Every picture tells a story, so let’s examine this snapshot from Mickey Morandini’s family album. It shows him as a young pro fresh off the Indiana campus, and in it he appears even more frail, more fragile, more a diminutive waif among giants than he does at his present quite unimposing 5 feet 11 inches and 172 pounds.
In no way does he resemble a prime major-league prospect, or even a player who can survive the long march through the withering heat of endless summer days. So if we listen closely, listen carefully, we can hear the whispers emanating from this photo.
He’s too small.
He’ll wear down.
He can’t hit left-handers.
He can’t hit consistently.
All of that and more Morandini heard when he was the young player in this snapshot. Yet now he is on his way to the playoffs for the second time.
Or, as he puts it: “Here I am eight years later, and I’ve reached 1,000 hits and I have played steady defense my whole career and have come close to hitting .300 and have played in a World Series and an All-Star Game. So I’ve done things in this game I think nobody thought I would do.”
Here’s another photo, with Morandini at home at the front end of his career. He is now an accomplished handyman, a regular Mr. Fix-It who, says his former Phillies teammate Curt Schilling, “is in love with his tools. Call him any day in the off-season and he has his tool belt on if you call him after 9 in the morning.” But here he’s just another klutz, a montage of thumbs.
“I was never handy when I was young,” he says, looking at that picture. “I grew up, my father passed away when I was 4, so I never really had anyone to teach me things like that. So when I got out of college, I really wanted to become more handy, so I started reading and watching TV. It’s something I really got interested in, and it has paid off. Now I can do some things to my own house and build some things for the kids that I couldn’t do before.”
Is there any similarity between the two pictures?
“Yeah,” he says. “When you play baseball . . . I’m kind of a perfectionist, I put a lot of pressure on myself to do well. I guess it’s the same thing when I’m building something. I have a lot of pride in it, and I want to do it right.
“It all boils down to pride. Believing in yourself, and having confidence in yourself, and going out and doing the best job you can do.”
Oh, yeah, and he likes challenges.
That’s what the Cubs gave Morandini for Christmas last year when they acquired him Dec. 23 to replace a legend. Just pack your bags, leave the only major-league home you ever have known, set up shop at Wrigley Field and make the worshipers who regularly fill that place not rue the retirement of Ryne Sandberg.
Replacing a future Hall of Famer is never an easy task. But Morandini, whose home is in nearby Valparaiso, Ind., accepted it readily and took on the job with the same mentality reflected in those album snapshots.
He got off to a fast start when this season opened, and that surely helped him gain quick acceptance. But there also were his dirty fingernails, his blue-collar approach and the dirt that often decorated his uniform at game’s end. He was a scuffler, a scrambler, a battler who would do anything to win. This approach helped him gain quick acceptance and muted any problems he might have encountered as Sandberg’s successor.
“I’ve been asked that question a million times,” he says, “but it never was a problem. First off, we’re two different players, and he retired. It’s not like they traded Ryno and brought me over. He was out of the game. He’s an RBI, home run guy, a production-type player. I’m more of a table-setter. Get on base. Score runs. Steal a base here and there. I knew I couldn’t come out here and hit 40 homers and drive in a hundred runs. So I just tried to stay within myself.”
That’s the approach Morandini has taken throughout a career that progressed quickly after his graduation from Indiana in 1989. He began that year in Class A Spartanburg and ended it in Class AA Reading, began the next year in Class AAA Scranton and ended it in Philadelphia.
He was back in Scranton as 1991 opened, but after a mere dozen games he was back in Philadelphia and surrounded by as wild and as rambunctious a bunch as the major leagues have seen this decade. Darren Daulton and Lenny Dykstra, John Kruk and Pete Incaviglia were the leaders of these macho men, and every one of them ran the streets just as hard as they played.
“Not too long ago,” Morandini says, thinking back on those days, “you had to earn your way here. You came up, you shut up, you went out and played and you earned respect doing that. It has changed some now with the way rookies come up, and they’re very flamboyant and loud. But those guys, back in those days, they were here seven, eight years, and as a rookie you just kept your mouth shut, went out and played. That’s the way you earned their respect.
“But I was appalled when I first came up. The first thing I saw in the locker room were guys smoking. It appalled me that an athlete would be smoking and chewing and drinking as much as they did after the game. But they were tough guys. They laid it on the line on the field, they played hard, they played hurt and I feel very fortunate to have played with those guys. I learned a lot from them.”
This was not the most comfortable of settings for him, but he absorbed those lessons and applied them even as he was platooned during his first years. The old whispers still surrounded him, and he didn’t escape them until 1995, when he played in a then-career-high 127 games, hit .283 and made the All-Star team.
He played in 140 games in 1996, in 150 in 1997 and then came his most unexpected Christmas gift.
“I’ve always loved Wrigley Field, the grass and the day games,” he said on the day it was announced. “I was shocked at first, but I’ve settled down. The more my wife and I talked about it, the more excited we got.”
He thinks living at home helps.
“You’re more of a normal person, especially with the day games,” he says. “You can go home, have dinner, go to a movie, the kids can sleep in their own beds. We have two dogs at home, the kids can enjoy time with the pets. They can play with their own toys, have their own bedrooms.”
His play certainly has reflected that, and in this season he replaced a legend, the kid who couldn’t hit left-handed pitching and was too frail to perform every day played in a career-high 154 games, hit a career-high .296, had a career-high 172 hits, collected his 1,000th major-league hit, committed a career-low five errors, had 45- and 59-game errorless streaks and put himself in line to win his first Gold Glove Award.
“It’s been a blast,” he says of all this. “The season we’ve had, it has been the most fun season of my career.”
