Durham's Gone Far, But Never Left Home

FORMER HARDING STAR STILL CARRIES PART OF CHARLOTTE WITH HIM TO THE MAJOR LEAGUES. DURHAM UNCHANGED AFTER BIG-LEAGUE MOVE


(copy of 1995 Charlotte Observer article by Stan Olson)

This is how Charlotte's Ray Durham, the starting second baseman for the Chicago White Sox, describes his first major-league hit, a bunt single off Brewers pitcher Ricky Bones on opening day in Milwaukee:

``First, I almost fell coming out of the batter's box before I got started good. Then, when I got to the base, I stepped on (first baseman) John Jaha's ankle and took a head-first dive down the foul line. I got up with chalk all over me.``I didn't exactly look cool, but I didn't care, as long as I got that first hit.''

Many more should follow.

Durham, who grew up in Charlotte and played baseball and football at Harding High, has quickly established himself in the White Sox lineup and is a viable American League Rookie of the Year candidate.

Durham was selected by Chicago in the fifth round of the 1990 free-agent draft out of Harding. Five years later, he gets to wear one of those popular black ``Sox'' caps in the majors. But he is probably the least surprised by his success.

``I was confident the whole way,'' he said. ``Once you start having doubts, that's when things sneak up on you.''

Durham was talking by telephone recently from the team's hotel in Toronto. It was 11 a.m., but the jangling phone had awakened him. You can sleep in when you're in the big leagues. You can do and see a lot of things, and Durham, 23, is still absorbing it all.

``It's just a different atmosphere than in the minors,'' Durham said. ``The hotels they put us up in are incredible. The private jet we have is outstanding. You just get treated different up here.''

You earn it on the field, though.

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Starting slow

Durham, 5-8 and 170 pounds, hit leadoff to open the season but struggled, striking out four times in one game. After a couple of weeks, with his batting average mired below .200, recently fired White Sox manager Gene Lamont benched him for two games and dropped him to seventh in the order to take some of the pressure off.

``I don't think he was real comfortable when the season started,'' Lamont said. `It's tough just to step into the big leagues. Once you get here, pitchers make adjustments to you. And then you have to make them back.''

Without the responsibility of kick-starting the offense, Durham relaxed. And, almost immediately, started to hit. So well that through Thursday he was batting .315, with four doubles, a homer, 16 RBIs and eight stolen bases in nine tries.

Asked about the slump, Durham said, ``There wasn't any pressure - I've always started out slow. It's kind of hard to explain, it was just one of those little funks that players go into.''

Maybe he really didn't feel pressure. After all, when you're 23 and fresh from a season at Class AAA Nashville where you hit .296 with 34 steals and 16 homers, failure must seem like something that only happens to others.

``I knew I was gonna get here,'' Durham said.

He's known it for a long time.

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Baseball or football?

He grew up off of Tuckaseegee Road, an Atlanta Braves fan who starred in Little League and who said he once - just once - went to see the Charlotte Knights play, although it may have been the Charlotte O's.

``I remember that Knights game,'' Durham said. ``I was a little guy and thought the field was so huge. I was thinking, I'll be out there someday.' ``

Durham had other options. When he was a sophomore, then-Harding football coach Tom Knotts, liking what he saw in practice, promoted Durham to the varsity just in time for a Rams' state playoff game. The first time he touched the ball, he returned a kick 92 yards for a touchdown.

Durham starred on offense as a wide receiver, once scoring five times in a game. He starred on defense in the secondary, intercepting 14 passes his senior year. All of the ACC schools showed interest he said, and scholarship offers came from South Carolina and Oklahoma State, among others.

``I liked both sports, but I had a talk with my mom, and she didn't like all the injuries that happen in football,'' Durham said. ``Baseball presented itself as the best opportunity.''

Buddy Rego, Durham's baseball coach at Harding, remembered first seeing ``a skinny little kid from Spaugh Junior High who already had a reputation that he could play.''

It only got better. Durham led the Rams in batting average, extra base hits, RBIs and stolen bases in each of his three seasons. At one point, he stole 119 bases in a row.

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Friends and family

Durham's father - Ray Sr. - died in 1992, but an extended family that includes mother Alberta, two brothers, aunts and uncles and a grandmother who used to take him fishing at Latta Plantation, has filled the gap left there.

And now he's in the majors. The whole gang, family and friends, are coming to Baltimore to see him play later in the summer. Now, unlike earlier this season, there is little doubt he will play.

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Whole new game

Still, ``The Show,'' as the players call it, takes some getting used to.

``I think the big difference is that the game is just a whole lot quicker up here,'' Durham said. ``The guys are stronger. And the pitchers . . . up here, you'll have a three-ball, no-strike count and you'll still get a change-up instead of a fastball.

`` . . . These guys have five pitches they constantly throw for strikes. I'm just trying to make decent contact and make them make the play on me. If they bobble it, I'm on base.''

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Staying in touch

The cities of the American League are a long way from home but in a way, Durham takes Charlotte with him. There are regular phone calls home to the family, and others to Chris Jones, his best friend since the two were freshmen together at Harding.

``Ray's not changed at all,'' said Jones, who works in the shipping department of a Charlotte industrial firm. ``A couple years ago, when I started thinking he was going to make the major leagues, I had a feeling that maybe he might forget me. But it's never happened. Every week, I call him or he calls me and we're bugging each other. I'm always kidding him about his bald-head haircut.''

Rego, who also keeps in touch, recently awakened Chicago slugger Frank Thomas when the hotel operator rang the wrong room.

``When I told him who I was, Frank went and got Ray for me,'' Rego said. ``People like Ray. At Harding, he never quit smiling, and he still has that shyness - I call it politeness - about him. He doesn't put on any airs.''

And Durham still comes home after the season, staying sometimes with his mother and sometimes with his grandmother. Life is different back in Charlotte for him; his grandmother doesn't even bother with a phone. Durham gets the line turned on each fall when he returns.

Then he calls Jones. Sometimes, they settle in at Jones' home to eat Chinese food and play video games. More often, they go fishing.

``Ray played winter ball last year, and when he got back, first thing we did was go up to High Rock Lake to fish,'' Jones said. ``We didn't bother to get fishing licenses. We had a great day, caught 3-1/2 strings of crappie and we were trying to sneak out of there when a game warden caught us.

``We each got fined $160. It takes a lot to make Ray mad, but I didn't know how he'd take that. Then I looked at him and he looked at me and we both started laughing. . . . And we didn't even get to keep the fish.''

Durham and Jones are talking of renting an apartment together this winter. But first, there is more baseball.

``You can see he has a lot of tools to work with,'' said Lamont. ``But I think he's starting to show people what kind of player he can be.''

Thursday, in one of his last acts as manager, Lamont moved Ray Durham back to the leadoff slot in the White Sox batting order.