Sixteen Teams Later, He’s Still a Rookie : Because Comstock Had to Keep Going, He Went Around the World

CHICAGO —  Keith Comstock drove home to his Birmingham, Ala., apartment one night early in June 1983. He walked through the front door, faced his wife, Kathleen, and said, “Enough.”

“Enough?” she asked.

“I quit,” he said. “Baseball. The dreams. The struggle. The eight teams in eight years. I can’t go on. I’ll never make it. The real world beckons. I quit.”

Kathleen looked at him.

“Honey, you can’t quit,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“The car payment. We’ve got a car payment the end of the month. You can’t quit until we make that car payment.”

“Oh.”

Four years later, the Comstocks have paid off the station wagon. They drove it 60,000 miles before they finally traded it in.

“Not a lot of miles,” said Kathleen Comstock. “But hard miles.”

And four years later, her husband still hasn’t quit. Meet Keith Comstock, a new reliever for the Padres, left-hander, age 31.

Not a lot of years. But hard years.

Last weekend, he came to San Diego, by way of San Francisco, by way of Kawasaki, by way of Tokyo, by way of Toledo, by . . . well, let’s put it another way.

Since he signed with the Angels out of Canada College in Redwood City in 1976, Comstock has been under contract to 16 teams, in 14 leagues.

“The fact we are still playing baseball,” Kathleen said, “is a major miracle.”

Some players quit after being released by a couple of major league teams. Comstock is the only player in history to have been released by five major league countries .

“The only place I haven’t played is Italy,” Comstock said. “But I hear they’ve been trying to get a hold of me.”

Some players quit after a half-dozen years on minor league teams. Keith Comstock has played for nine different minor leagues . This included, at one time, every Double-A league in the United States.

“I know my way around those Double-A parks,” he said. “I’ve been to all of them. I counted.”

He also has played for a minor league in Japan. When Comstock went to pitch for the Tokyo Giants in 1985, he didn’t realize they had minor leagues in Japan.

He recalled: “They tell me they’re sending me down, and I say, ‘Wait a minute!’ You never read about them having minor leagues.”

And after it all, Keith Comstock has joined the Padres as a rookie.

“Can you believe it?” he said. “I’ve never met a rookie who is older.”

He came over from the San Francisco Giants in Saturday’s seven-player trade after being one of the Giants’ surprise success stories, going 2-0 with a 3.04 earned-run average, striking out 28 in 23 innings and walking 11.

With an ERA that has been under 4.00 only five times, he has suddenly rediscovered a screwball that complements an inner strength that calms him when he’s under pressure.

He has been with the Padres just four games but already has worked three of them. In 3 innings, he has allowed two runs on four hits, walked one and struck out seven.

It could have been much worse.

When the Wrigley Field fans were calling for the heads of the Padres Tuesday after Andre Dawson was hit by a pitch, who was called in to replace Eric Show amid the littered beer cups and peanuts? Comstock.

On Wednesday, when the Padres were in the middle of blowing a seven-run lead and the fans were alternately screaming and laughing, who was brought in?

Comstock.

“A lot of times, pitchers don’t do well in those situations because of pride,” he said. “Well, if I’m successful, it’s because I have no pride. After all I’ve been through, there’s nothing those hitters can do to me that hasn’t been done to me before.”

In 1983, before making the car payment, Comstock fell face-first over destiny. Once the 10th player on the pitching staff, he was suddenly thrown into the Double-A Birmingham team’s starting rotation. He went on a winning streak that eventually reached 10 games. By the time the Comstocks paid the $200 monthly bill on the car, he couldn’t bring himself to quit. And only once has he discussed it since.

“How about that?” he said. “My career. A Chevy station wagon.”

Billy Martin. Roger Craig. Johnny Podres. Billy Muffett. Art Fowler. Jim Perry. Warren Spahn. Larry Himes. Billy Gardner. Cal Ermer. Bob Didier. Moose Stubing.

These are just some of the people who have been Keith Comstock’s boss.

“You know, I think he might make a hell of a pitching coach,” Padre Manager Larry Bowa said. “Is there a way that he hasn’t been taught?”

Detailing Comstock’s path to San Diego would take until the All-Star Game. We’ll start where he starts, on Nov. 17, 1986.

He was just released from the Tokyo Giants after spending two years there. He went to Japan not to end his career, but to make enough money so he could come back and give it another try in the United States.

But after struggling in Tokyo in 1985, he was sent on a 1 1/2-hour subway ride to Kawasaki, where the team was given orders not to play him or even let him travel for the final year of his guaranteed contract.

“All I did was practice, I only pitched four games out of the goodness of the manager’s heart,” he said. “They tried to strip me of my pride, but, like I said, they had already done that in the United States.

“It was a good season in that I was able to work hard and direct all my energies to getting back home.”

So on that November day, he received his release and started answering the phone.

Scouts were interested because of his 12-6 record and 2.79 ERA in 1984 with Triple-A Toledo, the last U.S. team he played for before going to Japan. Many scouts wanted him to sign a Triple-A contract. He apologized and told them, no, he at least needed a shot at making a major league team.

