True Grit -- Mariners' Leader Has Crafted Career By Grinning And Bearing It
It's a good thing Jay Buhner is bald. Sometimes, it's the only way you can tell it's him in that mummy outfit seen in the clubhouse after every Mariner game - if you can find Buhner at all.
The man carries more bandages than Swedish Hospital, more ice than the Thunderbird hockey team.
Buhner does not make a big deal of it. The scarcity of his presence after games is partly because he is in the training room getting wrapped or thawed, partly because he doesn't want to talk about it.
For a man who is one of the noted characters on the Seattle Mariners, in all baseball, Buhner is curiously reticent to discuss himself.
He is a complex man, a consummate team player, a warrior (it's no accident 27 of his 40 homers were hit on the road), a man who can get down and dirty to amuse. He'll vomit on cue, and among Mariner legends is the body part on which he once wore a bagel.
Yet inside that pate of skin is a sharp mind. Under those bandages is the tender heart of a loving husband and father. "If you write anything about me, mention my wife, Leah, and the kids," he said. "They're my Godsend."
He'll give insights on teammates and pointed observations on his team and organization. To wit, "It's tough to play with a bullpen that's been as inconsistent as ours. It's tough to put out of your mind that we might not have scored enough runs to win a game. It gets old."
But talk about himself, please?
"Nope," he responds, sticking the blond brush of goatee toward a reporter as if he wants someone to take a swing at it in response. "Because I don't want to."
Trainer Rick Griffin said the bandages and ice packs are necessary because Buhner has played 10 years on AstroTurf and thrown himself all over the place. "His legs are fatigued," Griffin said. "He's got no specific injuries - just aches and pains, wear and tear."
Griffin said Buhner would benefit from days off. "Lou (Piniella) knows better than to ask Jay if he wants a day off, so he tells him he's not playing," Griffin said. "Jay turns around and tells Lou he is playing."
Piniella, a gamer in his time, will not tamp such spirit. "There are a lot of guys in our clubhouse who could use time off," he said. "Jay probably is foremost among them. But one of the hallmarks of our team is the attitude that he represents, and you don't mess with it."
Buhner's never-stop attitude was born of his upbringing and sharpened by clashes with former Mariner manager Jim Lefebvre ("the man actually said I was self-centered") and injuries that kept him out of the lineup his first three years with the Mariners.
And, yes, having tested the reporter's determination to get him to talk, he will talk about his approach, as it pertains to his place in the fabric of the team.
"I'm no different than a bunch of guys we have on our team; we come to play, man, and we are proud to be grinders," he said. "Look how Edgar and Alex have played through muscle pulls in their sides, how quickly Junior comes back from injuries, how Willie (Dan Wilson) and Paulie (Paul Sorrento) are ready every day. Look how bummed Gump (Russ Davis) is to be out right now. Man, these are the guys I want around me when you go to war."
After years of being where Davis is now, sidelined by an injury to his right ankle, Buhner told himself he was never coming out of the lineup again. Not if he could hobble into right field and the batter's box.
"What does it matter how you feel off the field as long as you're comfortable on it?"
He remembers a doubleheader in Detroit five years ago when he dived for a ball in the first game and banged his knee on a sprinkler head. He could scarcely walk between games but played the second game and hit a grand slam and drove in five runs.
"You never know what you're going to do unless you're in the lineup," he said. "You can't do any damage to the other team on the bench. So you ache . . . so you're 33 years old. Hey, this game is all about mental toughness. Get on the field and let the adrenaline take over."
Damage is the heart and soul of Buhner's game. His approach is old-time. He will take the strikeouts, take the big hacks, as long as once every day or so he creates havoc. "I don't mind walking back to the dugout with the bat on my shoulder," said the free swinger whose 175 strikeouts is a team record, "as long as once in a while I get to trot around the bases and push runs home."
He is so set in his role, he will take strikes in certain situations knowing he might see that pitch again, with the game on the line, and be ready to hit it as hard and as far as anyone.
Buhner is a Frank Howard, Rob Deer type of player - lots of misses, long drives and runs batted in. With 251 homers and seven consecutive seasons of 20 or more, he is the 10th player in history with 40 or more homers three consecutive years.
He has driven in 370 runs the past three years, with 100-RBI producers Rodriguez, Griffey and Martinez clearing the bases in front of him.
Yet earlier this year, in dark humor, he talked about declining abilities. After having 140 RBI last year, he was unproductive in April and said, "Maybe this is the beginning of the end."
"After that bad start, I just said screw it, it's a bad year," Buhner said. "I was getting down on myself and that's not me. Uncle Lee (hitting coach Lee Elia) kept after me, `Come out and work.' "
Elia finally convinced him to get back to basics, do the drills. A classic streak hitter - ex-Mariner Scott Bradley once said Seattle's best game plan was to hold on between Buhner's hot weeks - he went on an 11-game hitting streak in early July and settled into his old role, backing up the consistent hitters in front of him with the constant threat of power.
"No one wants to face Jay with men on base," Elia said. "When he stays on the ball with his old swing, he can produce runs with the best in the business. His biggest asset is the threat he represents, getting better pitches for Junior, Edgar and Alex."
Thus, even at .240 lifetime, Buhner is an integral part of the Seattle lineup and its phenomenal offensive production.
Yet, unlike many cleanup types, Buhner is a standout defensive player who should have more than the one Gold Glove he was awarded last year. "Damage comes in several forms," he mused. "If you can't do it with the bat, there's always the glove or the arm."
He will play two more years for Seattle, and while he talks as outrageously as ever about "hating the National League," he will be the guts of the Mariners until the turn of the century, get to play in the new park and leave a legacy of character and crushing home runs.
"I'd like to be remembered as a gamer," he said. "As a guy who heard he was mechanical and played hard in the field, who had a long swing yet produced runs like I was paid to do, who made a career for himself out of modest potential."
He had done some talking about himself in the end, in his machine-gun monotone frankness about himself and others.
"Be sure," Buhner said, in closing, "you write about Leah. She is my rock."
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The 40 X 3 Club
Jay Buhner became the 10th player in history to hit 40 homers in three consecutive seasons and the first to do it in 27 years.
. Player Club Years with 40 . Babe Ruth N.Y. Yankees 1927-32 (6) . Ralph Kiner Pittsburgh 1947-51 (5) . Duke Snider Brooklyn 1953-57 (5) . Ernie Banks Chicago Cubs 1957-60 (4) . Harmon Killebrew Minnesota 1961-64 (4) . Jimmie Foxx Philadelphia 1932-34 (3) . Eddie Matthews Milwaukee 1953-55 (3) . Ted Kluszewski Cincinnati 1953-55 (3) . Frank Howard Washington 1968-70 (3) . Jay Buhner Seattle 1995-97 (3) .