Jefferies Talks Back on 'Pet' Image
By Joe Sexton
Gregg Jefferies had left the clubhouse that afternoon in 1989 with the reasonable request that his bat a teammate was swinging be placed back in Jefferies's locker. Famous already for his possessiveness concerning his bats, Jefferies was standing on the field at Busch Stadium a quarter of an hour later when word came that he should return to the clubhouse. The bat, he discovered, had been intentionally broken into pieces. And his world, he claimed in recounting the story, might as well have been, too. Jefferies stood and fingered the shards of the bat and once more tried to piece together in his mind what he intended to do with his life. A Minor League Sensation The season, his first full one in the major leagues, had been choked full of nights without sleep, days without joy and games without hits. As a result, Jefferies fought the urge to believe that he was a 21-year-old without an option but to quit. "I don't know that I ever would have done it, but I thought about it," recalled Jefferies, who had been a minor league sensation but was being made to feel like a clubhouse pariah. "I couldn't believe the desire to backstab. I asked why would people want to hurt others so badly? Why did they want to embarrass others? "To me, it was incredible. It was like it all was part of the business, and in it you either stick it out or give up. I asked myself if I actually wanted to do this. I came close to saying no. I came close." Jefferies didn't, however, and in the two seasons since, the Met infielder has instead come a long way, he believes, toward clubhouse acceptance, inner calm and the eventual success that the organization had so loudly trumpeted for him. "Everything about me has been blown out of proportion all along," said Jefferies, who has not played regularly in nearly two weeks because of a strained muscle in his rib cage and yesterday was placed on the disabled list and won't be available until Sunday. "How good my offense was, how bad my defense was, how weird my relationship with my father was," he continued. "The media, I think, went beyond the bounds in how it portrayed me. People on the team didn't appreciate it, but they forgot I wasn't the one saying it all. I was 21. It was impossible for anyone to be that good. "Anyway, I learned that you can't force friends. You make them. And you definitely can't please everybody. The first year was a tough year, but I'm glad it happened. Now, it is for me as if it never happened. I can't tell you how different it is now." Many of the Mets, though, can't wait to tell you how wrong Jefferies is, although they decline to be quoted directly. The open coldness may have broken and the clandestine character assaults may have abated, but there is still detachment and distance. If there is not personal animus, there is widespread awkwardness, a situation compounded both by Jefferies's rudimentary social skills and the club's obvious fumblings to find a position in the field for him to play. Only last week, for instance, Jefferies was stalking the clubhouse trying to identify the source of an anonymous newspaper quote that attributed the turmoil on the team's infield to the fact that in Jefferies it had "a designated hitter playing third base." Over the weekend, Jefferies found himself once more mystified and bruised by a teammate's public questioning of his willingness to work at his defense. "People, I guess, will always have something to say," he said. "But to say I don't work is ridiculous. To say I'm not dedicated to work is ridiculous. To say I'm not dedicated to baseball is ridiculous." No doubt, the crux of the debate -- inside the clubhouse, over the airwaves of New York's sports talk shows and perhaps even at some level of management's subconscious -- is whether the Mets have simply been too dedicated to Jefferies, whether their infatuation with his potential offense has blinded them to the full range of ramifications wrought by his limited defensive skills. And the Mets' problems in the infield were compounded yesterday when shortstop Kevin Elster was injured in the game against the Giants. Jefferies, a "phenom" named by one respected publication the minor league player of the decade for the 80's, was a shortstop in the minors before being switched to third base. With the Mets, he was then converted to a second baseman before last year, when he was returned to third and told not even to bother taking another ground ball at second. Three weeks into the 1991 season, Jefferies was once again ordered to second, a development that has been met with undisguised fear by Jefferies and hard stares of doubt from the rest of the Mets. "I don't think the organization has been confounded," said Joe McIlvaine, general manager of the Padres, who was in charge of player development for the Mets during Jefferies's formative seasons. "They're trying to make the best fit. There, obviously, have been a lot of different thoughts. But I don't think there is blame. "Certainly you can't just point your finger at Jefferies. Can you fault him for being confused? The best solution hasn't been found yet, that's clear. There is a lot to the point, though, that in trying different things out, you have to concern yourself with not losing the player altogether." For his part, Jefferies maintains that he is in firm control of himself, that his bouts of doubt are more manageable than before, that he harbors no anger with the organization for its constantly contrary opinions, although he emphasizes that he does not want "to be taken for a fool." He said he is convinced that with the relatively youthful combination of Elster and Howard Johnson at shortstop and third, his status at second is permanent. He is, as well, equally insistent that his stature as a fielder will improve. And he flatly refuses to believe that his teammates view him as a pet management project that is nurtured and protected at the expense of the team's soundness as well as the careers of others. "I don't feel it goes that deep," Jefferies said. "The organization hasn't done what it's done for one player. It's not the case. I don't feel I'm as bad a defensive player as I've been made out to be. But even the players on my own team read that in the papers and believe it, too. And trust me, there are a lot of guys who are not as good defensively as they are made out to be. A Limited Guaranty? "Hey, I didn't even realize how important defense would be until I got to the minor leagues. When I worked out with my dad, all I wanted to do was hit," said Jefferies, whose father spent years grooming him for a major league career. "At 12 or 13, that was what baseball was to me. I loved it too much. Early on, I asked myself who I wanted to be, Ozzie Smith or George Brett. To me, the answer was obvious." What is not so obvious, at least not yet, is whether, defense aside, Jefferies truly is the precocious and productive property at the plate that he was guaranteed to be. McIlvaine, after all, had said Jefferies, a switch-hitter with pop in his bat from both sides, was unquestionably the best hitting prospect the Mets had produced in his entire tenure with the team. After two full seasons and a part of another, Jefferies began 1991 with a .277 career average. He hit .283 last season, his 40 doubles the top total in the National League. That season, though, was significantly tarnished by a dismal September, when he lost nearly 20 points off his average and when during one stretch he went hitless in 37 straight at-bats with men in scoring position, the worst such streak in the 16 years that the Elias Sports Bureau has kept the statistic. Now, Jefferies is laboring with a .192 average and all of 4 extra-base hits in 52 at-bats. He has not hit a home run since last Sept. 8. "There has over the seasons been nothing wrong with the mechanics of the swing," Mike Cubbage, the hitting coach for the Mets and the man who managed Jefferies at several levels of the minor leagues. "His problems have been impatience and a failure to conquer the strike zone." Jefferies acknowledges as much, and in one of the many largely unseen, unreported instances of his humility, concedes as well that he has yet to demonstrate he is as good with the bat as was advertised. "I don't want to feel unsatisfied as a player, and right now that is how I feel," he said. "And it's not like there's a light switch I can turn on once I've decided this is the year that I prove it all." Privacy as His Refuge Jefferies, however, said it has been increasingly easy for him to unplug himself emotionally from the torments of bad games and the disappointment of whatever bad vibes he still picks up in the clubhouse. He has a spacious house on Long Island that he shares with his agent, a supply of video games for distraction and enough of a taste for nightlife to venture to Manhattan occasionally. Beyond that information, though, Jefferies is still suspicious of a reporter's motives. "I'm not solemn or strange, but I like not being known," he said. "And anyway people are going to have their opinions no matter what I choose to show them. My privacy is still the one thing I have." That may be true, but one thing is equally apparent. As Jefferies embarks on his third full season, his innocence gone, his grace period complete, his responsibility in the infield heightened and his proficiency at the plate desperately required, Jefferies's public persona is bound for relentless scrutiny.
