05/07/2002 - Updated 08:06 PM ET

Baseball Weekly cover report

Pena, Johnson must grow up under the glare

By Seth Livingstone, USA TODAY Baseball Weekly

Baseball Weekly Carlos Pena, left, and Nick Johnson are two of baseball's top rookies.

NEW YORK — CRANKING A GAME-WINNING home run in the ninth inning of the season's second game — against the team that had just traded him — that was pretty cool for Oakland A's rookie Carlos Pena.

But even that fairy tale paled next to last week's experience when Pena simultaneously played his first game at Yankee Stadium and his first big-league game in front of his parents, who risked everything by moving the family from the Dominican Republic to the United States 10 years ago.

Pena, a few days from his 24th birthday, almost always sports an infectious smile, but he was beaming on this night. "This is definitely a special night for me and my family. It's definitely amazing, to think they're here watching me and I'm standing on the same spot where Babe Ruth stood," he says.

Before that same game, another rookie first baseman pondered baseball history in the Bronx. Baby-faced Nick Johnson was wondering what Yankees-past had hung their jerseys in the locker that was now his, along the back wall of the New York clubhouse.

"I know that one was Thurman Munson's," says Johnson, pointing across the room to locker No. 15, preserved as a memorial to the late Yankees catcher. "That's the best thing about wearing a Yankees uniform — all the great players who've played here. You're in the same place they were. That's awesome."

Baseball legends pass on. Some retire, some are traded. Inevitably, the torch is passed to young stars with special talents all their own. Nearly every team has a rookie hoping to make a dramatic impact in 2002, but none have been thrust under the microscope like Pena — who replaced Jason Giambi at first base in Oakland — and Johnson — who is on the high-profile Yankees.

The A's traded for Pena after losing their most productive offensive player and clubhouse leader to free agency. All Pena did was respond in April with seven home runs (three more than Giambi) and 16 RBI (two more than Giambi).

"I really don't invest energy thinking about it," Pena says. "Replacing Giambi doesn't cross my mind. I think about the things I need to focus on — having good at-bats, playing good defense, playing hard. Everything else is going to be a distraction to me."

Johnson, called upon to help replace the left-handed bats of Paul O'Neill and Tino Martinez in the Yankees' lineup, has been limited to DH duty by Giambi's arrival in New York.

"I love playing first base, but he (Giambi) is a great player, so you make the adjustment," says Johnson, two days after delivering a game-winning, ninth-inning double in Seattle. "I can't complain. I'm in the big leagues with the Yankees."

THE LAST DAY OF APRIL turned into a cold, soggy, miserable night in the Bronx for the A's. They spotted the Yanks a six-run lead in the first inning, waited nearly two hours through a rain delay and lost 8-2.

Pena arrived at Yankee Stadium in lightweight workout attire and a gray baseball cap. Though batting practice had been canceled, he quickly dressed for the elements in a green turtleneck and matching A's ski cap.

"I'm not even outside, but I'm going to wear my warm clothes," he says. "This cold weather is only good when you're about to go to sleep and you can cuddle up. I don't think I'll ever get used to the cold."

Pena, who prefers the tropical climate of his youth, has adapted to more in the last decade than most people do in a lifetime. In 1992, his parents, Felipe and Mery, decided that it would be best for their children to move to the United States. Leaving behind decent jobs and a comfortable home in Santo Domingo, they arrived at the home of a relative in Haverhill, Mass. Felipe, a mechanical engineer, found work as a custodian. Mery, a teacher and accountant, got a job at a nursing home.

Pena was 13 at the time. His infatuation with snow lasted all of 10 minutes. Accustomed to playing baseball year-round, Pena and his siblings sought recreational refuge in the basement of a YMCA, rigging a mattress against the wall to facilitate batting practice.

"We had to be creative," Pena says. "Me, my father and my brothers did what we had to do. We made a workout area out of nothing. We hung a mattress with extra stuffing; we used a hockey net as a screen, and my father used to pitch to us."

A virtual no-name coming out of high school, Pena wrote some 100 colleges looking for a scholarship. He got one response — from Wright State in Ohio. He played there for only one season.

"It was my first year away from home, and it was difficult," he says. "So I made a decision. If this is not going to work out, I'm going to make a move. It was very risky because I had no place to go. I went back to Boston and started working as a mail clerk at Family Bank. Eventually, I went to Northeastern University and talked to the coach, Neil McPhee. He said: 'I know what you did at Wright State. Come out for the team.' I was more or less a walk-on there in '97. Then, I went to the Cape Cod League and that's when things really happened."

Taking advantage of a last-minute cancellation that opened a roster spot, Pena excelled against some of the top college prospects in the country. He led the league in homers and RBI, and won MVP honors.

The rest of his family has enjoyed its own success. Brother Pedro is an infielder at Northeastern, brother Omar is at Old Dominion University, and sister Femaris studies at Boston College and is an intern with the Boston Ballet. Mery has become a certified public accountant, and Felipe went back to school and obtained his master's degree in business administration. Felipe wrote his thesis on the business of baseball, focusing on his son's experiences.

"I'm so proud of him," Pena says. "He had a dream. He had a goal, and he went after it. It didn't matter that he was 58 years old. He still went for his master's degree and got it in English — his second language. That's amazing.

"I talk to my father or my mother, and I get the sense of how proud they are of us. All they really want from us is to do the best we possibly can. There's no way we can possibly pay them back for what they did. All we can do is just be good people. That's why today (at Yankee Stadium) is a very emotional day in our family. It's a way for me to tell them that their sacrifice was worth the effort."

