Scott Eyre looked both ways, as if jaywalking across Michigan Avenue, before reaching into the back of his locker to pull out his little black rock.
Eyre didn’t want his teammates to see his treasure. That could be bad luck, and he already has had plenty of that. Two elbow surgeries in two years is not the usual formula for success as a pitcher.
Eyre picked up the rock two years ago while the White Sox were in Sarasota, Fla., for spring training. All the other rocks and shells were white, so he figured he had stumbled across something special.
He kept it in his pocket during games and started pitching well. His arm finally felt right. The rock was doing its job, and Eyre was not about to mess with fate.
“You gain a new respect for life after surgery,” he said, “and that rock was the little symbol I needed to remind me.”
The rock is a bit like Eyre himself, who stands out among his more predictable clubhouse contemporaries.
Eyre has no pretensions. Ask a few questions and you’ll get his life story.
– He used to sneak out of high school early on days he was pitching to watch the movie “Major League.”
“You know how people say, `I’ve seen such-and-such movie 100 times’?” Eyre said. “Well, I really have seen that 100 times.”
– He met his wife, Laura, at a bar in Sarasota after a few teammates bought her a beer. They said the drink came courtesy of Eyre, who found himself tongue-tied for the first time in his adult life.
– Eyre’s father left the family when Scott was 8 years old, leaving his mother, Peggy Jo, to raise five kids on her own.
Scott’s relationship with his dad has improved over the years, and when Eyre made his major-league debut for the Sox in August, he made sure his parents sat next to each other at Anaheim Stadium.
“I think that made my mom a little uncomfortable,” Eyre said. “But she did it because she knew it meant a lot to me.”
Instead of building resentment for his father, Eyre rebelled by becoming a devoted family man. Within five months of meeting Laura, Scott was planning their wedding.
He first brought up the idea of marriage as the two watched 4th of July fireworks in Orlando in 1996. They had met June 2.
“He just said, `I could marry you,’ ” Laura recalled. “And that didn’t even scare me.”
Even before he met Laura, Eyre knew he wanted to be a father by age 25. Laura is due with their first child in August, three months after her husband turns 26.
The next step in Eyre’s vision of a perfect family life is to own a home. He and Laura have picked out a lot in Sarasota, but they have until April 30 to close the deal.
“If I break camp with Chicago and I’m pitching decent, we’ll buy the house,” Eyre said. “If I’m getting lit up, then we’ll hold off.”
Talk about pressure. But Eyre says it won’t faze him. He has dealt with it before.
Last season he was recalled from Double-A Birmingham to replace staff ace Wilson Alvarez, who had been sent to San Francisco in the so-called white-flag deal. Eyre stuck with the club and made 11 starts, winning all four decisions at Comiskey Park and losing all four on the road. His earned-run average was 5.04, mostly because of a nine-run shellacking in Milwaukee.
His rookie season was impressive, but this spring Eyre (2-0, 1.93 ERA) has shown he’s capable of much more. He has been tinkering with a sinking two-seam fastball, but that hasn’t affected his control.
“He’s more consistent in the strike zone than last year, and he can throw his changeup on almost any count,” pitching coach Mike Pazik said. “You consider that he is a left-hander, he has movement and he can throw the ball inside, and that’s a good formula for success.”
Eyre, who grew up near the Forum in Inglewood, Calif., was picked by Texas in the ninth round of the 1991 draft. Three years later, the Rangers shipped him to the Sox for utility infielder Esteban Beltre.
Now Beltre is a non-roster invitee in Minnesota’s camp and Eyre is on the cusp of nailing down a spot in the Sox’s starting rotation.
Eyre has a long scar near his elbow and almost two years’ worth of rehabilitation stories, but he wouldn’t change the journey he took to get to the bigs.
“Surgery may have been the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said. “I learned the game. I sat at home and watched every game I could find on TV. I had nothing else to do.”
His agenda is a bit busier these days.
