Jerry Hairston: Second Chance

Since the first time Jerry Hairston put on an Orioles uniform on September 11, 1998, he has been a lightning rod for a whole gamut of issues surrounding the ballclub. His exuberant play on the field in his first few games as an Oriole ignited a mini-insurrection of fans calling for more youth, more emotion and more excitement on a team that had grown old and self-satisfied despite its losing ways.

When he began the next season in Rochester, fans besieged the airwaves demanding Hairston's return to replace the somnolent incumbent second baseman, Delino DeShields. Hairston, in a way, symbolized the very youth movement that the fans wanted but that Orioles management was snail-like in responding to, as crusty-but-underperforming veterans held onto their positions while the team continued to play poorly.

It wasn't until the last two months of 2000 that the always buoyant Hairston was given the second base job on a full-time basis. He said at the time that he wanted to be the Orioles' offensive sparkplug.

Something happened, though, when the 2001 season began. Hairston had the job he wanted as Baltimore's starting second baseman, leading the youth movement that fans had clamored for. The only problem was, he wasn't hitting as well as expected. He batted .256 last year and was criticized for being too impatient and swinging with too much gusto for a man built more to hit doubles down the line than home runs over the fence. He also earned the reputation among some of his peers as a cocky young player who was too demonstrative on the field to suit the macho code of players like the Yankees' Roger Clemens, who showed his distaste for Hairston's uppitiness by throwing at him. Even some in the Orioles clubhouse felt Hairston was a little too emotional on the field. The second basemen ticked off umpires by being a constant complainer, especially on strike calls. What's worse, for a man who prided himself on defense, Hairston made 19 errors, many on easy plays that he just appeared unready to handle. So when the young Orioles collapsed last season, with the worst record in baseball after the All-Star break, Hairston became the scapegoat for many fans. Those who had hailed him as a glory boy and hope of the future three years ago were now calling for his head.

Hairston seemed oblivious to it all. He is who he is, he likes to say, and he plays the way he plays. He was always an aggressive hitter, and he always wore his heart on his sleeve out on the field. Hairston wasn't going to change his ways—for anybody.

And he seemed vindicated this spring, when in Florida manager Mike Hargrove finally rewarded Hairston with the plum he always felt should have been his—leadoff man in the order. Hairston hit very well in spring training, he was more patient at the plate, and he fit into the leadoff role like a hand in a glove. He seemed on the brink of seeing his dream fulfilled. He would lead the young Orioles as their sparkplug.

But then, unfortunately, the season began. The Hairston of spring training seemed to evaporate in the cool northern air. He couldn't buy a hit in the early going. The patient approach he had seemed to master in Florida gave way to undisciplined hitting. His once faithful fans became his detractors.

“Jerry did real well in spring training,” says hitting coach Terry Crowley. “But you know, I think spring training is spring training. The volume gets turned up a little bit more when the season starts. You don't face quite the same caliber of pitching. That's not to say Jerry can't hit. He can. We've seen him do it. We like a guy who's settled down and not too hyper. Jerry has the ability to do those things.”

It took a long time before Hairston was able to reach the .200 mark. He was dumped from the leadoff spot and placed at the bottom of the order. Crowley and Hargrove kept waiting for Hairston to turn things around. The hitting coach felt Hairston had gotten some bad breaks in the first few games, hitting hard line drives that were caught but could just as easily have been hits. “You think you have to make a change when you really don't, because the hits aren't falling,” explains Crowley. “So he just got himself into a little funk, pressing a little bit, taking pitches he should have been swinging at, swinging at pitches he probably should have taken. He just wasn't the totally relaxed hitter we saw in spring training. But he'll come around.”

By the time Hairston did start to come around again, it was too late. On May 21, just when Hairston had begun to hit again, the axe fell. Hargrove benched him in favor of Brian Roberts, who was recalled from Rochester to take over at second base.

While others might have seen the axe coming, Hairston hadn't. He was shocked and disappointed. And he was hurt. He put a grand and noble public face on his benching, saying he accepted it and would do whatever the team asked of him. He acted the professional.

But he was deeply upset.

“I'm dealing with it,” he says, “but I'm an every day player. I was surprised, and I don't like it.”

