Snow a batter who still carries plenty of Pop
To this day he can picture the men, sweaty like baseball players after a game, only ''way, way sweatier." The innumerable balled-up pieces of used tape, scattered across the floor. The towels, and the ''huge" men who wore them. The pulsating music, ''pouring out, like in baseball, but 100 times better, because in football every win is so big." The playful abuse -- being stuffed in a trash can, taped to a trainer's table, or thrown into the shower ''just enough to get my head under, to scare me."
More than 30 years later, Jack Thomas Snow Jr. -- better known as J.T. -- still can smell, see, and hear the Los Angeles Coliseum locker room on those days when his dad's Rams won.
''I would just pray they would win," recalled Snow, who turned 38 this spring training, his first with the Red Sox after nine seasons with the Giants. ''My mom would bring me down to the family entrance, and my dad would be waiting outside. When they didn't win I would sit in my dad's locker, and I wouldn't say a word.
''It's cool, because a couple years ago my son would wait up near the family room, and he would ask, 'Did we win?' I'd say, 'Oh yeah, and it's going to be loud.' Or I'd say, 'No,' and he'd be quiet for five or 10 minutes, and then he'd whisper to me, and then he'd lighten up and talk."
Shane Snow, J.T.'s son, is 8, one year older than J.T. was when his father, Jack, played the last game of a career in which he caught 340 passes, 45 for touchdowns, and piled up 6,012 receiving yards. Snow, speaking last week in Fort Myers, Fla., said he remembers only ''a few of my dad's games, but I have a DVD, I got it a couple years ago, 15 minutes of clips of a bunch of his highlights. It's pretty cool."
There is a photo inside Snow's locker at City of Palms Park of his dad, ball tucked, running after a catch. The photo honors his father. So does his Sox number. Snow is wearing No. 84 this spring, and not because he's a minor leaguer seeking a job.
''I actually got to finalize the deal [with the Sox] while he was still alive, and [the idea] just came to me," said Snow, who wore No. 6 in San Francisco. ''When I told him, he was at the point where he was having a hard time communicating and talking, but he could still by nodding his head, so it brought a smile to his face, and I think he felt good about it.
''I wouldn't be sitting here and have played 13 years in the big leagues without his support and his upbringing, so it's an honor for me to do that."
Snow signed with the Sox Jan. 7. His father, debilitated by a blood-borne staph infection this winter, died of complications Jan. 9 at age 62.
''He loved baseball," said Snow, who went 2 for 3 yesterday with two RBIs in a 10-7 loss to Pittsburgh, upping his spring totals to 5 for 12 (.417) with 5 RBIs.
''He recently got the satellite package. He loved to sit down and watch the whole game. If I were having a tough time, I could always pick up the phone. It was a good buffer to have. The longer I played, and the older I got, he got better at it."
That is the only indication Snow gives of a falling out between himself and his parents. Snow didn't speak with them for two years in the mid-'90s, and while he says the situation ''was not as big a deal as it was made out to be," he also acknowledges that what was written ''wasn't untrue." Snow won't say what came between them.
''The biggest thing," he said, speaking in particular about his relationship with his father, ''is we were men, and we patched it up and moved on."
They got back together, according to published accounts, in March 1997, when a Randy Johnson fastball ricocheted off Snow's wrist and into his face, smashing his orbital bone. His mother, Merry Carole (she was born on Christmas Day), was ill with cancer at the time, and Snow, a day after being injured by Johnson, called her. He began visiting her until the cancer reached her spine and took her life, in 1998.
Father and son grew close again, and Jack visited J.T. more often in the clubhouse, when Snow's Giants came to St. Louis, where Jack lived, and in Scottsdale, Ariz., where the Giants trained in the spring. In doing so, Snow said, his father came to appreciate his son's game, and the countenance it requires.
''Football is a survival sport," Snow said. ''We kind of had different thoughts on that. I think he always wanted me to be more vocal and footballish, but you can't in baseball. He always called it 'the baseball attitude.' You go 4 for 4, you're excited, but the next day you can go 0 for 4.
''Not until recently when he got to see me in the big leagues and come to the ballpark, seeing how it is every day, did he start to realize how it is.
''I'm going to miss not being able to call him and talk to him."
But before Jack and J.T., no father had ever played in the NFL or major leagues, to have a son go on to play in the other league. Snow believes there is a reason why a number of sons of professionals make it as athletes.
''To expect your kid to be a professional athlete is an unfair expectation," he said. ''I think that's why you see a lot of sons of famous fathers make it. The dads don't put any pressure on you because they know how hard it is to make it, where other parents, and I've seen it with my own son in Little League, parents are screaming and yelling at the kid."
Jack Snow coached J.T.'s Little League team for three or four years, and he wanted his son to succeed. He banged countless ground balls at him, placing equal import on scoring and preventing runs, a foundation that someday would manifest itself in Snow winning six consecutive Gold Gloves.
''But," Snow said, ''my mom and dad, never once, verbally yelled at me or were really vocal in the stands."
As Snow grew into adolescence, his father made one offer, and let it stand.
''When I got into high school," Snow said, ''he said, 'If you want me to help you I can help you. I'm not going to drag you out there. But if you want, I'm here for you.' My sophomore year I made a commitment. I told him, 'Dad, show me what I need to do.' "
That begat 6 a.m. workouts for Snow, who played baseball, basketball and football.
