Quest to Be Best : Dodgers’ Raul Mondesi Is Willing to Do Whatever It Takes to Be Better Than Great

VERO BEACH, Fla. —  It’s a sticky, smothering heat, suffocating the senses. The crowd doesn’t feel like sitting around and watching the game. The players don’t feel like playing it.

The game ends in a loss to the Houston Astros. Although it’s only a meaningless spring training game, everyone seemingly is in a rotten mood. The Dodgers hastily shower and head home.

Nearly two hours have passed since the last player left the clubhouse, but there, inside the batting tunnel, where the heat is stifling, coach Reggie Smith is throwing batting practice to one player.

Curveball . . . thwack ! Slider . . . thwack ! Changeup . . . thwack ! Fastball . . . thwack !

He may be the most exciting--and talented--player in the league, and the first player from the Dominican Republic to win the National League’s rookie-of-the-year award, but Dodger center fielder Raul Mondesi is working out this day as if he’s trying to win the last spot on the team.

Mondesi, perspiration flowing, stopping only long enough to wipe the moisture from his eyes, finally quits at 5:50 p.m. He trudges to the clubhouse, slumps in front of his locker and is too exhausted to move away from the clubhouse attendant vacuuming.

He slowly rises and heads to the shower, where he stands for 15 minutes, allowing the cool water to soothe his body. By the time he returns to the clubhouse, the lights are dim.

“I don’t think about the time,” he says in his Dominican accent. “I don’t care if it’s 10 o’clock, or 11 o’clock. If I want to work, I work.

“That’s why you see the difference between the great players and the good players. If you’re a good player, you take your shower, go home and everything’s all right.

“If you want to be a great player, you work hard every day and don’t take nothing for granted.

“That’s what I try to be.”

A great player?

“No,” he says. “I want to be the best. I don’t want people to see me walking down the street and say, ‘There’s Raul Mondesi, he’s a great player.’

“I want them to say, ‘There’s Raul, the best player in the game.’

“That’s what I want.”

*

Ralph Avila was watching the tryout camp for the Dominican kids at Field 1 of Campo Las Palmas when scout Pablo Guerrero excitedly told him that he must take a look at this skinny, but powerful, outfielder on Field 2.

Avila, vice president of Campo Las Palmas, didn’t think much of the idea. The best players in the tryout camp were always on Field 1. No one ever came from Field 2. Those were the kids who would try out, get a free lunch and go home.

“As I’m walking over there,” Avila said, “I hear this sound of a bat, and the ball is flying over the fence. Then, there’s another. And another. He’s hitting these homers a long ways.

“I watch him only for a few minutes, can’t believe what I’m seeing, and I say, ‘Sign him. Sign him right now.’ ”

Mondesi was signed at 16 for $2,000.

It was the most money he had seen in his life . . . until last week.

Mondesi, one of seven children raised by his mother, Martina, in a tiny home in San Cristobal, just signed a one-year contract for $435,000. His first investment will be to buy a new house for his mother.

“My mother, she’s like superwoman,” he says. “I can’t tell you what she means to me. My father died when I was 7, and she had to do everything. She worked in a laundry just to put food on the table.

“That’s why, when I come to America, I said I would buy her a house. She’s 66 years old. I want her to be comfortable for the rest of her life.”

If Mondesi continues to play the way everyone envisions, that will be only the beginning. There will be plenty of money for the entire family.

“He won’t have to worry about money the rest of his life,” said Al Lamachia, Toronto Blue Jay vice president/baseball operations. “I think Mondesi already is the best right fielder in the game. By his third year, he might be the best player in the league.

“His strength is close to (Roberto) Clemente, and if his instincts allow him to make the changes that he needs to make, he may be one of those that you remember for a long, long time.”

Mondesi, 24, who will be moving to center field and batting third this season, batted .306 with 16 homers and 56 runs batted in when the strike ended his season.

But to capture the true essence of his ability, you’ve got to be there for the show.

There was the time . . . .

