A trip back to Buhnerful

I f you ever run into Makoto Suzuki, unlikely since he is pitching in Japan, ask for his most memorable day in U.S. baseball.

Like all players, he might say the day he signed to play pro ball, or the day he threw his first pitch, or when he first won a game.

Or the day he met Jay Buhner.

Early in his first Mariners camp in 1994, Suzuki was sitting in the training room with catcher Mackey Sasser when Buhner walked up behind Sasser and threw up on his back.

Playfully. Intentionally.

Ordinarily, on days such as today, when a legendary player is being inducted into his team's Hall of Fame, there are paeans to his feats. And Buhner certainly created his full measure of those for Seattle from 1989 to 2001 with his thunderous bat and his golden glove and arm.

But Buhner being Buhner, he has always had only one demand of anyone describing him: "Tell it like it is, like I am. Tell them (wife) Leah and the kids are my Godsend. Tell them I was an OK player but I was the best damn teammate I could be." Yet that's not true, not exactly. This man's no-quit approach to the game was accompanied by nonstop efforts to make everyone a member of the club, with a zaniness seldom seen among the seemingly sane.

When Buhner retired after the 2001 season, Ken Griffey Jr. said wisely, "Now, everyone in Seattle is going to feel the way I have for two years. I have missed Jay more than I can say. In Seattle, I never knew who'd be in left (field) on any day, but I always knew I never had to worry about anything to right; Jay would take care of it.

"Not many people know what he meant to the Mariners' team and organization. They don't make many like him. In fact, they only made one, and he was a beauty."

Like Griffey, who left after the 1999 season, those whose memories run longer and whose emotions run deeper and whose humor runs ribald will tell you that there is one salient reason for the fading Mariners besides Seattle's hitting, pitching and fielding failures.

No Buhner.

The man for whom Bald is Buhnerful was pushed into retirement by a seemingly endless series of injuries that took him off the field after the 2001 season.

And since then, the team that won 116 games in 2001 without Randy Johnson, Alex Rodriguez and Griffey has never been the same.

Actually, if Buhner had been a Ringling Bros. performer and left, the circus wouldn't be the same, either.

The contributions in the middle of a Mariners lineup, a big part of making it for years the most feared in baseball, and right field, a big part of a defense that was as good as the offense, have been missed obviously.

But while he lived to play hard — and raise daughter Brielle, 12, and sons Chase, 10, and Gunnar, 9, alongside wife Leah — what Buhner brought to the clubhouse, to the closeness and looseness that was the hallmark of the Big, Bad M's, 1995-2001, has been missed even more.

Buhnerisms were much more unique than the humble hot foot, sawed bats or even sat-on cakes. They were topped by what he called "blurping," his amazing ability to vomit on cue.

Then there was his penchant for skipping around the clubhouse wearing nothing but a pair of black socks.

Summing up his era, Buhner grinned evilly, "Did we have some fun, or did we have some fun? Too bad you can't write about most of it."

According to younger brother Ted, Jay was always like this growing up in Texas. "It comes from our dad and his brother," Ted said. "They both got sent to military school to calm their butts down."

Leah, who advised Jay to shave what was left of his thin blond hair in 1993, used to ask her husband why he was like this.

"He told me, 'It's just the way it is, babe,' " she said. "Jay is a wonderful husband and father. But he's hyper. You think he pulled tricks in the clubhouse; you should have been home the year he was injured.

"He's wonderful with the kids. But thank goodness they aren't taking after him."

Of course, the wackiness would not have worked without the stature.

When he retired, he ranked 82nd in major-league history with 310 home runs. He won a Gold Glove and a spot on the 1996 American League All-Star team. He helped his team to four postseason appearances from 1995 through 2001, proving his big-game credentials by hitting .306 — more than 50 points higher than his lifetime average.

Early on, however, before his shaved pate and goatee became nationally recognized, before he became Bone, he was a driven Texas kid looking to play.

He came to Seattle like a young Clint Eastwood, acquired from the New York Yankees in a 1988 trade for designated hitter Ken Phelps that will top D.B. Cooper as the Northwest's biggest heist.

Made to sit in 1989 while the team was losing for lack of power, Buhner got into a heavy disagreement with former Seattle manager Jim Lefebvre, and only the muscular intervention of coach Bill Plummer kept Lefebvre from feeling the full force of Buhner's wrath.

Eventually, the talent won out over the temper, and Buhner played as if every game might be his last and turned right field in Seattle into his private fiefdom, the Boneyard.

So deep ran the admiration, the love from fans, that Buhner Buzz Cut Night became the Mariners' most popular and notorious event each year. From 1994 through 2001 (missing only 2000), more than 22,000 fans got buzzed — including 298 women, one age 77.

"Those nights were a blast, and I really hope no one ever regretted doing it," Buhner said. "They all looked great to me afterward."

