under EXPOSed

Jupiter - Sunday 1 April 2001

Montreal Expos manager Felipe Alou is 65, exactly four decades deeper into this quirky baseball business than Vladimir Guerrero, and still he feels he lacks "the stature" to overload the game's most mysterious megatalent with time-tested, traditional wisdom. "I was a decent player, that's all I was," says Alou, downplaying his .286 average over 17 major league seasons and his trailblazing status as the second Dominican ever to reach the bigs. "This guy Vladimir is a monster of a player. He tries some things I never tried, some things I never could."

Statistics have no place in this part of the discussion, though Guerrero's offensive numbers do correlate nicely at this age with the earliest legends of Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams. Look, instead, at the improvisational ease with which the Expos' prime exposition attacks each challenge. Stick a 3-1 slider down around his ankles, begging the guy to take a walk, and he'll corkscrew it off the right field foul pole for an opposite-field home run. Send him chasing out to the warning track in pursuit of a classic gapper andhe'll come up firing with an otherworldly arm that turns lazy stand-up doubles into frantic face-first bellyflops. Slice a foul ball 10 rows deep into the stands and he'll sprint to the wall just to verify he had the angle on the play all along and the will, if only the field were as boundless as his enthusiasm, to complete it. "It's amazing," Sammy Sosa, the smiling Dominican slugger whose name America knows by heart, says of Guerrero, a bashful bruiser happily hidden away in the hockey homeland of French Canada. "I don't know how he does it. I just want to know how."

Sammy's got a much better chance of stealing Guerrero's secrets than we. Guerrero grants precious few interview requests by the English-speaking media, the offered assistance of an interpreter notwithstanding. There were a few
casual comments as he arrived at the Expos' Jupiter complex for spring training this year but nothing deep. "I'm just ready to do what I always do," Guerrero said, and in truth not much more needs to be said. Oh, there was some joking about Guerrero's new hairstyle, a random field of tight and tiny knots that inspired some teammates to begin calling him "Coolio." There was a quick one-liner about the new expanded strike zone, too. On that, Guerrero said, "I'm a free swinger. They can put it anywhere...third base, first base, left field. It doesn't matter." To do what he always does, however, Guerrero, the .322 career hitter needs only to be left alone, left to the rituals and rhythms of a boyhood he is in no hurry to cast aside just because that floppy No. 27 Expos uniform from a few years ago has been stretched tighter and tighter to fit the 6-feet-3, 210-pound frame of a thoroughly mature, 25-year-old athlete.

Guerrero's mother, Altagracia Alvino, will be waiting in Montreal on Thursday night when the team arrives from Chicago to begin the first homestand of the regular season. She cooks the meals for Guerrero, always doubling and tripling the recipe to make more welcome the visits by the Expos' many other Latin players, and she, in partnership with other family members shuttling back and forth from the Dominican Republic, cares for 2-year-old Vladimir Guerrero Jr. it is so comfortable in the apartment that Guerrero seldom ventures anywhere else around Montreal but the ballpark, regardless of the many flamboyant ways a man might otherwise find to spend a five-year $ 28 million contract. "In my personal opinion, he's like an angel," says Jesus Campos, Guerrero's roommate when Guerrero first left the Dominican Summer League in 1994 to join the Expos' Gulf Coast Rookie League team at the old West Palm Beach Municipal Stadium. "He wants to stay to his side. He will talk to people he knows, his people. He avoids bad things that are going to get his mind to the negative."

Some wondered if the departure of Guerrero's older brother might mess with his mind. Wilton Guerrero played for Montreal for three years and was Vlady's constant companion, often providing interpretation and guidance. Then the Expos developed a younger All-Star second baseman in Jose Vidro and decided last December not to renew Wilton's contract. He signed with Cincinnati this spring, establishing an almost daily phone contact between Jupiter and the Red's camp in Sarasota. One of the hotter topics the brothers discussed was the line drive Wilton hit off the glove hand of Boston ace Pedro Martinez in a mid-March exhibition game. Martinez, another Dominican, was with the Expos in 1996 when Guerrero made the jump from Class A West Palm Beach, to Class AA Harrisburg, up to Montreal, and Martinez treated the nervous newcomer like family, inviting Guerrero, then 20, to stay in his apartment for the duration of his September call-up. Wilton, according to Campos, is referred to as "The Mayor" by his younger brother. Martinez is called by Guerrero "my father."

