DATE: Sunday, June 29, 1997                 TAG: 9706290246

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY RICH RADFORD, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  244 lines

TALES FROM THE MINORS PAST AND PRESENT NORFOLK PLAYERS AND COACHES CAN SUPPLY ENOUGH STORIES ABOUT LIFE IN THE MINORS TO MAKE `BULL DURHAM II.''

So you think the scenes and antics in the movie Bull Durham were made up, huh?

According to players and coaches who have worn the Norfolk Tides uniform at some point during the last two seasons, the minor leagues are where those stories flourish, mostly because the players are young, naive and, quite simply, a baseball season makes for a long summer. You have to amuse yourself somehow.

Here are some of their stories:

Would you like fries with that?

Tides pitcher Joe Crawford can't recall the guy's name, but when he was with Kingsport in the Appalachian Rookie League, the team bus once pulled into a McDonald's prior to a doubleheader, with everyone getting their fill of burgers and fries. Then it was off to the ballpark.

``We had about five minutes before our second game was to start and our manager is looking around for the starting pitcher, who hasn't taken one warmup throw and is sitting at the end of the bench like he's on another planet,'' Crawford said. ``The manager says, `Hey, we got a game to play. You gonna pitch or what?'

``The guy hops off the bench and pulls out a McDonald's cheeseburger that's been in his back pocket for three hours, woofs it down in three bites and heads for the bullpen to warm up. Then he pitched great.

``From that point on, the public address guy played Jimmy Buffett's `Cheeseburger in Paradise' every time the guy went out to pitch.''

Buy 25, get 2 free

Early in his career, Bobby Valentine played in Class A Ogden, Utah, under Tommy Lasorda, who went on to a legendary managerial career with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Valentine, who managed the Tides last season before moving up to lead the New York Mets, says he used to wonder why, during road trips, Lasorda would send the team trainer into truck stop restaurants to scout the joints.

Eventually, Valentine found out why.

``The trainer would go in, look at the manager of the place and say, `I got 25 hungry ballplayers on a bus. If the team trainer and manager eat free, I'll bring 'em in.' When that deal didn't work, he'd get on the bus and give Lasorda the no-go sign and we were back on the road looking for another truckstop.''

Bottle rockets and bullfrogs

When Mets coach Bruce Benedict recalls his playing days for the Double-A Savannah Braves in 1977, he thinks of bottle rockets and bullfrogs.

``We had a relief pitcher named Domingo Figueroa who would bury coke bottles in the bullpen and stick bottle rockets in 'em,'' said Benedict, who coached for the Tides last season. ``He smoked while in the bullpen and he'd casually lean down and light the bottle rockets with his cigarette, shooting them off into centerfield. Nobody had any idea where they were coming from and he'd do it for entire games.''

One evening in Savannah, Benedict says the grounds crew rolled back the tarp to discover a bullfrog the size of a small hubcap.

``Two of our players - Danny Morogiello and Rick Matula - taped a card with No. 7 (Savannah manager Gene Hassell's number) and the lineup card to his back and wrapped a piece of string around his neck as a collar. And that darn frog hopped all the way to home plate to deliver the lineup card as if he knew what he was doing. It was amazing.''

Curb service

Phil Geisler's first pro stop was in the Appalachian Rookie League with Martinsville. He came with nothing more than clothes and hooked up with Andy Sallee as his first roommate.

Sallee, likewise, was traveling light.

``We got a two-room apartment and the first day we were there, some people across the street were putting two mattresses, a double and a single, out by the curb to be picked up,'' Geisler said. ``We decided if the mattresses were there when we got home that night, they were ours.

``We put them under the porch of our apartment for a few days to air out, then sprayed them down with disinfectant. Those were our beds, without sheets. It was really hot that summer and we just slept on the mattresses.

``Oh, we also had two Coke crates we used as chairs and we propped the TV on a broken fold-out chair we'd taken from the team clubhouse.''

As simple as the surroundings were, Geisler remembers it fondly.

