Hung-chih Kuo - The lone brave on the mound

I have mentioned that I decided to leave earlier than I previously planned one week before the trip. It caused be some hassle to speed up the packing process, and cost me some money due to the extended stay in Vegas. I did all this for one person: Hung-chih Kuo, a pitcher from Taiwan. Well, don't get me wrong, I am not a close friend of him. I don't even know him personally. I am just a fan of him and I think what he has achieved so far deserves more respect from the general public.

So let me write one full article about the player whom I admire the most at this point.

Interestingly, being a die-hard baseball fan for many years, I don't really have many favorite players, and I don't root exclusively for a particular team (I am an Anaheim Angels fan, but I like many other teams, too). Perhaps I have gone beyond the level of supporting a specific person/team in baseball and fallen in love with just the game itself. Before Hung-chih Kuo, my last favorite player dated back to C. M. Li, the former popular Taiwanese player known as Mr. Baseball in Taiwan, who is already retired for more than five years. To me, it is a bit surprising that I have found another favorite player now.

The story about Kuo is not a happy story at all. He has overcome a painful process to arrive at his current position. The story is an encouraging and moving one for me and many other Taiwanese international students. As we work in US, away from the home country, we appreciate his efforts and sufferings more than viewing it overseas.

The signing

A little bit of review for the historical background:

Kuo was signed by the Dodger system back in 2000. If I remember it correctly, he is the third Taiwanese player to appear in the minor league, after S.M. Tang and C.F. Chen. The signing was a major sports news back then but most reporters wrote about it negatively. Signing Taiwanese players was not common back then, so the signing was done in an ad hoc fashion. Kuo was 18 at the time and he was in the training camp for the national youth team. His agent arranged the signing, and shortly after it Kuo flew to US, leaving the national team and the mandatory military service in Taiwan behind.

The particular action was perceived badly by the media. They reported this as betrayal to the national team, and blamed Kuo himself for that in the papers. So before even pitching the first game in US, Kuo's signing was widely known to the public - in a bad way - and he got a very bad fame for ignoring the mandatory military service in Taiwan, which is illegal. However, I think the fact is, his agent was the one to be blamed. There was no high school graduates who signed directly with a US team before, so there were a lot of issues in grey area with no set examples to follow. Most athletes hire agents to handle this type of issues, and his agent simply did the job poorly.

When Kuo headed to US, sadly, at least half of his fellow countrymen did not wish him success at the time due to the bad news made of him.

The legendary start

With all the noises left behind, Kuo started his first minor league game in 2001. This game has become a legend in the Dodger's minor league system: In the only three innings he pitched on the day, he struck out seven, walked only one with no hit allowed, and the most solid contact the other team ever made was a foul fly ball. That was a total dominance in the three innings. Someone who saw this game even claimed that he was ready for the Majors on that day. Well I do not believe one can spot a Major Leaguer from many talented young players based on the performance of one game, the real message behind the claim is that Kuo was totally outstanding in that game.

Usually with this kind of a good start, you can expect at least a solid year in the minor system. But that did not happen. Those three innings were the only three he pitched in the year. Kuo torn his left-arm tendon in the third inning before throwing the last strike to finish up the inning, and that started his long misfortune for three years.

Long way of coming back

For the next three years the story about Kuo was a scary one. He had totally three surgeries on his left arm, two of them being the Tommy John surgery (replacing the tendon on the throwing arm with the tendon on the other arm, or a leg). After each surgery, there was a long, hard process of rehabilitation program. I haven't been through one so I am not able to tell how difficult that is, but I can certainly relate to the mental suffering he had through these years.

Being an international student in the US, I understand it well that sometimes life in a new country could become difficult. However, we are lucky that we can still focus on the study, which is the purpose of coming to the country. Now, Kuo came to the country to participate in professional baseball, and all of a sudden he was out of the game. It was even unsure whether he would be able to pitch again. All he could do was focus on the rehab and hope that he will recover. What made the situation worse was that because of his leaving without properly taken care of the military service, he could not visit home any more. I try to think about it, and figure that the pressure can be unsustainably huge. If I were not able to continue my study due to some kind of illness and I were not able to visit home, and all I could do is to put hope on a rehab program which I don't know if it will eventually work out, not only once, but three times. Can I take it? Well I really don't know.

But Kuo tried his best on it. He was very determined in coming back to the game, and regardless of how things appeared hopeless he did not give up. I started to really root for him from year 2003 when I started my graduate study in US and got a real sense how it feels like to work in US, with the families, friends, and most of the things you were familiar with far away. At the mean time, the media in Taiwan seemed to forget about this player. There were few reports about him, and whenever a short report did appear, it was usually a bad one, reminding people how he "sneaked away" from the national team and ignored the military service, or making up trash stories like he was lazy about basic trainings so becomes injury-prone, etc. I did not know what's wrong with these reporters to write such things about a young man who tries his very best to hang on to his dream. The media is just sometimes hard to understand.

