By John Erardi
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Juan Castro of the Reds turns the double play as Chicago Cub Moises Alou slides in at 2nd. (Craig Ruttle photo) | ZOOM |

Juan Castro learned his trade as a middle infielder at the feet of his dad, Efrain, back home in Los Mochis, Mexico, along the Gulf of California.

Castro is the Reds' nonpareil fielding second baseman who is finally beginning to hit - now that he's getting his first real opportunity to play every day.

Castro, 31, has become a difference-maker.

Reds pitcher Ryan Dempster says Castro is so good, he saves the Reds pitching staff "four runs a week."

Rarely does a game go by that Castro doesn't make at least one great play in the field.

"My father was a shortstop and a center fielder - he had great hands," recalls Castro, his brown eyes sparkling as he remembers "the play."

"My dad was playing center field that day. I was 5 or 6 years old. The fences were never very tall on the fields we played on, maybe this tall," said Castro, holding his hand at chest height.

"He was running full speed into the left-center field gap and reached up at the last second to backhand the ball, and before he hit the wall - he was still going full-speed - he held the ball up for the umpire to see and then hit the wall and was flipped over it. They carried him off on a stretcher. He got banged up so bad - he hurt his back so bad - that he couldn't play for a year. I can still see that play in my mind. He was running and running and running and reached up to catch it. It's one of the greatest plays I ever saw."

Longtime observers of Reds baseball say that a few weeks ago, Castro made the best play they'd ever seen a second baseman make in Cincinnati while going to his right.

And that includes anything that Johnny Temple, Joe Morgan and Pokey Reese - or any visiting second baseman - ever did.

Off even before the crack of Julio Franco's bat, Castro charged to the shortstop-side of second base and - fully extended to his backhand side - leaped and spun and threw in one motion a one-hop strike to first baseman Sean Casey to nip Franco, who could not believe it.

"It's amazing how much stuff can go through your mind in a couple of seconds," Castro says. "I knew Felipe (shortstop Felipe Lopez) was playing Franco to pull, so I figured it was me or nobody. And then, when I got to the ball, I thought, 'Oh, man, now I gotta throw it!' So, I did what I could to get rid of it. It's all instinct at that point - all the groundballs in practice, all the groundballs in the game; you just seem to know where first base is, like you could throw it there blindfolded."

Castro says he usually practices routine plays ("nice and easy, slowly," he explains), but he then makes some plays flipping the ball to first base with his glove or bare-handing the ball there, just to remind himself of the need to be nimble and, occasionally, creative.

"I know those types of plays are going to come up every once in a while in a game, and you want to be ready for them," he says.

But that wasn't even his best play.

"I made one play when I was with the Dodgers that I don't think I'll ever make again," he says, grinning.

He was playing shortstop. There was a runner at first base. Castro ranged to his left for a bouncing ball up the middle and caught the ball on the grass on the outfield side of second base. The ball had barely touched his glove - and his momentum was carrying him toward right field - when, in one motion, Castro slipped the ball from his glove and made a behind-the-back throw to the second baseman, right on the money, to nail the runner.

"Eric Young was playing second base and I don't think he believed it, either," Castro says. "It was the only chance I had. The ball had already passed me by."

Grew up with game

Los Mochis is a four-hour drive up the Gulf of California coast from Mazatlan, well-known to American tourists for its beaches and to the crustacean conscious as the shrimp capital of the world.

Los Mochis is also known as the jumping-on spot for a train trip through world-renowned "Copper Canyon" that takes travelers into Chihuahua, 300 miles away.

"Baseball's big there," says Castro. "Soccer's big, too, but not as big as it is the farther south you go in Mexico. I grew up with a baseball in my hands. As a boy, I threw a rubber ball off the brick of our house so many times - and made so many game-saving plays in the seventh game of the World Series, if you know what I mean - that my mother would get mad sometimes because the ball made so many marks on the brick."

The Los Angeles Dodgers drafted Castro at 18. He was tutored by former big-league shortstop and Cuban native Chico Fernandez, a Dodgers coach.

"One day, he came to me with a ball that had ridges along the sides of it," Castro remembers. "When you throw the ball off a wall, or off the ground to another guy, it bounces crazy. It's a great drill for quickness and for hand-eye coordination."

The Dodgers' front office says it no longer knows Fernandez's whereabouts. He's from Havana, and would be 71 years old - wherever he is. He played eight seasons in the big leagues. He came up with Brooklyn in 1956, and played three full seasons in Philadelphia and three more in Detroit, before finishing up as a New York Met in 1963. He would likely be delighted to hear his star pupil is still using the crazy ball.

"Yes, I use it - mostly in spring training," says Castro, who, admittedly, is amazed at some of his own plays.

"If I get to see the play (on a TV replay), I sometimes say, 'Oh my gosh - how did I do that?' But at the time I make the play, and everybody says, 'Nice play,' I just say, 'Thank you,' because I really don't know what I did."

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E-mail jerardi@enquirer.com