Saberhagen Searches for a Fitting Finale

In a corner of the visitors’ clubhouse at Edison Field, Bret Saberhagen took a hearty bite of a fast-food cheeseburger, smiled and said, “Pretty good diet, huh? That’s why we’re baseball players and not athletes.”

This was late Wednesday afternoon. This was when Saberhagen was still slated to face the Angels tonight in the fourth start of his latest and last comeback, still hopeful of helping the Boston Red Sox reach the playoffs before retiring after the final out of the final game of his 18th season as a major league baseball player, if not athlete.

Instead, the two-time Cy Young Award winner and two-time comeback player of the year, a 37-year-old right-hander who has been a prisoner of the disabled list during an otherwise distinguished career, may have already pitched his final game.

Rookie Casey Fossum will face the Angels in his second major league start tonight. Saberhagen was scratched after playing catch for a few minutes before Wednesday night’s game and informing Manager Joe Kerrigan that he was experiencing discomfort behind his right shoulder, the same shoulder that has been operated on three times, a frustrating and stuff-sapping accompaniment to one knee and two elbow surgeries.

With Pedro Martinez sidelined for a month because of shoulder inflammation and finally scheduled to start Sunday at Texas, with the Red Sox having stayed in division and wild-card contention while operating a halfway-house rotation for recycled veterans--see David Cone, Hideo Nomo and Frank Castillo--striving to prove they’re not finished, they can’t afford start-to-start uncertainty from one more.

Saberhagen knows it and wouldn’t want to burden the Red Sox with that uncertainty, which is why he wanted to test the shoulder Wednesday rather than summon an 11th-hour replacement while warming up before tonight’s start.

“I’m not trying to be a hero anymore,” he said. “I’m not trying to prove anything to myself or anyone else anymore. My only thought is that the team comes first. I mean, there was a time when I thought that even if I was hurting I could help better than somebody else, but I’m older now and I know I can’t hit my spots and can’t throw all my pitches when I’m not 100%. One bad pitch can lead to a loss and we just can’t afford losses at this point. If we weren’t in contention I’d finish up even with the pain.”

It isn’t certain now how it will finish for the Saberhagen, who pitched Reseda Cleveland High to the L.A. City championship in 1982, hurling a no-hitter in the title game, an indication of things to come. He was 21 and only in his second season with the Kansas City Royals when he won his first Cy Young Award with a 20-6 record and pitched the Royals to a World Series triumph over the St. Louis Cardinals by giving up only one run in the 18 dominant innings of Games 3 and 7.

He would win a second Cy Young with the Royals in 1989, going 23-6, but he required the first of his elbow operations the next year and has been on the disabled list 12 times, including the 22 months that followed his last shoulder surgery in November 1999. He returned triumphantly from that arduous rehab on July 27, beating the Chicago White Sox by giving up only three hits and one run in six innings, but in two subsequent starts against the Angels and Oakland A’s he was tagged for nine runs and 16 hits in nine innings, and announced after the Oakland game on Aug. 7 that he would retire at the end of the season.

In fact, his three children--Drew, 15, Brittany, 14, and Daulton, 9--had traveled to Oakland to see that game and subsequently told their dad that they wanted to be on hand when he pitched his last game.

“You may have just seen it,” Saberhagen told them.

Indeed. The discomfort that affected his performance in that game has lingered, canceling his appearance tonight and possibly bringing a premature end to the end. Kerrigan said only that the team would wait a couple days to see if the condition eases enough for Saberhagen to throw on the side.

“My shoulder is shot from all the surgeries, and the inflammation tends to creep from spot to spot,” Saberhagen said. “If I could go back and change one thing it would be all the injuries and all the time in rehab, but there’s only one way I can look at it.

“During all that time I’ve been down, I’ve seen young players go through surgery who have never experienced even one game in the big leagues, let alone the success and big moments I’ve enjoyed. So if things aren’t going great for me now, it’s not the end of the world. I’ve been very fortunate. The game doesn’t owe me anything. I owe the game everything.”

After all, he said, the goal was to play four years and he has gone four times that, pitching 2,5622/3 innings with a 167-117 record.

Now, having been living in New York, he has a new home in Calabasas and plans to make up for lost time with his children.

Drew, who will be a sophomore at Calabasas High, already has scouts and college recruiters salivating as a left-handed first baseman and pitcher.

“I can’t replace all the stuff I’ve missed in the kids’ life, but I plan on being there for them from now on,” Saberhagen said. “That’s my main concern now.”

That, and the fire in his shoulder and the fading hope he can still find a way to help get the Red Sox to October.