Oh, what a relief it was
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Columnist
If 14 major-league seasons have taught relief pitcher Mike Fetters something beyond how to deal with elbow pain, it is the ability to recognize "The Look" from warning track distance.
"The Look" is the dreaded expression that precedes the notification that a player has been traded.
In the employ of seven major-league teams, some more than once, it is something the Iolani School graduate has come to know all too well.
So when a Pittsburgh representative approached him Saturday, "I knew what was coming," Fetters said. "I had my head down waiting for the news. But when they told me I was going to the Arizona Diamondbacks, I lifted my head up and got excited."
Perhaps only a veteran's sense of propriety kept one of baseball's most animated figures from his biggest signature fist pump yet. Maybe only the concern for the feelings of the players he was leaving stopped Fetters from another of his bobble-head bounces and a shriek of joy.
Suddenly, he'd gone from a team 10 games under .500 and headed for yet another salary-dumping roster overhaul to the defending world champion that was 16 games up.
After a career spent watching pennant races from the outside, Fetters was jumping into the middle of baseball's hottest one. After a tenure without a post-season appearance, he had been handed his best opportunity to make one and from near his off-season home in Chandler, Ariz., as well.
At age 37, well after he was supposed to be back in 'Ewa Beach taking in his baseball with a TV clicker in one hand and a cold beverage in the other, Fetters is finally where he has always dreamed about being.
"The money (a reported $2.75 million salary) is great but when you have been around baseball as long as I have, you want the chance to play for a championship," Fetters said. "That's what you're there for."
Whether he is to be a setup man for All-Star Byung-Hyun Kim or as a closer himself, Fetters says it matters little at this point. Only that he is handed the ball with an opportunity to help his team compete for the title.
The chance to play for a contender is something that had looked to have passed him by. Glimpses of a pennant race with Milwaukee in 1992 and Anaheim in '98 had served to whet his appetite for much more.
"That's one of the things I've always envied about Sid Fernandez, he got to pitch in the playoffs and the World Series," Fetters said. "He got to do it all."
Come the resumption of play after the All-Star break, Fetters won't be hard to find. He'll be the guy with the biggest smile in Arizona.
