DEVIL RAYS Hendrickson devotes time solely to mound

A sub-par NBA career made Mark Hendrickson focus on his pitching talent.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) -- For Mark Hendrickson, the decision to leave the NBA for a full-time career in baseball was easy.
Tired of producing mediocre results in two sports, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays pitcher decided that being 6-foot-9 and left-handed gave him a chance to be what he wasn't on the basketball floor -- an impact player.
The Devil Rays are counting on it.
"It just came to a point of wanting to be as good as I could be. The first couple of years, I did both. I took eight months off and tried to perform three months out of the year. I couldn't really do that," Hendrickson said Monday.
"It was fine in the minors. But as you get closer to the majors, you need to dedicate yourself. ... I still have, in my eyes, a ways to go to be where I want to be. I'm not far off. I'm just going to keep working at it."
Double duty
Hendrickson played four seasons in the NBA after entering the league as a second-round draft pick of the Philadelphia 76ers in 1996. The former Washington State star also played for the Sacramento Kings, New Jersey Nets and Cleveland Cavaliers, while moonlighting as a minor league prospect in the Toronto Blue Jays organization.
The 29-year-old switched to baseball full-time in 2000 and spent his first full season in the majors last year, going 9-9 with a 5.51 ERA in 30 starts for the Blue Jays. The Devil Rays obtained him from Toronto in a three-way trade that sent left-hander Joe Kennedy to Colorado in December.
"He pitched well last year for his first full year in the big leagues," Devil Rays manager Lou Piniella said.
"He won nine ballgames. His ERA away from the dome in Toronto was a run and a half less per game. He doesn't have much pitching experience ... but I really think he's going to fit really nice in our rotation."
Hendrickson averaged 3.3 points and 2.8 rebounds in 114 career games in the NBA. He played against Michael Jordan, found himself occasionally matched up one-on-one against Shaquille O'Neal and said his four years in professional basketball helped make the transition to the majors as a rookie easier.
He led all AL rookies in starts and was second in wins, third in innings pitched and seventh in strikeouts.
"Last year was my first chance to really see firsthand what it was like to compare each season. I gained a lot of respect for baseball players because it's just one of those things where once it starts, there's no getting away from it," said Hendrickson, who'll turn 30 in June.
"It's a long season. I held up pretty good. But for the most part, baseball is kind of a grind. Basketball is more intense but for a shorter period of time, so you do have a little bit more free time during the course of the season."
Finding his niche
The native of Mount Vernon, Wash., originally elected to play basketball because he felt he was further along in that sport. He was a two-time all-conference selection at Washington State, but after four years in the NBA it became apparent that he'd never be much more than a role player at that level.
He doesn't regret the change.
"This is going to be my fourth year doing it full-time. Those are the years I look at because all the other time, looking back, I really didn't know what I was doing. ... I had a sense of how to pitch, but I didn't get the repetition to know my body and what it feels like to throw the ball correctly," Hendrickson said.
"I'm just trying to build off of last year. I had some ups and downs, probably a typical rookie season, a little inconsistent. I think for me the important thing is in the offseason I felt a lot more comfortable with my workouts and started to learn how to pitch. I'm just going to keep working."