Eddie Rodriguez stood on the turf field at PK Park surrounded by reporters and cameras on a brilliantly sunny day on May 16. He was just finishing up answering a question about the game (a 17-7 Oregon win against East Tennessee State) when teammate Danny Pulfer snuck up behind him with a jersey full of shaving cream and pied him in the face.
Pulfer and the rest of the team yelled in approval as Rodriguez backed away, wiping the gunk from his eyes. He eventually saw who did him in and the two embraced for a second, then Pulfer handed him a towel.
“I forgot about that,” Rodriguez said with a grin.
The senior catcher from Warden, Wash., had just hit for the cycle (hitting a single, double, triple and home run), a rarity at any level of baseball that never goes unappreciated. And as Rodriguez stood there, shaving cream smeared into every crevice of his face, it wasn’t hard to see why the soft-spoken man, who leads the Ducks in hitting with a .348 average, succeeds and has the respect of everyone he meets.
“He’s a grinder,” head coach George Horton said, using one of his favorite nicknames. “He’s always there, always working hard. You always get an honest effort from Eddie. He’s a tough kid. That’s where the respect level comes from … he’s the consummate example of a grinder guy. You gotta respect people like that.”
That “grinder” mentality is something Rodriguez established from a young age in Warden. The town of 2,605 is seated deep in the middle of agriculture country in eastern Washington, with rolling wheat fields and irrigation pipes featured prominently on the horizon. The nearest two towns, Lind (population: 582) and Othello (population: 6,495), don’t offer anything better in terms of distractions, so Rodriguez, along with family and friends, would play baseball through the stifling summer heat.
“We had nothing else to do besides play baseball and hit the ball around,” Rodriguez said. “I think I grew up in a good place for me. If I lived somewhere else I would probably have been doing something else besides hitting the ball around.”
Rodriguez and his cousin, former Oregon State pitcher Jorge Reyes, made a name for Warden’s baseball team during their time there, but upon graduation, each took very different routes to Division I baseball. Reyes went directly to OSU, and in his first year led the Beavers to the College World Series, where they won their second consecutive national championship. Reyes was named Most Outstanding Player.
Rodriguez, by comparison, went to Wenatchee Valley Community College, where he gained recognition as a two-time all-league selection.
“I got to Wenatchee not knowing what I was going to do,” Rodriguez said. “I just wanted to play baseball. It was mine and Jorge’s passion to play professional baseball. Then my sophomore year was when I kind of figured out that I could play D-1 baseball. I proved myself on the diamond, coaches saw me, and here I am today.”
He leads the team in myriad offensive categories, including home runs (six), hits (70), RBI (41), slugging percentage (.507) and on-base percentage (.412).
“He’s a competitor and I love having him on my side,” Pulfer said just after he had stuffed the shaving cream into Rodriguez’s face. “It’s just good to see that he’s getting rewarded for all the good stuff he’s been doing.”
This year’s successes have overshadowed some of last year’s lower points for Rodriguez. Besides the team going 14-42, Rodriguez floated from catcher to first base and the bench because of a posterior cruciate ligament injury he received not long after the season started. He hit .222 in 34 games and readily admits to being depressed and frustrated.
“I’ve never been hurt in my life,” Rodriguez said. “The whole year is a big blur for me. I knew I could bring a lot to the table for this team, but I couldn’t because of my injury. It gave me that much more fire coming into this year to prove to the state of Oregon and the Pac-10 that an injury like that isn’t going to stop me.”
Some of the frustration boiled over last April after an 11-1 loss to California. The Ducks had won the previous day but failed to pull out the series, and the losing (which would get worse) finally got to Rodriguez.
“He literally broke down,” Pulfer said. “After the Cal series, (Eddie) said he just wanted to win and that’s the kind of person he is. He’s a winner and he hates losing like all of us. And being hurt last year … it really hit him hard.”
But Rodriguez got healthy, and the frustration has melted away this year. It started with a hit in the opening game of the season against No. 4 Cal State Fullerton (a 7-3 Oregon win), followed by one of the most iconic moments of the 2010 season more than a month later on April 2 against No. 1 Arizona State.
With the Ducks down 5-4 in the bottom of the ninth, Rodriguez stepped to the plate seeking redemption because he had committed a throwing error that had allowed ASU to score the go-ahead run. He hit a chopper to second base, which the fielder dove for and knocked down. Rodriguez hustled down the base path and slid head first into the bag, just beating out the hurried throw. That started a rally that ended with him scoring on a single by pinch hitter Ryan Hambright, barely beating out the throw home. When Rodriguez was called safe, he tossed his helmet into the air in jubilation, and the Ducks went on to win 6-5 in 12 innings.
Needless to say, there still have been struggles. As the Ducks won their first Pac-10 series of the new era and climbed in the rankings to No. 15, Rodriguez had some off weeks behind the plate that cost the team some runs. The defensive struggles were noted by Horton and the team, but the skipper stuck with Rodriguez, and he’s continued to work through it.
“I don’t know if he’s back to where he doesn’t think about it at all or whatever, but it certainly doesn’t seem like it’s as epidemic a nature as it was earlier,” Horton said. “That’s a tribute to Eddie’s toughness and mind-set that he’s still been able to function at a high level.”
That grinding out mantra the team and Rodriguez have subscribed to is a reason why the Ducks sit at 37-19 and are on the verge of making the postseason. Rodriguez knows he’s not perfect, but he’ll prove he’s not a quitter.
“Baseball is a game of failure,” he said. “Its how you bounce back after those failures that creates a good ball player.”
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