"That mountain of a man isn't going to be effected by anything like his brother not being here," Alou said. "He could play without his brother, without his father, he could play without a manager. We don't have anything to do with the way he plays. "One of my goals, about five years ago, was to manage long enough to manage this guy for one year. Now I have had four years with him. He didn't let me down."

How could he ? Vladimir Guerrero, who according to legend arrived for his original tryout at the Expos' Dominican Baseball Academy on the back of a friend's motorcycle and stepped into the batting cage in mismatched shoes, is a one-man rotisserie league.

Last year he placed in the top five of seven National League hitting categories. Sosa had more home runs (50 to 44) and RBI (147 to 123) but only Colorado's Todd Helton, playing half his games in homer-happy Coors Field, topped Guerrero's combination of hitting for power and average. Helton won the NL batting average and RBI titles (.372 and 147). Guerrero, meanwhile, was no lower than fifth in any of the Triple Crown categories, including a career-high .345 average that trailed only Helton and Moises Alou.

Atlanta Braves center fielder Andruw Jones, the defensive wizard so frequenttly compared to Guerrero when both were coming up through the minors, has fallen slightly off the pace. Jones had 199 hits last season, third in the league, but Guerrero was right behind at 197. On no other important list, even the speed-burning category of triples, did Jones lead his rival into the top 10.And how about the American League's salary sultans, Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter and Manny Ramirez ?

Guerrero is signed through 2003 at an average rate of $ 5.6 million per year. The salaries of the other three range from $ 18. million to $ 25.2 million per year. Put them all together, however, and the only places where Guerrero takes a back seat based on last year's major numbers are batting average (Ramirez hit .351 to Guerrero's .345) and RBI (A-Rod had nine more than Guerrero with 132)."Vlady is so young that there's still raw talent out there," said Tim Raines, who debuted with Montreal in 1979 when Andre Dawson was just starting out and returned to the Expos this spring as a non-roster invitee. "You might see a McGwire-type season from him. I wouldn't be surprised to see him win a Triple Crown some year. It's a lot of fun playing with a guy like that, watching him play every day. Only Expos players get to do that day in and day out."

That's because the Expos rarely appear on national television and haven't been to the playoffs since 1981, when Guerrero was a 5-year-old begging to get picked for a stickball game in the dusty streets of his village of Nizao Bani. Of course, what the Expos did or didn't accomplish in decades past has no particular relevance to Guerrero. He didn't grow up glued to nightly baseball highlights from the United States. Truth is, he's growing up right now."I dedicate all my time to baseball," Guerrero said at the Expos' 1997 spring training camp, "because when you come from where I came from, you don't want to risk anything." Guerrero batted .358 that spring with four homers and, at 21, was the only rookie to make the major league roster.

In the final South Florida exhibition game, however, he fouled a ball off his left foot and broke a bone. That injury, plus a broken hand in July, limited him to half a season, but still he hit .302, drove in 40 runs and threw out four runners at home plate. Scott Rolen of the Phillies got Rookie of the Year honors but he struggled with a bad back last season and hit only 26 homers. Whom would you rather have in your lineup on opening day 2001 ? "If you could have your pick of any player, and everyone says the thing to do is to get a closer, you have to consider this guy," Florida Marlins manager John Boles said of Guerrero. "He's a player as gifted as just about anybody you could ever want to see with his power to all fields. He hit a couple of homers into the upper deck off us last year and one of them was a knuckleball by Dennis Springer that he hit to left-center.

"It's frightening. Sometimes I think the best thing to say, 'Here it is,' and put it right down the middle because he has such great plate coverage." Alou, accordingly, lets Guerrero go for anything he can reach. Guerrero walked just 58 times last year and 23 of those were intentional, a major league high. "If a guy's hitting .360 or .370, what are you going to tell him, stop swinging at them ?" Raines asks. What you tell the most under EXPOSed superstar in all of sports is as simple as he states it, and no more. Just get ready, and do what you always do. Nobody else, it seems, can.

by Dave George - THE PALM BEACH POST - 1 April 2001