Catcher Scott Bradley once described Seattle's game plan as "hold our own between the weeks when Jay carries us on those big shoulders."

Once Buhner hit his stride — only the eighth man to hit 40 or more homers in three consecutive years — the Mariners hit theirs, with American League West titles in 1995 and 1997.

When Buhner was hurt and missed about half of both 1998 and 1999, the team faded. When he was back in right field again in 2000, the team went to the postseason again.

And while he missed much of the 2001 season with a left-foot injury that gutted his efforts, he was with the club the entire year, including road trips, at the team's request.

"Jay is a guy you want around, even if he can't go on the field. You appreciate what he can do for the team otherwise," CEO Howard Lincoln said. "He'll always be a Mariner. Always."

As part of that esteem, Lincoln and team president Chuck Armstrong have insisted that Buhner remain in the organization. Now 40, he pulls on No. 19 and works with outfielders in spring camps and is often in the clubhouse and sometimes in the broadcast booth.

With Buhner not yet retired a few months after the 2001 season, but close to it, team officials paid him a unique tribute by offering him salary arbitration, a decision that could have cost them close to $2 million. They knew Buhner would not go back on his word that he would announce his departure. And he did not, although he had spoken those words at least twice before and was drawn back, by the game and by teammates.

The first time was near the end of the 1999 season. The proud player, tired of being hurt and unable to contribute as usual, walked into manager Lou Piniella's office and said he was done.

Piniella asked him to wait, and later Buhner decided to keep on. He played well in 2000, coaxing 26 home runs and 82 runs batted in from his battered body in just 112 games. And in two memorable games in July, he hit career homers 299, 300 and 301.

That brought him back refreshed, if not rejuvenated, for 2001. But his body let him down when he injured the sole of his left foot in training camp, making plantar fasciitis a household term in the Pacific Northwest.

Tearing it up again in his first spring at-bat, Buhner talked of quitting again.

He came into the clubhouse depressed and said, "I'm done. Or at least I'll have to think about it. If I can't go out sitting tall in the saddle, then I'll quit. ... I swear I will."

But with teammates like Norm Charlton saying, "We'll get him back in here and get him fired up again," Buhner came back.

He went out on his own terms at the end of that year, closing the circle with his final hit, homer and RBI at Yankee Stadium. The day he went, he noted his left shoulder had broken down on him, again. "I'll need surgery just to retire," he said.

Indeed, Seattle's medical staff was Buhner's second team over much of his career. Dr. Larry Pedegana, Dr. Mitch Storey, and trainers Rick Griffin and Tom Newberg kept the outfielder going amid multiple surgeries.

To this day, Griffin has a life-size poster of Buhner hanging in the clubhouse, on which he labeled the body parts that had gone wrong over his dozen years of throwing himself into walls, tarps and every inch of the Boneyard — which, at the Kingdome, was not unlike diving on your average parking lot.

The poster is covered. It would be easier to list the pieces that did not need icing, taping or loosening simply so the guy could take pregame practice, never mind play games.

From the top of his head — he suffered occasional migraines — to the bottom of his feet — plantar fasciitis — Buhner hurt all over, and rarely stopped to think of it.

Yet, this medical history out of Ripley's did not start with baseball.

"When I was a kid, I was in the hospital for hundreds of stitches — my head, my eye," Buhner said. "... Then there was the time a tractor ran over my foot. My mom got to know everyone at the hospital by name."

It got worse in high school in Houston. During one six-week period, he was in three auto accidents — once going through a windshield, another time being knocked out of a pickup truck and landing on his feet.

What would you expect of a kid who played prep soccer to keep in shape for baseball, but had to be a goalkeeper? "It was the only position they let you run into people," Buhner explained, like that was normal.

It is a shame that injuries must share space with character, class and competitiveness, but that was Buhner. He was on the disabled list 10 times and missed about 500 days — nearly three seasons. Had he not, he would have wound up with close to 400 homers and 1,200 RBI.

"I think what we achieved as a team makes up for what I may have missed as an individual," he said. "But looking back, I wouldn't have done it any differently. Nothing can top us saving baseball in Seattle and having the satisfaction of being part of one of sports' biggest success stories ever."

As with all truly unique and memorable people, the legend lives on, and the love, for the Everyman effort Buhner brought to the game.

Off the field, he brings that charisma to the community. He is still involved in many charitable works — the most renowned being the annual Cystic Fibrosis Golf Tournament, one of the area's biggest days of giving, and his work on behalf of the Diabetes Foundation, in honor of his father.

"It's time," he said when he retired. "You can work and practice and overcome slumps and injuries and all sorts of troubles. But when it's time to go, when it's time to ride into the sunset, you go."

And so he went, the warhorse gone to pasture. But as long as Safeco Field stands, an edifice to Jay Campbell Buhner as much as anyone, Bone will never be forgotten.

Bob Finnigan: 206-464-8276 or bfinnigan@seattletimes.com