Kuo's activity in baseball was limited by the injury to a very minimal extent from 2001 to 2004, pitching only 42.1 innings in four years. This is about the workload of a decent starter in about one month. Finally, in year 2005 there was a promising sign. He was finally able to pitch regularly, showing some good sign of recovering from the long, horrible history of injuries. With his excellent strike-out rate(42K in 26 innings in A+, 44K in 28.1 innings in AA), he was also called up to the Major League in Spetember 2005, playing for the Dodgers as a reliever. The highlights during his short stay included contributing a homerun to Barry Bonds in one game, and striking out 5 Arizona Diamondbacks in 2 innings.

What about now?

In 2006 Kuo did very well in the spring training, and earned himself a spot in the 25-men roster by the beginning of the regular season, serving as a reliever. He did particularly well in one game, sriking out 4 Phillies in 2 innings. But most of the time he had problems in commending the pitches and gave too many free passes to the opponents. He was moved back and forth between the Majors and AAA mainly due to the control problem.

I went to Dodgers stadium on June 25 but he did not pitch that day. Being a reliever, it was almost impossible to predict when he will pitch. Before leaving LA, one thing I really wanted to do was seeing him pitch on the mound of the Majors, where I believe he truly belongs.

While I was preparing for the driving trip, Kuo was sent back to Las Vegas 51s (Dodger's AAA team), due to the commend problems again. His control has been on and off, leaving a poor BB/9 of 5.65 in the stint at the Dodgers during June and July. In order to have a regular amount of work to fix his commend, they started trying to put him in a starter role in Vegas. With that, it became easier to predict when he will play, and I started to think about fitting a baseball game in Vegas into my travel plan.

The game at Vegas

I checked out the game schedule for the 51s, and surprisingly there are only four games scheduled at home during the whole August. But it makes perfect sense. Summer is very hot in Vegas, and it is not good to play baseball in such condition. I tried to predict the starting rotation for the 51s and found that Kuo should be the starter for the second or third game of their homestand, therefore I went to Vegas early and kept an eye on who starts which game. Finally, Kuo was announced as the starter for August 17, and of course I wouldn't miss that game. This was a game I had been waiting for years.

I went to the game with two other friends who came to Vegas for a trip at the time. We drove north bound on the Las Vegas Blvd. and arrived at the Cashman Field shortly after we passed downtown. Las Vegas 51s is perhaps the most well-known minor league team among Taiwanese fans, thanks to Chin-feng Chen, the first Taiwanese fielder who played baseball in the Majors. It was a bit sad to me that Chen did not make himself a long time Major Leaguer and had gone back to Taiwan on 2006, otherwise I could see him playing in person too.

Cashman Field is a beautiful mid-sized ballpark. Of course it is not comparable to the Major League ballparks in terms of capacity, but it is also well-maintained. I noticed two interesting things in the ballpark: (1) When you come to the stand, someone working at the ballpark will check your ticket and wipe up your seat for you. Remember that Vegas is in the middle of the desert, and the seats can get very dirty. I think it is a very nice service. I felt welcomed at the ballpark. (2) There are pipes spraying water above the stands and maintaining a barely tolerable temperature.

Even with the water sprayed over the stand, the heat is just barely tolerable. It is why they have to arrange only few games during August.

I and my friend Wei-cherng.

Cashman Field is a beautiful ballpark

We arrived about 1 hour before the game but the players were still not on the field. The weather was so hot that no extensive warming-up was needed. Finally we saw Hung-chih Kuo warming up at the outfield. We tried to shout some Chinese to him but not sure if he heard that.

The game was pretty good on that day. Kuo pitched well. Whenever he had got 2 strikes, we shouted, "Hung-chih Kuo, Hung-chih Kuo~~ Strike him out!! Strike him out!!" at the stand. Usually it ended up the way we wanted, but it took a couple more pitches. He had some difficulties commending the breaking balls that night, and the pitch count went high quickly. However, his fastball was dominating at this level. He could just blow that by the hitters and they could not do much. I always think there is something special about his fastball. Yes, it is fast, around mid-90s from a lefty. However, it is not that rare in the Majors, yet most hitters can not hit it. Even in the Majors, you see a lot of swing-and-misses to his fastballs. It is hard to explain, but I do think there is something special in his fastball.

We saw a couple of fastballs at 96 MPH that night. He threw hard in a beautiful mid-August night, and all the injuries, bad news and doubts seem to be far apart from the pitcher on the mound. I just hoped he can throw like this for years to come, and show people that he's got the truly outstanding talent and made unimaginable effort to come through all the setbacks, and people can forget about the nonsense the Taiwanese reporters wrote about him.

