Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 22, 1994 TAG: 9405220096
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ray Cox
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Unlike in football and other sports in which raw, overwrought, eye-bulging, vein-jutting, clinch-fisted emotionalism is used to a player's advantage, baseball rewards such inclinations with strikeouts, balls hammered into the dirt (if a player hammers them at all) and spheres thrown everywhere but the strike zone or some other intended target.
Baseball wisdom of the ages says, "Never get too high or too low."
What that means is, in a game played every day, don't overly celebrate the moonshot home run nor mourn the bases-loaded strikeout. There's always another day in which to be humbled or to be a hero.
In baseball, everybody talks the talk; few walk the walk.
Jeff Conger, the Salem Buccaneers' center fielder, surveyed the four years of his baseball career during the past off-season and concluded that he had to calm down. His approach to baseball was being colored by the football orientation that took him through high school at Charlotte (N.C.) Latin and almost (if he hadn't signed a baseball contract) into a scholarship at Appalachian State.
"I was always a wall-biting kind of guy," he said.
It took him four years, but he finally learned that in baseball, when you bite the wall, the wall often bites back.
The numbers proved it. Through the four campaigns leading into this one, Conger's achievements were not atrocious, but not very outstanding, either. Not really the kind of stuff the Pittsburgh Pirates were looking for when they took him with their eighth pick in the 1990 draft.
His nadir might have been last year in Salem: a .230 batting average as a part-timer and 125 strikeouts and only 31 walks in 391 at bats. Not good for a leadoff-type hitter who is supposed to get on base to use his terrific speed (3.8 seconds from home to first) to his best advantage.
"This winter, I decided to take a different mental approach," he said. "I wanted to be more relaxed, have some more fun.
"The last couple of years, I was so tense every time up at the plate because I wanted to do so well. In the outfield, I worried about making mistakes. When you worry about it, you're going to make the mistake."
The odd part about it was, if there ever was a spring training to overdose on anxiety, this was probably it.
"After four years, if I didn't have a good spring this time, then BASEBALL RAY COX that may have been it for me," he said.
What, Conger worry? Not this time. The spring he had probably was his best ever. And he's kept right on cranking since returning to Salem.
He's hit for average, he's hit for occasional power - on opening night he bashed one clean out of sight, a shot that rivaled some of Mike Brown's solar-system orbiters last season - and he played up a storm in center field.
At least four times this year, he's made spectacular running, over-the-shoulder catches out in the spacious lawns of Muncipal Field's center field that were as splendid as any you'd want to see. You hesitate to say this about a player in Class A, but a couple of Conger's snags were almost Willie Maysesque.
It all goes back to the original premise.
"It's the same thing; I've been fearless out there," Conger said.
As much as any player, Conger means much to the Bucs. It's no coincidence that the couple of weeks he missed with back and rib ailments were ones in which Salem struggled.
"I'm having fun now," he said. "I'm looking forward to every game as an opportunity, not as a chance to make a mistake."
\ LOCAL BOYS MADE GOOD (AND BAD): Brad Clontz, the former Patrick County High School and Virginia Tech sidewinder, leads the Class AA Southern League in saves with 14, has a 1.19 earned in 19 games, leads the league with 19 appearances and has 10 walks and 19 strikeouts in 22 innings for the Greensboro Braves.
Clontz's miserly offerings have opponents batting .179 against him.
Roanoke's George Canale has recovered from a broken hand and again is swinging the big stick he was noted for in his Virginia Tech days. This week, he was hitting .293 with four homers and 11 RBI for the Class AA Memphis Chicks of the Southern League. All four of the homers have come in the past week, one being a grand slam.
This under troubling personal circumstances. Canale's wife Laura has been hospitalized with complications related to her second pregnancy. The couple's first child did not come to term.
Eric Owens of Dry Fork and Ferrum, a shortstop most of his life, was switched to third in the past couple of weeks and is adjusting well with the Class AA Chattanooga Lookouts. In 38 games, he's hitting .262 with 20 runs, 38 hits and eight steals. Owens also has endeared himself to his employers for habitually being first in line to do volunteer community work.
Also from Chattanooga comes word of slugger Bubba Smith, not a Timesland local but a fellow who's never met a stranger here (or anywhere else). Smith started the season on the disabled list with a sore left wrist then after activation, got caught in a logjam at first base. To assure him of adequate at bats, he was shipped to Class A Charleston, where he is hitting .217, with three homers and nine RBI in 10 games.
Roanoker Dee Dalton is playing second base (like Owens, the former Timesland player of the year was a career shortstop) at Madison of the Midwestern League, where he is hitting .248 with 33 hits, 16 runs, a team-leading 11 doubles and 22 RBI while batting third.
Nelson Metheney of Salem is 3-2 with a 5.54 ERA in seven appearances at Class A Clearwater. Opponents are batting .304, but of 10 players who have tried to steal on him, only one succeeded.
by CNB