PITTSBURGH — If you could find baseball players under a rock, they would look like John Kruk.
Kruk didn’t come to the Philadelphia Phillies from the San Diego Padres, where he once played, or even West Virginia, where he is alleged to have been born. He was lifted out of a Grimm’s Fairy Tale, where he’d been doing time as a troll.
Even the name suggests a sub-species:
Kruk: A formless object of indeterminate weight who preys on unsuspecting pitchers and unguarded buffet tables with equal ferocity. Distinguishing features include scruffy beard, permanent scowl and dirty uniform. Known to utter strange guttural sounds when not smoking or spitting. Shy around strangers.
Oh, there’s one other way to define a Kruk: Leading hitter in the National League. A Kruk is most dangerous with a bat in his hands. Just look at the numbers entering Thursday: .370 average, .450 on-base percentage, 85 hits, 41 runs and 27 multi-hit games.
Kruk — listed at 5 feet 10, 200 pounds — hasn’t gone hitless in consecutive games since taking over the league lead April 22. That’s an impressive feat under any circumstance, made more so when the line-drive dispenser in question looks like he plays for free beer on the tavern softball team.
“My list of worst bodies in sports? Kruk would be at least honorable mention,” said Pittsburgh outfielder Andy Van Slyke, who has never been a pound overweight in his life but trails Kruk in the batting race by 22 points.
“He’s right there in the Craig Stadler and Mike LaValliere mode,” Van Slyke added, invoking the name of the mustachioed golfer and stumpy Pirate catcher.
Van Slyke tried to imagine what would be served if he were invited to Kruk’s house for dinner.
“Probably ribs, burgers and fries,” he said. “Chips and beer. You wouldn’t see any of that California cuisine, with the light vinaigrette dressing, on his plate.
“He must have a weight clause in his contract that says, ‘You must weigh 20 more pounds than you weighed last season.”‘
Phillies manager Jim Fregosi was asked if he had any ideas on how to shake Kruk out of a mini-slump (two hits in his previous 13 at-bats). “Try to put some more weight on him,” Fregosi said.
Kruk was told that the first Marlins-owned player to drive in a run was Todd Pridy, the pudgy Erie first baseman whose nickname is Kruk.
“Why do they call him that?” Kruk demanded.
Because of his body, Kruk was told.
“I’m not fat,” Kruk snapped.
He then took his bat and, using it as a divining rod, placed the barrel firmly upon the rump of Don Robinson, the portly pitcher. “Look at that,” Kruk said.
Case closed. But for Kruk, the kitchen’s always open.
“We were in Atlanta the other day,” said Phillies coach John Vukovich. “It was on a Sunday morning. Kruk had put some hamburgers away in the refrigerator the night before. He came in, took ’em out, and popped ’em in the microwave. Breakfast.”
Kruk, of course, isn’t the first big-league ballplayer to be cut out of a Jell-O mold. There was a guy by the name of Ruth and more recently, Cecil Fielder.
“How about Gates Brown?” Fregosi said, laughing at the memory. “That SOB would come up to pinch hit with mustard all over his shirt. There’d be a hot dog stuffed in his back pocket.”
The John Kruk Way to Stay in Shape will not be appearing on an exercise video anytime soon, though a couple of winters ago he did work out with Gus Hoefling, the trainer who devised Steve Carlton’s fanatical regimen. But Kruk didn’t have a real good season that year. After doing better the following season when he put some weight back on, exercise became something he watched other people do on TV.
“Eight hours I sleep, six hours I sit, and the other 10 I lie around,” Kruk told Sports Illustrated.
Does he consider himself to be in shape?
“For a marathon, probably not,” he said.
But for a ballplayer who never has to run much farther than 180 feet at any given time, he obviously passes. And the way he’s hitting, he’s doing for ballplayers what Oprah Winfrey did for talk-show hosts. Fat can be beautiful.
“Just a pure hitter,” Vukovich says. “He doesn’t overanalyze. He simplifies it. He’s got a good natural swing, and doesn’t fabricate anything into his swing. He fiddles around with it, but that’s part of why he’s such a pure hitter — he can hit in a number of different areas.”
His big offensive numbers overshadow his defense, which includes a 96-game errorless streak at first base.
“And that’s not a cautious streak, either,” Vukovich says. “He’ll make a gambling throw to second base. He can go 3-6-3 as well as anybody in the league. He’s a Gold Glove first baseman.”
Kids love Kruk because he looks just like the other stuffed animals on their closet shelf. “My little daughter came running into the clubhouse the other day, yelling, ‘Where’s John Kruk? Where’s John Kruk?”‘ said Fregosi, wincing at the memory. “Made me want to spank her.”
Kruk fits right in with the other incorrigibles in the Phillies’ clubhouse: Mitch “Wild Thing” Williams, Lenny “Nails” Dykstra and Darren Daulton, who’s actually pretty normal but is guilty by association. It’s a great lineup of role models… if you’re making a gangster movie.
“You heard what Kruk said about Dale Murphy getting hurt, didn’t you?” Fregosi said, referring to the team’s straight-arrow Mormon outfielder on the disabled list with a sore left knee.
“He said — on TV — that this was God’s way of keeping Murph away from us.”
When Kruk spotted a visitor to the Phillies clubhouse, he loudly demanded to know who it was. Told the visitor was from Fort Lauderdale, Kruk roared: “Where’s that?”
Kruk’s sense of geography really isn’t that bad, according to Daulton, the same man who has said a Phillies game ain’t over till the fat guy swings.
“If you had a map of the United States and Fort Lauderdale was printed on it, John would find it eventually,” Daulton said.
Surely, Kruk was asked, he’d taken at least one vacation to South Florida while growing up.
“Not me,” he said.
Where had he gone?
“Philadelphia. And St. Paul.”
While Kruk may never appear in GQ or be interviewed by William Buckley, the notion that Kruk is some backwoods bumpkin is false, according to those who know him.
“John Kruk is anything but naive,” Fregosi says, “even though he likes to give that impression. He’s just the kind of guy who likes to play ball, and knows how this game should be played.
“He doesn’t like all the attention.”
Lose 50 pounds on the scale or 70 points off the batting average, and the attention will melt away. Neither is likely to happen. So relax, couch potatoes, let that gut hang over your belt, and have another helping of your favorite snack. If you don’t, John Kruk will.
