Lovin’ Life

Hot Hitting Melvin Mora Could Not Be Happier

It’s about two hours before game time, and the Orioles are taking batting practice.

Not Melvin Mora, however.

He’s already hit, and now he’s in front of the dugout playing his own, unique version of hackey sack. Instead of kicking a soft little bag in the air as often as he can without allowing it to hit the ground, he is kicking a baseball. It’s a remarkable performance, even for an athlete who as a teenager played on the Venezuelan national soccer team. Mora has added this ritual to his pre-game routine, keeping a baseball aloft with his foot as long as he can. He’s teaching the game to teammate Luis Matos, because, Mora says, it’s a good way of loosening up before a ballgame. More likely, though, it’s just another way for this bundle of playful energy-disguised as a big league baseball player — to keep himself moving.

Mora and the word, moving, are virtually synonymous. He seldom stays still.

It’s hard to miss him when he comes into the Baltimore clubhouse. He immediately starts yelling to teammates across the room, his arms flailing every which way.

And once he goes out to the field, Mora is a human internal combustion engine.

On this particular night in June, once the game starts, it seems as though he never stops running.

First time up, he reaches on a fielder’s choice and hustles to second as Brian Roberts gets caught in a rundown between second and third. Two wild pitches later, Mora has scored the first run of the game.

Then, in the fifth inning, after a walk, Mora makes a daring move on the base paths. On a single to left, he lopes into second base as though he’s going to stop there. After all, the left fielder is the gifted veteran, Luis Gonzales, who already has the ball in his glove just as Mora is approaching second. But all of a sudden Mora turns on the jets and flies around second and streaks for third, catching Gonzales completely off-guard, the throw from the left fielder coming in lazily to the cutoff man. Mora’s gambit quickly pays off. He scores from third on an error.

For the night, Mora will cross the plate a total of four times, taking over the lead as the top run scorer in major league baseball (to go with his status as No. 2 hitter in the American League). Even though he officially goes 1-for-3 for the night, Mora’s average drops three points down to .367. When you’re hitting as well as Mora has been this season, one-for-three is an off night.

When the game ends with an Oriole victory, Mora leaps into his post-game ritual following a win, a contrived dance and hand-slapping farrago with his good buddy and infield neighbor, Miguel Tejada.

Mora and Tejada have formed a special bond, and not just because the anchor the left side of the Orioles infield.

The have sparked a joie de vie on the team. They light up the clubhouse with their buoyant approach to baseball.

Mora thinks it’s not coincidental that he and Tejada not only are good friends, but also are like in many ways.

“We both come from poor towns,” he explains. “And because you come from a poor town, and you know what you’ve been through, you know what you're coming from, you know what your family did for you — to send you to school, to pay for you to go to school, even though they didn’t have all the money like a rich family — that’s why we like to help people. And I’m always happy. I’m always talking about everybody — ‘What’s happened? What’s happening? Did you do this? Did you do that?’— I never come sad into the clubhouse, even if something sad has happened inside me. I’m always talking to somebody. And Tejada is the same way. Even if he has problems at home, he comes here talking and having fun. It’s a Latin thing. Most Latin people like to have fun. And when we play baseball, we like to have fun playing baseball.”

Mora might easily be excused for not being so upbeat, for carrying a chip on his shoulder as many professional athletes do. He not only grew up in an impoverished home in Aqua Negra, Venezuela, he also had — at the age of six — his father die in his arms, after he was shot in a case of mistaken identity. And two years ago, in the midst of the season, one of Mora’s brothers also was killed in Venezuela.

Mora mingles his upbeat nature with an intense pride.

He bristles when reminded that former manager Mike Hargrove criticized him publicly for allegedly swinging for the fences two years ago.

“When you have a manager like that, talking about his players, saying they don’t know how to win, that you don’t find a way to win, I don’t like that,” says. “He tries to point his finger at players. We want to win more than he does. When people say I just try to hit home runs, they don’t know what crossed my mind when I was hitting. I don’t pay attention when people talk like that. It makes me sick.”

He also seethes when recalling a former agent. “He said I was a lifetime Triple-A player, that I would always play well in the minor leagues, but that I’d never get called up to the big leagues. Not only did I prove that I could play in the big leagues, but I also made the All-Star team [in 2003]. He's not my agent anymore. I stay with people who believe in me.”

