quote:
A fresh start
Friday, June 11, 2004
By BOB KLAPISCH
SPORTS COLUMNIST
AP
Danny Almonte
Danny Almonte is standing exactly 60 feet, 6 inches away - a span he's calibrated not with the help of a tape measure, but by his own perfect instincts. Even in the wide-open dimensions of the outfield, a true pitcher - even a teenager — knows how far a fastball is supposed to travel.
"You ready?" Almonte asks. We haven't begun to play catch, but his vibe is unmistakable. Long arms, long torso, cap pulled down low, Andy Pettitte-style. Almonte almost looks like he's ready for life on 161st Street in the Bronx, where baseball isn't a passion, it's a business, cold as Microsoft.
But Almonte isn't there yet. He is, after all, just a sophomore at James Monroe High School in the Bronx, pitching tonight at Shea Stadium for the New York City championship against George Washington H.S. Almonte says it's the greatest here-and-now moment of his abbreviated baseball life, but he's still trying to outrun the scandal of the 2001 Little League World Series.
Then, the Dominican-born Almonte pulverized 12-year-old hitters with a 78-mph fastball, striking out 46 batters in three starts - a stunning feat until it was discovered that Almonte was actually 14.
Danny Almonte file
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The facts on Danny Almonte, who will pitch today (7 p.m.) at Shea Stadium as his high school team plays for New York City's PSAL A Division title:
Age: 17
School: James Monroe High School, Bronx
Class: Sophomore
Position: Pitcher, first base
Height: 5 feet 10
Weight: 155 pounds
Fastball: 87 mph
2004 pitching: 9-1, 1.57 ERA, 84 strikeouts in 532/3 innings
2004 hitting: .456, 10 HR, 58 RBI
That's the asterisk Almonte carries today, and perhaps forever: white heat, followed by a white lie.
On this day not long ago, however, Almonte, 17, is far away from Williamsport. Instead, he's in Babylon, Long Island, paying a visit to the All-American Sports Academy, a crisply run camp for baseball-addicted preteens. Almonte has been invited to the camp by its director, Rob Drommerhauser, who was the Mets' bullpen catcher in the Eighties. Drommerhauser knows Ray Negron, who counseled Dwight Gooden after he succumbed to coke. And Negron knows Rolando Paulino, Almonte's Little League coach from the Bronx and present-day caretaker.
Sifting through four degrees of separation, Almonte finds himself in the middle of 135 upper-middle-class boys. The currency is the same for everyone here - a love of baseball - but that's not to say Danny has much else in common with the campers. He barely speaks, and when he does, he uses Negron to translate one- and two-word answers.
No matter. No one has to really talk to Danny to know his story. The kids recognize his face. And they surely realize the gift of his adult-like left arm.
"Fastball," Almonte says, announcing the first pitch, like the Speaker of the House bringing in the president for the State of the Union. The campers are all watching Almonte, as are the camp's staffers, including a retired Baltimore Orioles' scout whose presence lets the kids believe they're on a bullet train to The Show.
Me? I'm the one playing catch with Danny - a former Columbia right-hander who's still hanging around the sandlots of New Jersey. I'm too old, Almonte is too young. Our skills are hurtling in opposite directions, but for one brief moment we're in exactly the same place in the baseball universe.
Even as he goes into his windup, it's obvious Danny has a DNA to die for. His windup is short, his hips rotate perfectly, his front leg coils like a snake. And upon releasing the ball, his arm forms a perfect "L" - just the way it's taught to the campers.
Only, these mechanics are a product of genetics - inherited, not taught. As much as the All-American Baseball Academy advertises to the contrary, such physics can't be force-fed to its students. As Almonte's limbs unfold and the ball leaves his fingertips, it's obvious where he and that heater are headed.
"Danny has what I call pitchability," is how Yankees' scout Cesar Presbott put it. He's a New York-based bird-dog who, along with every other area scout, has been tracking Almonte since 2001. So far, Presbott likes what he sees.
"It's not about how hard you throw," the scout says. "I've seen plenty of guys who are at 95 [mph] and can't pitch. Danny has that something special."
Maybe it's because Almonte has already lived through the darkest days of his life. In the wake of the Williamsport fiasco, Almonte's perfect game was stricken from the record books, his Bronx-based team stripped of its third-place finish, and his coach, Rolando Paulino, was banned for life from all future Little League tournaments.
