Sunday, May 05, 2002
A ballplayer's journey
By John Erardi, jerardi@enquirer.com
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Jose Silva, 28, is not only bilingual, he is bicultural, with citizenship in the United States and Mexico. He was born in Tijuana and raised there and in San Diego. His extended family lives in Mexico. His father was a pharmaceutical salesman based in San Diego. Silva went to school in San Diego and lives there in the offseason.
All of this provides the right-hander, now trying to work his way into the Reds' plans after a rash of injuries, with a unique perspective about the state of youth baseball in America. It's a view that helps explain why almost half the players entering pro ball these days are foreign-born.
“The baseball was better in Tijuana than in San Diego when I was growing up, and it still is,” Silva said. “When I was a kid, I'd come home from school, grab a bucket of balls, walk two miles to my friend's house and then walk to the field to hit for two or three hours, and then call my dad after he got home from work and had him pick me up.”'
During his offseason runs by the playgrounds in San Diego, Silva saw the empty diamonds and rues the immersion of American youth in video games.
“I remember playing games in San Diego, jumping in the car and changing my uniform and driving to Tijuana to play two more games,” Silva said. “The whole weekend was playing baseball, back-and-forth across the border.”
And yet, it is also true that Silva was probably too sophisticated as a high school pitcher, learning to throw a split-fingered pitch to go with his devastating 94-95-mph fastball that made him Baseball America's fourth-rated prospect in the United States as a senior at Hilltop High School in Chula Vista, outside San Diego.
When the strain on his elbow from throwing the split-fingered pitch and a hard curveball shelved him three months before the June draft, no team was willing to take a chance that high on damaged goods, and he fell to a sixth-round pick by the Toronto Blue Jays.
For anybody who thinks high-level pitching isn't addictive, consider: In the year he couldn't pitch, Silva would wake up once or twice a week with a sore arm and tired legs.
“I'd feel like I had pitched nine innings,” Silva said. “I was dreaming about pitching. I'd pitch a whole game in my dreams, one pitch at a time. I probably threw more pitches in those dream games than I did in real games.”
After his arm healed, he quickly got back on the fast track, leading Gulf Coast League pitchers in strikeouts per nine innings (11.8) in 1992 and continued that domination in the South Atlantic League in 1993 (10.2 strikeouts per nine innings). In 1994, Baseball America named his fastball the best in the Double-A Southern League.
At 6 feet 6 and 235 pounds, the hard-throwing Silva is the Mexican Rob Dibble, the only difference being that all the pain was inflicted on Silva, not on others.
He has suffered more injuries than a rodeo bull rider, but he perseveres because pitching is what he knows, what he does and, of course, what he gets paid for. Even busted up and rehabbing, he makes a good living. To be a pitcher is to be injured, although Silva has been injured more than most. He remains upbeat.
“I want so bad to get back out there,” he said. “I can't sleep sometimes, I'm so anxious. I know I've got to work twice as hard now because (all the Reds pitchers) are doing so well. But I can't worry about that. I'm not a GM; I just pitch.”
Reds general manager Jim Bowden has high hopes for Silva.
“Last fall, he was throwing 96 to 98 (mph),” Bowden said. “The difference is, he was learning how to pitch. With that great arm of his, he never really had to learn how to pitch (coming up through the minors and in the early years of his big-league career).
“(But) he's young, and we think he still has a lot left.”
Silva is presently rehabbing from elbow surgery.
“I had some bone spurs break off in the last game of winter ball in Mexico,” he said.
He will throw Monday for Reds pitching coach Don Gullett, then Silva might head to the minors to begin pitching again.
Silva's worst injury didn't happen on the field.
After the '94 season, he was involved in an auto accident four blocks from his home in San Diego, the same day Toronto had elevated him to their 40-man roster. He broke his jaw in four places, both eye sockets, his right cheek and his nose. He was in the hospital for three weeks and laid up for two months, and his jaw was wired shut for three months. He has had five surgeries to reconstruct his facial bones.
“I didn't have any plastic surgery, but I was better looking before the accident,” he says, grinning.
He was able to appear in only three innings in Double-A Knoxville in 1995. In 1996 (26 strikeouts in 44 innings), his pitches weren't quite what they had been from 1992-94, but were good enough to earn him a call-up to Toronto. But not before a minor-league pitching coach told him he needed another pitch to cope with big-league hitters and thus taught him the slider.
“That was two days before I got called up,” he said. “They said, "You need a slider.' I was like, "Why? I throw 100 (mph).' I threw 10 of 'em, and the next day my elbow had ballooned to twice its size. I went up to the big leagues, and I got shellacked. I couldn't throw hard. Right after that season, I had surgery.”
He was traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates. In 1998, he made 18 starts and posted some decent numbers (6-7, 4.40 ERA, 2-to-1 strikeouts-to-walks ratio).
Although elbow tendinitis had shelved him for six weeks in 1997, his elbow was feeling great two months into the '98 season as he started 6-3 with a 3.44 ERA in 14 starts. But when he squared around to bunt against the Phillies' Tyler Green, he took a pitch off the right wrist, fracturing it.
He did return to make four starts later in the season, going 0-4 with an 8.38 ERA. The injury jinx continued; the following spring training, he suffered a severe facial bruise when he was hit by a batted ball in a Triple-A game; he had gone there to get in some work.
It was a forgetful year, which ended with Silva missing Pittsburgh's last 16 games with biceps tendonitis. In 2000, he was solid (11-9 in 51 games, including 19 starts). Last June, he was settling back into a groove when a ball hit by Atlanta's Andruw Jones fractured Silva's right leg. Silva pitched in only four minor-league games on rehab after that.
“My wife says, "We've got to work on your reactions,'” Silva said. “I say, "OK, let's have somebody throw a pitch 98 miles an hour and then have the batter hit it back at you at 150 miles an hour and see if you can get out of the way.''"
Silva got the word while playing winter ball last December in the Mexican League that the Reds had traded a minor-league pitcher (Ben Shaffer) for him.
“My reaction was "OK, whatever,'” Silva said. “But I've always liked the way guys have gotten along together over here. In spring training, I've done exercises and drills over here I never did anywhere else. But after two weeks of doing it, you feel great.”
Mexico is a place Silva goes when he's looking to get himself, and his arm, right. He said there are about 15 Mexican-born players in the major leagues. The other two on the Reds are Elmer Dessens and Juan Castro.
“Mexican winter ball is good quality of baseball, between Triple A and the major leagues,” Silva said. “When you're from Mexico, the fans expect a lot from you. We have to be the last ones to leave, signing all the autographs. It's always helped me to pitch there. I get sharp and stay sharp. If you're a major leaguer, people expect you to strike out everybody. They expect the big-league hitters to hit a home run every time.”
He also enjoys the Mexican culture, which includes kids playing baseball all the time.
“During the day, you go down the streets and see kids playing stickball,” Silva said. “I see that, and I say, "I remember doing that!' I'd get my father's spray paint and put a little black spot on the wall and try to hit it. I was 7, 8 years old.”
In the first game he pitched this spring, he took a batted ball off the shin, only three or four inches from where Jones' ball had fractured his leg.
“These are freak injuries,” Silva said. “You can't do anything about them; you can't control them. I look at it this way: I could be dead right now. I've been able to keep coming back from all these injuries. A lot of guys don't.”
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A ballplayer's journey
