IN THERE PITCHING : Bill Dodd’s Promise in High School Still a Long Way From Being Fulfilled

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Bill Dodd and two Chattanooga Lookouts teammates have a soda machine in a death grip. It’s tilted at a 45-degree angle and they’re shaking it, trying to pry loose a Pepsi.

Dodd has just come into the stifling, 25-by-25-foot room that passes for a visiting club house at Tim McCarver Stadium after finishing his daily 25-minute run. Sweat beads on his forehead, now more from the frustration of being gypped by this confounded thing than from his jogging in the outfield.

After another moment of struggling with the machine, Dodd surrenders, leaving the battle to his teammates. He trudges outside to find relief from the heat.

“It’s cooler outside anyway,” Dodd says.

After about five minutes, his teammates emerge victorious with a soda and hand it over to a grateful Dodd.

He finishes gulping just as a group of youngsters approach.

“Are y’all the Cincinnati Reds?” one asks.

“Well . . . ,” Dodd says, starting to explain the intricacies of minor league affiliations to major league clubs.

“Nah,” another breaks in. “They’re in the minors.”

“Chattanooga, huh?” a third asks.

“Yes,” Dodd confirms with a sigh.

The scene, however brief, is another vignette in the tortured baseball life of Bill Dodd. After all, it has been a lurching transition from stardom at Capistrano Valley High School to minor league mediocrity in the Tennessee countryside.

As the young fans noticed, the only similarities between the Chattanooga Lookouts and the Cincinnati Reds are the hand-me-down warmup jerseys the Chattanooga players wear. Dodd knows this, but he’s happy just to be playing for Chattanooga, the Reds’ double-A affiliate.

The path to Chattanooga has taken Dodd through Tempe, Ariz., where a spat with a college pitching coach and National Collegiate Athletic Assn. sanctions against his school sent him packing for home. As a professional, he has gone through such garden spots as Billings, Mont., and Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Dodd has endured injury, inflated earned-run averages, broken soda machines and bothersome fans as best as could be expected. And he keeps coming back for more.

Two days later, Dodd is scheduled to be the Lookouts’ starting pitcher. It’s his first starting assignment since 1986 and only the fifth in his professional career.

At 7 p.m. things are looking good. In fewer than 30 minutes, Dodd will face the Memphis Chicks, the last-place team in the Southern League’s Western Division. The Chicks’ team batting average is .244 and they have only two batters hitting .300 or better.

At 7:15, Dodd is throwing in the bullpen. His pitches land in the catcher’s mitt with an impressive “pop.” Game time is just a few moments away and Dodd appears ready.

At 7:20, a storm hits.

Thunder, lighting and heavy rain send players scurrying for cover and the ground crew racing for the tarp. Dodd lingers a moment in the downpour, watching the dark sky. Sometimes these Southern storms blow over quickly. Not tonight. The game is called after a 90-minute wait.

So why does Dodd continue to endure the angst of the minor leagues? Why would an otherwise bright, mature, handsome 22-year-old stick with something that’s given him so much grief?

The answer comes a day later.

Dodd throws a four-hitter, strikes out seven and walks one in five innings as Chattanooga beats Memphis, 7-2, in the first game of a doubleheader.

Dodd’s career has been a curious mix of great highs and tremendous lows. One day’s disappointment slowly, inevitably leads into the next day’s success.

“Some days you throw and you’re unhittable,” Dodd said. “Others I think, ‘What the hell am I doing out here?’ ”

Until the victory against Memphis, Dodd’s current season has been more failure than success.

“So far, it hasn’t been a good season,” he said. “It’s fun when you’re doing well and the team’s doing well. When everything is going right, there’s nothing better than playing baseball.”

Dodd is 3-2 with a 4.09 ERA in 46 innings pitched in 28 games, the slowest start of his career.

Dodd said when things are bad, when it’s late at night in yet another unfamiliar hotel and he’s wondering what’s wrong with his fastball, he has mulled a career change.

He wonders what would have happened if he had earned his degree at Arizona State, if he had quit baseball while he was ahead and landed a real job.

“People my age have a degree and all,” Dodd said. “I could be playing another four or five years and not make the majors. I could be out earning a living during that time.”

He pauses a beat, then continues.

