The hits just keep on coming - Darin Erstad of the Anaheim Angels

DARIN ERSTAD IS ROLLING ALONG AT A PACE THAT THREATENS AN 80-YEAR-OLD RECORD

He rolled over more than Beethoven. Rolled over more than the advanced-placement class at dog-obedience school. Rolled over more than the Orange County surf.

Rolled over so many times, who could possibly keep count?

He could.

"Seventy-two ground bails to the second baseman," Darin Erstad says. "Fifty-eight ground balls to the first baseman."

And tell Tchaikovsky the news. It's almost become Erstad's mantra, his self-reminder, the number of times he saw that same pitch coming last year and did the same #%$#!! thing with it. He's chanting it particularly often now when things are going so unbelievably well for the Anaheim Angels' lefthanded hitting left fielder, the All-Star who's feeling and stroking like one again.

Not since Ralph "Roadrunner" Garr of the Atlanta Braves went into the 1974 All-Star break with 149 hits has a player appeared such a threat to George Sisler's single-season record of 257 hits, set in 1920. With 149 hits and a .382 average in the Angels' first 90 games, Erstad is on a pace for 265 hits. Moreover, hi? is batting .366 with runners in scoring position, and he has 18 home runs and 17 steals in 22 attempts. He also has thrown out eight runners from the outfield.

"This guy," says Angels pitcher Kent Bottenfield, an eight-year veteran, "has got to be close to a league MVP."

No matter how many hits Erstad's bat has detonated this year-eerily. the ball is finding either grass or outfield seats as if on some computer, guidance system--he reminds himself of all those weak three-hoppers to Robbie and Randy and Thome and Tino. No matter how many times people tell him to enjoy this crazy run, urging hind to crock a smile for a change, Erstad instinctively recalls all those runs from home to first with jaws and fists clenched. Always, always at full-speed.

It's ,just his way.

Last year's something I'll never forget," Erstad says. "I face the music. I was terrible. I was a mess."

A mess?

"For a year and a half," Erstad says, "I stunk."

Hold it. It' all this seems like too much dwelling on past imperfections when the present is giving us one of baseball's most positive comeback stones, well, that's the way Erstad would have it. Because he knows how quickly today can turn into yesterday.

"I could go oh-for-the-rest-of-July," he says during the All-Star Break. "Just like that."

Didn't happen. In his second game after the break, Erstad added another three hits, including a two-run homer off Kevin Brown that beat L.A. at Dodger Stadium. The day after that, Erstad had another multi-hit outing, his 49th in 90 games. In 195 fewer at-bats, Erstad already had surpassed his hits total (148) of 1999.

"It's just one of those things that's tough to explain," Erstad says. "I mean, I'm just trying to get on base. It seems like there's the same difficulty, but for some reason, the hits are falling. You feel a rhythm, you find a groove and the ball finds all the holes. Not much is being caught out there. As a hitter, I'm not going to complain."

Nearly every afternoon or night of 2000 has been bountiful, starting with a January marriage to his high school sweetheart, Sarah. Erstad, 26, had absolutely no problem with Angels manager Terry Collins and his staff before last year's firings--to the contrary, he loved their hard-nosed approach--but the hiring of Mike Scioscia finally has the Angels playing the way Erstad always knew they could.

One of the first orders of business, too, was the first guy in the order.

"I was given a role," says Erstad, who had bounced around from outfield to first base to designated hitter "I'm the leadoff hitter. I'm the left fielder. If you want to take fly balls in left, you better ask me. That's my spot. It's like shortstops have their turf. I wouldn't dream of even crossing DiSar's (Gary DiSarcina's) path at short. He'd tackle me."

Erstad, as a member of Nebraska's national-championship football team of 1994, has tackled and been tackled--which made it a little too convenient for everybody to pigeonhole Erstad, whom the Angels made the first pick of the entire 1995 draft, as a baseball player with a "football mentality."

Erstad's intensity and competitiveness his first four years with the Angels did nothing to refute the notion. As he notes himself, nobody ever complained about his intensity when he got off to a quick start in 1998, only when he started making his "mess."

But Erstad also would like to downplay the football thing.

"Remember, I was a punter and a placekicker," Erstad says. "To do those things, you need to stay calm."

There is a calmness about Erstad at the plate this season that clearly was missing before, says Larry Bowa, the Seattle Mariners coach who was on the Angels staff from 1997-99. Asked what he thought was Erstad's low point last year, and Bowa says every day was equally painful, watching Erstad take extra batting practice and fight with himself on every pitch.

"He didn't feel good about himself, not because of effort, but because he was concerned," Bowa says.

