JOYNER LEARNED LESSONS : More Worldly Wally Prepares for Year II

MESA, Ariz. — It was the springtime of Wally Joyner’s youth, days he’ll always remember and never be able to revisit. It was the spring of 1986, a wonderfully uncomplicated time for Joyner. Back then, all a young man had to worry about was replacing a Hall of Fame-bound first baseman named Rod Carew.

But that was long ago. That was before the 100 runs batted in, the 16 home runs in six weeks, the two broken-up no-hitters, the All-Star game starting assignment, Wally World, the Wally T-shirts and commemorative plates, the second-half slump, the staph infection that shook the world, the lost Rookie of the Year race and the contract dispute.

Now, the concerns are heavier, the questions more pointed.

Wally, what happened to the home runs?

Wally, were you just an April-and-May flash-in-the-pan?

Wally, was the pressure too much?

Wally, why didn’t you hold out?

Wally, will you walk out?

Say goodby to innocence. As Joyner’s manager, Gene Mauch, puts it: “If there was any naivete there, people rubbed it off of him.”

Part of the problem was Joyner’s rookie season with the Angels. Has there ever been another like it? The final statistics indicate potential greatness--a .290 batting average, 22 home runs and 100 RBIs. But break down 1986 into a two-act play, with the All-Star break serving as intermission, and the character of Wally appears to be played by two different actors. From Roy Hobbs to a hobble.

First-Half Wally ruled the American League for six weeks. After the Angels’ first 36 games, Joyner had 16 home runs. He hit game-winning home runs with the Metrodome roof collapsing, and in the ninth inning off Dave Righetti. He hit two home runs in his first game at Tiger Stadium. He ruined a June 16 no-hit bid by Charlie Hough with a ninth-inning single.

Fans took notice. All aboard, Wally World. By acclamation, Joyner was voted into the All-Star game--ahead of Don Mattingly, ahead of Eddie Murray. His numbers at the break: .313, 20 home runs and 72 RBIs.

“For the first half of the season,” says teammate Doug DeCinces, “he was the MVP of the league.”

Then there was Second-Half Wally. Upon first inspection, he looked more like Second-Hand Wally, frayed and worn out. He batted .232 in August and .239 in September. He did not hit a home run after Aug. 5. He had 91 RBIs on Sept. 1, 92 on Sept. 21 and needed to scramble in the first week of October to reach 100.

Joyner’s statistics after the All-Star Game: .257, 2 home runs, 28 RBIs.

First half versus second half came into play during the 1986 American League Rookie of the Year balloting, where Joyner, once considered a lock for the award, was edged out by the Oakland A’s Jose Canseco.

It has also come into play this spring, where people wonder if the fabled sophomore jinx didn’t take hold of Joyner before his freshman season was complete.

Was Wally merely a six-week wonder?

“That’s all it was. It was six weeks,” Joyner said. “The truth hurts, but it doesn’t bother me. Nobody spends five months at the top of their game.

“Everybody has six (good) weeks. Don Mattingly, Kirby Puckett, Jesse Barfield, Jim Rice--all those guys had six great weeks, but they were all spread out. Instead of having one week in May and one week in June and one week in July and one week in August, with me, it was all April and May. I had a great 1986 in a month-and-a-half.”

Joyner points to the bottom line.

“It doesn’t matter when or how you get it, as long as you get it,” he said. “If I finish exactly (with) the same (numbers) this year, I’ll be happy. I’ll know that I’ll be putting some numbers on the board.’

And Joyner points out that he wasn’t alone when it came to rookie tailspins in 1986.

“I think they cut down Jose Canseco’s season and he hit .250 and .197, something like that,” he said. “They do it to everybody. It’s easy to do because there is a break at the All-Star game.

“The way I look at it, instead of having a good month and a bad month and two good ones and a bad one, I had four good months in a row and two bad ones. I started out great and finished slow. But I was playing with a bad shoulder and I had a bad shin that was very infected. That hindered my abilities.

