Mariners' Guardado has made it from mean streets to the majors

STOCKTON, Calif. — The house sparkles, with its manicured lawn and tasteful décor, sprawled on the corner of a well-appointed neighborhood. It is the house that Eddie Guardado gave his father, Victor, and stepmom, Karen, one recent Christmas, after he had signed his first big contract with the Minnesota Twins.

Victor, who picked peaches and tomatoes in the California fields after he came over from Mexico and worked two jobs to put food on the table for his nine kids, thought Eddie was taking him to get the topcoat he had asked for. When Eddie pulled up to the house, ostensibly to pick up chairs for a party, Victor didn't notice the ribbon on the garage. But he noticed his family pouring out of the house, then Eddie handed him the key.

"It's yours, Pops, yours and Karen's," Eddie said.

Victor, sitting in the garage, where he loves to tinker or just hang out, smiled at the memory.

"Tears flowed out of my face. I said, 'Are you sure? How much do I have to pay?' I thought they had put a down payment. Eddie said, 'You don't have to pay nothing. You don't even have to pay taxes.'

"I couldn't believe it, because we lived in a very, very, very, very poor neighborhood. For me to own a house? Impossible."

Guardado, sitting in the Mariners' spring-training clubhouse in Peoria, Ariz., smiled, too, and called it, "probably the best thing I ever did with the money I have. I'd never seen my dad cry in all my life except for that day."

It's a great house, and a great story. But this stately house, in this pristine neighborhood, is not where you tell the Eddie Guardado story, the story of Seattle's new closer.

Humble, harried beginnings

You need to head down a few miles to the heart of East Stockton, down where the hookers still walk the streets in the old neighborhood, where Franklin High School is barricaded so no one can get in or out once the bell rings, where many of Eddie's old acquaintances wound up in jail, on drugs, or dead.

Joe "Chachi" Elias, one of his best friends, takes the visitor on a tour of this Stockton, Eddie Guardado's Stockton.

"The good thing about Eddie," Elias said, "he has friends in high places, and friends in low places. To this day, Eddie can come here and walk through these streets, and everyone knows him."

Elias cruises past the ramshackle home on Sierra Nevada, one of many in which Eddie and his family lived. After their parents separated, they moved often, and Eddie's older brother, Danny, recalled how, in the darkest days, they packed their things into garbage bags, because they couldn't afford suitcases.

"We'd stay in one place for two, three days, then move on again," Danny said. "It was hard on us. We went through six different elementary schools in one year. I missed out on sixth grade, Eddie missed out on first grade. All he knew how do to was run, be in the streets, with me, following me."

It was one of those houses that a teenaged Danny came home to in the wee hours one morning, bloodied from a fight. Fearing reprisals, he woke up Eddie and told him he'd better sleep on the floor that night, out of gunshot range.

"They didn't come around and shoot," Danny said. "But the possibility was there, all the time. So we had to be careful."

Rough road to triumph

Elias' SUV cruises through these streets, past Fremont Junior High, flanked by railroad tracks.

"Kids were always meeting on the tracks to fight," he said.

He winds his way through the barrio, largely unchanged from their youth, past the house in the area known in "Okieville," where Lisa Limbaugh — now Eddie's wife — grew up, down streets without sidewalks, past the Elbert Arms housing project.

"That's a place we lost a lot of friends to drive-bys," Elias said, gesturing. "Fifty percent of our friends out of Stockton are dope dealers, ex-dope dealers, locked up or dead."

He continues down Main Street, past the liquor stores where the drug dealers congregated. He tells of the gang warfare in the schools, of the difficulty of ever leaving this neighborhood.

"It was real rough," says Elias quietly, as he pulls into the muffler and brake shop he co-owns on Waterloo Road. "It was easy to lose track. Luckily, a few of us came out all right."

In the end, this is not a sad story, though it has some sad elements, the friends lost along the way, the lives that have never escaped the poverty.

No, this is a story of triumph, of avoiding the temptations than can bring down young lives in this hard town, 80 miles east of Oakland.

Not just Eddie, who had the golden left arm that made him rich, but his brothers and sisters, all of whom lead successful lives. And Victor, who never went to school past ninth grade but now works as a chemist for the city of Stockton, testing water samples. It's a far cry from the days when he managed a hamburger stand and moonlighted in a glass factory.

"Victor," said Elias emotionally, "worked his butt off for those kids."

Now married 26 years to Karen, it was Victor who bought Eddie his first baseball glove — $3 at a garage sale. (After a long estrangement, Eddie is now on good terms with his mother, who lives in Long Beach, Calif.).

