Career Rebound: Staff Ace Scott Erickson Bounces Back From Elbow Surgery

Many people thought Scott Erickson was baseball history.

After all, he was going through major surgery on his right elbow—that delicate and invaluable joint that had enabled him to be a successful big league pitcher for more than a decade. A ligament was being replaced in the elbow, a delicate procedure that was estimated to keep him out of baseball for a year or more, if he was able to overcome it at all. He had put that right elbow through a lot of trauma over the years— 2,200 innings pitched in the major and minor leagues, not to mention many thousands of pitches more in workout sessions and over the winter and during spring training.

What's more, Erickson would be 34 by the time he might be able to come back—an age when many pitchers already are on the decline.

When he proclaimed last fall—during a year he did not pitch because of the August 8, 2000, surgery—that he would be the Orioles' Opening Day starter this season, many people scoffed.

But one baseball insider who never was worried that he would be able to come back, was the big right-hander himself.

“No, I wasn't concerned,” Erickson says. “They'd done this surgery enough times [pitcher Tommy John was the first to undergo the procedure], they'd been doing it for 20 years, I've talked to plenty of guys who'd had the surgery. They all came back, and they all—from what I've seen—are throwing harder than they did before. So I always kind of joked around before I had the surgery that maybe one year I'd sit out and have that surgery, so I could come back throwing harder. Unfortunately, I asked the wrong question, because I had to have it. So let's hope it just works out that I'm throwing harder.”

So far, it's worked out better than anyone, including Erickson, might have expected. While he isn't throwing harder yet—in fact his velocity is down a little—a number of major league scouts say that Erickson looks just as strong as he did the year before the surgery and that his curveball is even nastier than it previously was. He lived up to his prediction and was on the mound Opening Day, beating Rogers Clemens and the Yankees. He has looked very sharp in most of his outings the first few weeks of the season, with his patented sinker still forcing batters to bounce the ball onto the infield, and he even criticized himself for allowing the Red Sox to beat him in the eighth inning on April 6 after he had pitched 72/3 beautiful innings. “Basically, I choked,” he conceded.

The Orioles are extremely pleased about the way he not only has recovered from his elbow problems, but has come back so powerfully.

“His curveball's got more bite on it,” says pitching coach Mark Wiley. “His slider is just nasty, right from pitch one in spring training in the bullpen. He told me he'd been throwing for a long time before he got there, because he missed that year. He was ready to pitch probably at the very end of last year, so he had the whole offseason to really work his butt off and get himself prepared for spring training. And obviously he got himself ready for pitching the first game of spring training.

“He's got all his pitches, and his delivery's real sound. And I think his command is better than it's been before. His delivery was so right, and he practiced it so much and solidified it, and that's going to help with the command.”

Those naysayers who doubted Erickson could come back obviously did not know of his commitment to working himself into shape, his stubborn determination and his powerful work ethic.

“He worked so hard in preparing for the season,” Wiley says. “He came into spring training in better shape than anyone. His work ethic is probably as good as Roger Clemens'. He really enjoys his work.”

Erickson says he could have pitched at the end of last year, had he wanted to. The Orioles pretty much left it up to him, and he was counting on pitching the final game of the 2001 season at Yankee Stadium.

“I wanted to finish my rehab and show them where I was at,” he relates, “and I wanted to catch up with the team, just to be back in the baseball lifestyle, I guess you could say. Grover [manager Mike Hargrove] basically left it up to me. It got to the point where I thought I could have pitched. I was trying to get my velocity to a certain number before I wanted to step back on the field. It got real close to what I was shooting for. I wanted to pitch the last game in Yankee Stadium.” But the events of September 11 disrupted the baseball season. The Orioles' schedule was changed so that the last game of the year was played in Baltimore, rather than New York. “We didn't play in Yankee Stadium for our last game, so I said I wasn't going to pitch. It just didn't work out that way, because our season was changed. That's the way it went, so I said forget it. With all the happenings of last year, I just decided to shut it down and let the young guys keep pitching and go out there and get the experience they needed. It didn't work out the way I wanted it to, so I just stepped out of the picture.”

He might have stepped out on the season's final day, but he did not step out on his winter regimen. Erickson wanted more than anything to be as ready as he could be Opening Day 2002. He devoted his offseason to getting prepared. As usual, he returned to his home on Lake Tahoe in Nevada. He plays golf there and skis during the winter months, and regularly lifts weights. This winter he played racquetball as well (though not as well, he concedes, as teammate Jeff Conine, who previously has been nationally ranked as a racquetball player). Erickson also got his arm in shape, working out in a way that didn't really deviate much from his previous winter regimens.

”I throw against a wall usually,” he says. “I've done that my whole career.” He doesn't use a baseball, but something that's about the same size and weight. “This year I was throwing an Increda softball,” he says. “It's a spongy type ball. It's the same weight [as a baseball], but a little larger.”

Erickson is a fitness nut, and last winter he had even more reason to pick up the intensity of his workouts.

“Basically, every day, after I lifted, I would go into the racquetball court with the Increda-ball and throw in there for about 15 or 20 minutes,” he explains. “And I was throwing the ball as hard as I could before New Year's came around. After that, it was just a matter of building up arm strength and everything.”