``Before that, I'd always lived on the West Coast and had never seen fireflies. Our windows didn't have screens, so they'd fly in through the windows, then up the chimney. I'd just lay there watching them.''

All aboard ... well, some aboard

Mets third baseman Matt Franco was with Wytheville in the Appalachian Rookie League in 1987 when the team bus broke down on the way to a visiting ballpark.

For two hours, the team sat by the roadside without anyone stopping to offer help. Finally, a farm truck pulled over.

``We were about 30 miles away from the ballpark and had about an hour to make it there,'' Franco said. ``You should have seen this truck. It actually had wooden railings in the back. Looked like they used it to haul hay and stuff.

``Our manager reads off 12 names and tells us to jump in the back,'' Franco said. ``He rode in the front and the 12 of us, which was the starting lineup and a couple extras, hopped on. We made it there just in time. The rest of the team showed up in the fourth inning.''

Groundskeeper with a losing record

While he was a roving instructor with the Atlanta Braves organization, Benedict was in Idaho Falls, where the grounds crew chief was a first-timer.

Ten minutes before the season's first game, Benedict was on the field explaining the finer points of getting a field ``game ready'' when two men in suits walked out flashing badges.

``They say, `FBI. Are you so and so?' '' Benedict said. ``And they handcuffed the guy right there on the field and led him off. The field had no lines and there's about 10 minutes until game time. So I lined it.

``The next day, the guy got out on bail and fled to Canada. I was there a week and spent the whole time taking care of the field.''

Snakes alive

Crawford says he wasn't fazed a bit when a grass snake crawled under the bullpen fence at the New York Mets' training facility one day in Port St. Lucie, Fla.

Crawford was playing for the Class A St. Lucie Mets and had come to realize pitching coach Bill Latham was petrified of snakes.

``All the other guys in the bullpen were jumping on benches as this snake came slithering along,'' Crawford said. ``But Mark Fuller and me were the country boys on the team and we cornered the snake with a catcher's mitt so I could pick it up.''

Fuller got on the dugout phone with Latham to distract him while Crawford headed for the dugout. When Crawford tapped Latham on the shoulder and Latham turned, Crawford was holding the snake inches from Latham's face.

``He just dropped the phone and ran onto the field,'' Crawford said. ``All these people in the stands are there wondering what the heck Latham was doing.''

Sucker at second base

Every team has a ``Mr. Gullible'' and on Valentine's Ogden team it was the second baseman.

One night, two of Lasorda's buddies from Los Angeles showed up in suits. That night the second baseman smashed a home run over the fence in left.

After the game, Lasorda was hooting it up with his buddies when he motioned for the second baseman to come into his office.

Lasorda pointed to his cronies and said, ``They're here to make a commercial and they got your home run on film and want to pay you $10,000 for the rights to use it.''

Did the player fall for it?

``He went to an auto dealership the next day and put $500 down on a new car.''

Confessions of a sinkerballer

It's often bone dry in Midland, Texas, and the field gets hard as marble. Kevin Flora, an outfielder for the Tides last season now with Triple-A New Orleans, remembered a player who once took a scene right out of Bull Durham.

The player turned on the sprinklers and flooded the infield.

``He was a relief pitcher who threw sinkerballs,'' Flora said. ``He was tired of coming in and doing his job, getting some guy to hit a groundball, only to watch it take a crazy bounce over a third baseman's head and end up a single.

``The next day, the place was a muddy mess. He was the one who'd kept complaining all season, so it wasn't a real mystery who'd done it. When he was questioned, he came right out and said, `Yeah, I did it.' ''

Flora said the best part of it was that it was an original idea.

``This was not a guy who'd sit down and watch a movie,'' Flora said. ``I honestly believe he thought it up himself.''

It was so hot ...

Chris Howard swears he spent the hottest summer of his life in Wisconsin in 1988. How hot was it?

``It was so hot that at night the guys I lived with would take turns sleeping in the shower.''

Howard, who caught for the Tides last year, rented a pink house with six Class A Wausau teammates. The house was conveniently located across the street from the park, but it had no air conditioning.

