Friday, April 21, 2006 Dodgers believe Kuo still on course The hard-thrower from Taiwan has battled back from two Tommy John surgeries. By BILL PLUNKETT The Orange County Register For the first five years of his professional baseball career, Hong-Chih Kuo was the Sidd Finch of the Dodgers' organization. Like the fictional flamethrower hatched years ago on the pages of Sports Illustrated, Kuo came from the Far East throwing improbably hard and leaving few witnesses to his tall-tale exploits. But in Kuo's case, the stories were true. With a $1.2million bonus just before his 18th birthday in 1999, Kuo was the first Taiwanese player signed out of high school by a major- league organization - only the second ever, after former Dodgers prospect Chin-Feng Chen. The next spring, Kuo made his professional debut in the Class-A California League. An assistant in the Dodgers' Asian operations department at the time, Scott Akasaki is one of the few people left in the organization who was there that night in April 2000. Kuo faced 10 hitters and struck out seven with an overpowering fastball. Two of the 10 batters put a ball in play, grounding out weakly. "I remember calling my dad after the game," Akasaki said. "His favorite player was Sandy Koufax. I said, 'Dad, I know I never saw Sandy Koufax. But I just saw Hong-Chih Kuo.'" No one saw much of Kuo over the next four years, and that single game in San Bernardino grew into legend. Kuo's fastball gained speed over time - 94 or 95mph that night, closing in on 100mph with each retelling. Before striking out his final batter, Kuo felt something in his pitching elbow. The next morning the pain was worse. The diagnosis was a torn ligament, and Kuo underwent ligament-replacement surgery. "No surgery is easy. No rehab is easy," said Rick Honeycutt, the Dodgers' minor- league pitching coordinator before joining the major- league staff this season. "But when you're 17, 18, 19 years old, it had to be in his mind - 'What if I can't come back?' Most kids have to start thinking about maybe getting a job somewhere if it doesn't work out. "With his background, if he goes home, they hand him a gun." Kuo faced two years of mandatory military service if he returned to Taiwan. Kuo received a military waiver after playing for Chinese Taipei in this spring's World Baseball Classic. Kuo, who didn't speak a word of English when he arrived in the U.S., remained in Los Angeles each offseason and got to know the Dodgers' medical staff well. After a 14-month recovery from his first surgery, he pitched briefly in 2001 but elbow problems followed him into 2002. He pitched 14 innings and had another operation to treat scar tissue in his elbow after the season. But the ligament gave out again in spring 2003. At 21, Kuo had his third operation in three years and his second Tommy John procedure, twice as many as ... Tommy John. "One time in Vero Beach when he was hurt, he said to me, 'Acey, I was a good hitter. Maybe you could try me as a hitter,'" said Acey Kohrogi, the Dodgers' director of Asian operations. "I said, 'Shut up, Kuo. You have a golden left arm. Just stay with it.' "I can see why he felt that way. You see the struggles of the rehab. You think he's making progress. He's almost back - then he's down with pain again, inflammation, this and that." Kuo says there were times when he considered giving up, but he was buoyed by support throughout the organization. He talked to pitchers Eric Gagne and Darren Dreifort who had three Tommy John surgeries between them. "It was tough," Kuo said. "I thought about it (giving up), but I talked to a lot of guys. I talked to Gagne and Dreifort before I had the second one. They said you just gotta go for it." Kuo spent most of the 2003 season traveling with the team while he rehabilitated from his second Tommy John surgery. He never threw a pitch but got a major-league education. "For me, it helped a lot," he said. "I didn't play, but I got to watch big-league pitchers - how they throw, how they prepare, how they think about hitters. I was doing the pitching charts, and I learned a lot, talking to pitchers like Gagne and Dreifort and (Paul) Quantrill and watching them." It would be awhile before Kuo could put his knowledge to use. Handled with care, he pitched six innings in 2004 and was converted to the bullpen in 2005. Last season, he went from Class-A to Double-A and then got a September promotion to the majors with fewer than 100 innings pitched as a professional. In his second big-league appearance, Kuo was called on to face San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds. Kuo pumped seven consecutive fastballs that registered 95 or 96 mph as Bonds worked the count full - then hit a towering home run into McCovey Cove. But the outing impressed Kuo's future employer. "I turned to Sabes (Giants GM Brian Sabean) and said, 'Are you watching this? Can you believe this kid?'" Dodgers GM Ned Colletti said this spring. Colletti saw Kuo as part of the Dodgers' bullpen mix and not just a situational left-hander. Dodgers manager Grady Little watched Kuo allow one earned run in 12 spring innings while striking out 14 and saw the same thing. "He's been under the supervision of Dr. (Frank) Jobe nearly his entire career, " Little said. "You look at the number of years he's been in the organization and the number of games he's pitched (102 innings over six years) - it's not a pretty sight. But he looks good out there on the mound. He looks strong. He's got stuff to get lefties and right-handers out. "Our No.1 concern is to get him to a point where he knows injuries are completely behind him, and we do, too." Kuo, 24, said he reached that point last year and does not worry about his elbow giving out again. When Kuo completed his long climb to the majors, Kohrogi gave him a few things he had saved - the Dodgers cap Kohrogi presented him in Taiwan at the news conference announcing Kuo's signing, the pitching charts Kuo kept in 2003 with the Dodgers and a video of those three innings in San Bernardino in April 2000. "I just said, 'These are important moments in your life. You should have these now,'" Kohrogi said. "He looked like he was going to cry. ... I think it's almost unbelievable that he's here." The decision for the Dodgers now is what to do with Kuo if he has overcome his injury issues. A power-pitching, left-handed starter is a rare commodity. But a starter's workload might be more than Kuo's elbow can handle. "I think at the end of this year we'll have to look at how he is physically, h ow his arm bounces back," Honeycutt said. "I'm definitely not ruling that out (being a starter) as a possibility at some point. "His body will tell us that. Right now, we want him to just pitch, put him in successful situations and build on that." -- 我的可愛女兒們 http://0rz.net/321AC --

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