The purpose of throwing the Increda-ball, he says, was to get his arm loose after the year of inactivity, even though he has gone through a similar exercise during previous winters. “It was getting loose, getting the muscles, the elasticity back in the arm, trying to get the mechanics and practice everything you need to be consistent when you throw a ball,” Erickson says. Being inactive for 2001 was not easy for Erickson. He spent much of the summer in Sarasota, Florida, at the Orioles' minor league camp, getting his arm in shape.

”In baseball terms, it was somewhat of a miserable summer—because I've been playing every year since I was about seven years old,” he says. “Lucky enough, they made me distance myself from the team in Sarasota, which definitely helped, to not try to go thinking about sitting on the bench every night and watching them play while I couldn't. And then when I got back up here for the last six weeks, it was good to just get acclimated with the team, the new guys on the team, and everything like that. So that gave me a little flavor, and to just get into it, and get ready for spring training this year. So besides the fact that I didn't play all last year, I had a lot to look forward to. That's the way I tried to approach it.”

How does Erickson assess his own return to action? Does he believe he's pitching better than before, as scouts seem to think?

“My velocity's lower,” he acknowledges. “Hopefully, it's just going to come around. I don't think my breaking ball's any different. I've always had a fastball and slider, and it happened to be my breaking ball that cost me [the game to Boston, when he yielded a three-run homer to Nomar Garciaparra]. I definitely have a better change-up now, which is a split. I never really threw that, or felt consistent with that before. Basically the only difference in anything prior to surgery and after surgery is that I had  time to work on the split, in a situation where it wasn't going to cost me a game, or something like that. It's the same arm speed, same arm angle, everything as a normal fastball. That's the one bonus I got out of this surgery, besides prolonging my career, hopefully, and maybe adding a little bit to the fastball—the ability to throw a real comfortable change-up.”

One lingering question is whether Erickson's fastball will go up a few notches in velocity. He says it generally takes a while, following ligament replacement surgery, for a pitcher to regain or increase full velocity. But there's also the matter that he's older, and that velocity usually diminishes at some point when a pitcher is in his 30s.

“I'm not sure,” he says regarding the return of full speed of his fastball. “To be honest with you, I don't know what's going to happen. Usually, when I open a season my fastball's probably a little faster than it is right now.” He does not, however, think that his age is a factor. “I don't think so,” he conjectures. “No, I think I've maintained a good enough shape over the years that my body is okay. And I was throwing 96, 97, I don't think I'm going to lose five miles an hour, just like that.”

Erickson comes back to a team that is vastly different from the one he left in 2000. It's younger and several of its mainstays, notably Cal Ripken and Brady Anderson, are gone. It's a much weaker team than the club Erickson joined when he came to Baltimore from Minnesota in 1995. In fact, he's been an Oriole far longer than anyone else on the roster.

Does that change his approach at all?

“No, I don't think so,” he responds. “I've always given the game everything I possibly could, from the day I first came here in 1995 until today—or tomorrow. I'm not going to change anything just because I've been here longer than anybody else. You've still got to go out there and do your work and lead by example. And if something needs to be said every once in a while, then you can mention it. But I really don't offer too much information unless somebody asks. So if they're going about their business and doing it the way they should be, then everybody's happy.”

He does seem, though, a little mellower than in the past, a bit more thoughtful and willing to give of himself in the clubhouse. He even seems a little less uncomfortable in talking with the press. He never shirked from talking to the media. It was just an activity that he never seemed to relish.

“It's not a terrible deal, to have to deal with the press,” he now says. “But it's kind of a joke when they don't know what they're talking about. When I come in after a game and guys are asking questions basically like they didn't watch any of the game. That's one of the most irritating parts of it.” Erickson never has been one to seek out public attention. In fact, he likes to avoid it. “When the season's over I go home and nobody says a word to me about baseball. In a sense, that's why I go home [to South Tahoe] after the season. A lot of guys move to the city where they're playing. I guess they want to be recognized all year round. But I prefer to go up and hibernate in the mountains and kick back and get ready for the following spring training.” One thing that Erickson did not spend much time doing during his year away from the big league mound was sopping up good feelings from being named by People Magazine as one of the country's 50 most beautiful people.

”That was pretty irrelevant in the scheme of things,” he says. “It didn't change one thing in my life, and it didn't add anything, and it didn't take anything away. I never bought a copy of the magazine.”

It's obvious that his bout with surgery and a year away from the big leagues have narrowed Erickson's focus even more acutely on one thing—baseball. The whole experience seems to have made him a better pitcher, both physically and mentally.

Says Wiley, “I was surprised, in that you don't know how someone's going to be when they've been out of competition for as long as he was. I've seen him throw now as good as I've seen him throw. He may have thrown a little harder at times earlier, but that'll be here, and he throws plenty hard enough. It's still a plus fastball, and he's got other things in his arsenal.

”I'm just tickled pink he's where he's at. This guy is really an anchor for us now, for our young pitching staff. To have a veteran of that caliber, after he's gone through a surgery like that, it's pretty amazing.”