THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, May 25, 1995 TAG: 9505250623
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TOM ROBINSON
LENGTH: Long : 123 lines
Jason Isringhausen came out of Brighton, Ill., where farm tractors can rumble down Main Street unimpeded because the town of 2,300 has no stoplights. He came from the depths of the baseball draft, a 44th-round afterthought, a sore-armed junior-college outfielder thrown a $7,000 bone by the New York Mets and told to become a pitcher. He has come far from his days as a wild child, a kid the high school football coach knew could do big things if he'd just get his head on straight! Not that Isringhausen was in the pokey every weekend. He didn't love trouble. But Isringhausen was carefree. Fearless. So full of himself that he thought he could climb to a third-floor apartment and down again during spring training two years ago. When a railing snapped and he fell to the pavement, injuring his sternum, breaking toes and cutting his head, it got him thinking. And changing. From the time he was in kindergarten, he told anybody who'd ask that he wanted to be a major league baseball player. People would snicker. Sure you do, son. Dare to dream. And it might have appeared to be total fantasy for this product of the southern Illinois cornfields, his parents' only boy, the youngest of three children whose mother had the athletic genes. Georgene Isringhausen was a heck of a softball player who played till she was 40. Her husband, Chuck, a machinist for Shell Oil, wasn't. But their son was an athletic natural, which explains how he could catch pop-ups, real baseballs, hit by his mother when he was 4. And look now, 18 years later: Isringhausen, strapping at 6-foot-3 and 200 pounds, buzz cut, babyface, pumping curves, changeups and 90 mph fastballs with his right arm for the Norfolk Tides. Still raw in some ways, having pitched exclusively just since 1992, but with a healthy elbow since 1993. They've penciled his name into the rotation at Shea Stadium for next season. It looks like they could use ink. ``It gives me goose bumps,'' Georgene Isringhausen said into the telephone. ``Just thinking about it, I've got them, right now. It just amazes me. I don't know. When they talk about him going up to the big leagues, I get butterflies. It's scary. But he's very confident. He says, `That's what I've been working so hard for, Mom.' ``That and the fact that he'll be in New York scares me to death. It's big, and he has no fear. He doesn't know. Coming from Brighton, he doesn't know what fear is. . . . He's getting an education, I guess.'' And giving one. Isringhausen has taken Double-A and Triple-A hitters to school this season. In six starts for Double-A Binghamton, Isringhausen gave up 26 hits and struck out 59 in 41 innings. He was 2-1 with a 2.85 ERA. Promoted to Norfolk on May 6, he has won his three starts with ease. (He's scheduled to pitch Sunday at Harbor Park against the Columbus Clippers.) Opponents have 11 hits off him in 23 2/3 innings. He has given up one run, struck out 18, walked just five. Who could have known? Isringhausen was a centerfielder, catcher and occasionally a pitcher in high school. Some games, he played all three. Undrafted after his senior year, he went to Lewis & Clark College in Godfrey, Ill., a few miles from his home. He played outfield there but relieved now and again. His fastball, though thrown with an elbow full of calcium deposits that would require surgery, still caught the eye of Mets scout Terry Tripp on one of his few visits to Godfrey. That June, Tripp, unaware of the bad elbow, persuaded the Mets to take a flier on Isringhausen late in the draft. They picked him but didn't attempt to sign him until after his second season at Lewis & Clark. Isringhausen jumped at the $7,000 offer. ``That was enough for me. I didn't care,'' Isringhausen said. `You might not get that chance again. I could've gone to another college and blown my arm out, you never know. Plus, I knew there was something wrong with my elbow and I didn't feel like paying for (surgery) myself.'' The operation came in '92 after he pitched in pain in rookie ball. He flew to New York, his only visit to the city so far, and while there he took a walk in Central Park, in broad daylight. His mom heard about it and panicked. The nervous people now are holding bats. Since the surgery, Isringhausen has won 23 minor league games and lost 13. He has pitched 348 1/3 innings, allowed 259 hits, struck out 309 and compiled a 2.66 ERA, all terrific numbers. All he needs now, they say, are Triple-A innings. ``I don't know how many, but I'd like to see him get a few,'' Tides pitching coach Bob Apodaca said. ``I just think he needs to face that next plateau of experienced-type hitters.'' Experience truly has been Isringhausen's wisest elder. ``I think what's made him move up so fast is he just went from a young boy to a man,'' Mets minor league adviser Chuck Hiller said. ``He was always a good kid, but he was more of an airhead type. He got a little more serious about it.'' Funny what a fall from three flights can do. ``He still has his fun,'' said Tides lefthander Bill Pulsipher, who should join Isringhausen at Shea next year. ``But he's set his mind better on what he wants to do. There's a certain point when you realize you can get to the big leagues, you can get there quickly and stay for a long time. He's made up his mind to go for what he wants.'' Isringhausen these days is a little older, a little smarter, and though he addresses the media in clipped sentences, he is hardly the introvert he is sometimes made out to be. ``He's called shy in some of these articles. I chuckle when I see that,'' Georgene Isringhausen said. ``Jason's one of the least-shy people I know.'' No doubt, though, there is a quiet cockiness in Isringhausen. He plays like a kid who always knew where he was going to wind up. Which he is. Yet now that he's so close, even he seems startled when he takes stock of his rapid rise. ``A little bit,'' he said. ``I mean, I never expected it to quite be like that. It's always been a dream, and it's kind of almost ready to come true. So I'm just real excited every time I go out there. I just feel like I'm getting a step closer if I do well.'' And a step farther from Brighton, where celebrity has called on the Isringhausens, and where wealth could be next. ``This is a dream. Do you understand that?'' Georgene Isringhausen said. ``I don't know how to explain it. He's still our son, he's still our baby. It's just not real yet, how close he is. ``Look at that, I've got goose bumps again,'' she said, laughing. ``It's unreal.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color staff photo by JIM WALKER/
Jason Isringhausen is 3-0 with an earned-run average of 0.38 since
his promotion to the Tides on May 6. His next scheduled start is
Sunday, against Columbus.
by CNB