“There’s always the chance I could make it. I have nothing else to lose. It’s a nice life. You can’t beat it. What other job lets you sleep in and watch soap operas all afternoon?”

Such indecision hasn’t always plagued Dodd. Experience--good and bad, but mostly bad--has changed him, though. Indeed, Dodd seems older, wiser and more mature than his 22 years. A year at Arizona State and four more in the minors have been full of, as Dodd puts it, “learning experiences.”

Bob Zamora, Capistrano Valley coach, recalls his first meeting with Dodd, who was then a hopeful, impressive-looking eighth-grader.

“I met him and his mother,” Zamora said. “She said, ‘My son’s playing baseball at (Capistrano Valley) next year and he wants to play major league baseball.”

Zamora, accustomed to hearing such wishful thinking, sized up the youngster and soon realized it might not be unrealistic to expect Dodd to make it big.

“The overlying word would be confidence,” Zamora said. “It’s one thing to have a goal in life to play in the big leagues. It’s a goal of a lot of people. But Billy had the size and talent to go along with it.

“Everything came easy to him. In high school it wasn’t much of a challenge for him. He overpowered everyone.”

In his senior season in 1984, Dodd was 10-0 with a 1.72 ERA and 108 strikeouts. He batted .425 and hit a county-leading nine home runs. He was second in RBIs with 35.

In his three-year varsity career, he was 28-2 and had 300 strikeouts. He was named The Times’ Orange County player of the year in his junior and season seasons. Recently, he was named to The Times’ 20th anniversary all-county team, joining Angels Bert Blyleven (Santiago) and Mike Witt (Servite) and Jim Peterson of Sonora on the first-team pitching staff.

In addition to the statistics, Dodd was 6-feet-4, 200 pounds--a vision of athletic power and skill on the mound.

He picked Arizona State over a pack of other colleges and many figured it was only a matter of time before Dodd became one of the nation’s top collegiate pitchers.

It never happened.

He never found his niche with the Sun Devils. He was 2-3 with a 7.36 ERA, which was not particularly impressive but not terrible for a freshman trying to adjust to college baseball in a new role as a relief pitcher. But it wasn’t statistics that drove Dodd from the school.

A sore elbow and a difference of opinion with pitching coach Tim Kelly accounted for most of the problems.

Dodd said his elbow hurt; Kelly thought he was malingering.

Dodd went to the trainer, who said there was nothing wrong, at least as far as he could tell.

Unconvinced, Dodd went on his own to see orthopedic specialist Dr. Frank Jobe, who did not see anything serious either but prescribed rest.

And that caused a bigger rift between Dodd and the coaching staff.

There was more, though.

In December of 1984, the Sun Devils were placed on two years probation by the Pacific 10 Conference for violations in the school’s work-study program. They were banned from postseason play in 1985.

Then in March of 1985, several Arizona State players, including Dodd, were found with Nardil, an antidepressant and potentially dangerous mood-altering drug. The drug was reportedly used to help players cope with disappointment on the playing field, though how they got it was never disclosed. Dodd said he never took it, but kept it at home “as a souvenir to keep in the scrapbook.” Though no players were suspended, the negative publicity about the incident was the last thing the school needed, coming on the heels of the NCAA sanctions.

Dodd left after the season ended and decided to attend Saddleback College, not far from his Dana Point home.

“It was . . . ,” said Dodd, trying to search for the right description of his troubled season at Arizona State, “It was weird. I don’t think I was ready to go to a major, four-year school like that. I probably should have gone to a (community college) then transferred. You’re at home in Dana Point one minute, then they throw you in a dorm in Arizona by yourself. I don’t think I was ready for that.”

After a year of regrouping and confidence-building at Saddleback, Dodd was drafted by the Reds.

He was assigned to Billings, the Reds’ rookie league team, where he spent the 1986 and ’87 seasons, posting consecutive 5-1 records.

He was promoted to Class-A Cedar Rapids last season and had his best season. Dodd was 6-4 with 10 saves and a 2.07 ERA, helping the Reds to the Midwest League championship.

Now, midway through his fourth season, Dodd is a veteran of the minors. He wonders if he’ll be promoted again next season and what the second half of this season will be like.

“At this point,” he said. “I’d just like to turn my season around. I think if I do that, everything will fall into place. I know I can still play. My career’s not done yet.”