There were culprits everywhere in this sorry tale - primarily Danny's father, Felipe, who was caught chiseling two years off his son's age. No one ever blamed Almonte for the scam, but even if you have a problem with him today, his impenetrable wall of serenity, sprinkled with the requisite teenage indifference, suggests it's your problem, not his.
Almonte has moved along quite nicely since 2001. He won All-City honors with a 10-2 record and 2.63 ERA last year and was even better this season, lowering his ERA by more than one run. When he wasn't pitching, Almonte was one of Monroe's best hitters, starting at first base, posting a .456 average - which is one reason the Eagles are 41-2.
Their coach, Mike Turo, believes Almonte will continue to grow and be throwing in the low 90s by his senior year. Which is to say, he'll be riding that bullet train to The Show.
Joe DeLuca, a former Orioles' scout, would later say: "There's no doubt in my mind Danny's going to be drafted. Even with the stuff he's got right now, he could go somewhere in the lower rounds."
It's not that Almonte has major league velocity. If the meter for respectability drops at 90 mph, then Danny is a work in progress, somewhere in the mid-80s. But he has several obvious factors working in his favor: he's young, he's a lefty, and because of his long arms has what one major league executive calls "a projectable body." In other words, Almonte is waiting to ripen.
One more thing: Almonte's fastball has last-second-movement. Scouts call it late life in the zone, and it's the difference between a high-round draft pick - and a fat signing bonus - and spending the rest of your baseball life with me in the sandlots.
Understand, hitting a baseball is all about timing and comfort, which is why a straight fastball - even in excess of 90 mph - looks like a grapefruit to a major-leaguer. But nothing makes a hitter more uncomfortable than a fastball that moves late and unpredictably, which is precisely the gift that's been bestowed upon Almonte.
Although scientists have proven the impossibility of such a phenomenon, Danny's fastball nevertheless seems to accelerate just before it reaches my glove, tailing to the right. To a right-handed hitter, Almonte is throwing a screwball with a bad temper, drifting sharply away from the sweet spot of the bat barrel. Someday, when Almonte adds another 10 mph, a hitter won't be able to react to the cut until it's too late, which will result in plenty of weak ground balls to short.
No wonder Almonte buried those Little Leaguers two years ago. His fastballs are coming at me in a steady stream, each one accompanied with a faint "hiss." DeLuca nods approvingly, and murmurs, "He's got some pop, doesn't he?"
Suddenly, the former scout is curious enough to ask Almonte what else is on the menu.
"You got a curveball?" he asks. Almonte nods, expecting the question, ready to unveil his next surprise. The curve - also known as the deuce, the hook, or Uncle Charlie - has been eclipsed by trendier weapons such as the slider and split-finger fastball, but nothing can duplicate the effects of an old-fashioned curve with a 12-to-6 trajectory. Dwight Gooden had it in 1985 in his pre-rehab days, which compelled hitters to reverently address it as Lord Charles.
Almonte's curve, still in embryo form, is nevertheless dramatic. His "L" arm angle allowed him to get on top of the ball, pull down fiercely on the seams, and deliver a tight-spinning, late-breaking parabola that drops at least a foot. Almonte wants to show DeLuca the third pitch in his arsenal, a knuckleball, but the scout nukes it immediately.
"Get rid of it," Danny is told. "Let me see the curve again."
Danny throws a dozen more - for me, for DeLuca, and the campers who watched in naked awe. Through the entire game of catch, Almonte hardly seemed self-conscious. In fact, he was somewhere else, his eyes fixed in a thousand-yard stare. Maybe Almonte learned this self-hypnosis from watching Roger Clemens on TV. Or maybe not. Perhaps, like his curveball, even the ability to concentrate comes this naturally to Almonte.
DeLuca seems to think so. Arms folded over his barrel chest, the old scout offers Danny a peek into his future.
"You keep growing and keep throwing - and you stay in school - and you have a chance to go places, Danny," DeLuca said.
For the first time all day, Danny lowers the walls that protect him. He smiles. Finally.
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So why, exactly, did Almonte lie? Put the question through a morality strainer and you get another, more complicated question: Is it really a lie if you really believe it's true?
