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Coast to Coast
From sea to shining sea, Rich Aurilia has played baseball. The kid who learned the game on Brooklyn's streets is now starting for the team by the Golden Gate.
By Cal Steward
Rich Aurilia may have only two and a half years of big-league experience, but he's already been honored in Cooperstown and is about to have his number retired. Okay, perhaps Aurilia's stats over the past two seasons don't exactly match those of Mark McGuire, but he has come by his honors legitimately. The Giants' shortstop hit the first interleague grand slam in Major League Baseball history on June 14, 1997, and as a result, the bat he used is now on display in Cooperstown.
And later this season, the 27-year old Aurilia's uniform number is being retired. No, Aurilia's number will not be going up on 3Com Park's outfield fence alongside Mays, McCovey, Marichal et al. Instead, he's being recognized by the youth league he played in for nearly 10 years while growing up in Brooklyn, NY., the Our Lady of Grace Parish League. It may not be the big leagues, but this ceremony will mean just as much to him as the other ceremony must have meant to all those Giants greats.
"I guess I'm the first player who went through their age-group leagues to make it all the way to the major leagues." Aurilia says with descernible pride. "They're having me back there on one of the days we play the Mets (in early May). They want to retire the number for me, put it up on the fence, hold a ceremony and everything. Pretty neat."
"I'm really excited to go do it [be honored] because they are the people who have followed me throughout my career, and those are the people you really don't forget, the people you start out with," he says. "It's really going to mean a lot to me to go back there and have that done."
Aurilia's breakout season with San Francisco in 1998 is what his former league is honoring him for. He started a career-high 105 games and hit .268 with nine homers and 49 RBI. Coming out of Spring Training, he and Rey Sanchez platooned, but Aurilia quickly wrestled the starting position from Sanchez.
This achievement may not seem like much on the grand scale of pro sports career, but it is central to Aurilia's success story. Despite its rich historical relationship with the sport, modern-day Brooklyn could not be considered a hotbed for baseball prodigies. In fact, for youngsters from any New York borough to make it to the Majors has increasingly become a rarity.
"Growing up in New York is a great life experience, and it's really a great baseball experience too," Aurilia says. "But you don't have some of the privileges that people who live in the suburbs may have. Most of our games were played on basically a dirt patch. We just threw some bases out there and it was a field." Aurilia recalled playing once against Indians pitcher Steve Karsay's high school team in nearby Queens. The field was located in an industrial area and butted up against a freeway. The field had more litter than a New York subway, and it's condition was that of a disaster area.
"There wasn't even a pitching mound," he remembers. "It was more like a pitching hole. The infield was just a skin, all dirt, and it was barely big enough to play on. The bases were right at the edge of the dirt and outfield grass. But I'd say most of the fields I played on in high schools were like that."
That didn't discourage the young Aurilia, who, despite growing up deep in basketball territory, had a love affair with his ball, bat, and glove from an early age.
"As far back as I can remember, I always had a glove and a ball in my hand," he recalls. "I really can't pinpoint why I started playing baseball. I don't really remember someone teaching me. I always messed around playing stickball and whiffleball and whatever else I could play."
"I even played a game called stoopball that I played out in front of my house. If you threw the ball off the stairs and it bounced once, it was worth five points. If it went in the air, it was 10, and if you caught it on a line coming back off the corner of the stairs, it was like 100 points. You tried to invent all these little games growing up in the city."
But real games were hard to come by. Aurilia started playing T-ball when he was 6. There weren't many boys his age in his Graves End neighborhood, so he tagged along with teenagers three and four years older than he was to play in park games.
"I was maybe 9 or 10, and the kids were 13, 14, and 15," he says. "I think it made me a better player, because I played at a different level of competition and it drove me a little more. It stayed that way throughout the rest of my baseball career. In high school, I played varsity at a young age. In college (at St. John's University), I started as a freshman, and then coming to the big leagues, I was only 22 years old."
And baseball has taken him places he never would have dreamed as a kid, when he was throwing a ratty old ball against his front stoop. Early in his college career, Aurilia even went the route of Dr. Joel Fleishman of the Northern Exposure television series-- from the streets of New York to the tundra of Alaska.
"I played in a summer league in a little town called Kenai, Alaska, which is about four hours from Anchorage," he says. "Talk about culture shock. I was a city kid. It's where I spent my whole life. And then I go to Kenai, where the population is nothing compared to what I was used to.
"I went salmon fishing in the middle of the river," he continues. "I did some rock climbing, just stuff that I would never have had a chance to do if not for baseball. I probably never would have gone to Alaska if it wasn't to play. I stayed with a great family up there, and still stay in touch with them. They come down to Spring Training every year and stay for about a month."