“Tony Fernandez hits a ball to the wall in right field,” Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda said. “He rounds first, figuring he had an automatic double. Mondesi throws him out by 20 feet.”

Said Reggie Smith: “Fernandez couldn’t believe it. He just stood there, looked out at Mondy, as if it to say, ‘I can’t believe you just did that.’ ”

Said Fernandez, now with the New York Yankees: “Do I remember? How do I forget? You can’t forget an arm like that. Never. It was unbelievable.”

Then there was the time . . . .

“He hit that home run off (Montreal Expo closer John) Wetteland,” Dodger first baseman Eric Karros said. “It was a high fastball. The pitch was legitimately a foot above the strike zone.

“As soon as he swung, I said, ‘Oh, no.’ Then, when I saw him hit it, I go, ‘That’s a way, Mondy.’

“Mondy’s like one of those basketball players. You say, ‘Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot.’ And then soon as he makes it, you say, ‘All right, keep on taking those.’ ”

Then there was the time . . . .

“(Houston’s Craig) Biggio had a base hit to right field one game,” shortstop Jose Offerman said. “He was running to second. By the time I got the ball, Biggio was only halfway there. I actually had to wait for him just to get to the base.”

Said Biggio: “You know, for a while there, I didn’t believe it. I thought I was missing something there, like someone threw another ball in or something. I’ll tell you what, I never went to second on Mondesi after that unless I cleared the fence.”

Despite the reputation, stopping players from even rounding second base, let alone trying for third, Mondesi, 5 feet 11 and 220 pounds, still led the major leagues with 16 assists. His arm has become so famous that people forget the man can hit for average, hit for power, steal bases and is an outstanding outfielder.

“I’m not sure if anyone in the league has the ability he has,” Karros said. “Maybe there are guys who have better defensive judgment, and we still kid him about the time he was standing in the outfield in Colorado and didn’t realize he didn’t have his cap on, but no one in the league is more exciting than he is.”

Said third baseman Tim Wallach: “You hear people complain about his aggressiveness at the plate. Or that he takes too many chances in the field. Hey, you can’t take that away from him. You take that away from him, and you take away the player.

“You don’t want to see this guy ever change.”

*

Mondesi, the skinny kid who wondered at times if there would be enough food on the table, today is a hero in the streets of the Dominican Republic. Children, some only a few years younger than Mondesi, line up at his door early in the morning waiting for autographs. Strangers stop him in the street.

Everybody knows Raul Mondesi.

“He’s a hero in our country, a genuine hero,” Offerman said. “We’ve had a lot of players come through the Dominican, guys like George Bell and Tony Fernandez, but I don’t know if anyone’s been more popular than Raul.”

Maybe in time, Mondesi will mind the attention. Maybe he’ll consider stardom a burden. Maybe he’ll even crave those days of anonymity. But not today.

“It makes me feel good when people know me,” he says. “People love me there. They come to see me. I like that.

“I remember when people used to say, ‘You’re going to be the best player in the major leagues.’ I’d laugh, and say, ‘You’re crazy. You’re crazy.’

“Now, they’re not so crazy. I feel they may be right. I feel I’ve got a good chance to be a star.”

But he says he’ll never forget his roots. This is why he saves all of his wristbands, packs 50 pairs of shoes in boxes and sends them along with hundreds of bats and gloves to Dominican kids each year.

“I never had anything when I grew up,” said Mondesi, whose wife, Ada, is seven months’ pregnant with their second child. “I’d play baseball, and all I’d have is cardboard for a glove. I would have given anything to have a real glove and bat.

“I want to help those kids. A lot of them are poor families. They can’t afford baseball equipment, so I help them.

“What am I going to do with all this stuff, anyway? I only have two hands. I only have two feet. It’s the least I can do, but I will do more.”

The clubhouse lights are turned out. It is time to go. The clubhouse needs to be locked for the night.

“OK, see you tomorrow,” Mondesi says. “I put in a long day tomorrow. Who knows, maybe I stay all night.”