Sunday, February 21, 2010
By Chuck Finder, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/
BRADENTON, Fla. -- Teammates call him Dorf. Fellow pitchers teasingly refer to their coach and his mentor, Joe Kerrigan, as Dorf's dad.
In the hallways of Washington, however, this Dorf morphs.
He is a fellow invited to a photo op with first lady Michelle Obama. He is a Beltway insider who kibbutzed about agriculture with Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. and talked baseball with Sen. Jim Bunning, a former Pirates starter who waxed nostalgic about how pitchers in his day threw a lot more often than today's softies. He is a gentleman who was granted a private West Wing tour alongside a former senator and Florida governor, Bob Graham, who you would figure had been there before.
Pete Diana/Post-Gazette
Ross Ohlendorf: Pirates starting pitcher ... and Washington Beltway insider?
Most important, he is a man who helped to change governmental policy.
On Feb. 5, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it was scrapping the National Animal Identification System, the cattlemen-criticized program that traced livestock movement and disease.
The dude they call Dorf wrote two papers on the subject for the department.
In the regulatory area of what Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack calls "our shop," this cabinet member from Squirrel Hill, Shady Side Academy and plenty of Pirates games said of Ohlendorf, "He was actually quite helpful."
Not bad for an unpaid, 10-week intern who knocked off by 1 p.m. each day so he could work out.
Ohlendorf just smiles about it, in that gosh-durn, humble Texas way that caused Mississippi State alumnus Paul Maholm to jokingly wonder aloud the other day, "How did you get into Princeton?"
"He's very curious. He's very serious about agriculture," Vilsack said of the Austin, Texas, resident who named the "Rocking O" ranch where his retired father, Curtis, and junior Princeton pitcher of a brother, Chad, help to raise longhorns and oversee the 2,000 acres the family mostly leases out.
"I know he's going to have a wonderful opportunity after he finishes baseball to pursue his other love, which is agriculture. I just hope he wins the Cy Young award before he goes off ..."
Did we mention yet that the Vilsack is a Pirates fan?
"He has an interesting profile," Vilsack continued of Ohlendorf. "Ivy League-educated, professional athlete and someone who comes from a small-business background, which is what his folks' livestock business is. He reminds me keenly of somebody like Bill Bradley, another Princeton graduate who was obviously successful in sports and successful in politics.
"But first he has to win the Cy Young award."
Let us interrupt the tale of Mr. Ohlendorf Goes to Washington and get to Ohlendorf taking a Pirates' mound.
He is a former all-state basketball player in Texas, a 6-foot-4, 235-pound lad who went to the same Austin school as New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees and wrote his 144-page Princeton thesis -- "with graphics," he added -- on the investment of a draft bonus such as the $280,000 that the Arizona Diamondbacks gave him for being a 2004 fourth rounder. He was traded to the Yankees for future Hall of Famer Randy Johnson in 2007, and then shipped to the Pirates a year later in the Damaso Marte-Xavier Nady deal.
In eight of his final 11 starts last season, he allowed two earned runs or less. He struck out 51 in his final 70 innings and crafted a 2.82 ERA. He struck out three St. Louis Cardinals on a minimum nine pitches, called (appropriately enough for the North Shore's athletic history) an immaculate inning, on a Sept. 5 night when he struck out 11 ... and still lost.
That's how a guy ties for the team lead in victories at 11-10 in his first full season as a starter.
Yet more is expected from him. From himself.
Kerrigan's changes to Ohlendorf's motion and hands late last season produced results, and Ohlendorf continues to work this spring on a changeup, among other tweaks.
"I feel much more confident about my ability to pitch at the major-league level than I did last year," he said. "And I constantly need to improve. It's going to be a challenge to pick up where I left off. It's a big [factor], to do that."
It was a pitch that brought he and Vilsack together initially. Vilsack threw out the ceremonial first pitch July 1 at PNC Park, and who was behind the plate, rather than a catcher, but Ohlendorf -- who wanted to meet him.
It got that Princeton mind to thinking: agriculture, Washington internship.
He was looking for an excuse to be in Washington with his girlfriend the consultant, and one thing lead to another.
Curtis Ohlendorf, a retired IT manager at the University of Texas library, and Patti Ohlendorf, the school's vice president of legal affairs, raised no dummy. A guy doesn't nearly ace the math portion of the SAT or graduate Princeton with honors as an Operations Research and Financial Engineering major by being merely lucky.
The internship? Well, it beat hanging around Milwaukee on a Tuesday night.
He visited the Animal Plant Inspection Services. He attended a Tribal Leaders Reception. He was invited to a meeting in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House. He went with Vilsack to that elementary-school showing with a fellow Princeton graduate, the first lady.
"I was pretty nervous when I was going to meet her, more nervous than I expected," Ohlendorf said.
The coolest part about his offseason job, he concluded: "Probably having the written reports in the end. I feel like I had done something productive."
NOTES -- Joe Kerrigan said he and the Pirates need to handle a few tired, ailing starters more cautiously in 2010. "Some of it was our fault," the Pirates' pitching coach said Saturday, referring to Paul Maholm's nagging injury last year. "There were a couple of times, we shouldn't have let him pitch with that [left] knee. He tried to pitch with a brace ... no, we got to be smarter. We got to be stubborn." He added that All-Star Zach Duke was less crisp in August and September perhaps due to a heavy workload earlier. ... Delwyn Young and Ryan Church participated in Saturday's session, meaning 60 of 66 Pirates are in camp. The rest join them Tuesday. Church took No. 19 from Neil Walker, who switched to No. 18.
Chuck Finder: cfinder@post-gazette.com.
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First published on February 21, 2010 at 12:00 am
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