This Cat's worthy of cheer

See Source By JOHN BRANCH March 27, 2003

This has to be No. 7, at least. Maybe eight.

But the Big Cat, Andres Galarraga, will live at least one more life with the San Francisco Giants.

When the Giants on Wednesday relegated first baseman Damon Minor to Fresno to start the season, Galarraga - signed to a minor-league contract in January - was left with an apparent spot on San Francisco's Opening Day roster.

He'll serve as a backup first baseman, a big right-handed bat off the bench and - most importantly, perhaps - the feel-good vibe of the clubhouse.

Go ahead and root for Barry Bonds to finally win the World Series. Rationalize that he somehow deserves it.

Root harder for Andres Galarraga to simply play in one. He deserves it more.

There is a place for nice guys. And San Francisco is it, for now.

"I think a lot of people will remember me for being a nice guy," Galarraga says when asked about his likely legacy. "I like that."

No higher calling. Just "nice guy." If only every big-leaguer and professional athlete could aspire to such a lofty post-career epithet.

Galarraga is one of baseball's few true ambassadors, the kind of player who makes fans stand up and cheer for doing nothing but showing up. That's because everything he does - hitting home runs, backhanding a hard grounder, chatting with fans or reporters - is accompanied by the sport's biggest smile.

It's such a simple formula. Makes you wonder why more athletes don't try it.

"He is a lot of fun," says infielder Neifi Perez, who spent a couple of seasons with Galarraga in Colorado. "He's a great teammate. And if he stays like this, he'll play 'til he's 60."

Galarraga turns 42 in June. He's hoping for that elusive Series and another 14 home runs. That would make him the 35th player to reach 400. He'd pass - ho-hum - Johnny Bench, Graig Nettles, Joe Carter, Dale Murphy and Al Kaline along the way.

It's not just that he's one of those players who forever will sit at the Hall of Fame's doorstep, just outside immortality. And it's not just that he smiles through everything life has thrown him.

It's that he has been dismissed so many times. Every time he seems to disappear, he emerges again, filled with new life.

Galarraga was an overweight teenager from Caracas, Venezuela, signed by the Montreal Expos in 1979 on the advice of Felipe Alou, then a minor-league manager. Now Alou is San Francisco's manager and the man keeping Galarraga's career going nearly 25 years after the two first met.

"I knew he'd be a player," Alou says. "But I didn't know he would be a player for this long."

No one did. Galarraga spent nearly seven seasons in the minors. But he emerged as one of baseball's best hitters in the late 1980s, then fizzled hard in 1991.

The Expos gave up, traded him to St. Louis. That's where he found hitting coach Don Baylor, who revamped Galarraga's swing and drastically opened his stance.

In 1993, with Baylor managing the expansion Rockies and Galarraga signed as a free agent, Galarraga hit .370. He later led the league in home runs and RBI. He became the heart of Colorado's Blake Street Bombers, second only to John Elway in the Denver sports hierarchy.

Eventually, Colorado couldn't afford him. Galarraga signed with Atlanta in 1998, hitting .305 with 44 home runs and 121 RBI as if to prove he didn't need thin air to excel.

The next spring, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

He somehow smiled through the announcement. He vowed to return. And then he disappeared to spend a summer receiving chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

"When I had the cancer, the doctors said they had medicine," Galarraga says. "I said I not only want to stay alive, I want to play baseball."

So he did. He hit .302 with 28 home runs and 100 RBI in 2000. He was the comeback player of the year.

He's a lot grayer and a little heavier now, not as agile as he was when former Expos player Bob Bailey dubbed him the Big Cat nearly 20 years ago. The past two years have taken him to Texas and San Francisco and Montreal and back, now, to San Francisco. The years have turned him into a backup and a clubhouse leader.

"He still has some juice left in his bat," Alou says.

The Big Cat is unsure how many baseball lives he has left. He doesn't think about it.

"I just want to help my teammates stay up," he says. "That's why I'm smiling all the time - to tell my teammates that this is a special game."

It's special because of people like him. Root for him.

• E-mail John Branch at jbranch(at)fresnobee.com. (Distributed by Scripps-McClatchy Western Service, www.shns.com.)