Dad, Bo know baseball pressure

Photo

Scrappers Bo Greenwell and his father Mike Greenwell who was a major league player also. wdlewis

By Joe Scalzo

Bo Greenwell grew up in the Boston Red Sox clubhouse, tailing his father, Mike, while scoring postgame Cherry Cokes from the likes of Mo Vaughn, Roger Clemens and Wade Boggs.

His dad was a two-time All-Star in one of America’s best baseball towns. He saw firsthand the benefits of being a major leaguer’s son.

He saw the bad side, too.

When Bo was 5, he watched his dad get plugged in the earhole by a Randy Johnson fastball. It was July 18, 1993 — Mike’s 30th birthday.

“I remember that very clearly,” Bo said. “There’s nothing like watching your dad falling on his face at home plate on his birthday.”

When Bo struck out in little league, the opposing team would celebrate, yelling, “We struck out Mike Greenwell’s son.” When Bo emerged as a promising athlete in Fort Myers, Fla., he sometimes saw his name in the paper, but it always came with the addendum, “Mike Greenwell’s son.”

“I’ll never forget in my sophomore year, it was finally just Bo Greenwell,” he said. “That was the day I knew I was making a name for myself.”

Bo Greenwell is 20 now. The 6-foot, 185-pounder was the Cleveland Indians’ sixth-round pick in the 2007 draft out of Riverdale High School. A lefthanded outfielder, he played for the Gulf Coast Indians the past two years, batting .263 with two homers last season.

He’ll start this year with the Mahoning Valley Scrappers and, hopefully, end it somewhere else, like Class A Kinston or Lake County.

His father never pushed him to play baseball, and for a time Bo was a promising football player, playing quarterback and safety while catching the attention of college scouts. But he tore his ACL his senior year and turned his attention full-time to baseball.

When the Indians drafted him, they switched him from first base to the outfield. His father had made a similar switch years earlier in the minors, going from third base to outfield.

“We had this guy at third base named Wade Boggs, who I guess was pretty good,” Mike said, smiling.

Mike played fewer than 150 games at outfield in the minors, which wasn’t enough time to prepare him for Boston’s Green Monster. But he worked at it, twice leading the league while going 182 games without an error at one point. And he did it without help, as aging veterans like Jim Rice and Dwight Evans tried to keep their jobs.

“I joked about it with Rice in later years, asking, ‘Why didn’t you help me?’” Greenwell said. “He said, ‘You were taking my job.’ I understood that.”

Greenwell’s strength was his hitting. He batted .303 with 130 homers during his career with the Red Sox, which stretched from 1985 to 1996. He even finished second to a steroid-fueled Jose Canseco in the 1988 MVP race, and has since argued Canseco should give him the trophy. (He doesn’t expect it to happen.)

After making millions in the majors and during a brief stint in Japan — he signed with the Hanshin Tigers in 1997 for $2.5 million, missed most of spring training with an injury and abruptly retired after eight games due to a fractured foot — Mike took up stock car racing and now owns a family fun park in Cape Coral, Fla.

Growing up, Bo’s father emphasized two things: confidence and work ethic. Considering Mike’s nickname was “The Gator,” due to his habit of wrestling alligators in the offseason, this isn’t a surprise.

“You’ve got to want it,” said the 45-year-old Mike, whose son was almost 8 when he retired. “I tell him all the time, ‘You’ve got to know you’re a star. And you’ve got to find a way to be a star.’”

There’s little doubt of the father’s belief in his son. Wearing an Indians jacket and an Indians baseball cap at Wednesday’s media day, Mike was asked for an impartial assessment of his son’s strengths and weaknesses.

“Bo’s a complete player,” he said without hesitation. “He plays the game hard. He’s developing his power as we speak. He’s still young, but the ball jumps off his bat. He uses the whole field well.

“I truly believe he is a kid who is going to work his way to the big leagues.”

Bo admitted his defense needs work, mainly because he’s still adjusting to the outfield. His father believes in the baseball truism that it’s easier to go from the infield to the outfield than vice versa. Since Bo is a lefty, that left first base as his only option growing up. But his speed — which is well above average — and his work ethic should make the transition easy, he said.

“I was brought up to outwork and to outhustle everyone else,” said Bo, who also has a younger brother named Garrett. “To be the first one in the locker room and the last one to leave.

“My dad’s been with me every step of the way. He never pushed me into the game, but he let me develop a love for the game. And he developed the fire to want to be successful in the game. I love him for that.”

Bo still hasn’t escaped his father’s shadow, of course. While most Scrappers went uninterviewed on Wednesday, Bo and his dad attracted everyone’s attention.

That’s sure to cause some resentment among a few teammates — maybe not outwardly, but at least inwardly — and every time he’s promoted, there’s going to be a few people who think it’s due to his last name, not his talent.

“One of his coaches asked him one time about having a dad who played at the major league level and he said, ‘What’s that got to do with it? I’ve got to worry about me getting better,’” Mike said. “I thought that was a great answer.”

Besides, Bo said, he’s used to that pressure.

“Since Day One, when I popped out of my mother, there’s been a target on my back,” he said. “Pressure is candy in my opinion. I grew up around it. I was able to push through it in high school and when I was younger and I still do.

“That’s when it gets fun. That’s why we play the game. You don’t get to this level because when stuff got hard, we fell into a shell. We rose above it.”

scalzo@vindy.com