CARLOS' WAY

Rookie Carlos Peña

Plays For the Fun Of It.

When you're a Major League rookie, there are certain things you can say and certain things you just can't. Of all the taboo topics, 23-year-old- Athletics first baseman Carlos Peña may have hit the jackpot with a flamboyant display of hubris.

The season was just a few days old and the kid was coming back to play the Texas Rangers, the team that had traded him three months earlier. Swinging a hot bat, the rookie's return was played up by the local newspapers. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram ran a front-page article in its sports section with Peña pictured holding up his index finger in the air as if to say, "I'm No. 1." the paper quoted Peña saying, "In my mind, I think I am good enough to make the Hall of Fame. I'm sorry, and I'm not trying to be cocky, but that's just the way I feel."

    Yikes. To baseball players, that's like stepping on the first tee at Augusta National and saying you're going to bring down the course record. It's like walking into your first NBA game and saying, "Jordan? Who's that?" The Hall of Fame isn't a goal players toss around lightly. Especially when you have all of 34 service days to your name. The A's players couldn't resist and got their kicks by getting on Peña. They asked him to sign a ball, which he happily did. Afterward, they wrote "HOF" under his signature. Then they draped his jersey over the honorary locker space at the visiting clubhouse left for Cal Ripken Jr.

    Peña was humbled, not to mention a little embarrassed. But looking back on the incident, he wants to make one thing perfectly clear. "I'm far from cocky," Peña says. "Anyone who knows me knows I'm not like that." And the more you talk to Peña, the more you believe him. "When I'm by myself sometimes," Peña says, "I'll look around and give thanks for where I am."

    On some teams, his comments to the Fort Worth reporter might have led to a player-imposed fine--or at least a firm talking-to from an older player. On the A's, a few wisecracks was an easy price.

    "I told him he could say anything around here," Eric Chavez says. "Nobody's going to correct him. Why would we? We're all about the same age." And let's be honest, Peña has every reason to believe in himself, even though his Major League career is just taking flight.

    Fortunately the quote didn't come during Spring Training, because in Phoenix, Peña was looking like a bust. A scant .153 batting average and a tendency to strike out too often didn't say Hall of Fame--and nearly cost him a spot on the Major League roster. Questions started to swirl around Peña: This was the guy the A's had traded the farm--or at least four of its top prospects--to secure? This was the first-base heir to apparent Jason Giambi?

    As the final roster cuts on March 31 drew near, speculation grew that the A's might send Peña to Triple-A Sacramento for a little more seasoning. Maybe, the feeling was, the time to bring him up would be when he was swinging a hot bat. But Peña had something none of the other candidates for the first-base job could boast: a deft touch with the mitt. His glove work is reminiscent of slick first sackers like the Giants' J.T. Snow or, from a slightly earlier era, the Cardinals' Keith Hernandez.

    "I'd love to win a Gold Glove," Peña says. "I want to be recognized for my defense. When I'm done, I want people to say, 'He was a great defender.'"

    But after the games started counting on April 1, it was Peña's bat more than his glove that made the A's call to keep him on the Major League club look good right away. He smacked four home runs in the first week, including a game-winning walk-off job against the Rangers' Dan Miceli in the second game of the series. But just as he'd ignored the negative press all spring, he tried to ignore the praise that started flooding in. Because Giambi was struggling in New York, newspaper writers couldn't resist the comparison. Peña could. "I don't like to read my own newspaper clippings. It doesn't do any good," Peña says. "I don't read anything negative or positive. It's not fame, money nor glamour--it's not any of that. I just want simplicity."

    Maybe Peña is a believer in keeping his approach to the game simple because there are enough things in baseball that are out of his control. Peña certainly discovered that on Jan. 14 of this year, when the organization that had carefully groomed him as one of its finest prospects decided to ship him to a division rival in order to replenish its farm system. The Rangers, stocked with hitting prospects Hank Blalock and Mark Teixeria and with Rafael Palmeiro entrenched at first base, didn't have a spot for Peña. The A's, fresh from losing Giambi to the New York Yankees pounced. They traded polished lefthander Mario Ramos, slugging first baseman Jason Hart, promising outfielder Ryan Ludwick, and young catcher Gerald Laird to the Rangers for the kid ranked as one of the best first-base prospects in baseball.

    The A's interest in Peña wasn't strictly about arcing home runs and deft scoops of errant throws. It was also about who Peña is. He gives off an earnest intelligence that's rare in a baseball clubhouse. One of his friends and former teammates can testify to that. "Carlos is an incredible human being," Rangers shortstop Alex Rodriguez told the Sacramento Bee. "He's very...presidential. He can become the CEO of a large corporation. Very well-spoken. Very well-read. Just a great, high-quality person. Oakland's got a guy who is going to be a leader there for a long time. If I had a daughter, I would want her to marry Carlos Peña. If I had a son, I would want him to become Carlos Peña."