This is a story of triumph, because Guardado had a family that made sure he stayed on the straight and narrow, even if the road to perdition was wide and crooked. Because he met people like Jerry and Irene Ryan, parents of close friend Jim Ryan, who provided a second home, and Jerry Swanson, the police officer who was his Little League coach and first persuaded Eddie to step on the mound.

Because he had a big brother like Danny, who despite a few scrapes and detours, always knew there was a better life waiting.

"I used to tell Eddie, you've got to know who your friends are," said Danny, at 38 five years older than Eddie, now employed as a foreman for California Water Service Co. "If you see that guy going a bad route, go straight, bro. Because you don't want to end up like that. And Eddie was a strong kid. Still is. He'll go straight ahead."

Triumph, because these mean streets of Stockton led to Stribley Park, where the baseball games almost, but not quite, would provide an outlet from the violence and the gangs. Not quite, because they still talk about the day that a fight started on the handball courts behind left field, and ended with a man getting stabbed in the shoulder by a machete.

Or, even worse, the day that a car screeched past the diamond and shots rang out while Eddie's team was on the field, practicing.

"Next thing you know, everyone is laid out on the ground," Guardado recalled. "You start hearing shots, you go down. There's a right way. Don't try to run."

Talent lifts him out of streets

Yet, sports were an outlet for the Guardado kids, a way off the streets. Danny, played shortstop for NAIA powerhouse Lewis-Clark State — he still wears his 1988 national championship ring — led the way, and, as always, Eddie followed.

It was apparent almost from his first Little League pitch that he had transcendent talent, talent that would eventually lead him, in 1990, to sign a letter of intent to Cal State Fullerton that he never used, signing instead with the Minnesota Twins.

Guardado, deemed too small by some scouts, was a 21st-round draft choice, but he made it to the majors in two years, establishing himself as an ironman setup reliever (dubbed Everyday Eddie), then as the All-Star closer who was known for putting Twins fans into agony — and getting the job done.

"You know what? He could take it if he got his butt kicked," Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said earlier this spring. "He was a man about it. He walked away with his head held up, said, 'I'll get 'em tomorrow, boys. My bad.' We all knew he'd come back and want the ball the next day."

Yeah, the man had talent.

"It takes true talent to come out of a neighborhood like that," Danny said. "It takes talent to be strong, and be responsible for your actions and move on in life. Don't get me wrong. We did do little crooked things. We weren't angels. But we knew our limits, the rights from wrongs."

A better future in mind

Gangs were everywhere, but for the most part, they left the Guardados, and their friends, alone. Oh, Eddie fought, and has the scars to prove it — a nasty one on his left thigh where he was stabbed by an icepick in the eighth grade, and another on the pinkie knuckle of his left hand, where three pins are a reminder of a high-school fight. But they were aberrations, not a way of life.

"We were never forced to be in gangs, which is nice," Guardado said. "I've seen a lot of guys get jumped into gangs, and get kicked around and beat up; a lot of gang members hung around our porch. I couldn't tell you now, to this day (how he avoided them). I guess someone was looking over my shoulder."

Elias, who played professional baseball and spent a season as the Oakland A's bullpen catcher, believes that Guardado always had a better future in mind.

"Eddie was special, because when a lot of us were out chasing our girlfriend around and doing things after hours, Eddie was getting ready for tomorrow, " he said. "He had plans. He told the yearbook he was going to pitch at Yankee Stadium."

Prophecy fulfilled, but roots stay deep

Sitting in his dad's garage, Danny recalled vividly a hot summer day, just after the Little League season had ended. On a whim, he told Eddie to pull on his Phillies' uniform and pose for a picture. He still has the fading Polaroid snapshot, Eddie in a pitching pose, his long hair flowing out of his hat.

"I said, 'You know what, bro? You're going to the big leagues.' I swear to God, I said that. He was 9 years old."

Time has passed, and Eddie, now 10 years into his big-league career, has recently moved out of Stockton with his family — Lisa, sons Niko, 7, and Jakob, 2 — into a custom-built house in Tustin Ranch, near Anaheim.

But he returns often, and his upbringing has not dimmed in Guardado's memory.

"I'm kind of glad I grew up the way I grew up," he said. "We didn't have much. I know I didn't have any toys or anything like that. But I didn't know any better. If I didn't grow up in that type of environment, I probably wouldn't be here now. It motivates you — to do better and get out, and be one of the guys that did make it.

"I'll never forget where I came from. Never. That's probably the best advice I ever got, from one of my best friend's parents: Whatever happens in your career, if you go on to succeed in baseball, never forget where you come from. I have always kept that in the back of my mind. That really keeps me strong."

Larry Stone: 206-464-3146 or lstone@seattletimes.com