“That’s why I’m optimistic about this spring for two reasons. One, I’m getting better--I’m 100% again. And, two, I know there was a reason, outside of lack of ability, why I finished so slowly.”

The shoulder injury was a nagging problem that lingered throughout late summer, but that wasn’t Joyner’s worst problem. At least the shoulder could be diagnosed.

From August through mid-October, Joyner played with a staph infection in his right shin that didn’t manifest itself until the Angels needed him the most--the AL championship series.

And when it did manifest itself, it took days to ascertain the cause. Rumors flew around Anaheim Stadium. Maybe it was an insect bite. Maybe it was infection from that hard slide in Game 2.

It took 10 days of hospital tests to determine that Joyner was first infected in early August.

“He played the last six weeks with poison in his system,” Mauch said. “Even though it wasn’t pinpointed until the playoffs, the stuff was undoubtedly in his system.

“I’ve seen guys with abscessed teeth, and they’ve been sick and nobody knows why. It was like that with Wally. He had poison in his leg.”

By Joyner’s best estimate, the fateful weekend was Aug. 1 and 2, when Joyner fouled two balls off his right shin in consecutive games against the Seattle Mariners.

“I hear you can get a staph infection very easily in a hospital,” Joyner said. “After I fouled the second ball off my shin, the bruise was cut open. I was in the hospital for one hour with an open wound. Maybe the infection got in there.

“And then it stayed and grew for 2 1/2 months.”

Until the playoffs, when Joyner was suddenly hospitalized after Game 3 in Anaheim, the only symptom evident was fatigue.

“I’d complain about being tired and everything,” Joyner said. “We didn’t have an answer except that I had played a lot of games.

“The staph infection was the reason why. I was very sick, but nobody knew that. It wasn’t diagnosed until I couldn’t walk. By then, it was a day late and a dollar short.”

By the time Joyner was released from the hospital, the World Series was two games old. The Angels were finished awhile before that, losing three of the four games they played without Joyner.

“We were not a real good team in Games 6 and 7,” Mauch said. “We had to be at full strength and, obviously, we were not.

“You don’t often win a short series without one of your best players.”

As a baseball manager, Mauch is a 25-year man.

“That’s a lot of rookies,” he says.

But only one, Mauch maintains, can compare to the first year turned in by Joyner.

“Ever hear of Richie Allen?” Mauch said. “Look it up.

“Defensively, you give the edge to Wally, so it might be pretty close between those two overall. But those first six weeks, that was unheard of. There’s a pretty good chance no other rookie will ever equal what Wally did in those first 35, 36 games.

“It might be a long time before anybody has the start of a season like that one.”

Such a start worked both for and against Joyner. It thrust him immediately into the public consciousness--it was what, after all, created Wally World--but it also set up Joyner for a mighty fall.

It also brought on the media, in wave after wave.

At first, it was fun. “At the time, only Kirby Puckett and I were really hot,” Joyner said. “He’d get half the front page and I’d get the other half.”

But then came the 7 a.m. phone calls from reporters, endless interview requests, the lines of writers backed up around the batting cages.

“He was undoubtedly nicer about all that than I could have been,” Mauch said. “He was more cooperative than what was really in his and our best interests.

“If they included that in the Rookie of the Year balloting--the cooperating, the giving of himself--he would’ve won in a landslide.”

Instead, Joyner could feel himself getting caught up in a different kind of landslide. The Angels initially tried to soften the spotlight by scheduling press conferences for Joyner the first day the team visited a city, but gradually, the demands seemed to catch up with Joyner. As his home runs dwindled, Joyner grew distant. He was not always the baby-faced kid next door. He could be curt in interviews.

Mauch was asked if he saw a personality change in Joyner as the summer progressed.

“Sure,” he said. “He had so many obligations, they wore on him. They made him edgy.”