He pitched 4.2 innings in the game and left early due to the high pitch count while the team was leading. This is one thing I like about the way baseball is played in US. In most of the teams they try to protect the pitcher from over-working. Even if he was one out away from being the winning pitcher of the day, it was not important at all compared to the health of the player. I thought this is a good decision, especially for a player who had been injury-plagued for years. He struck out 9, walked 1 and allowed 4 hits. I thought he is faring much better in the starter role. Perhaps he should be a full-time starter in the future. This is what he would have been if the injuries did not set him back at the first place.

Pictures of Kuo pitching and hitting.

Aside from Kuo, it was an interesting game. It was my first time watching a minor league baseball game. It was noticeable that many spectators came to the game prepared. They are fans who know the game well, coming with the special-purpose papers to keep the log of the game, or making comments that make good sense to me. They were also more attentive than typical Major League audiences. Perhaps people come to minor league games when they become serious fans of the sport, not just for some entertainment.

Also I could feel the players can be split into two batches. Some of them are prospects that hopefully will move up to the Majors, and the rest are roster-fillers who are kept to make the team functional. They play mostly in the AAA and go up to the Majors only to fit in the short-term needs of the team. From the plays and the ages of the players, I could somewhat get some sense of who is in which role. Well it is the harsh truth: the spots in the Majors belong to the top 750 guys in baseball, and many, many, many players vie for those spots. This is how they maintain the superb standard of Major League baseball. Coming to a minor league game had made me appreciate the story behind the scene.

Also the team has to work hard to involve the fans with various activities. Since most of the players in the minor leagues come and go, they cannot rely on the star players to attract the fans - They will be in the Majors soon and leave the team for good. Minor league teams work extra-hard in other aspects, such as on-field small games with the fans, to make people feel like coming back again. Overall I enjoyed watching the game at Vegas, and perhaps I will go to some more minor league games in the future.

Cosmos, the alien mascot of the Las Vegas 51s, played with kids on the stand.

Finally the game was over and the home team won. Now it was the most important moment for us. We wanted to get the autograph from Kuo. The cashier at the gift shop told us there are three good timing to get the autographs of players: (1) When they are warming up before the game (not applicable to the starting pitcher, though), (2) Right after the game, when they all come out to the field, and (3) Wait for the players at the parking lot after the game. We were able to stop Kuo before he headed back to the dugout, got our baseballs signed, and wished him the best for the September (at the time, there was almost no doubt that he will be called up to the Majors again in September). This was my first autographed baseball in 20+ years of being a baseball fan.

And we did not stop at that. We waited for Kuo at the parking lot, and wished to take a photo with him. While we were waiting I was truly amazed by how knowledgeable the fans are. Almost for every player leaving the ballpark, a couple of fans recognize him as he stepped out of the gate and brought up something for him to sign, or even more surprisingly, just chatted with the player as if they knew each other for long time. We waited for long time but Kuo did not show up. Later, someone told us that we waited at the wrong gate - It is the place where the visiting team's players leave. Seeing that we were disappointed, the knowledgeable fan who talked with us took out a 2-inch pile of player cards, and gave us a autographed rookie card of Hung-chih Kuo from the deck. This was totally unexpected and I was really happy about it. I kept wondering who else are in that pile... Might there be autographed cards of some current/past Major League stars, such as Mike Piazza, when they played here?

The Future for Kuo

As of this is writing, Kuo was called up to the Majors as a starter in September. He pitched well in the new role: In 5 starts, he posted 1-1 record, pitched 29.1 innings in total, with 35 strike outs and 7 walks, 28 hits allowed and 10 earned runs (3.07 ERA as a starter). He also started game 2 of the NLDS against the Mets and veteran Tom Glavine. Although he lost the game, he did OK in his first post-season appearance.

I sincerely hope that Kuo can stay healthy and pitch long in the Majors. Given that he is only 25 this year, if he stays healthy, we have many years to expect exciting performance from him. Sometimes I cannot help but think if he was not injured, with his high-90 fastball (before injured) would we see a true pitching legend born in Taiwan? With all the injuries, the future was once uncertain, or even doomed for him. After four years of tremendous effort, both mentally and physically, he was able to fought back from the bottom of hell. I admire him a lot for being able to sustain what seems to be almost unbearable, overcome the hurdles and keep himself on the right track. It definitely require strong motive and true love of what he is doing. Now finally he is one step away from success after these long years. I would really like to see him establish himself as a Major Leaguer and everyone would be made aware of the extra-ordinary story about him. Even if he eventually does not make it, I will also remember once there was a great player who fought lonely with injuries and lack of support from his countrymen for his dreams.

To the true brave on the mound, Hung-chih Kuo.