``It was so hot that I remember nights when I'd get in the shower at 3 in the morning and wake up a prune at 6,'' Howard said. ``But at least I wasn't sweating in the sheets. When you got in, you turned on just enough hot water so you wouldn't wake up with hypothermia.''

Clothes make the man

Veterans love to pull pranks on the younger players. Last season, then-Tides Rick Reed and Gary Thurman, targeted Jason Hardtke and Benny Agbayani.

``One morning we're flying out of Pawtucket, and when I come out of the bathroom after showering, all of my clothes are gone,'' Hardtke said. ``There's an ugly green, 1970s leisure suit hanging on the rack with white shoes, a big white belt with a gold U.S. Marine Corps buckle, a turquoise polyester shirt and a clip-on tie.

``I had nothing else to wear. It was either that or nothing. I looked like Randy Quaid in `Vacation.' Real cheesy.''

Hardtke thought he had it bad. Then, in the hotel lobby, he saw Agbayani in ``an outfit worse than mine. At least mine fit.''

Agbayani was adorned in lime green pants, a red-and-white striped shirt, a brown jacket and shoes that had been spray-painted gold. The zipper to his pants had broken when he pulled it up, and the pants were too small in the waist. A belt held everything together.

``I'm not a morning person,'' said Agbayani. ``You got to pay your dues somehow. I paid them that morning.''

In the bag

While playing for the West Palm Beach Expos in the Class A Florida State League, Luis Rivera took time out to stop by a nearby mall and pick up two chicken sandwiches before heading for the ballpark.

To keep the sandwiches warm, Rivera, who played short for the Tides last year and is with New Orleans this year, had brought along a small travel bag, which the team supplied all its players.

``I'm walking down the street and this guy in coat and tie is walking behind me, but he's following a little too close,'' Rivera said. ``So I cross the street and he crosses the street. Now he's getting really close, so I stop to let him by because he's making me nervous.

``Next thing I know he's got me in a choke hold around my neck and is trying to knock my bag out of my hand. I elbowed him in the stomach and stepped on his foot and took off. When I turned around, these guys in a car are chasing me and yelling, `Stop or I'll shoot.' So I zigzagged all the way through the parking lot to the clubhouse.

``When I got there, Andres Galarraga is the only guy there and I'm telling him these guys looked like they were going to come into the clubhouse and get me, so we grabbed bats and went back to see if they were still out there.''

When Rivera and Galarraga emerged, the team's general manager was talking to five men in suits in the parking lot. The GM called everyone into his office.

``We get in there and they start accusing me of stealing a lady's purse and tell the GM they want to see the purse I had,'' Rivera said. ``I told them sure, I'll go get it. So I go to my locker and get the `purse,' which still had the sandwiches in it, and you should have seen their faces when I turned it over and showed them the Expos logo.

``That was my chance to be a millionaire. I really should have sued them.''

Team effort

When Tides radio man Rob Evans was working for Double-A Birmingham in 1988, the Barons broke to a 53-18 record. But by the time August arrived, the team was in a nose dive.

That's when, during a road trip, infielder Robin Ventura suggested a pool party to loosen the team up. During the party, Evans was sitting with manager Ken Berry when Ventura and teammate Grady Hall snuck up, hooked Berry under the arms and threw him in the pool.

``It was a one-day road trip, so what Berry had on was all that he had,'' Evans said. ``He went into the pool with his wallet and shoes, everything. And the entire season rested on how he reacted getting out of the pool.

``When he got out, he smiled and did a back-flip back into the pool. It was just what the team needed. They lost their first playoff game, then won the next six in a row to win the championship.''

Evans figures that team unity was forever solidified when it came time to toss the radio announcer into the pool. Evans is, by his own admission, a portly fellow.

``It took the entire starting lineup,'' Evans said, ``to pick me up and throw me in.'' ILLUSTRATION: Drawings

JANET SHAUGHNESSY/The Virginian-Pilot

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