Kapler charged by positivity
I looked down from my midafternoon perch in the press box and below me a familiar figure was hitting batting practice baseballs off or over the Wall.
``I'm somewhere in the neighborhood of a week away from playing real baseball," reports Gabe Kapler.
Don't worry. Kapler knows what you're thinking.
``Seriously," he laughs. ``This is me we're talking about. It's kind of silly. Everybody's reality is their own, let's face it."
Kapler's statistical reality is that of a lifetime .271 hitter with 62 home runs and 290 runs batted in. He has gone from Detroit to Texas to Colorado to Boston to Japan and back to Boston, and that's in seven years. He's a solid defensive player, and he can run. He used to be able to run, anyway. What he'll be like after sustaining an Achilles' tendon injury is an open question. His name will never be checked on a Hall of Fame ballot, but he has been a useful ballplayer who, at age 30 (turns 31 Aug. 31) ought to have more productive years left.
He's Gabe Kapler, and he's always going to be known for his weightlifter body and the fact that his next monosyllabic response to a question will be his first. Can he help it if this is the way his mind works?
Since tearing his left Achilles' tendon in that bizarre misstep on the turf in Toronto last Sept. 14, Kapler has had a lot of time to think. It was a given that he would make the most of his rehab time, that he would not just work on his damaged heel and then go off and vegetate. If there is any possible way to turn such a misfortune into a positive occurrence, Gabe Kapler would find it.
``There have been times I think I've handled this very well, and times I think I haven't," he explains. ``It's been a constant evaluation and reevaluation. I believe everything that happens in life has an element of education to it. And this experience has been enormously educational."
He has taken, he says, a ``spiritual path."
``It's not so much religious," he notes, ``but in the sense that life has its twists and turns, and not to sound excessively corny, that life has a series of choices. So, how do we develop? How do we mature? How do we teach?
``During this time," he continues, ``I know I'm being watched by my teammates, watched by my friends, and watched by my family to see how I will react to it. I'm trying to set an example."
Even in the early postinjury stages, that meant no moaning, no woe-is-me, nothing resembling self-pity. It also meant no dwelling on the injury moment itself, as bizarre as it was. Not many people injure themselves running the bases in front of a teammate's home run.
``It happened," he shrugs. ``And like everything else that's happened to me in my strange baseball career, it's just one more chapter in the story."
Kapler pretty much views his life as an ongoing novel. Take, for example, the story of how he came to Boston in the first place. He had just been released by Colorado. ``I'm home on my couch," he recalls. ``I'm thinking, `Now what?' And who calls? The Royals? The Padres? The Pirates? No, the Boston Red Sox. The Red Sox! And I get to play a vital role. That wasn't random. It was meant to happen."
It's the same with his return to Boston last year. He went to Japan, and it didn't work out, period. Where was there still a spot for him? Boston. Can't beat that, if you're Gabe Kapler.
One thing Kapler has been doing during these first two months is studying, yup, baseball. Oh, he's been doing a few other things (such as reading), but since he can't yet play baseball he's been looking at it from a different perspective. Sort of an insider's outside view, you might say. And what has he learned?
``That the game is played by people," he explains.
That appears to be self-evident. We may need elaboration here.
``I've been reading faces and body language," he says. ``Ballplayers have the same personalities and characteristics as those in the general population. They can give themselves away. Let me give you an example. Jason Varitek had an at-bat in Philadelphia. His body language said that he was super-confident. His mechanics were on time. Now, he ended up walking, but when I asked him later if I was right about his state of mind during that at-bat, he said, yes, I was. That was very exciting to me."
So, where could all this lead? Could this information make him a manager someday? Can it transform him from the semiregular he has been to the All-Star he was once projected to be? The odds are against that. So what practical benefit could this ability to decipher the body language of his teammates mean to Gabe Kapler?
``You know what?" he says. ``I really don't know. It could be nothing. It could just mean I was meant to be having this conversation with you."
Gabe Kapler is one ballplayer who is going to be comfortable in his own skin, no matter what. He will keep working on his game, but he will accept whatever the final outcome is, as long as he knows he gave the game everything he had. And he will always be grateful for landing in Boston back in June 2003, and to have been a part of the 2004 Red Sox.
``Something happened to change the culture of the clubhouse in August or September that year," he explains. ``We were not the best team on paper that year. We were not supposed to win the World Series. We won because we had the right people, playing together. In any given year there are maybe 10 teams with a legitimate chance of winning. The team with the right people will win."
The next thing I knew, he was talking about the Gwyneth Paltrow movie, ``Sliding Doors." I was afraid I'd be getting in over my head.
``You must have some work to do," I said. ``Don't want to hold you up."
Bad enough a player can outtalk a writer, but it's very unsettling when he outthinks one, too. 