Hide the youngsters! Pad the water coolers! Get Derrek Lee into protecting custody!
Heads up, people — Big Z is again on the town!
Yep, former Cubs pitcher and one-time strolling volcano Carlos Zambrano — all 6-Four and 275 kilos (or so) of him — is suiting as much as play baseball as soon as once more in Chicago at age 37.
But the large fellow’s not again with the Cubs, for whom he performed 11 of his 12 major-league seasons, from 2001 to 2011. No, he’s making a comeback as a reduction pitcher for the Chicago Dogs of the American Association of Independent Professional Baseball.
Never heard of the Dogs? Well, they’re named after scorching canines, not mangy curs or fluffy home pets, and so they play in opposition to such notables because the Fargo-Moorhead Redhawks, Texas Airhogs, Kansas City T-Bones, St. Paul Saints and Milwaukee Milkmen. They additionally get their licks in in opposition to the Railroaders and RailCats, the Goldeyes and Canaries. They play the Lincoln Saltdogs, too, and one wonders about that Dogs-Saltdogs matchup and the probably fantastic headlines that may ensue. Of course, Dogs vs. T-Bones is a keeper, too.
But none of this issues to Zambrano, who seems to be resplendent in his crimson Dogs observe jersey, black shorts and crimson socks on this beautiful May afternoon. He is getting ready for observe and the workforce’s residence opener at glowing Impact Field in Rosemont, and he desires it recognized that he’s critical about succeeding at making it again to the bigs after being out of Major League Baseball for six seasons.
There have been plenty of major-league pitchers who have been older than 37 — certainly Rich Hill, Pat Neshek and Fernando Rodney are all energetic pitchers older than Zambrano — however none that anyone can consider who have been away from the sport for therefore lengthy and got here again.
“Bartolo Colon,” Zambrano says. “He pitched when he was 45.”
Not that the not too long ago retired Colon was ever out of the sport for six seasons. Only that the quick, chunky — hell, let’s name him what he was: fats — pitcher for a lot of groups simply appeared to go on and on with out rhyme or motive or concern over health or age.
“Bartolo, he’s short, he’s heavy,’’ Zambrano says. “But I saw him last year throwing 94 mph! And remember, he did it as a starter. I changed my role, you know. I want to be a reliever now.”
‘I changed my role, you know. I want to be a reliever now.’
That’s one of many causes Zambrano, who used to the touch the mid to higher 90s together with his heater when he was within the zone, feels he could make it — simply by throwing fewer innings as a reliever. But he additionally feels he has the proper mindset nowadays to be not only a reliever, however a more in-depth. The man who shuts the barn door and blows out the lantern. The reaper.
Not the quick man or center man?
Big Z shakes his head firmly. No.
“I feel I’ve good, uh, intimidation to be a more in-depth, you recognize?’’
That can be a reasonably certain factor.
For instance, you can ask the Gatorade dispenser within the Cubs’ dugout again in 2009 how intimidated it felt when Z demolished it with a bat after he was thrown out of a sport in opposition to the Pirates for arguing a tag name at residence plate. In a rage, he had tried to throw the sport ball out of the park, virtually making it into the left-field bleachers, then he threw his glove as arduous as he might in opposition to the dugout display, and at last he went ballistic on the aforementioned plastic cooler.
Then there was the nuclear, near-fisticuffs scrum with Lee, which obtained Zambrano suspended for 2 days earlier than being thrown on baseball’s restricted checklist for six weeks. After that, he went via eight months of anger-management classes. In 2008, he struck out trying, took one step and angrily broke the bat in half over his left thigh.
Thrown into the combination have been quite a few run-ins with umpires, nasty phrases about his personal teammates (for which he would apologize), and meltdowns that appeared to make his pitching incidental to his frame of mind.
When he lastly was accomplished with the Cubs in 2011 — or moderately, after they have been accomplished with him — Big Z…