Before anyone would do that, they demanded to see him pitch, so he set up a performance on Nov. 23 in San Francisco’s Golden Gate semipro league, which plays near his hometown of San Carlos. But one team was going to be missing: his boyhood love, the San Francisco Giants.

“They never called, and I wasn’t going to push it, until one day Jerry the barber told me I had to call them,” Comstock said. “Then my dentist also told me I had to call them, so I did.”

Pitching for the Palo Alto Oaks against New Pisa Restaurant, he threw a no-hitter. The next morning he was a Giant. End of story.

Uh, wrong. For Keith Comstock, endings have never come so cheaply.

He throws well for the Giants in spring training, picks up three saves, is told that he made the team . . . and the next day, is told that he didn’t. Instead, the Giants decided to take Mark Davis, who, by the way, came to San Diego last weekend along with Comstock, Mark Grant and Chris Brown.

“All of my bags were packed and ready for San Francisco, I had already called my family and told them that I made it,” he said. “I had to call my family back and tell them the bad news. First thing my brother says is, ‘Does this mean we can’t get tickets? Did you meet anybody who can get us tickets?’ I say, ‘That’s it, this time I really quit.’ ”

So instead of reporting to Triple-A Phoenix, he went home and watched other people play baseball.

“I watched 14 little league games, 20 softball games, watched my daughter play center field on the Bobby Sox team, got back in the whiffle ball league with my brothers,” he said. “And I noticed something. There’s a lot of people out there who would be giving anything to do what I do. All they can do it dream. At least I’ve got a shot at it. I realized how lucky I was. My love of baseball came back.”

He went to Phoenix, stayed a month, excelled for the Giants, and he is suddenly in San Diego, stunned that he would be traded from his home area and surprised it wasn’t to some small European nation.

“Are you kidding me? I knew playing for San Francisco was too good to be true,” he said. “I knew we weren’t going to last there.

“It’s just that, you know, I’m surprised anybody would want me.”

You’d be surprised what people want these days.

“Half the battle in this game is being at the right place at the right time,” Bowa said. “Keith has been at the wrong place at the wrong time. You ask 10 guys if they would stick around as long as he has, nine would say no.

“You can learn from a guy like that.”

Keith Comstock’s Guide to the World:

Red Deer, Alberta, 1975--Became first player ever released from a baseball organization because he was injured before a game while playing football . “Just a little game of touch outside my trailer. Threw out my back. But hey, I made a great catch.”

Mazatlan, Mexico, 1981--Became one of first players released because his manager was released, and his manager had given him a ride there.

“Bob Didier was coaching a bunch of us in the Oakland organization down there, and when he got fired, they wanted all of us gone. It was OK. The food wasn’t real good.”

Somewhere in Venezuela, 1983--Became one of the first players banned from the country for five years because he didn’t show up.

“I had just signed with the Twins up here, and they thought if I went down there and played, I’d get shot, I didn’t care. But they wouldn’t let me go. So I was cut without ever playing a game.”

Organizations of California, 1979; Detroit, 1983; Minnesota, 1984--”I was never trouble for anybody, except with California in 1979, when I was with El Paso. I said that the only thing pitching coach Warren Spahn taught me was that he won 363 games. Young kid, big mouth.

“But I don’t think that’s a problem. I haven’t popped off to anybody in, what, eight years?”

Tokyo, 1986--”I didn’t mind leaving there, either. The only English word some of those people knew was ‘No.’ ”

When asked about the reasons for his endurance, Comstock cannot seem to find explanations. He likes to refer to Herb, his late father who drove a truck until he ran the company.

“My father always told me, play out your hand,” he said. “He always talked about the easiest thing to do would be to quit.

“I wanted to go to something past junior college, to have something to fall back on. He said, ‘If you have something to fall back on, you fall back.’ ”

The other person he mentions is Kathleen, whom he married in 1979 in El Paso. She is the provider of such wisdom as, “When you move, you get the boxes from Toys ‘R’ Us. Early in the morning. Toys ‘R’ Us, their boxes are the best.”

“The thing about baseball is,” she said, “it’s not going to last forever. We’ll settle down soon. If he doesn’t go for it while he can, he won’t be able to live with himself.

“My friends think I’m crazy, asking me how we can live like this? I’ll give them the wrong phone number, the wrong address, I won’t even know it.”

She laughed.

“Sometimes I wonder, what happens when we stay in the same place for a couple of years? Can I handle it? Will I get really bored? I worry about that.”

Comstock is beyond worry. He just appreciates being in the major leagues.

“I still can’t believe that I’m supposed to call somebody to bring my luggage to the lobby,” he said. “I can’t believe I’m not in charge of carrying the bats.

“But what I like most about up here is the war stories, sitting with guys, talking about all they’ve been through. I’m dying to get to know Goose Gossage, I bet he’s got some great stories. I’d like to hear them.”

Comstock looked surprised when somebody mentioned that Goose would probably like to hear his.

“Oh, I don’t know. Doesn’t everybody go through those kinds of things?”