Section B · Page 8
---
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
Tuesday, March 13. 2001
Pitcher welcomes contact
The Associated Press
HAINES CITY, Fla. — Pitcher Brian Meadows, off to a good start with the Kansas City Royals this spring, likes batters to make contact with what he serves up to them
— early and often.
"Brian's not afraid of contact," says Royals manager Tony Muser.
M e a d o w s admits it took him a while to come to that viewpoint, but now he accepts it readily.
"I want the hitter to hit the first three pitches I ter to hit "he," said yesterday. "The more they see of me, the more chances I have of getting hurt.
"If they hit the first three pitches, it helps the defense behind me, helps the tempo of the game, speeds the game up, keeps everybody more aware."
A third of the way through spring
training, Meadows has been tne Royals best pitcher - 1-0 with a .090 earned run average in three starts. He's allowed six hits and just one run, with no walks and six strikeouts in 10 innings
On Sunday against Philadelphia, he worked four scoreless innings, striking out four without a walk and retiring the first 11 batters he faced. The only hit off him was an infield single.
The 6-foot-4 right-hander occasionally reaches the lower 90s with his fastball, but his working range is from the mid- to upper 80 miles per hour.
"I'm not going to light any radar guns up." Meadows said. "I'm not going to blow anybody away. I have to have command of all my pitches and get the ground ball.
"It took a while to learn that in pro ball, but I accept that role. In high school, you can blow it by people at 85 miles per hour, but you can't do that in pro ball."
After high school in Alabama, Meadows was a third-round draft choice of the Florida Marlins in 1994. By 1998 he was the Marlins'
opening day starter, and he led the team in victories with 11 that season. He won another 11 games the following year, then was traded to San Diego.
Last season he was 7-8 with a 5.34 ERA in 22 starts before the Padres traded him to the Royals on July 31 for pitcher Jay Witsak. With Kansas City, Meadows was 6-2 with a 4.77 ERA in 11 games, 10 of them start.
"My goal this year is 15 wins," Meadows said. "I won 11 the first two years and 13 last year. I want to get better than 13."
Muser attributes Meadows' spring training success to keeping the ball low in the strike zone after pointers from pitching coach Brent Strom.
Meadows said just a slight change in his mechanics aided the downward movement of his pitches.
"It's definitely helping the movement of some of my pitches, and it's going to get me more ground balls," he said. "I was turning into a fly ball pitcher. I've got to keep the ball on the ground."
JUPITER, Fla. — The third spring appearance for Darryl Kile was more like last season than the first two.
The Associated Press
Cardinal pitcher fresh for spring
Kile, coming off his first 20-win season a all owed three hits in five scoreless innings in the St
Louis Cardinals' 5-0 victory against the Los Angeles Dodgers in a split-squad game yesterday.
Kile totaled five innings his first two spring outouts, the last one in relief, allowing three runs. He struck out three and walked one against the Dodgers.
"Right now, I'm just trying to get rhythm," Kile said. "If you notice, I'm a little herky jerky. My No.1 priority is to try to find my rhythm and hopefully get into sync quick."
Mike Timlin and Steve Kline
completed a four-hitter, each working two innings. Kline struck out the last four batters.
"Beware National League," said Mark McGwire. "We've got a nice staff."
Kile, who batted, 123 last year, also walked twice.
"Honestly, I wanted to swing,
and if I swung I'm probably out," Kile said. "Ramon's ball is moving a lot and I couldn't get wood on it, so why swine?"
Kile, who struggled pitching for Colorado in 1999 and 2000, said there wasn't much carryover from last season's success. Like an unproven pitcher, he came in with a laundry list of improvements to make.
"What happened last year is over," Kile said. "I've got to focus on the things I didn't do well last year, and I think every player does."
High on his list was developing a better changeup.
"I threw quite a few today," Kile said. "Some good, some not so good."
Martínez worked four innings and gave up two runs on two
hits with five walks and five strikeouts.
Rookie Albert Pujols added a two-run homer, his second of the spring, in the eighth off Onan Masaoka.
Notes:
n Mike Matheny added an RBI single to the 5th for St. Louis.
n Mike Matheny added an RBI single in the first for St. Louis.
n Right-hander Garrett Stephenson, recovering from an elbow injury in the postseason, is scheduled to throw batting practice for the first time today.
n Second baseman and leadoff hitter Fernando Vina, out since the second game of the spring with an Achilles tendon injury in his left foot, expects to be return to the lineup Thursday or Friday.
n McGwire hit his second home run of the spring, a two-run shot in the first off Ramon Martinez. McGwire added an RBI single in the fifth off Yorkis Perez, giving him four RBI this spring.
He stopped well short of saying he was rounding into form.
Baseball players try to break tradition of smokeless 'spit' tobacco
"There's a long way to go," McGwire said.
The Associated Press
FORT MYERS, Fla. — The top shelf of Lou Merloni's locker had the usual baseball stuff — a cap, a glove, a couple of wristbands.