    Character is important to a team famous for a loose and unpretentious clubhouse. Fortunately, Peña may have the perfect pedigree for becoming a superstar without a bloated ego. He comes from a background where achievement is as much about respecting work as it is about respecting talent.

    Peña father, Felipe, a mechanical engineer, moved his family--from his native Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, to suburban Boston in 1992. He immersed the family in the new language and culture and stressed education to his kids. He let them find their own paths, and they have. Carlos Peña studied engineering at Northeastern University before he was drafted No. 10 overall in 1998. His brother, Pedro, is a junior biochemistry major and an outfielder at Old Dominion. His other brother, Omar, is a redshirt sophomore infielder at Northeastern, Both are considered major draft prospects this June. Omar's twin sister, Femaris, is a communications major at Northeastern and a dancer who has performed with the Boston Ballet. "I just let them know they have to be honest with themselves and work very hard," Felipe Peña says. "Just do your job and fulfill your duties, whatever they are. Act to gain respect from people and then treat people with respect."

    Peña applied his father's words every step of the way. Few rookies have sounded any more ready to embark on a successful big-league career than Peña did this spring. "They're offering me this, but in order to take advantage of it I have to be present," Peña told reporters at the start of the season. "This is just a stepping-stone to a lot of things I want to do before I'm done."

    The confidence in his abilities to play the game is only equaled by his passion for the game--another gift his father Felipe gave Carlos, Pedro, and Omar. Pedro Peña still recalls trips with his dad, his brothers, and all their uncles, and family friends to Olympic Stadium in Santo Domingo. "All the fields would be taken," Pedro says. "So we'd just go off somewhere in the woods, find an open space and make a field out of it. We'd set up the bases. Sometimes there was a tree behind the pitcher. It didn't matter. It all became part of the field."

    Carlos Peña also remembers those games that stretched from morning to night, just a bunch of neighborhood kids crowding onto a dusty lot. One kid held a bottle cap in his hand. The other had a stick on his shoulder, waiting for the pitch. Everybody else waited for their turn to hit. They did it dad after day, all year long in their Santo Domingo neighborhood. It lasted a childhood--three childhoods, in fact, as the three Dominican brothers separated by just three years followed their father and fell in love with baseball. "I had a beautiful childhood," Carlos Peña says. "I can't find one complaint."

   For those who are lucky and talented enough, childhood can go on forever. They're called Major League baseball players. And Carlos Peña appears to be on the verge of playing a kid's game for a lot of years. And probably for a lot of money and fame.

     Yet Peña does not dwell on the fame and fortune of the Major Leagues. "I'm just playing Little League," Peña said recently. "The only difference is everybody is taller."

   Although he plays in the big leagues imagining he's playing Little League, when he was still small, Peña dreamt he was in The Bigs. Pedro remembers when nine-year-old Carlos would cook up games in which they were big-league hitters going through a season.

   "He'd want us to go through the whole season," Pedro says. "He'd say 'Oh Pedro is hitting .350, he's ahead of me by 10 points with a week left.' One day, he said I beat him for the batting title, but he got the MVP."

   Of course, the man who came before Peña at first base for the A's already has an MVP-- a real one. A fact that puts expectations on Peña--from fans, teammates, and management. But helping Peña is the confidence he gained from playing last September with the Rangers. Instead of fantasizing success in the Major Leagues, Peña got a taste of it. After his late-season call-up, he hit two homeruns against the A's in one September ballgame in Arlington.

   "At that moment I could see that I could do it," Peña says. "I would look at video of myself hitting and say 'You just saw that. You can do it. That's you.' I helped my team win games."

   He's doing that again with the A's, though he's aware his rookie year will hold wild swings of fortune. But Peña doesn't fear the changes. Remember, with Peña, it's all aobut simplicity. "The most effective approach to this situation will be to take the attitude that I'm going to be here until I'm not," Peña says. "The results will take care of themselves. I'm going up and down between here and Triple-A until I'm not. I don't even want to know what I'm hitting. I don't watch Baseball Tonight. Sometimes I want to, but it doesn't work for me."

   Peña takes his quest to keep the game simple to unusual lengths. He says he tries not to notice who the opposing pitcher is until about 30 minutes before game time.

   "I'm thinking, 'OK, it's Dave Burba? He throws fastballs, sinkers, and sliders?'" Peña says. "Maybe then I'll start thinking about it. But when I go to the plate, I just want to think about seeing the ball and hitting it. If I'm thinking about other things than just 'See the ball,' that shrinks the ball."

   Listening to Peña gives the impression he isn't your average ballplayer. For a lot of players, the perfect day away from the field is 18 holes of golf and a night of carousing in the town. For Peña?

   "A perfect day for me has a lot of laughter, a lot of tranquility and good health," Peña says. "That's it."

   It sounds a lot like a simple recipe for a perfect ending to a day at the ballpark as well. Maybe whoever got a hold of that ball signed "Carlos Peña, HOF" should hang onto it. It may not turn out to be such a joke.

Mark Saxon is the A's beat writer for the The Oakland Tribute.