And the former Met could take particular pleasure back in early June when the Orioles played in Yankee Stadium and his locker was surrounded by hordes of New York baseball writers and broadcasters seeking a word with the American League’s top hitter at the time. “I remember a radio guy in New York,” he says, harking back to his days with the Mets. “He said, ‘Melvin Mora can play everywhere, but he cannot play in just one position every day.’ He said I was only a utility player. He said I couldn’t get 400 at-bats a year. And he said I couldn’t hit .300 in the big leagues. Now he’s quiet. So I like to show them what I can do.”

Mora’s pride as an athlete has faced perhaps its greatest challenge this season, even as he has been one of the most dangerous and prolific batsmen in the American League. Recognizing his prowess as a hitter, the Orioles decided to convert Mora into a full-time third baseman this year. Though he had played every position in both the infield and the outfield in his five-year big league career, Mora had been at third base seven times-and never since 2000. He made an error on the first ball hit to him in an intrasquad game this spring. He did likewise on his first play at third in the exhibition season, as well as on the first chance he had on Opening Day. Eleven games into the season, Mora had committed seven errors and the wolves were beginning to howl that the Orioles had made a big mistake turning third base over to him.

Did it upset Mora that he was being ridiculed by the press and on the talk shows for his leaky glove?

“No, it didn’t bother me,” he says, “because sometimes people get paid to talk crap. And sometimes people pay for a ticket to go to the ballpark to talk crap, too. But I like when they talk like that. You know why? Because it makes you keep going, it makes you go hard. It makes you show that you can play.”

Mora has pretty much quieted the critics, as he had made great strides at third, pulling off several fantastic plays and becoming much steadier with both his glove and his arm.

Before making the move to third, Mora sought advice from Cookie Rojas, his former infield instructor in New York, and from Cal Ripken, who made a similar move, from shortstop to third, late in his career. “I knew it was going to be tough,” the 32-year-old says. “Cal told me it would take me 100 games to get used to third base. I said I didn’t want to take 100 games.” By the end of spring training, Mora thought he had made the adjustment. But when the season opened, it was obvious he hadn’t, that perhaps Ripken’s warning had merit to it. Looking back now, Mora believes that his defensive problems were more mental than physical, that he was letting all the advice he received from people like Ripken, Rojas, and Orioles infield coach Sam Perlozzo interfere with his natural athletic instincts.

“I was thinking too much,” he says. “Many times I was thinking about what Sam had told me about my legs, about this and that. I was concentrating more on where my legs should be than on catching the ball. It’s like when you go to the plate and you’re struggling. Maybe the hitting coach will have told you that you need to rotate your trunk more, you need to move your arm, or you need to take a short step. So you worry more about taking the short step or turning your trunk than about hitting the ball. And me, I’m not that kind of hitter, I’m not that kind of fielder. I’ve always played great defense in my career. I’m the kind of guy, you see the ball, catch the ball and throw. You see the ball and hit it — by instinct.”

Mora feels much more comfortable at third now, but he acknowledges, “There’s a long way to go. The more I play and work at it, the better I’m going to get. You’re going to make errors. You’re going to strike out. You’re going to hit a pop-up with the bases loaded. The only thing you can do is go out there and work hard and try to make the play at third and try to get a base hit with the bases loaded. And next year, when I come back, I will know that position. I love playing third base.”

It’s obvious that Mora loves not just third base, but everything about the game of baseball. But baseball is far from his first love. Or his second or third. Way ahead of a game that involves hitting or catching a little ball, in Mora’s pecking order, come Genesis Raquel, Christian Emmanuel, Matthew David, Rebekah Alesha, Jada Priscilla — his three-year-old quintuplets (as of July 28) — six-year-old daughter Tatiana, and wife, Gisel.

“My family’s the most important thing in my life,” says Mora, who spends as much spare time as he can playing with his children at his home in Bel Air, north of Baltimore. “They’re all different, and I have fun with all of them,” he says, proudly. “Especially after you lose a game, because you go home thinking about the game, and as soon as I see them, that’s it. I don’t think about anything else. When I come home, they go, ‘Poppy, poppy.’”

One reason why Mora was so happy to sign a three-year, $10 million contract with the Orioles last winter was because he and his wife have come to treasure living in Bel Air, when they currently are building a new house.

“I love the place,” he says of his new hometown, “especially the people up there. They treat us good. The neighborhood is great, and my wife loves it. It’s a good place to live.”