NICK JOHNSON TAKES PRIDE in his bloodlines as well. His mother, Paula, is the older sister of Larry Bowa, five-time All-Star shortstop and now manager of the Phillies.

Baseball talent aside, they are complete opposites. The diminutive Bowa is brash and vocal. Johnson stands 6-3, 227, but is so soft-spoken reporters strain to hear him.

"I think I got that from my dad's side because my mom, she's just like him," says Johnson, who has the hairline of a 20-something Eddie Munster and wears his navy stirrup socks to Orlando Hernandez heights. "I keep things more in. But I've got (that fire) on the inside."

Johnson also has the kind of sweet swing that made him a third-round pick coming out of high school in 1996. He hit .345 at Double-A Norwich in 1999 only to miss all of 2000 with a hand injury. Johnson bounced back last season to bat .256 with 18 homers at Triple-A Columbus, then led the Yanks with five homers in spring training.

"Pressure?" Johnson says. "Not for me. I just want to do well — help out, win ballgames. If you're not swinging well, you just keep working."

Johnson, fighting a sore right knee, never quite found his groove in April.

"We can tell him how good he is, but until he feels it and gets in that batter's box every day and produces, he's not going to be satisfied with himself," Yankees manager Joe Torre says. "It's part of the maturation — what it takes to play here."

If Pena and Johnson have one thing in common, it's selectivity at the plate, an uncommon asset among rookies. Each fits his team's game plan of taking pitchers deep into counts when possible.

Neither is being asked to do more than he can handle. Johnson hit his fourth home run of the season May 3 but was still looking to improve his .213 average.

"He just needs to play," Torre says. "Sometimes he gets a little too selective and winds up behind in the count. Up here, that's tough."

"He has a good eye, and there's no panic in his approach," hitting coach Rick Down says. "He's comfortable with no strikes or two strikes. He's up there with an idea of what he's looking for. We want to make sure he stays aggressive at the plate."

Both Pena and Johnson have been batting ninth in the order. Oakland manager Art Howe doesn't plan to move Pena — even if he hits seven more homers in May.

"I told him in the spring that if you're on this team, you're going to hit at the bottom. That's what I've done with all our young players. Hitting ninth on this team is no slight because I feel we're that good, top to bottom."

"It definitely does take the heat off," says Pena, who had been blocked behind first baseman Rafael Palmeiro in Texas. "They're saying, 'Hey, we don't expect you to drive in runs. We don't expect you to hit home runs.' All I want to do is contribute, if it means hitting a ground ball back to the pitcher and driving in a run somehow, making a good play in the field, or driving in a run with a sac fly. It doesn't matter."

THIRTY FAMILY MEMBERS and friends were on hand to watch Pena's Yankee Stadium debut. No matter that he went 0-for-3 with a walk, there was a small celebration — complete with mom's fried plantains — back at the hotel.

The big city is a long way from Sacramento, where Pena could have started the season. When he was hitting .153 in spring training, there was serious debate about his readiness to start with Oakland.

"It wasn't a slam-dunk. It was a last-minute decision," Howe says. "He struggled in spring training, offensively, (but) we knew the bat was there. The one thing he brought every day was his glove."

Pena, who committed one error in his first 30 games this season, has no shortage of confidence in his abilities but insists he was taken a tad out of context when he told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram: "In my mind, I think I am good enough to make the Hall of Fame."

"The guys in here were all over me for that," Pena says. "This is what I meant: When we are kids we dream about being astronauts, firefighters, some type of hero. We have no limitations put on us. As we grow older, we stop dreaming, even though inside us we hear that voice saying: 'You can do that. Go for it. Go for it.' I encourage myself to listen to that kid inside me telling me: 'Yes you can. Go for it.'

"Hall of Fame? I don't know what's going to happen, but why am I going to say that it's not? I do know that all I have right now depends on what I'm doing and that it might not be here tomorrow. I don't even know if I'm going to be here tomorrow. I know how fragile all this is. I don't take it for granted. There's no way, ever, that words like that will be coming out of my mouth."

What does come from his mouth — and from Johnson's — are questions. Plenty of them.

"Nick comes and asks me a lot of questions, which is good," says Giambi, whose locker is just to the left of the rookie's. "We're both left-handed hitters, so he'll ask how guys are pitching me or about a guy he's never faced. That's the same thing I did to learn how guys were going to pitch to you.

"I know he's going to be a phenomenal player. He's got great discipline and that's half the battle in this league — to get to where you can hit strikes and work counts. He's well beyond his years when it comes to that."

Pena makes so many inquiries that he's afraid he sometimes bothers his veteran teammates. "No way," David Justice says. "I love Carlos. That's my little brother. Some rookies nowadays come to the big leagues and act like they've been here 10 years and know everything. He's not like that. He really wants to learn.

"One thing I've told him to concentrate on is staying relaxed, not trying to overpower the ball and hit it 700 feet. It must be working. He's definitely the most productive nine-hole hitter in the league."

Johnson still resides in Sacramento, where he grew up emulating left-handed-hitting first basemen Wally Joyner, Mark Grace and John Olerud.

For now, Pena is sharing a five-bedroom house in Walnut Creek, Calif., with four teammates: third baseman Eric Chavez, outfielder Mike Colangelo, and lefties Mark Mulder and Mike Venafro.

"Late in the night all we're doing is playing video games and making fun of each other," Chavez says.

"I've got to know him quite well since spring training," Colangelo says. "He's got that quiet confidence. That's the sign of a great player."

Hall of Fame?

Only time will tell for Pena and for Johnson. But in the first weeks of 2002, they're in the right place to fuel the buzz and get their careers off the ground.