During the 40-minute interview for this story, Joyner was twice interrupted by other reporters. Joyner politely told both he would sit down with them after the Angels completed their daily workout.

“Last year, I would have said, ‘Fine, let’s do it right after this,’ ” Joyner said. “I could do it after this, but I need to go hit. I need to get ready for the season. I didn’t say no, I told them I’d do it later.

“Last year, I didn’t say no very often. When I did, I’d get some sneers and some backbiting from reporters--’Who’s this rookie think he is?’

“This year, hopefully I have enough experience that if I get backbiting again, I can lay into them and say, ‘Listen, if you can’t take no for an answer, then why should I do the interview anyway?’ ”

This spring, Joyner has been accessible, pleasant and quotable. And, perhaps as a result of his schooling by Reggie Jackson, he is quicker to offer an opinion.

Ask Wally about the Rookie of the Year voting.

“The way I look at it is that 13 people who had leverage and who had the power to say whether I won or lost said that I came in second,” said Joyner, who actually lost to Canseco by 12 points. “I’d say that 70% of the baseball fans felt like I should’ve won Rookie of the Year.

“It doesn’t make any difference. Jose Canseco got some cash and he got a pat on the back, but that doesn’t make his year any better or worse. I thought I had a better year than he did, only because the Angels were contenders . . . and I felt like I had an important role in that.”

Or ask Wally about his current contract negotiations with the Angels. Joyner is seeking $200,000, the Angels have countered with $160,000 and General Manager Mike Port has set today as the signing deadline.

“It’s $40,000,” he said. “That’s 7,000 fans. If I didn’t draw 7,000 fans to the Angels’ stadium, I don’t know who did.

“Mike has said he’s going to renew everybody’s contract on March 5. When you renew somebody, that usually means the player was being unreasonable. I don’t think I have been.

“I just haven’t been treated like I was appreciated for last year. And if they didn’t appreciate last year, what are they gonna appreciate? What’s going to happen when I just have a so-so year?”

Joyner figures to discover more about his financial future this afternoon. His baseball future will take a little longer to unfold.

Two predictions:

--Mauch: “Wally should do as much or more in every category as he did last year. It’ll just be spread out a little more. How many home runs did he hit last year--22? Twenty should be about his norm. And he batted .290. He should hit a little better than that.

“He had a slump last year, but that didn’t surprise me--not after I found out how long that junk was in his system.”

--DeCinces: “If you ask me if it was a fluke year, I say no way. I know Wally’s personality, his drive, his ability. I don’t know if he’ll hit the home runs again, but the overall consistency is there. He’s a consistent, everyday player.”

And so, Wally World prepares for its second orbit. The maiden voyage shot for the moon but wound up getting burned by the sun. Older and healthier, Joyner hope to steady the course in 1987.

Angel Notes

The Angels signed a first baseman and a pitcher Wednesday. Yes, Mark Ryal and DeWayne Buice came to the terms with the club, as did utilityman Darrell Miller. Wally Joyner and Kirk McCaskill, however, remain among the seven players facing a sign-or-we’ll-renew-you ultimatum today. McCaskill’s agent, Marvin Demoff, is expected to fly in today for a meeting with Angel General Manager Mike Port. Joyner’s agent, Steve Freyer, is in Florida and will conduct business by phone. “Steve’s tried to ask Mike for an extension,” Joyner said. “We’ll see about it (Thursday).” . . . Gene Mauch on Joyner’s contract negotiations: “He’s not employed by an ogre. The California Angels take care of their players. Now, I’m not shilling for Mike at all. I want Wally to get all he can. If Wally can get $200,000, get it. If he can get $175,000, get it. I’m all for it. But if I were him, I’d laugh about it. I wouldn’t take it too seriously. Next year, he’ll be going for bigger things.” . . . Besides Joyner and McCaskill, the other unsigned players are outfielders Devon White, Jack Howell and Reggie Montgomery and infielders Gus Polidor and Bill Merrifield.