Suppan Gets a Home Game

This is where it all started for Jeff Suppan.

Raised in Woodland Hills, a graduate of Encino’s Crespi High and a former local sportswriter, Suppan has a home in Granada Hills and will soon be opening a restaurant in the San Fernando Valley.

But today, he certainly won’t be this area’s favorite son. Nobody waving a Dodger blue rally towel will want this local boy to make good.

Suppan, a St. Louis Cardinal right-hander, will be on the mound at Dodger Stadium for Game 4 of the division series against the Dodgers, trying to kill the renewed hope ignited by the arm and spirit of Jose Lima on Saturday night.

Down 2-0 in the best-of-five series to a team that won a major league-high 105 regular-season games, the Dodgers pulled out a 4-0 victory.

If Suppan, who will be opposed by Dodger left-hander Odalis Perez, can’t wrap up the series today, it will go back to St. Louis on Monday for the deciding game.

So much for a relaxing weekend back home.

But Suppan isn’t complaining.

“It’s very exciting ... growing up here in the San Fernando Valley,” Suppan said, “getting an opportunity like this to pitch.”

While Suppan would have preferred to be pitching in the next round, the National League championship series, he’s thrilled just to be throwing his first postseason pitches at the end of his first decade in the big leagues.

Suppan, 29, began his career with the Boston Red Sox, and also pitched for the Arizona Diamondbacks, Kansas City Royals and Pittsburgh Pirates before briefly returning to Boston for last season’s stretch run.

Yet in all that time, Suppan, who signed with the Cardinals as a free agent in the off-season, has never been in a postseason game. He’s coming off his best season, a career-high 16 wins, along with nine losses, the victories including 10 straight on the road.

Perez is all too familiar with the postseason. The starter in Game 1 of this series, he lasted only 2 2/3 innings at Busch Stadium, pulled after giving up six runs, including three of the five Cardinal homers hit that day.

That leaves Perez with an astronomical 20.25 earned-run average for this postseason.

Afterward, it was theorized that Perez had been tipping his pitches.

“We addressed the idea ... so he’s worked on that a little bit,” Dodger pitching coach Jim Colborn said.

“But it’s kind of hard to make big changes this quick.”

Though the situation might prove to be disastrous for the Dodgers, Colborn managed to find some humor in it, saying Perez might have tipped off the batters by muttering the nature of the pitch he was about to throw.

Reminded that the native of the Dominican Republic would have been calling out the pitches in Spanish, Colborn said, “Yeah, so you’d have to have someone smart enough to realize it was in Spanish. That’s why not all of the hitters got it.”

Talking to hitters and other athletes was one of Suppan’s obligations back in the days when he briefly worked for the Los Angeles Daily News as a sportswriter.

“I got $10 a night,” he said, “and thought that was great money.”

Suppan soon moved on as his own athletic career intensified. He would attend games at Dodger Stadium several times a year, but never drove there himself.

So last month, when he decided to stay in Granada Hills for the Cardinals’ three-game series against the Dodgers, Suppan realized he needed directions for driving to and from the stadium.

He called Dodger catcher Brent Mayne, a former teammate in Kansas City.

Mayne drew Suppan a detailed map.

Right about now, Mayne is probably wishing he had given Suppan the wrong directions.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

The Suppan File

A look at today’s St. Louis starter, Jeff Suppan, who is making his postseason debut:

* Age: 29

* Height/weight: 6-2, 220

* High school: Encino Crespi

* Throws/bats: Right/right

2004 STATISTICS

* Record...16-9 (31 games started)

* Innings pitched...188

* Hits...192

* Earned runs...87

* Home runs...25

* Walks...65

* Strikeouts...110

* Strikeouts/9 inn....5.27

* ERA...4.16