THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, August 6, 1994 TAG: 9408060344
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TOM ROBINSON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines
Carlos Delgado was a comet. An April comet who scattered fire through the first month of the major league baseball season. Long balls sailed off his bat. National attention in two countries was drawn his way.
It was too much to believe. Delgado, then 21, became baseball's latest phenom to fizzle after a false spring. But consider the circumstances. Why should it have wound up any other way?
Delgado is a catcher, a 6-foot-3, 206-pound bull who was anticipating a season in Triple-A. However, with a couple of weeks left in spring training, the Toronto Blue Jays - two-time defending World Series champions - suddenly asked Delgado to be their leftfielder.
He was the reigning most valuable player of the Double-A Southern League, and the Class-A Florida State League MVP the year before that. Yet he had played exactly one game in Triple-A and made two token appearances with the Blue Jays last October. He had never played the outfield. But he wasn't about to say no, that's for sure.
``I had nothing to lose. Nothing whatsoever,'' Delgado said Friday in the Syracuse Chiefs' clubhouse at Harbor Park. ``So I went out there and took fly balls and ground balls and fly balls and ground balls, and more fly balls and more ground balls. The next thing you know, I found myself the Opening Day leftfielder.''
Delgado, a lefthanded hitter from Puerto Rico, proceeded to blast eight home runs in the season's first three weeks. He tied Kent Hrbek's record for April home runs by a rookie. Two of the bolts ricocheted off the restaurants high above the outfield fence in Toronto's SkyDome.
Big-league pitches were coming in hard, but Delgado's black bat was ripping them out even harder. Maybe it wasn't too much to believe.
``Yeah, I've seen him. It didn't surprise me,'' Tides third baseman Butch Huskey said. ``Every league he's played in he's torn up. He's a monster.''
Delgado, a sixth-year pro, has appropriately monstrous minor league numbers. In 1992, he hit .324 with 30 home runs and 100 RBIs in the thick air of the Florida State League. Last year in Knoxville, he hit .303 with 25 homers and 102 RBIs.
And since his demotion from Toronto on June 9, Delgado is batting .305 with nine homers and 29 RBIs. The move was necessary when Delgado just as suddenly couldn't hit anymore. The league began to adjust to Delgado, and he did not follow suit.
As Delgado cooled off in May, Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston began to platoon him in left. Irregular work for a kid - Delgado turned 22 on June 25 - usually means trouble ahead. There was.
In a massive slide through May and into June, Delgado hit only one home run. He struck out 46 times in 130 at-bats. His average had dropped to .215 before the call came to send him to Syracuse, let him catch again and regain his potent stroke.
``At the beginning of the year, I was getting a lot of good pitches to hit,'' Delgado said. ``The next thing you know, everybody's watching, pitchers are watching, scouts are watching. Nobody was going to throw the ball right down the middle. I got myself in trouble because I started swinging at bad pitches.
``I was telling myself you can't swing at those pitches, then a good pitch came by, and I couldn't pull the trigger. I got caught between being too aggressive and not being aggressive enough. My timing got messed up, and when your timing is off, you're off.''
Despite a sore right shoulder that has limited his time behind the plate, Delgado has found his timing. Yet he apparently never lost the broad smile that was evident in national TV interviews in April. It was just as obvious Friday.
Delgado has ``handled himself well,'' Chiefs manager Bob Didier said. ``He's a very mature kid. And it's not like he got sent down because he totally failed. He had three good weeks up there.''
Enough that a minisensation still shadows Delgado's every move.
``I've never seen the crush of people waiting for him after every game, before every game, at the hotel, autographs,'' Didier said. ``A lot of people want his time. It's the treatment that stars in the big leagues get, and he's getting it here at Triple-A.''
Syracuse is loaded with the kind of marquee prospects who lure hangers-on. Outfielder Shawn Green leads the International League with a .361 average. Shortstop Alex Gonzalez, Toronto's Opening Day shortstop, is at .304 with 10 home runs. Triple-A all-star outfielder Robert Perez is hitting .292, also with 10 home runs.
Perez is 25, the others all pups of 21 and 22. But only Delgado has already been a major league wonder and a washout. It's a tough entry on an otherwise shining resume.
``I'm doing OK,'' Delgado said. ``The first month was awesome. Everything was so fast, everything was so quick. Then it was a battle. That's the game. Nobody said it was going to be easy, and nobody said it was going to be fair.
``It was tough to leave Toronto. Toronto is a great city, and the big leagues are the best. But this isn't vacationland. I came here to work, and I'm not going to complain and say the road trips are bad, the hotels aren't that great or the ballparks are bad. I've got a job to do. I'm going to do it. And I'm going to get out of here as soon as I can.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
RALPH FITZGERALD
Syracuse's Carlos Delgado tied a rookie record with with april home
runs while eith Toronto.
by CNB