Ernie Banks he’s not, but new Cubs shortstop Ricky Gutierrez also believes in playing two. Or at least playing one and listening to one.
After an afternoon playing in a Cactus League game, Gutierrez has been known to take in a second ballgame using nothing but a cell phone.
The announcer? His wife, Lisa.
“They’re all playing little league baseball,” Gutierrez says of his three sons, Aric, 12; Ricky, Jr., 7; and Kendrick, 4. “During the weekend my wife calls me on the phone and tells me `they’re hitting!’ so I can hear what they do.”
This is a fairly new phenomenon for the Gutierrez family. Last season, and for the previous five, Gutierrez spent spring training with the Houston Astros in Kissimmee, Fla., about a two-hour drive from his home in Pembroke Pines, Fla.
With the promise of becoming the Cubs’ everyday job at shortstop, Gutierrez couldn’t pass up the opportunity to sign the two-year, $4.5 million contract Cubs General Manager Ed Lynch placed before him last December. Even if it meant having to run up his cellular-phone bill.
Since hitting .251 in 133 games for San Diego as a rookie in 1993, Gutierrez has sat on the cusp of being an everyday shortstop. With only 13 career homers, he bears no resemblance to power-hitting shortstops such as the New York Yankees’ Derek Jeter or Seattle’s Alex Rodriguez.
His fielding is consistent–a word often used to describe Gutierrez–but doesn’t conjure up images of Ozzie Smith or Ozzie Guillen. In parts of seven major league seasons, he never has hit lower than .240 or higher than .284, and for the last three seasons he has finished at .261.
Gutierrez played only 85 games last season after he twice broke bones in his left hand. When he came back from the second injury in August he found himself in a platoon role with Tim Bogar.
“It didn’t matter who was pitching, righty or lefty,” said Gutierrez, a right-handed hitter. “I’d play two, sit one. Maybe because I got hurt two times they thought it was going to take me a long time to get back to playing every day.”
In the midst of a third straight NL Central title run and without the statistics or desire to make any demands, Gutierrez settled into his new role without dreaming of bringing any strife into an idyllic Astros clubhouse.
In August, just as Gutierrez was coming off the disabled list for the second time, the Cubs brought up shortstop prospect Jose Nieves from Class AAA Iowa. If Nieves hadn’t made 16 errors during his two-month tryout with the Cubs, Lynch may not have been forced to go shopping for a shortstop in the off-season.
Lynch was the San Diego’s director of minor leagues when the Padres acquired Gutierrez in a 1992 trade with Baltimore, the team that drafted him in 1988. When Gutierrez’s agent let Lynch know he wanted to play for the Cubs, all that was left was to determine if the price was right.
“This off-season when we were in Anaheim [at the winter meetings], Don [Baylor] and I were talking with his agent, Larry Reynolds,” Lynch said. “And Larry made it very clear that Ricky wanted to play for Don Baylor and the Chicago Cubs. He made it very clear and he wanted to be very aggressive in working something out with us.”
After thinking he had earned the starting job with Houston, Gutierrez didn’t think it was right that he had lost it to an injury.
“I just wanted to have a shot to play every day and be left alone and be in the lineup every day,” Gutierrez said. “Not having to come to the ballpark every day and look in the lineup and see if I’m playing.”
Gutierrez recognized he fit in well with the Cubs but his .330 career average at Wrigley Field, 70 points above his lifetime average of .260, also had something to do with it.
He remembers one particular day there in 1998 when he was the only Astro to get a hit off of Kerry Wood. The other two times up Gutierrez struck out, much like the rest of his teammates did on the day Wood tied the Major League record of 20 strikeouts in a game.
“In a way it’s an honor,” Gutierrez said. “Because the way he threw that day was awesome. I was just lucky to get one. That was probably the only mistake he made all game, he hung me a curve ball and I was able to hit it out of [third baseman Kevin] Orie’s reach. After that, there were no mistakes.”
That day was an aberration for an Astros team that hasn’t been challenged seriously in the NL Central for three seasons. Despite all the memories, Gutierrez knew it was time to move on.
“I’ll always remember the team that we had over there and the guys that we had on that team,” Gutierrez said. “I got along with all the guys over there and I still have a lot of friends but I had to move on. I had to find a better place for me to play.”
