Springing for The Check

By Tom Callahan

"It starts over every spring with or without you; maybe that's the trick of it," said the old catcher Paul Richards, who died last May.

At least in spring training, baseball is neither a game of inches nor a business measured in dollars and cents, though things are pretty well calculated. In Mesa, Ariz., where the California Angels do their exercising (and exorcising), home runs are gauged by how many rows deep they soar into an adjacent orange grove. At Tampa, Cincinnati Manager Pete Rose can tell you exactly how hard Pittsburgh's Forbes Field used to be in the old days. Last spring he said it was as hard as Chinese arithmetic.

"It was as hard as $100 worth of Jawbreakers," Rose says now, proving he is a Hall of Famer. "If you got a good reliever one year," Charlie Dressen used to advise newer managers, "get a different one the next." Only Rose would understand that this applies to similes as well. Approaching 46, the Reds' player-manager had to leave himself off the winter roster in order to protect a younger man, like Pitcher Norm Charlton, whose finger Rose broke with the first fungo of the season.

Secure in the knowledge that he can go 0 for 157 without falling below a .300 average for his 25 campaigns, Rose is entitled to activate himself any time after May 15. This gives him something in common with baseball's new holdouts, star free agents who have gone suspiciously begging in the marketplace and are enjoined even from reconciling with their old clubs until May 1. "I used to have to hold out every year," reminisces Rose. After winning batting titles in 1968 and '69, he saw his average plummet to .316 and had to wrangle to get a $2,500 raise. "But I caught up. Remember how I used to say I wanted to be the first $100,000 singles hitter? This year I paid over $100,000 in state taxes."

This year the owners are catching up. Sixteen of 26 arbitration verdicts have gone the way of management, intent on driving down last season's average wage of $412,520. The arbitrator lopped $200,000 off Dodger Pitcher Orel Hershiser's $1 million salary. As for free agents, museum pieces have lost their charm. Reds Shortstop Davey Concepcion, uncoveted elsewhere, had his $900,000 rate cut to $350,000. Reggie Jackson was obliged to come down almost that much to rejoin his old A's.

For those liberated few who thought they were in the prime of life, the picture is murkier. Once, Yankees Owner George Steinbrenner considered it a two-sided delight to lure away an American League East pitcher like Boston's Luis Tiant. Suddenly he has no interest in Detroit's Jack Morris, the decade's winningest pitcher. Montreal Outfielder Tim Raines, the National League batting champion (.334), must wonder whether he has bad breath. So frustrated was Teammate Andre Dawson, he signed a blank contract with the Cubs and is now working for $350,000 less than the Expos offered. World Series Hero Ray Knight cut a similarly shrewd deal while transferring from the champion Mets to the last-place Orioles.

The union charges collusion, but the thought of these 26 owners doing anything in complete concert seems as preposterous as Ron Guidry lingering on - his tractor over a matter of $50,000 while Steinbrenner replaces him with a pitcher (Tommy John, 46) three years older than Hall of Famer-elect Catfish Hunter. Detroit Manager Sparky Anderson, who ultimately retrieved Morris but lost Catcher Lance Parrish to Philadelphia, is typically philosophical. "Babe Ruth is buried in Baltimore ((Hawthorne, N.Y., to be irrelevantly accurate))," he says, spitting, "and the game goes on."

With a sigh that carries the fences at Lakeland, Anderson says, "Every player who comes to a new town tells how happy he is. I wish just one guy would stand up and say, 'I hate your town, I hate your team, I hate your manager. I'm here for one reason: you shelled out the most.' " Perhaps the least cynical Tiger is Steve Searcy, a stylish left-hander (wearing a CAN'T MISS tag). Searcy had a small stake in the free-agent war. He wants Parrish's number: 13.

"Sure it's unlucky -- for everyone else," says Searcy, sounding just like a rookie in his first major-league camp. For now, his number is 60. "I feel like an offensive lineman." Three years ago Boston's Roger Clemens was in Searcy's position precisely, a wide-eyed college star on the cusp of the big leagues, anticipating a few Triple-A weeks in the light early season before a fifth starter is summoned. Searcy admits, "The first time I faced Darrell Evans in an intrasquad game, I just couldn't pitch to him. But these guys aren't gods. I can get them out. I'll do anything to prove it."

Now Clemens, last year's Dwight Gooden, is the Cy Young winner and MVP of the American League. One season short of arbitration eligibility, he is the sorest of all the unhappy players automatically renewed by their clubs (in his case for $450,000, up $110,000). Two weeks ago Clemens stomped out. Over in the Mets' camp, this year's Gooden is trimmer and happier and thinks his dip last season from 24-4 to 17-6 may be traced in part to a mouthful of abscessed teeth. "Some games, I took a lot of pain pills." Missing his gold front tooth for the first time as a pro, Gooden went out last week with a perfect smile and gave up nine runs in the first inning.