Mechanically, Erstad was all out of sorts. Physically, he was having some problems, like the hamstring that put him on the disabled list in late '98 and the strained knee ligament that got him stuck on the D.L. last year. But there was other stuff on his mind, not the least of which was the memory of his schizophrenic '98 season.

After making the All-Star Game with a .313 average, 18 homers and 59 runs scored, Erstad went the next year and a half hitting just .255, with 14 homers and 76 RBIs in 754 at-bats. He struck out 101 times last season alone. And all those annoying 4-3's and 3-unassisteds. Plus, the A.L.'s hardest guy to double up in '98 (once every 268.5 at-bats) led the Angels with 16 double-play grounders.

"I was rolling over on a lot of sinkers away, or there were lots of breaking balls inside that I couldn't lay off," Erstad says. "I was trying to pull everything. I would be thinking, go the other way, but my body was trained to pull."

When not studying video of himself--and he rivals VCR-a-holic Tony Gwynn for his use of videotape as a hitting tool--Erstad watched other hitters closely and tried to copy their techniques. During his Seattle phase, Erstad assumed the stances of Alex Rodriguez, then Edgar Martinez, then David Segui.

"Didn't work," Erstad says. "I even tried that toe-touching thing Sammy Sosa does."

At the same time, the team was fractured, literally and figuratively. In keeping with the franchise's bad-voodoo history, the Angels were beset with injuries in spring training (DiSarcina's arm broken by a bat swung by coach George Hendrick) and on opening day (Mo Vaughn turning over an ankle on his first defensive play with the club). Jim Edmonds' decision to put off surgery until after the season had begun vexed the whole team, but Erstad in particular.

"He won't admit to this, but I think we had so many injuries that Darin felt he had to carry the whole load," Bowa says. "He was thinking, `Well, I'm healthy, so I'm going to pick up for three or four guys.' It's hard to play the game that way."

The same inner fire that made Erstad so universally admired--"He's the player you live and die for, the player who makes you wish you had seven or eight others just like him," Bowa says was burning him in the britches.

"I've lightened up in the time leading up to the game, done a better job of separating it," Erstad says. "I'm not taking it home with me. I learned to let things go."

Where did he find this enlightenment?

"Right in the mirror," says Erstad. "I mean, I didn't really look in the mirror and talk to myself, but I did do some soul-searching. I knew I could play. It was just my stubborness."

He looks in the mirror now and sees a beard more red than his hair. It's not one of those baseball beards, the goatees that suddenly make middle-aged men think they look like ballplayers, but a real beard--the full kind that climbs down a man of winter's throat, untrimmed. Truth be told, he looks more like a hockey player, which he was at Jamestown (N.D.) High. Or the ice-fisherman that he is, too.

"It's that same thing, the stubborness he has at the plate," says Mariners lefthander Aaron Sele, a Minnesota native. "You sit there at that hole, waiting for the fish, knowing it's got to come to you."

It has been suggested that marriage had something to do with his--gosh, you just don't dare use the word "mellowing" around Erstad. He plays and resides part-time in Southern California, but remains North Dakota to the roots of his blond mane, fair skin and Fargo accent. Erstad shakes his head at the suggestion, saying he and Sarah have been together for 10 years, so no big change there.

"I don't play catch with her," Erstad says. "She might hurt me."

Good point. Sharp point. The man married a woman who knows how to throw a spear. Sarah was a college athlete as well, having tossed the javelin for Cornell for a while.

Ballplayers may have fluke seasons, but in Erstad's case, the "fluke" was what Vaughn called Erstad's down year. Talk to anybody from Erstad's past, in fact, and you'll find nobody convinced that his slump would continue. By all accounts, he's just too dedicated to his craft and too driven to succeed.

"I remember sitting there many times last year, watching Darin getting balls he should've crushed and grounding out," says ex-teammate Chuck Finley, now with the Indians. "But I always knew he'd work it out. Because one thing Darin ain't afraid of is work. You cannot outwork Darin Erstad."

The new regime in Anaheim has worked wonders with the Angels, still within striking distance of both the division-leading Mariners and a wild-card spot, and Erstad has found his personal guru in live-wire coach Mickey Hatcher.

Yet Erstad also says that the more time passes since hitting coach Rod Carew left, eventually to take the same job with the Brewers, the more Erstad finds himself applying Carew's principles to his swing. That much is evident by the fact that of those first 149 hits, close to half were sent into left field, and longtime Angels observers swear they've never seen a ball stung with such authority to the opposite field.

George Sisler? Meet Darin Sizzler.

