Kuo draws a crowd at workouts Young Taiwanese lefty works to rebound from injuries By Ken Gurnick / MLB.com http://tinyurl.com/85k2h (原文網址有郭和野茂的合照) LOS ANGELES -- A catcher's glove was popping the pop of velocity not usually heard in January. And if that wasn't enough of a tip-off, the crowd that formed around the Dodger Stadium bullpen during Friday's voluntary workout was a sign that something special was happening. The pitcher making the noise is trying to come back from a second Tommy John operation, and his name is not Darren Dreifort. It's Hong-Chih Kuo, now 22 and in his fifth star-crossed season. The Dodgers gave Kuo $1.2 million in 1999 to be the first Taiwanese high school player to sign with a Major League organization. Ever since, there has been a heightened anticipation surrounding everything the hard-throwing left-hander has done. It was that way when he made his professional debut in San Bernardino in 2000, a game that has become something of Dodger minor league folklore. Kuo faced 10 batters in that game and struck out seven. He hit a batter with a pitch and induced two feeble infield grounders. Joe Thurston, now fighting for a Major League job, was playing shortstop behind Kuo that night. "It seemed like he struck out everybody," said Thurston. "I remember having a friend on the other team and he fouled a ball off. That was about the best contact off him -- a foul ball. In Single-A, you just don't see guys throw like that. It wasn't like they weren't getting a hit. They weren't touching the ball. And he was doing it so easy. You see guys throwing hard like that, but they're grunting and working hard. He looked like a natural." Kuo made it look so easy, in fact, that few realized he struck out the final batter in the third inning with an elbow that blew out on the previous pitch. "A scout told me that he could have pitched in the big leagues that night, and he was only 17," said Dino Ebel, Kuo's manager at San Bernardino. "But I remember that last at-bat and he threw a 98-mph fastball and stepped off and shook his arm a little. Then he reared back and threw another 98-mph fastball and struck the guy out and walked off the mound and said he felt something." Kuo, 6 feet and 200 pounds, then underwent his first Tommy John elbow reconstruction. He pitched in only seven games each of the next two seasons. But Kuo would later say that the arm never really felt right, leading to a cleanup operation after the 2002 season. But during the 2003 Spring Training, Kuo's elbow blew out again. So Kuo, who lockers at Dodger Stadium directly across from Dreifort, became the second pitcher in the Dodger clubhouse to undergo a second Tommy John elbow reconstruction. In four years, he has pitched in 15 games and undergone three operations. Nonetheless, the Dodgers protected him from exposure to the Rule 5 draft in December, because they believe he still has a good shot of fulfilling the promise. Which brought him to Friday's workout, throwing off a "flat" mound in the bullpen, under the watchful eyes of manager Jim Tracy and pitching coach Jim Colborn, along with Dodger Asian Operations officials Acey Kohrogi and Vincent Liao, who scouted Kuo when he was on the Taiwanese National Team. "It feels good," Kuo said of the elbow after the workout. "It feels better than ever. Awesome." When you are going on your fifth year of injury rehabilitation, you really have nothing, if not hope. Kuo said he has been counseled frequently by Dreifort, which is by design. "Who better to help him understand what he would go through?" said Pat Screnar , the longtime Dodger physical therapist who is overseeing Kuo's latest comeback. "It's 10 months out from the surgery and he's just started throwing to a catcher, but so far it's going well." --

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