According to some baseball fans, all it takes for a left-hander to carve out a 10-year career as a major-league reliever is mediocre ability.
Just don’t tell Sean Spencer that.
The 5-foot-11, 185-pound pitcher said he ideally still would be a professional pitcher.
Instead of possibly participating in a pennant race, Spencer, a 1993 South Kitsap High School graduate, was out Saturday at Trophy Lake Golf & Casting for the annual Benji Olson/Ed Fisher Scholarships Golf Classic.
“It’s a great time,” said Spencer, who lives in Port Orchard with his wife and 15-month-old daughter. “We get a lot of guys from our high-school year coming back to play. It’s a little reunion, so it’s great to come back and play.”
He personally would like to be on the mound, but he never could stay healthy.
Spencer first injured his elbow as a junior in 1996 at the University of Washington and pitched one game that season.
He underwent “Tommy John” surgery, where the ulnar collateral ligament is replaced by another tendon from elsewhere in the body.
Despite that, the Seattle Mariners drafted him in the 40th round that year.
Spencer, 33, fared well his first two seasons in the minors, serving as the team’s closer at Single-A Lancaster (Pa.) and Double-A Orlando (Fla.) while averaging better than a strikeout per inning at both stops.
The trend continued in 1999 at Triple-A Tacoma. He wasn’t the Rainiers’ closer, but he still averaged more than a strikeout per inning and made his Major League debut on May 6 that year.
It didn’t last long.
Spencer, who now is a commercial loan officer at West Sound Bank in Bremerton, allowed four runs in 1 2/3 innings over two games for the Mariners.
That was the end of his stint.
Despite pitching well at Tacoma the following year, Spencer couldn’t find a place with the Mariners, who used just 15 pitchers in addition to one appearance by utility player John Mabry, en route to a 91-71 season.
Seattle traded Spencer and outfielder Terrmel Sledge on Aug. 10 of that year to Montreal for catcher Chris Widger.
Expos manager Felipe Alou used him in eight games and he compiled a 5.40 ERA in 6 2/3 innings.
That was the end of a big-league career during which he fashioned an 8.64 ERA in 10 games.
Spencer said problems with his elbow and shoulder shortened his career.
His velocity, which was in the 88- to 92-mph range when he started in the pros, decreased with age and ailments.
He doesn’t pitch today because, frankly, it hurts too much.
“It was a great time and a great experience,” he said. “It would be nice to still be doing that now, but I had too many injuries.”
Despite that, Spencer wasn’t ready to leave the game after 2000.
He pitched two more seasons in the Expos’ organization before he was released.
The franchise relocated to the nation’s capital in 2005 and was renamed the Nationals.
Even with Spencer’s short tenure in the major leagues, he still marvels over the different atmosphere at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium compared with Seattle.
“It was a weird experience because there really weren’t any fans up there,” he said. “There were maybe 10,000 fans at each game. It wasn’t really a good baseball city.”
While Spencer didn’t pitch as long as he hoped, he retired from the game in 2004 with the most notable experience of his career.
Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos, who is Greek American, decided to help fund a Greek baseball team to compete in the 2004 Olympics in Athens. Spencer had enough lineage to play on the team.
“It probably was better than even being in the big leagues,” Spencer said. “To get a chance to walk out there during the Opening Ceremony, especially being a part of the home town team and hearing everyone yell and scream, was a great experience.”