One thing was missing
There was no can of smokeless tobacco, the kind players tuck between the lower lip and gum to deliver relaxation and nicotine.
The Boston Red Sox infielder used it for nearly a decade, back to his Providence College days. He knew it could lead to oral cancer, tooth decay and other health problems.
But he was young and athletic. Surely, that wouldn't happen to him. So he kept "dipping" and, he said, became dependent.
"I'm a smart kid," Merlon said.
"I had people telling me. I've seen pictures. I know what it can do, but you still do it."
Then a relative and two close
friends got cancers unrelated to smokeless tobacco. He saw the toll the disease took on them and their loved ones.
So, with a nicotine patch on his left shoulder and anti-anxiety medication, he's been off the tobacco for two months.
"It's not going to happen again," Merloni, 29, said. "I'm not going to have another one."
Many major-leaguers can't say that. Some use smokeless tobacco to relieve stress or pass idle time. Others use leaf tobacco that forms a chaw in the cheek. Both are banned in Little League, college baseball and the minors.
"Our hope is that if you don't use it in the minors, you won't start picking it up when you get to the majors," Major League Baseball spokesman Pat Courtney said.
It can be difficult to sever the connection between baseball and tobacco, said Paul Turner, director of the National Spit Tobacco Education Program.
"As kids, there's always been that association of spit tobacco with baseball, and we want to break that stereotype," he said.
U. S. Smokeless Tobacco Co. controls a majority of the market and said it is committed to marketing only to adults.
"We were the only smokeless tobacco manufacturer to voluntarily adopt marketing and advertising restrictions and financially support programs to reduce youth usage of tobacco products," company representative Mark Rozelle said in a statement.
"Nearly five million adults in a wide variety of professions have chosen smokeless tobacco as their preferred way to experience tobacco satisfaction and the company goes to great lengths to market its products responsibly."
Rozelle, who declined an interview request, said the company had a policy against distributing products to pro teams or athletes.
But baseball players can buy them. Walk into any big-league clubhouse and you're bound to see round cans of Copenhagen, Skoal or Kodiak.
In a 1999 spring training survey by smokeless tobacco opponents, players were asked about their use in the previous 30 days.
Of 313 major-leaguers responding, 10.9 percent said they used leaf tobacco, 23.3 said they used the dipping kind and 5.8 said they used both. Of 1,145 minor-leaguers who answered, 10.7 percent said they used leaf tobacco, 18.3 said they used dipping tobacco and 4.2 said they used both.
Baseball announcer Joe Garagiola, national chairman of the NSTEP that did the survey, bristles at the phrase "smokeless
tobacco."
"Smokeless," he said, "does not mean harmless." He prefers the less savory phrase, "spit tobacco.
U. S. Smokeless Tobacco Co. recently changed its name from U.S. Tobacco Co., to indicate it doesn't sell cigarettes.
Garagiola said bans didn't work. He prefers educating people.
"The NCAA says, 'If you spit, you sit,'" he said. "I've talked to baseball teams on the college level and every time I find four or five guys who want to quit."
Australia has laws against importing tobacco, but Mike Neill, a star on last year's U.S. Olympic-champion baseball team and now a Red Sox minor leaguer, said some teammates used smoke-less tobacco at the Sydney Games.
"Where there's a will, there's a way," he said.
Merloni found it in Japan where he played early last season.
"I realized over there how dependent I was," he said. "You can only get it on Army bases and I told my interpreter, I said, 'Listen, I've got to get there. I've got to get some of this stuff.'"
Gargiola said some people thought he was too zealous in crusading against smokeless tobacco.
"I don't want somebody to come down with cancer and say, 'Joe, you were right,'" he said.
Recently, Boston College coach Peter Hughes played with his sons, aged 2 and 4, in the clubhouse after facing the Red Sox. Another son is one month old.
"Enough's enough," said Hughes, who ended 14 years of smokeless tobacco use 10 months ago. "It's a time bomb. I've got three little boys. I want to watch them grow up."
Receive a full salon and day spa package for the price of a hair cut.
Pamper Yourself!
Actual Value- $450.00
KU Student Price-$65.00
All Packages Include All
of the Following Services
- Personal Image Consultation
- Hair Cut, Shampoo, and Design
- Shampoo, Blow Dry, and Style
- Stress Relieving Scalp Massage
  - Clarifying Treatment
- Deep Conditioning Treatment
- Skin Care Consultation
  - Mini Facial
  - Makeup Application
  - Makeup Lesson
- Half Hour Body Massage
- Eyebrow or Upper Lip Waxing
- Upper Body Relaxation Treatment
- Partial Herbal Body Wrap
- Introduction To Color
  - Hi Lites (6-8 Foils)
  - Low Lites
  - Redken
For more information or to reserve your spot CALL (785)766-1510 Call today and Receive $5.00 off
---