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MLB News | March 26, 2010
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Jim Edmonds is born again with the Milwaukee Brewers
By Tim Brown
March 26, 2010
Maryvale, AZ — Jim Edmonds’ comeback began as a St. Louis Cardinals thing, became a baseball thing and finally a Milwaukee Brewers thing.
Whatever the route (and he believes owners’ collusion can’t be entirely dismissed), it’s put Edmonds here, at almost age 40, a year’s sabbatical behind him, his 17th major league season coming, this one as an extra outfielder.
A little more than a week before the Brewers open at Miller Park against the Colorado Rockies, Edmonds’ return to the big leagues – he’s healthy, he’s assured there’ll be playing time, he’s been added to the 40-man roster and he just returned from Southern California, where he packed up some things for the regular season – is all but complete.
Gone is the year he spent pattering around the clubhouse at Shady Canyon Golf Club (Mark McGwire’s home away from home) in Irvine, Calif., the days he lolled at the beach with his four children, ages 1 to 16, and the few minutes he killed thinking about baseball while he was away.
“Actually got to take my kids to the beach for the first time in 20 years,” he said. “First time I’ve seen the beach in the summer.”
Actually, I exaggerated the time he spent on baseball.
“Zero,” he said.
As it went down, Edmonds was back in St. Louis over the winter tending to his restaurant – Fifteen – when he happened into a few of his former teammates. They gave him “a little pull,” Edmonds said, to pick up his glove again. The Cardinals had some young-ish outfielders and not much depth, they explained, so why not?
“I thought it’d be a good idea to try and make that team,” Edmonds said.
Sadly for Edmonds, the general manager and field manager weren’t quite as inspired. But baseball was in his head again. He’d gone out batting .256 with decent power over a half-season for the Chicago Cubs in 2008, which ended with them losing in a train-wreck division series against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
When he didn’t receive offers to play in 2009, he was surprised and a little suspicious that he and other veterans were being forced out of the game because of their desire for guaranteed contracts. But he had a wife and children and a golf swing to tend to, so he left it at that. If the game didn’t want him, there was more to Jimmy Baseball than baseball.
Unexpectedly then, he’d been talked into more baseball, and he was asking the Cardinals for a shot, and finding himself disappointed it wasn’t going to work there.
“It was weird,” he said. “It just kind of happened. That one day put it all out there. I don’t really know what came about to put me in this situation. It just did. Deep down inside maybe I was a little angry. I had something to prove because of last year.”
Often enough, at his age, the comeback season merely serves to confirm the season before, or the one that led to the comeback. Eric Gagne, for one, following a summer in a Canadian independent league, didn’t make it to the end of spring before the Dodgers granted him his release. But, amid the long shots and the overlooked and the forgotten, Edmonds is not quite alone.
Jacque Jones is back with the Minnesota Twins after losing his grip in Detroit and Florida in 2008 and reassessing his career in Mexico and Newark in 2009. While he might be ticketed for Triple-A Rochester to start the season, Jones is batting .321 in 11 games and playing a sturdy outfield. Last Saturday, after he poked a single to left and ripped a double to right against Tampa Bay Rays left-hander David Price, he was starting to feel like himself again.
“You know,” he said, “this spring more than anything is about my confidence. I felt like I hadn’t lost any of my ability to play. I got caught in a rut and my confidence began to wane. … I had to relax and breathe and go have fun and play the game. It was all about being confident.”
On the independent league team in Newark, playing for Tim Raines, he found himself in the same dugout as former big leaguers Carl Everett, Keith Foulke, Armando Benitez, Jay Gibbons and Ramiro Mendoza. Like them, perhaps, Jones refused to believe a game he’d played since childhood would leave him, in his case, before his 35th birthday.
“From something to nothing, like that?” Jones said.
Jones wouldn’t accept it. And while Edmonds refused to chase the game like Jones did, he was lured back by a minor league contract and a promise to release him a week before the conclusion of camp if he asked. Instead, he’ll make a base salary of $850,000 with the chance to earn $1.75 million more based on plate appearances. He could pocket another $100,000 if he is named – what else? – Comeback Player of the Year.
By most opinions, Edmonds, an eight-time Gold Glove winner, has looked comfortable in the outfield and is finding his hitting groove, batting .286 with nine RBIs in 14 games.
“It hasn’t come easy,” he said, “but it hasn’t been as tough as I thought.”
What’s left is to prove to anyone who was watching that 2009 – his year on the beach – was a mistake. And not his mistake.
“I didn’t miss it, but I was kind of not satisfied with the way it ended,” he said. “I can still play. I wasn’t worried about the year off. That’s all in your head.”
And, OK, maybe a little in his heart.
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