PHOENIX – Marco Scutaro receives the hero’s treatment in his native Venezuela.
He’s hounded by autograph seekers, and fans acknowledge him as one of the top players for Leones del Caracas, one of the two most popular winter league teams in a country that loves baseball.
So it’s a bit of an adjustment for Scutaro when he arrives in the Bay Area each spring, walks into a grocery store and goes about his business uninterrupted. “I’m always signing autographs everywhere (in Venezuela),” the A’s infielder said. “When I come here it’s kind of rest for my hand a little bit.”
Scutaro flies under the radar on the major league baseball celebrity scale. It’s easy to overlook his value even though he has been one of the A’s most indispensable parts over the past three seasons.
He regularly is slated to be the insurance policy of the middle infield, the reliable fallback in case of injury. Because of shortstop Bobby Crosby’s various ailments the past two seasons and a shoulder injury that kept second baseman Mark Ellis sidelined for the 2004 season, Scutaro has enjoyed close to a full-time role the past three years.
Last fall he had four RBIs in Game 3 of the American League first-round playoff series against Minnesota, tying a franchise record for a postseason game.
Yet Scutaro enters his fourth season with the A’s the way he had the previous three: with nothing guaranteed. Crosby and Ellis again begin the season as starters, leaving Scutaro as the backup.
“It doesn’t do any good to think about it, to worry about it,” Scutaro said. “If you think about it, I don’t think you’ll be able to perform.
“We’re baseball players. The only thing we can control is to play hard.”
Not that Scutaro, 31, should find motivation hard to come by. Crosby is working his way back from a back injury and is scheduled to play in his first Cactus League game tonight. His full-time availability is hardly a given, leaving Scutaro as the everyday shortstop if Crosby is unavailable.
“We’ve just been pretty lucky to have kept him around,” third baseman Eric Chavez said of Scutaro. “He’s really been able to stabilize our ship, so to speak.”
Scutaro, who will earn $1.55 million from a one-year deal signed in the off-season, isn’t eligible for free agency until after the 2009 season.
Does he wonder what kind of opportunities might be available with other teams?
“It doesn’t matter how much I think, I can’t do anything,” he said. “If you start worrying about that kind of stuff you can’t control…”
Scutaro was hitting .370 in Cactus League play and has earned Manager Bob Geren’s praise for being in shape when he arrived to camp.
Credit that to Scutaro’s winter ball schedule. He returns home every off-season to play for Caracas.
It’s Scutaro’s participation in the Venezuelan winter league – he helped lead his country to the Caribbean Series championship in 2006 – that makes him so popular in his homeland. Scutaro said the passion of Venezuelan fans during the winter league season is beyond anything found in the major leagues.
“It’s way different; you’ve got to live the experience,” he said. “Down there, from the first pitch they’re screaming, playing music. It’s crazy, especially when we play Magallanes (Caracas’ rival). It’s like the Yankees and Boston.”
Winter ball has become such a natural extension to his baseball season, he can’t imagine what it would be like not playing for Caracas. Scutaro said Venezuelan fans take winter ball so seriously that he can’t use those games to experiment or work on specific parts of his game.
“I don’t go there to work on nothing, just winning,” he said.
