RETURNING THAMES TAKES GAME BY STORM
Brewers find gem who reinvented himself overseas
Eric Thames walked into the loud Milwaukee Brewers clubhouse after his historic evening and started to strip off his uniform when a stranger approached him at his locker.
It was a representative from Major League Baseball’s drug- testing program.
They didn’t want his bat, the one he used to tie a franchise record by homering in his fifth consecutive game. Only his urine.
“Random, right?” Thames said, laughing. “Guess it comes with the territory, right?”
Ah, nothing like the price of splendid success that has captivated baseball.
After you’ve been exiled to South Korea, spend three years playing for the Korea Baseball Organization, you’re not supposed to return to the globe’s premier baseball circuit and treat it like PlayStation.
Through Monday he was hitting .405 with a major league- leading seven home runs to go with 12 RBI and a 1.000 slugging percentage and a 1.479 on- base- plus- slugging percentage.
“It’s as good as I’ve ever seen anybody be at baseball for a two- week period,” teammate Ryan Braun said. “It’s been incredible.”
The man that Major League Baseball forgot while he was toiling on the other side of the world has returned from Changwon, South Korea, leaving baseball executives scrambling to figure out how they missed on him.
“When we had him, you saw the raw power, the great swing and the work ethic,” said Los Angeles Dodgers vice
president Alex Anthopoulos, the former general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays. “He was very motivated. But you just didn’t know if he could ever put it together offensively.”
Thames, who bounced from the Blue Jays to the Seattle Mariners to the Baltimore Orioles to the Houston Astros before asking for his release after the 2013 season to play for the NC Dinos, put up cartoonish numbers in the Korea Baseball Organization.
He hit .348 with 124 home runs and 379 RBI in three years, and became South Korea’s version of Barry Bonds in 2015 by hitting 47 homers with 140 RBI, stealing 40 bases and winning a Gold Glove and MVP honors.
“I thought the coolest thing in the world was getting more walks than strikeouts,” said Thames, the first 40- 40 player in South Korean baseball history. “But getting on base so much and stealing all of those bases, I was exhausted.”
He was nicknamed “God” by South Korean fans and couldn’t even leave his apartment without admirers running toward him for pictures and an autograph.
It got so crazy that Thames one night was outside a restaurant kissing his date when a fan tapped him on his shoulder.
“I’m like, ‘ Dude, what are you doing?’ ” Thames said. “It’s like Man Law. You don’t do that.”
That level of fame might not arrive in the USA. Still, Thames had trouble grasping what had happened to his life.
Four years ago, he jumped at the chance to play every day and make $ 750,000 in South Korea. It turned into a three- year stint, earning a total of $ 3.75 million.
He has bounced back to the circuit that had no use for him, with a threeyear, $ 16 million Brewers contract.
“I think everybody in the world was surprised they were willing to give me that kind of money, he said. “I came to Milwaukee before I signed, checked it out, and after an hour I knew it was where I wanted to be. I love the Midwest. I love the hospitality of people. And Milwaukee has great beer.”
His first two weeks back in the bigs suggest his new fans will always keep a frosty mug at hand for him.
“Right now, he’s definitely scary every time he swings the bat,” said Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon. “Give it to him, man. He really has made himself into amore dangerous- looking hitter.”
Thames was a free swinger when he left the USA. If it was within 3 feet of the batter’s box, he joked, he was swinging.
In South Korea, he learned discipline. Pitchers there routinely throw no harder than 88 to 91 mph but will make your head spin with an array of split- fingered pitches and breaking balls.
“I had to really bear down in the strike zone and learn how to have plate discipline,” Thames said. “I would have to carry that here because they throw harder and the strike zone is bigger.”
Thames quickly dispelled the theory that pitchers can throw fastballs past him after going three years without anyone lighting up the radar gun in South Korea. Three of his seven homers have come off pitches registering at least 95 mph.
“Velocity is just seeing it,” Thames said. “The body adapts.”
Who knew Thames’ adjustment period would last two months?
“My confidence feels different,” he said. “My swing feels different. My mind feels different. It’s nothing like I felt the first time I was in the big leagues. It’s crazy how life works out, isn’t it?”