"The individual stuff just doesn't do much for me," says Erstad, flinching at every mention of Sisler's name and any talk of the record. "If the choice was between me hitting .400 and us not making the playoffs by a game, I'd take us making the playoffs, any time.

"If I'm hitting .399 on my last at-bat and there's a guy on second, you better believe I'll put a grounder to the right side."

The rollover of choice, the rollover that counts.

HIT LISTS

FIRST HALF

Darin Erstad had more hits at the All-Star break than any player in the last 26 years. The players with the most hits at the break since 1961:

Player           Year   Hits

Ralph Garr       1974    149
Marry Alou       1969    146
Darin Erstad     2000    144
Rod Carew        1974    143
Rod Carew        1977    135
Don Mattingly    1986    130
Tony Gwynn       1997    130
Kirby Puckett    1986    129
Kenny Lofton     1994    129
Pete Rose        1973    129

Research by Bill Arnold

SINGLE-SEASON LEADERS

No player has had more than 240 hits in a season in the last 70 years. If Erstad collects 100 hits in the second half, he will crack the top-10 list and surpass Wade Boggs for the best total since 1960.

Single-season leaders

Player           Year   Hits

George Sisler    1970    257
Lefty O'Doul     1929    254
Bill Terry       1930    254
Al Simmons       1925    253
Rogers Hornsby   1922    250
Chuck Klein      1930    250
Ty Cobb          1911    248
George Sisler    1922    246
Heinie Manush    1928    241
Babe Herman      1930    241

Leaders since 1960

Player           Year   Hits

Wade Bongs       1985    240
Rod Carew        1977    239
Don Mattingly    1986    238
Kirby Puckett    1988    234
Matty Alou       1969    231
Tommy Davis      1962    230
Joe Torre        1971    230
Pete Rose        1973    230
Willie Wilson    1980    230
Lance Johnson    1996    227

RELATED ARTICLE: SAME JIM, DIFFERENT STORY

Like two buddies who hadn't talked in a while, Darin Erstad and Jim Edmonds walked toward one another, said hey and hugged.

A couple of All-Stars hooking up in happy times. Mr. In Your Face and Mr. Stay Out of My Face wishing each other well at the All-Star Game in Atlanta.

"I get along with Jimmy great," Erstad says. "Everybody knows about him. Everybody knows about me. There aren't many secrets out there.

"I want to play hard, and he can make things look easy at times. We're not the only two people on teams that have bumped heads. I'll take him on my team any day of the week."

Because both appear to be on their way to career years after disappointing seasons, it's easy to downplay all of those times when they were angry Angels in the outfield. But for much of the previous two seasons in Anaheim, there was plenty of losing on the field and more than enough sniping off of it. Erstad supplied his share of the sniping, and a lot of it was aimed at Edmonds.

These are two players on opposite ends of the intensity meter. Erstad happily will spend 12 hours at the ballpark, working before and after games. He doesn't like to acknowledge injuries and considers it his duty to play through them. Edmonds, as naturally gifted as anyone, has been known to tell you what's hurting and to sit out when he doesn't think he can give you enough.

"Not everyone can be Darin Erstad," Edmonds says. "He's the guy who some how turns it up every day with the intensity level of this being the only game he has to play this week.

"Everybody else seems to behave like if I can get through the once-in-a-while kind of days, then I'll be happy to go 101 percent on the others. It's hard to play every game that hard.""

From the moment the Angels mercifully traded Edmonds to St. Louis in spring training, the laid-back Southern California native has found contentment with the Cardinals. He has been the first-place Cardinals' best player, with a .336 batting average, 26 home runs and highlight catches in center field nearly every night that surpass the difficulty of the over-the-shoulder catch he made at the All-Star Game. He has missed only three games, two of those because of the flu. Never underestimate a change in scenery.

"I've been amazed at the difference in organizations," Edmonds said. "(Anaheim) wanted a stereotypical ballplayer. If you look around the clubhouse, all the players do the same thing. You can't have that."

Instead of always trying to light a fire under Edmonds, the Cardinals have coddled him. They gave him security by quickly signing him to a six-year, $52 million contract extension and encouraging him to put roots in St. Louis. He moved into a big, colonial house "with pillars on the front," and his two daughters have plenty of room to run around during their summer visits.

"I have to like it here because I'm going to be here seven years," Edmonds says. "But I like it more than I thought I would."

Why's that?

"There's only one beat writer," Edmonds says, and he's not smiling.

He adds, "The organization, the fans and the baseball."

In other words, a new deal, steady cheering and a seven-game lead in the division heading into this week. No need to bicker about any of that. --Stan McNeal

Chris Jenkins is a staff writer for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

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