Sunday, August 01, 1999
Patient Young still wants to be a Red
BY TIM SULLIVAN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Dmitri Young was not in the lineup Saturday night. Neither was he in a snit.
The Cincinnati Reds' switch-hitting outfielder is remarkably placid from both sides of the plate. He doesn't nurse grudges. He doesn't air grievances. He has spent most of this season as a forgotten man but has remembered to hold his tongue.
Another guy might want out. Dmitri Young wants in. In the final hours before Saturday's midnight trading deadline, he was hoping to stay put, eager to see this startling Reds' season through to its conclusion. His role is diminished, but not his enthusiasm.
“Granted, it was tough,” he said. “It was real tough. Not many people go from playing every day and having a breakthrough year to being on the bench watching other people play. But if you go in and complain and stir things up, you're hurting the team and you're hurting yourself.”
Suffered in silence
Among the more pleasant byproducts of pennant contention is peace. Winning clubs are not friction free — they have their petty jealousies and their personality clashes — but baseball etiquette says boat-rocking should be limited to losing propositions.
Thus Dmitri Young has done his suffering in silence. He was a revelation last year, the player-to-be-named-later who earned top billing with a .310 batting average and 48 doubles. Yet when the Reds had the chance to acquire Greg Vaughn last February, Young abruptly was shifted from left field to right field. When he failed to hit at the start of the season, Young's hold on right field was reduced to a time-share operation with Michael Tucker and Jeffrey Hammonds.
As a result, Young has started only 41 of the Reds' first 101 games: 29 in right field, 10 in left, one at first base and one as a designated hitter. A two-month tear has made Young the leading hitter among the right fielders — both in terms of batting average and slugging percentage — but manager Jack McKeon is still juggling the three players as if they were equals. (McKeon guessed right Saturday: Hammonds homered in the sixth inning.)
“I always believed eventually "D' would get back to his regular thing,” McKeon said. “I said before the All-Star break that the second half was going to be his time. But I'm saddled with seven outfielders who are pretty good.”
Rather than resent each other's presence, Young says the right field troika has bonded because of their shared predicament. “We're all in the same boat,” he said. “All we can do is go out there and be ready to go out and play.”
Deadline on mind
As the trade deadline approached Saturday night, any of the three might have been expendable. Reds General Manager Jim Bowden was close to a deal for Baltimore pitcher Juan Guzman, but sources indicated a need to dump some salary to make it palatable to Managing Executive John Allen. Hammonds, the highest-paid and least-utilized of the right fielders, was the obvious candidate for a change of address. This also made him the hardest to move.
Each new rumor created more uncertainty and more anxiety. The players preferred to talk of other things, but the deadline was much on their minds.
“I'll probably do a little Livan Hernandez if I was traded from this team,” Young said. “He broke down. He didn't want to leave his team, his organization. I don't think anyone here wants to be put off of this team.”
Experience says there are no guarantees. On the day of the 1977 trading deadline, trying to defend back-to-back World Series titles, the Reds traded seven players in five separate deals.
The state of Reds starting pitching made the status quo an unattractive option Saturday night.
“Hopefully they can go down to the minor-league system and give up three or four good prospects and not give up someone here,” Dmitri Young said. “I hope it's not me.'
Enquirer columnist Tim Sullivan welcomes your e-mail. Message him at tsullivan@enquirer.com.
SULLIVAN ARCHIVE