"In Danny's mind, he was 12 years old [in 2001]. He was innocent," Paulino said. Not that Almonte spent much time worrying about the scandal. Two years ago he could barely speak or read English, which kept him blissfully removed from the investigation and the subsequent penalties handed down.
Not only was Paulino banned from future tournaments, but so was Felipe Almonte, who returned to the Dominican Republic insisting his son was 12. That is, until Danny's real birth certificate, the one indicating his year of birth was 1987, not 1989, was discovered.
Paulino says he didn't realize Felipe had committed fraud on the Little League, believing Danny was only 12. But the 40-year-old Paulino and the elder Almonte were no strangers to each other. In fact, they'd been friends since boyhood in the Dominican Republic. And when Felipe Almonte and his wife returned to their country in the summer of 2001, they left Danny in Paulino's care.
That was the last time Danny saw his parents, and he is quick to say, "I really miss my mother." It's the only topic that moves him - those daily telephone conversations back to the Dominican Republic. But ask about Felipe, his father, and the walls thicken again.
"I talk to him about once a week," Danny says distantly. Actually, it's Paulino who maintains close contact with Felipe Almonte, delivering updates on his son. Today, Danny has a special visa that allows him to remain in the United States and live with Paulino. When Danny isn't playing baseball, he's at Monroe. When he's not in school, he's home watching TV, usually watching the Yankees. It's an ordinary teenager's life, says Paulino, which is what Felipe Almonte wanted all along.
"Danny's father decided it's better for him here in America. He has greater opportunities here," Paulino said. "He can have a better education and a better chance to develop as a baseball player."
Money is a factor, too. Major league rules compel U.S.-based players to have a high school diploma or its equivalency in order to get drafted. That means Danny will have to wait two more years for The Show, or vice versa. Of course, he could simply quit school, return to the Dominican Republic, and, since he's past his 16th birthday, become instantly eligible to sign with any team he wanted.
It's tempting. After all, every kid on the island knows the story of Wily Mo Pena, the 17-year-old phenom who pulled down a $1.55 million signing bonus from the Yankees in 1999. But for every overnight millionaire in the Dominican, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of teenagers who sign for no more than $20,000 or $25,000, hang around the minor leagues for a few years, and ultimately return home, broke and uneducated.
The competition for that winning lottery ticket is so intense, birth certificate forgery is a way of life for many foreigners, especially in the Dominican Republic. As former Met manager Bobby Valentine once told the Daily News, "There's no system of high schools there where every player gets an opportunity to be seen. Sometimes they have to wait five years to get on a local team where they can be seen by scouts."
Closer attention to immigration papers since the 9-11 attacks in the United States showed how much cheating has taken pace in the big leagues. The Yankees, for instance, learned that Cuban-born Orlando Hernandez was 32 when they signed him in 1998, not 28. The Angels' Bartolo Colon went from 26 to 28. And the Braves' Rafael Furcal lost the distinction of breaking Ty Cobb's record for most stolen bases as a 19-year-old (40 in 2000), when it was discovered he was actually 21 at the time.
"Hey, they all cheat," is how Monroe's Turo put it. He remembers just how casually the rules were broken during a visit to the Dominican Republic two summers ago, when his 10-year-old son was part of a touring Bronx All-Star team that was coached by none other than Paulino himself.
Paulino and Felipe Almonte, renewing their friendship, had pitted their Little League squads against each other in Almonte's hometown of Moca. The Bronx contingent was winning the first game, 6-1, when Turo remembers seeing older, stronger Dominican players slipping through the back of the dugout.
"All of a sudden, they had a whole new team out there, because they were losing," Turo says. "Those weren't 10- and 11-year-olds on the field anymore. They feel like they have to win, and they'll do anything to beat you."
The experience didn't entirely prejudice Turo toward Dominican players. He welcomed Almonte onto the Monroe squad in March 2003, which must feel like another lifetime for the two. Today, Turo and Almonte are just nine innings away from a New York City championship, although Danny won't be relying just on his coach.
Instead, Almonte will summon that precious fastball. It's the best friend he's ever had - incapable of lying, cheating, or mocking him, ever. As long as Almonte is throwing the heat, the rest of the world can wait outside the impenetrable walls of his soul.
E-mail: klapisch@northjersey.com
