Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 5, 1993 TAG: 9309050042
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RAY COX
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"The only cupless catcher in America, right here," he said while catching in the bullpen without the usual protection before a game this week at Salem Municipal Field.
Bubba is a romantic.
"[A young lady] told me to drill you," said Buccaneers pitcher Sean Lawrence, one of Smith's teammates at the University of Illinois.
"Aw, she's just jealous because I won't date her," Smith said.
At 6-foot-3, 235 pounds, Bubba Smith all but blots out the moon as he takes his place in the right-handed batter's box on a summer evening.
"Hey Bubba," a Salem fan hollered at him one night this season, "I thought you told me you were on a seafood diet."
Hold the finny creatures of the deep. Bubba has been feasting on Carolina League pitching. For two years he has gorged - 59 home runs worth.
Back-to-back most valuable player awards in the league - the first time anybody has done that. If they gave the vote to the fans instead of the media, Bubba wins in the biggest rout in the history of democracy. Anywhere the big guy goes, they love him.
"They like me because they know I'm going to go up there and swing hard," he said.
Hard? This guy is the monster of mash, the baron of bop, the biggest stick on a team of the most prodigious wall-bangers in league history. The rocket-launching Spirits went into the last three games of the season with a circuit-record 159 dingers - 27 of them by Smith, the league leader. The Carolina League standard had stood for a decade.
Bubba has style.
What else can you say about a guy who arrived in a limousine for his first game of the season May 26 after being traded from the Seattle Mariners' organization and hopped out behind the Municipal Field clubhouse, two innings into the game, wad of cash in beefy fist to pay the driver? The Sultan of Qatar would have been hard-pressed to make a more dramatic entrance.
"Delighted to be here," Smith said.
So he takes some practice cuts on the clubhouse porch, suits up and breaks open a close game in the late innings with a pinch-hit fielders' choice RBI.
Bubba hasn't let up much since, hitting .303 with 80 RBI in 90 games.
Bubba deserves to be comfortable with those numbers. He just may be the most comfortable man in the league as he takes his ease in his own hammock, strung between pine trees on the hill overlooking the Spirits' cramped clubhouse at Ernie Shore Field.
"Just a nice place to be after batting practice; it's too hot in the clubhouse," he said. "All the air conditioning goes into the trainer's room and he ain't giving any of it back."
Bubba takes a lot.
"I've heard them all," he said. " `Got a Twinkie in your pocket?' they yell. `Hey Bubba, we have a pizza for you.' It's OK, long as they don't get too personal or say something about my family."
Bubba's a family-type guy. Charles and Lynn Smith's baby boy was big even when he was small back home in Riverside, Calif. He started out as Charles, too. That lasted until his little sister, Jamie, had problems saying "brother" when she was 1 and he was 2. From that day forth, he's been Bubba.
"We had an athletic-oriented family," he said. "A lot of the guys on my dad's side of the family, including him, were into sports. My mother loves sports. My sister was a cheerleader.
"My father had me playing everything when I was young - football, baseball, golf, bowling. I always liked basketball and football better than baseball because there was more action, but baseball was the sport I was best at."
The fact is, Bubba's true calling may be politics. There isn't a baby he wouldn't kiss, a youngster he wouldn't flip a ball to, a fan he wouldn't pause to chat with, an autograph he wouldn't sign.
What would image-tarnished major-league baseball give for a guy like that, especially one who smacks them as far as the big boy does?
Bubba's available. They know where to call.
\ BAD LUCK FOR THOSE WHO DON'T DUCK: Sympathize, if you will, with Nelson Metheney's perfectly wretched luck.
The young man from Salem High School, by way of Clinch Valley College, was just beginning to perform the duties required for the best summer job he'd ever had. In other words, he'd thrown two pitches in his first professional baseball start with the Batavia Clippers of the New York-Penn League.
That's when a screamer off the leadoff man's bat came straight at Metheney's noggin. In an instinctive reaction, he raised both hands to protect himself. Good instincts. Had he not been so quick, he might have been dead.
Still, death isn't the only undesirable potential result of such a situation. Metheney found out the hard way when the baseball whooshed into the thumb on his right (pitching) hand.
"Bent it right back," Metheney said.
Dislocated thumb, out for six weeks. Couldn't even pick up a baseball, much less throw the miserable thing.
"I was a little disappointed that things had happened that way," he said.
Since Metheney returned to the mound in early August, most of the disappointment has been reserved for the enemy dugout. In five starts, he has gone 3-0 with a 2.84 earned run average and 14 strikeout in 25 innings.
"I was worried about my control before I came back," he said.
None of those fears materialized. Metheney, who is done for the year, walked six. Better still, hitters batted only .229 against him.
That will tend to liven things up in sleepy western New York.
"Not much fun around here," he said. "There's only about 16,000 people, nothing to do."
by CNB