He was especially upset because he felt his hitting finally had come around again. The day Roberts was recalled, in fact, Hairston hit his first home run of the year, and through the end of May, he was batting .356 in his previous 15 games. Hairston also believed that his fielding had greatly improved. He had only two errors with almost a third of the season gone, and several coaches from other teams had told him before his benching that they considered him a contender for a Gold Glove award.

Hairston, 26, like his still young baseball career, is a thicket of contradictions and ups and downs, a man who seems open and easy to read but is much more difficult to pigeonhole than early impressions might indicate.

He is cocky and often does go overboard with umpires, but he also is respectful and polite and very likeable. He is devoutly religious and extremely confident of his own abilities. He likes to do things his own way, but he still greatly respects his elders, even when he doesn't always heed their advice. He can be brash and also naive. He is eager to learn yet set in his ways. As a ballplayer, Hairston is his own biggest supporter and his own worst enemy.

One way in which he has no counteracting alter-ego, however, is his upbeat outlook on life and his own abilities.

He might be hitting just .228 (as he was in mid-May), but he points out that if he had just four or five more hits at that juncture, his average would be about .280. (He's pretty close to being on the money there. With five more hits, at the time, his average would have been .277 rather than .228. But any player who's hitting poorly at a given time can make the same claim. Ten hits in 200 at-bats can make a difference of 50 points in a player's batting average.)

He can be struggling to reach .200 and still say that he feels great and is confident about his hitting.

When's he taken out of the leadoff spot by Hargrove, he says he doesn't really care where he hits, that it only matters the first time through the lineup whether you bat first or ninth.

When he's asked about his trouble getting hits this year, he says, “This is a humbling game. I look at my numbers at the end of the season.” He can call up the fact that he was hitting .149 at Triple-A in early 1999 and ended his Rochester season at .291.

“You have to be mentally tough,” he says, reciting a lesson the big leagues have taught him. “Not everything's going to go your way.”

Regarding his reputation for being brash on the field and therefore rankling other players, Hairston boils it down to his contretemps with Roger Clemens last year, saying he knows of no one else who is annoyed by his on-field behavior. “It's really been blown out of proportion,” he says, “and it's really only one player that had a problem with it. I have great respect for every big leaguer out there. When I play against them, I have the ultimate respect. They didn't get to this level for nothing. I respect my opponent. Obviously, I want to win as much as anybody. I play hard, and I don't think I've rubbed anybody the wrong way. At least, other players haven't said anything. In fact, a lot of the guys say, ‘I love the way you play. Keep playing hard.'” Hairston also says he respects Clemens, and the incident from last year is behind him.

When asked about trouble he might have had early in the year in laying down bunts, something he once was known for, Hairston says the next time he is asked to bunt, “I know I'm going to get the job done.”

Regarding his fielding problems from 2001, he says that perhaps “I was too relaxed. And when you get too relaxed, sometimes you lose a little concentration. It wasn't my hands or my arm, but just a lack of concentration. And a lot of the errors I made were aggressive errors. I was trying to make something happen.”

Just before Hargrove replaced Hairston at second with Roberts, Hairston was talking about how comfortable he felt on the field and at the plate compared with when he first came to the major leagues. “Now I have a game plan,” he says, explaining that he wants to relax at the plate, and “if the ball is in my area, hack. For three or four games I tried to be too fine, trying to place the ball here or there. I've never in my life done that. There's a reason why I went through the minor leagues pretty quick—because I can hit. My way of hitting, when I step in the box, is that I'm going to hack. If the ball's in my zone, I'm going to take an aggressive hack. Some people may say I swing too hard. But, hey, a lot of guys in this league swing hard. I'm an aggressive hitter, I always have been. I'm an aggressive player, period. If it ain't good enough, it ain't good enough. But doggone it, I know it's going to work out for me. I know it's going to work out in the long run.”

The long run might now be here for Hairston. He got the job he wanted, and at least for the time being, he lost it.

But he never has been one to hang his head or doubt himself. Jerry Hairston believes in himself in a way that is almost contagious in its genuine enthusiasm. Whether that is enough to help him win his job back will be the ultimate test for Hairston. That, and his bat and glove.