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Rocco Fighting To Join In On Rays Magic

Photo by KELVIN MA

Rays outfielder Rocco Baldelli, on the 60-day disabled list with a mitochondrial disorder, watches the Rays take on the Rangers from the dugout on May 27, 2008.

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By MARTIN FENNELLY | The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 28, 2008

Updated: 05/28/2008 12:34 am

ST. PETERSBURG - He's feeling better, he's doing better, but there's still no timetable.

He arrives at Tropicana Field early. He likes to get his work in before most anyone else. "You just don't want to feel like you're taking up anybody else's time," Rocco Baldelli said. Then he watches the Rays play.

Baldelli is eligible to come off the disabled list Thursday, but won't. He doesn't know when he'll be back. Others wonder if he'll ever be back.

He sports a beard these days. It started out as a hockey playoff beard, just another Rhode Islander pulling for his Boston Bruins. The Bruins were knocked off.

"But now the team is playing so well, I can't shave. I switched sports right in the middle of the beard."

Rocco Baldelli smiled.

That he still can says a lot about him. He's 26 and hasn't played a regular-season game for the Rays in more than a year. The body that once made him Can't Miss now taunts and foils him, no matter how hard he works, and he works hard. The Rays he joined eight years ago are suddenly the talk of baseball. He watches.

"This is a different atmosphere, a different team," Baldelli said last week. "I'd love to be playing on a winner. I can't explain it. It'd be tough for you to explain it if I can't."

'A Great Teammate'

Once upon a time, the dream Rays outfield was going to be Rocco Baldelli in center field, Carl Crawford in left and Josh Hamilton in right.

The three men were at the Trop on Tuesday. A cartoon likeness of Carl Crawford adorned the cover of Sports Illustrated last week. Hamilton, now with Texas, having beaten his demons, is on the SI cover this week. He had a grand slam and five RBIs Tuesday as the Rangers cooled off the Rays, 12-6.

Then there's Rocco.

He held a news conference in spring training.

"That was the hardest thing I've ever had to do," Baldelli said. "In my head, I was losing it. I took a couple of deep breaths."

That day, he spoke of "metabolic and/or mitochondrial abnormalities." It was all so murky. Some of us wondered if this kid would ever play again. Some of us still do.

He feels he is making progress. He works out at the Trop when the Rays are home. When they're on the road, he works at the Rays' training complex. He hits, throws, runs some, lifts some, then goes home and watches the game on TV.

His teammates want him to be part of this as much as he can.

"He's such a great teammate and he always wanted to win," Scott Kazmir said. "Part of this must be killing him."

Baldelli sometimes wishes he had a broken bone hanging out or something, so people could see his medical problem - so he could see it, too. It's invisible. It's insidious.

"If you go by how media try to describe it, it would be that this guy is tired, literally dragging, like I had the flu," Baldelli said. "It has nothing to do with that.

"When I said fatigue in spring training, it was muscle fatigue. It's muscle fatigue that leads to cramping. That's what's been keeping me off the field. I work out for a very short amount of time and my muscles cramp. They don't have the strength and endurance they should. I don't mean running five miles. I mean taking 50 swings.

"It would be like you woke up tomorrow and your legs didn't work. What would you do? It's like a bad dream is what it is. If I did rehab for five years, 24 hours a day, it wouldn't help. The only thing that can help me now is working with doctors to find some kind of chemical prescription or something."

Or something.

Been There, Done That

"I know what it takes to come back," Baldelli said.

When he was a high school freshman, Baldelli shattered his right leg in a basketball game. The thing just exploded. He was in a wheelchair for months. He came back.

He missed 221 consecutive Rays games at one point, but came back in June 2006 and led the team in runs, doubles, home runs and RBIs the rest of the year.

"If there was no chance I'd step on the field again, I wouldn't be here."

He sees these 2008 Rays and gets excited watching them. It makes coming to the park easier. This is the kind of team Baldelli dreamed of playing on in Tampa Bay. He still has that dream.

"He's still fighting," Rays manager Joe Maddon said. "Who knows, by the end of the season, he might be the guy who puts us over the top. ... Stranger things have happened."

Baldelli thinks he can make it back this season. He can see it.

"I still think of this as my team. I don't know why, but I do."

He smiled again.

He still has that.

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