Erik Hanson makes transition from baseball to golf

SAMMAMISH — Erik Hanson doesn't really miss baseball.

Oh, he misses standing on the mound and staring out at 40,000 screaming fans, and smiles broadly when he remembers the adrenaline rush of playing in front of television cameras. But when he retired from the game in the spring of 2000, he found another passion.

Far from the tumult of the ballpark, Hanson quietly hones his skills at another game: golf.

The 6-foot-6 pitcher, known in the 1990s for his devastating curveball, plays 20 to 30 amateur golf tournaments each year.

When Hanson isn't competing, he works on his game almost every day on the demanding course at Sahalee Country Club in Sammamish, where he's playing this week in the Sahalee Players Championship.

Hanson is the defending Sahalee Club champion, and won last year's Pacific Northwest Mid-Amateur title.

Hanson started playing golf seriously after the Mariners traded him to the Cincinnati Reds in 1994. The manager at the time, Davey Johnson, and his bench coach, Ray Knight (husband of LPGA great Nancy Lopez), were avid golfers.

"We'd try to scramble up about seven or eight guys, a couple foursomes, and kill time on the road," Hanson said this week at the Sahalee clubhouse.

Now 38, Hanson spent 11 years in the major leagues, six of those with the Mariners. But shoulder surgery in 1997 effectively ended his baseball career.

"I wasn't quite the same, and then golf took over," he said. "My enthusiasm for baseball and the travel started to diminish. I knew no matter how successful my surgery was and how long I was able to pitch, it was going to end."

Hanson is not the only major-league pitcher to excel on the golf course. Rick Rhoden pitched for several teams during a 16-year career that ended in 1989 and last month competed in the U.S. Senior Open.

Hanson may have found a new beginning in golf, but some routines are hard to shake. He calls his golf-filled winters at Pinnacle Peak Country Club in Scottsdale, Ariz., "spring training" and his summer tournaments in the Seattle area are "my season." He and his wife, Laura, own a home in Scottsdale and one in Kirkland, where they have lived since he debuted with the Mariners.

The New Jersey native attended The Peddie School, a private school in Hightstown, N.J. By his sophomore year, Hanson suffered from baseball burnout. He had played nonstop since Little League. Besides, the lanky Hanson wasn't as strong as most of his high-school teammates.

So he decided to join the golf team.

A year walking the fairways of Peddie's 18-hole golf course renewed Hanson's enthusiasm for baseball. He went on to become an All-American at Wake Forest, where he majored in economics and business. He was drafted in the second round by the Mariners in 1986.

Hanson's best year with the Mariners came in 1990, when he was 18-9 with a 3.24 earned-run average. During an impressive 15-5 season with the Boston Red Sox in 1995, the right-hander was voted to the American League All-Star team. He spent his major-league career with four teams and was 89-84, with a 4.15 ERA.

Dave Valle, Hanson's catcher for several years, remembers him as a "tremendous competitor."

"Once he stopped playing baseball, he missed that part of the game," said Valle, now a color analyst for Mariners broadcasts. "And he's been able to fulfill that on the golf course. It's kind of like the pitcher's game. Guys that aren't pitching are out playing golf."

Hanson's wife said golf eased his retirement from baseball.

"For anybody whose husband has been in sports, you do wonder how they're going to handle it," she said. "Baseball is so encompassing of your time and energy, and then you cross this line and it's gone. He is so level and he's so emotionally easygoing. I think it'll be OK."

Hanson's transition to golf has been more than OK.

He finished fourth in the Seattle Amateur Championship on Sunday and he has high expectations for his golf career. He hopes to one day make that sport's major league — the PGA Tour.

"Erik understands what it takes to play top-caliber sports," said Jim Pike, head golf pro at Sahalee. "He's studied the game hard and learned a lot about his swing. He has applied a lot of the same principles he used in pitching: exercise, flexibility, strength training and, of course, practice."

Jeannine Befidi: 206-464-8294 or jbefidi@seattletimes.com