Quirk Survives Strange Twist of Fate in Career : Oriole Catcher Comes Back Despite Being Released Twice in Past Five Months

BALTIMORE —  Jamie Quirk’s career has been so zany, it’s almost comical. “When the bomb goes off,” Baltimore Oriole advance scout Ed Farmer said, “I want to be standing next to Jamie.”

Does Quirk have nine lives? Well, Kansas City Manager John Wathan said, “I suppose that’s why he’s always worn No. 9.” The Orioles are Quirk’s eighth major-league club.

But at lunch the other day, Quirk, 34, said to his wife, Anna, “I just want to go home. I want to open the refrigerator and eat what I want to eat instead of having to order from a waitress.”

He’s living at a hotel in Baltimore, just as he lived at a hotel in Oakland this season. Quirk began 1989 with an apartment in northern New Jersey. Back then, he was a Yankee.

This is his 15th season, and it may be his most bizarre yet--even wackier than ’84 when he was named a St. Louis coach, signed by the Chicago White Sox and sold to Cleveland in a six-month stretch.

Quirk was released by both the Yankees and Oakland before signing with the Orioles Aug. 5. General Manager Roland Hemond pursued him only after learning Mickey Tettleton would be unable to catch following left knee surgery.

Now, the Orioles are in the thick of the pennant race in the American League East, chasing Toronto. Suddenly, Quirk has a chance to play for his second World Series team, despite receiving two pink slips in the past five months.

“You see him counted down and out so many times and he just keeps coming back,” said George Brett, Quirk’s former teammate in Kansas City and the best man at his wedding. “He’s a good man. Things like that happen to good people.”

Quirk is 7 for 35 (.200) since joining the Orioles, but he wasn’t expected to hit much, because his career average is only .237. His primary assets are defense--twice he has blocked the plate to tag out opponents trying to score--and his ability to work with young pitchers.

Yet, Quirk admits, “There’s no way I should be in the big leagues if you look at the black and white in the media guide.” He has been granted free agency five times, released four times and traded twice.

Quirk’s Baseball Encyclopedia entry includes three separate stints with Kansas City and one at-bat with Cleveland that might have been the most memorable of his career: a two-out, ninth-inning homer against Minnesota that clinched the 1984 American League West title for, you guessed it, the Royals.

Brett was right: Quirk finds jobs because he is popular and well-respected, but it helps that he has played every position but center field and pitcher. It helps even more that he belongs to that rare species, left-handed-hitting catchers. Forget about his becoming a left-handed reliever. He throws right.

Quirk learned to catch in the Instructional League in 1978 at the suggestion of Whitey Herzog, his former manager with the Royals. “Whitey said it might add 10 years to my career,” Quirk said. “As a young kid I believed him, but it didn’t really sink in. Obviously, he was right.”

Not that Quirk developed into an everyday player. Indeed, he has never batted more than 300 times in a season, and his 15-year total is 1,749. By contrast, Jose Canseco batted 1,936 times his first four seasons with the A’s. Quirk hasn’t started against a left-hander since Aug. 29, 1986. His seven hits off lefties last season were a career-high.

“Stats mean nothing to me,” Quirk said. “Sure I’d like to have 30 home runs, 100 RBIs and hit .300. But I know I’m not ever going to do that. I try to be the type of player who helps you win ballgames. A ballclub needs those kind of players. The boss tells you what to do, you go do it.”

The philosophy has served him well -- “One thing we’ve missed about him is that he’s so much fun in the locker room,” Brett said -- but Quirk will remember this season as the one that tested his resolve. Ironically, it figured to be his most secure, for he signed his first guaranteed contract Dec. 20, agreeing to play in New York for $250,000.

“I was pretty stable for a while in Kansas City,” Quirk said. “I had a couple of years that were absolutely goofy -- ’84 was a crazy year -- but I could handle that. I was newly married, I had no children. That was fine. And ‘85, ‘86, ‘87, ’88 were very normal years in Kansas City.