The Oldest Rookie

By Joel Stein/New York City

Like any other good teacher, Jim Morris thought his students weren't working up to their potential. When kids on the high school baseball team he coached in Big Lake, Texas, complained that he was throwing too hard in batting practice, he told them to quit whining. After all, this was a team that had only three wins in each of the three seasons before Morris showed up in 1997. But the players knew their coach's fastball was major league scary. So when he gave them a pep talk about following their dreams, they challenged him to follow his own and try out for a major league club. And they offered him a deal: if their team, the Owls, made the state tournament, Morris would go to a major league tryout. He agreed, just to get them to shut up.

After batting against Morris in practice, the Owls now saw their opponents' pitches as if they were in slow motion and made it to the second round of the play-offs. Morris heard a radio ad for a tryout with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in a neighboring town. So last June 19, in 103[degree] heat, the 35-year-old showed up with his mitt and his three young children in tow.

Morris explained that he was just there to settle a bet, so the scout for the Devil Rays laughed and put him last on the schedule. After assessing 60 unpromising teenagers, the scout was eager to go home and told Morris to hurry. Without warming up, Morris threw his first pitch--at 94 m.p.h. The scout, figuring his radar gun was broken, checked him with another. Then Morris threw 12 pitches at 98 m.p.h. The scout, who later said he was "bumfuzzled," asked Morris to come back two days later, when, in pouring rain, he threw 95 m.p.h.

Only a handful of major-league pitchers can throw consistently in the upper 90s--and even fewer can maintain that velocity past age 30. Yet Morris--who never threw faster than 88 m.p.h. during a minor league stint that ended 12 years ago--had only grown stronger. Maybe it was because he'd had a painful bone spur removed from his shoulder. Maybe it was the years of weight training and pitching at batting practice. All the Devil Rays knew was that they were having a pathetic season and were desperate for left-handed pitching.

They sent Morris through two of their minor league teams, and then two weekends ago, the Devil Rays added him to their roster, making him the oldest major league rookie in nearly three decades. He got his first assignment pitching in relief against the Texas Rangers and struck out Royce Clayton with a 96-m.p.h. fastball. A few days later, he pitched a full inning against the heart of the Anaheim Angels order and retired the side.

Last weekend Morris accompanied his team to Yankee Stadium. He had thought about the place once, in 1982, when he was drafted by the Yankees in the 18th round. But the 18th round means never seeing Yankee Stadium, so he went to junior college for a semester instead. Then he was chosen by the Milwaukee Brewers, only to spend three years playing minor league ball. So he went back to college and then on to teach high school physics and chemistry. He never watched major league baseball. Says his wife Lorri: "He would always see someone he played with in the minors, and he'd think, 'Why aren't I there?'"

A quiet, religious man, Morris didn't much talk about his dream. "I didn't tell my mom until two days before I got called up to the majors," he says. "I had a job and a family. To drop all of that for something that was just a dream, I didn't know how she'd feel about that." He was also worried about his wife, who has to raise their three kids on her own while he is away. His former students still stop by his house to have dinner with Lorri and offer to mow her lawn. And Morris calls home each night. "He's been very, very homesick," Lorri says. "But I tell him, 'I've got home plate covered. You don't worry about what's going on here.'"

Last weekend 20 fans, some of them teachers, stood outside Morris' Manhattan hotel waiting for him to sign photos. "It was weird that I'm signing report cards in May," he says, "and now I'm signing autographs."

Morris says he's glad he got the opportunity to pitch now instead of when he was first drafted at age 18. "I don't think I would have understood everything that this entails. I thought everything should be handed to me. Now I appreciate it very much." His mom is very proud.