This season, the folks in Alaska as well as in Brooklyn should be seeing a career in full blossom. After finally receiving his opportunity to play regularly in 1998 following two seasons backing up former Giants Shawon Dunston and Jose Vizcaino, Aurilia showed the Giants he's more than up to the challenge of becoming their everyday starting shortstop.
Early in '98, he split time with Sanchez, the veteran free-agent acquisition, but as the season progressed Aurilia simply took over the position with his steady play, in the field and at the plate. His average hovered around .300 through much of the season until a strained groin muscle late July reduced his effectiveness. He still wound up hitting .268 with nine home runs, the most homers hit by a Giants shortstop since Chris Speier hit 10 in 1975.
He was even more remarkable in the field, opening the season with a 48-game errorless streak. He led the National League in fielding through the middle of August until the same groin injury resulted in him committing, during a six-game stretch, five of his 10 total errors.
"I don't mean to sound conceited, but I think I'm one of the top fielding shortstops in the league," he states simply. "I'm not as flashy as some of the guys around the league, but I just try to go out and do the fundamental things, because that's how I think I got to where I am."
Giants manager Dusty Baker concurs.
"Richie's very steady," he says. "He makes the plays that he's supposed to make. I want my shortstop to be a Steady Eddie. And as much as anything, I like the pop he was showing in his bat last year. He's developing into a solid hitter too."
To be sure, the Giants were impressed enough to sign Aurilia to a new two-year contract this past winter, ensuring that he'll likely be another key component of the lineup when Pacific Bell Park opens in April 2000.
"We're expecting even bigger things from him," says Baker. "He was always confident that he could play here, at this level. When you're young, time always seems like it's passing you by. In some cases, it does. But now it's his chance. This is a big year for him to prove he's an everyday player. He was about a four-day-a-week last year, but now he'll be taking on even more responsibility."
Aurilia thinks so too. After starting 105 games last year, he hopes to increase that total to 140 to 150 this season. He also believes he can hit double-digit home runs as well as for a higher average if he can stay injury-free. While Aurilia has always believed in his abilities, his confidence also stems from the fact that for the first time in his Major League career he is entering the season as The Guy at his position.
"It's a weight that's lifted off my shoulders, going into Spring Training knowing that I'm going to be the shortstop," he says. "For the past couple of years I've gone in knowing I have to compete against other shortstops, and you never quite have that sense of security. But this year, I know I can go in and work on the things I need to work on during Spring Training to get ready for the year without having to go in and win a job."
Without question, he's come a long wat from the Brooklyn dirt patch. And that's why having his number retired by his former youth league is so special to him.
"I remember going to She Stadium as a little kid, thinking, 'Wow, someday maybe I'll get a chance to play here,'" he says. "But I didn't really believe it could happen until it actually did."
Even in high school, it didn't seem all that likely. He attended Xaverian, and all-boys Catholic prep institution where athletic preferences were firmly rooted in basketball. Little wonder. Xaverian's most noted athletic alumnus is Indiana Pacer star, Chris Mullin.
"That was their claim to fame," Aurilia says. "It's changed a little since then, though. This past year, they were a nationally-ranked baseball power."
Aurilia likes to think he might have had a little to do with that. Most of all, he's proud that as a native New Yorker -- and specifically a Brooklynite-- he's keeping the flame alive for aspiring urban youngsters, showing that they can make it if thay have talent and desire and if they work hard.
"I guess I was just fortunate enough to have somewhere I could go and play, especially growing up in New York," he says. "it's not the best city in the world for young people to grow up. There are a lot of great role models, but there is also a lot of stuff that you have to try to avoid. Luckily enough, my parents and my friends steered me in the right direction."
As for steering teammates in the right direction when the Giants travel in the right direction when the Giants travel to New York, he's less effective than it might seem. Even though he spent one winter serving as a stagehand for the Metropolitan Opera, key parts of the Big Apple are still somewhat foreign to him. On the other hand, Aurilia would have no problem directing his teammates to his favorite restaurants in San Francisco China Basin, where he and his wife, Raquel, moved this off-season.
"We live downtown and love it," he says. "We enjoy going to restaurants and getting out and doing things. I remember Robby Thompson telling me, 'If you do one thing while you're here, just live in the City for one year and take advantage of it.' So we did it last year, and we're going to stay here every year."
In fact, not only does Aurilia live in San Francisco, but next season he will be only a few blocks from Pacific Bell Park.
"Living in the city is the best move we ever made," he says. "I'll be able to walk to the ballpark every day because it will be just down the street." Just like the Brooklyn Dodgers, who 50 years ago used to walk between Ebbets Field and their homes, mingling with fans along the way.
A true Brooklynite wouldn't have it any other way.