It Took More Than an Injury to Stop Bob Caffrey : Baseball: Shoulder problems contributed to the end of pro career for former Titan and Loara standout. But he says that’s not the whole story.

CORONA —  Bob Caffrey could easily point to a chronic shoulder injury as the sole reason his professional baseball career went from boom to bust in five years.

The evidence is undisputable: Caffrey, a first-round draft pick by the Montreal Expos in 1984, had arthroscopic surgery in 1985, just a year after he received a $100,000 signing bonus and was considered one of the nation’s best catching prospects.

Caffrey, a former Loara High School and Cal State Fullerton baseball standout who also played quarterback at both schools, then had reconstructive shoulder surgery in 1986, spent eight weeks with his arm in a sling and missed most of the season.

Caffrey never regained full range of motion and strength in his throwing arm, never made it past the double-A level and was released--stamped with a “damaged goods” label--by the Expos in the spring of 1989.

But to say the end of his career was caused by injuries alone wouldn’t be telling the whole truth.

It wouldn’t be a lie, but Caffrey, now 29, married with two children and trying to adjust to life without baseball, admits there was more to it than meets the arm.

“To this day, I’m trying to figure out what happened, what the true reasons were (for not making the big leagues),” Caffrey said. “I could say it was the shoulder, and that had something to do with it, but it also had to do with my confidence and how I handled certain situations.”

Caffrey is home in his Corona apartment, his day’s work in the merchandising department of the Straub Distributing Co. in Orange complete.

Installing beverage displays in supermarkets and neon signs in pubs isn’t his life’s ambition--he hopes to get into coaching, perhaps finish college--but it’s a decent job, and he can support his family, which includes his wife, Debbie, 3-year-old daughter, Jenna, and 8-month-old son, Joshua.

The Angels are playing the Oakland Athletics on television, and there is A’s first baseman Mark McGwire, one of Caffrey’s teammates on the 1984 U.S. Olympic team.

So many from that team--Will Clark, Barry Larkin, Cory Snyder, Chris Gwynn, B.J. Surhoff and Scott Bankhead, among others--have gone on to the major leagues.

“Yeah, I played with a lot of those guys,” Caffrey said. “But they knew what it took to make the big leagues.”

Caffrey didn’t have to say it, but it was understood. He hit a school-record 28 home runs and drove in 90 runs to help Fullerton win the 1984 national championship. He was blessed with great catching tools. But he didn’t have what it takes to make the big leagues.

“The game is 90% mental, and if you play without confidence, you’re not going to do well,” he said. “I’ve never been strong within as far as that goes.

“I was lucky in college to play for Augie (Garrido, Fullerton coach), whose major attribute was the psychology of individuals. He knew how to handle me. But in the pros, you don’t have someone in your corner. It’s a game, but it’s a business.”

The shoulder injury didn’t help. It’s difficult to be confident of your abilities when you know you can’t perform up to them. But his problems weren’t all mechanical.

At one point, Caffrey had what he described as a Steve Sax-like syndrome for catchers. Some sort of mental block prevented him from catching pitches in certain locations.

Caffrey wasn’t the smoothest of receivers coming out of college. Scouts were more impressed with his strong arm and bat and figured catching technique would come, but he never fully developed behind the plate.

“It was frustrating when I was playing and things weren’t happening,” Caffrey said. “And when I couldn’t make them happen, I’d get down on myself and down on baseball.”

Montreal management also got down on Caffrey. There was some turnover in the Expos’ front office in 1988, and those who drafted Caffrey and invested their time and money in him were gone. Caffrey admits he might have rubbed some of the new people the wrong way.

“As in life, there are political games in baseball, and I might not have handled them as well as I should have,” Caffrey said. “Maybe I wasn’t professional enough. Maybe I didn’t take the right steps or have the right attitude.”

Ironically, the best year of Caffrey’s baseball career might have led to his downfall. Fullerton played 86 games in 1984, going 66-20 and beating a Who’s Who of college baseball--Miami (Fla.), Arizona State, Oklahoma State and Texas--to win the College World Series in Omaha.

“It was one of the funnest times I’ve had in my life,” Caffrey said.

Caffrey, the 13th player selected in the 1984 draft, made the Olympic team as a backup catcher and saw plenty of action during Team U.S.A.’s 40-game, pre-Olympic tour but played little during its silver-medal performance in the Los Angeles Games.

Caffrey then signed with the Expos, spent two weeks at Class-A West Palm Beach and a month and a half in a St. Petersburg, Fla., instructional league, where he played every day.

That’s when his arm, worn out from the busiest nine-month period of its life, began to get sore. Caffrey caught through the pain at West Palm Beach in 1985 but was moved to designated hitter three months into the season.

Arthroscopic surgery after the season revealed a tear in the labrum, the ring of cartilage around the shoulder bone, and Caffrey underwent reconstructive surgery in January, 1986.

He played only 13 games at the end of the 1986 season, all at designated hitter, and was moved to first base in 1987. But because the team was grooming a first-base prospect, Caffrey split the season between West Palm Beach and Burlington, Iowa, a lower Class-A team.

Caffrey had a decent year, batting .243 with 20 home runs, and was promoted to double-A Jacksonville, Fla., as the backup catcher in 1988. When the starter got hurt, Caffrey stepped in and hit .263 with four homers and 22 RBIs in 51 games through early July.

More encouraging was that Caffrey was throwing with little or no pain--an apparent breakthrough. Caffrey played in the Southern League All-Star game, but his arm tired, and he slumped at the plate in the second half of the season. He was released in spring training, 1989.

Caffrey returned to Burlington, where he had met his future wife, and worked in a beer distributing warehouse for a year and a half before returning to Southern California last October.

Instead of playing for the big money, he’s working the 9-to-5 grind, trying to make ends meet and watching the big-money guys on television. But this former blue-chip prospect doesn’t have a chip on his shoulder.

“Sure, I had an opportunity to make millions, but you can’t live life thinking about that,” Caffrey said. “It does cross my mind, but I don’t wake up every day thinking about it.

“I’m happy, I have two lovely kids and a wife. I’m just trying to get my life going in another direction.”