, anyway? -- but they never get to ask the questions themselves.

    This is their chance. Every week, we'll have one big leaguer ask a question of another and go in search of the answer.

    This week's comes from Mark McGwire, to his old USC college teammate Randy Johnson: "Hey, do you still ride that bike?"

    Johnson: "Man, I can't believe he remembers that. No, I don't have it. I rode it to class one day my junior year and I came back and the only thing left was the front tire chained to the post. I didn't lock it up too well.

    I drove that thing to school all the time. It was a beach cruiser bike with big tires, big rims and only one speed. I don't remember much about it, but it must have stuck out with Mark because I'm so tall, I must have dwarfed it. It probably looked pretty funny."

    Alan Schwarz is the Senior Writer of Baseball America and a regular contributor to ESPN The Magazine, where he posted daily PulseCards from spring training.

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