As a high school quarterback, Snow threw to a receiver named Robb Nen -- who one day would close games as Snow's teammate in San Francisco -- and was good enough that Lou Holtz offered a full scholarship to Notre Dame, where Jack had been an All-American. But J.T. Snow chose a baseball career at the University of Arizona and, ultimately, a major league career now entering its 14th season.
Snow, between 1995 and 2000, averaged 21 home runs and 91 RBIs and won a Gold Glove each season. Asked yesterday if he's the best defensive first baseman of the last 20 years, Sox manager Terry Francona said, ''Yeah, I think he was, I really do. J.T. took it to another level."
He's still using the same glove that won him the last Gold Glove, a black Wilson 2802 that requires restitching each year. Last year, he wore a hole in the pocket and ''put a bunch of Super Glue in there so the leather wouldn't split." After the season, he sent it out to a manufacturer, who ''put a new inside in."
Snow, the year he won that last Gold Glove, had 536 at-bats. Because of myriad injuries to his ribs, groin, knee, and hamstring, he has averaged only 350 per season since, which is about what the Red Sox told him to expect.
He'll start some, and he'll get into games as a defensive replacement whenever the Sox have a lead in the middle-to-late innings. Francona indicated yesterday that he's likely to sub Snow for Kevin Youkilis earlier in games than he subbed John Olerud and Doug Mientkiewicz for Kevin Millar. The rationale: Snow still can swing it, and Youkilis is willing to accept it. ''Millar," Francona said, ''I used to have this conversation with him all the time, and I just couldn't get through his head why I was doing it."
Snow doesn't have the power he once did -- he homered only four times last season -- but some of that is a function of his former ballpark. He considers San Francisco's AT&T Park, which opened in 2000, to be the toughest home run park for a lefthanded hitter in baseball. He says he effectively stopped attempting to go deep, and his numbers bear that out. Since the park opened, he's homered once every 50 at-bats in San Francisco, and once every 33 at-bats elsewhere.
While Snow's homer totals have decreased, he has hit big ones, including what proved to be the winner in Game 1 of the 2002 World Series, a sixth-inning, two-out, two-run shot off Jarrod Washburn in a 4-3 win. The Giants led that series, 3-2, over the Angels entering Game 6.
''I think back to it all the time," Snow said. ''I was out there in Game 6, it was the seventh inning, eight outs to go, up, 5-0, and I said, 'Man, we're going to win this, I'm going to get a ring, my career's going to be complete.' Next thing you know . . . "
''Kenny Lofton hit a fly ball," Snow recounted. ''David Bell was on second. I was on third. I went back to tag up. When the ball fell in I looked up, and I saw Darren heading right for the plate."
Darren would be Darren Baker, manager Dusty Baker's son, then just 3 years old.
''David Bell had to run hard to score," Snow continued. ''I saw the catcher getting ready for what looked like a throw. I just reached out and got [Darren] by the jacket with one hand and picked the bat up and we got out of the way.
''I was a big hit with a lot of the moms and a lot of the parents. I've even had people who don't know who I am, when I say my name or show my ID, they say, 'You're the guy who saved Darren Baker.' I say, 'No, I'm the guy who hit .400 in the Series and got a hit in all seven games.' "
The event was immortalized in a fantastic photo of Snow scooping the toddler by the collar.
''I've got a big [copy] blown up at home," Snow said. ''I was lucky to get a good grip on his jacket. If I'd have dropped him or stumbled it might have been an ugly scene because there was a play coming at the plate. Then they put the rule in."
The rule calls for batboys to be at least 14.
''It's too old," Snow said. ''I have an 8-year-old son. He wants to come be a bat boy."
Snow, and Fox Sports Bay Area, playfully protested the new age requirement the following year with a promotional spoof of the Baker incident, in which Snow escorts a batboy, or rather, batman, to safety.
''I was carrying this old guy off the field," Snow said. ''He had to be in his mid-60s, kind of skinny. They weren't going to run it. They thought it was kind of [offensive]. They got a lot of pressure not to. But once they ran it, everybody loved it."
Alas, Shane Snow won't be in a Sox uniform this year, collecting David Ortiz's and Manny Ramírez's bats. But he will be at Fenway, once his school year ends back home in California.
''Last year, every homestand, he rode with me to the park," Snow said. ''2:30 would come around and he'd say, 'Let's go to the ballpark.' He'd come out and stretch with the team, play catch. He'd sit in Barry Bonds's chair. He'd climb all over it. He'd sit there and talk to Barry or watch TV with him.
''For me, and my son, when you grow up around it, you look at players differently than other kids do. Barry Bonds, my son looks at him as someone his dad plays baseball with. To him we're not the cartoon characters everyone else sees us as.
''[The Rams] were heroes to most people. To me, they were just guys my dad worked with."
Those experiences, getting stuffed in a shower, taped to a table, tossed in with the trash, ''that stuff all makes you a better kid, makes you a tougher kid, makes you able to handle a lot of different things," Snow said. ''My son and I, we talk a lot going back and forth to the ballpark, on the way over, the way home. Make sure you know how lucky you are."
