Kevin Tolar was 29 years old and had signed with Detroit in 2000 when he had the nose-to-nose confrontation with pitching coach Steve McCatty that he credits with reviving his career.
McCatty basically challenged Tolar to change his approach and the Mosley graduate responded. The results were immediate.
“It opened my eyes and I swallowed my pride and listened,” Tolar said.
At Double-A Jacksonville of the Southern League Tolar threw 17.1 innings in nine games allowing 7 hits and 1 earned run with 8 walks and 19 strikeouts. His ERA was 0.52.
That earned a promotion to Triple-A Toledo. In 33 games in the International League he again prospered with a 4-2 record, 3.30 ERA, 37 hits and 42 strikeouts in 46.1 innings.
In September he finally got the call that was 11 years in the dialing. The Tigers were bringing him up.
“It actually was a disappointment,” Tolar summed up the experience, which begs some explanation.
“It took me so many years to get there. I had it built up in my brain, and after the coaches got done messing with me …it was like, ‘Where is the emotion I’m supposed to be feeling?’ I walked around the corner and that’s when the emotion hit me — the tears, the chill bumps, the hours I’d put in.”
The totality of the episode only was gathering itself. His wife’s grandfather had given him an older-model car to use during the season in Toledo, and when Tolar prepared to leave for the two-hour drive to Detroit he discovered it was broken down in the parking lot.
He had to find someone to give him a lift to get a rental car for the next leg of his journey, coincidentally the first year the Tigers were housed in Comerica Field.
“I get there and go to the field and it was a big letdown.”
When Tolar walked in the clubhouse, he said, two of the team’s big-name players were fighting in one corner.
“I mean one had the other one up against the wall by a forearm under the throat and just nailed him. My immediate realization was that these are just guys. It took some of the mystique out of it and brought me back to reality. I walked out on the field and it’s, ‘OK, this is just a bigger ballpark.’ ”
Tolar was used in limited duty in five games by the Tigers and pitched well. His totals were 3 innings, 1 hit, 1 earned run, 1 walk and 3 strikeouts.
That set the stage for spring training in 2001 which turned out to be one of the defining moments of his professional career. Tolar said he had an excellent spring and it was two days before the Tigers broke camp to head north. There was a strong possibility he was going with them.
It is his life and his career, so it’s his story:
“I was in the clubhouse calling my wife trying to find out where she was because it would be the last time I could see the kids for a while. When I walked out the bullpen coach was yelling for me to hurry up and get loose. It was only the fourth inning and Jeff Weaver was scheduled to go six. I had like eight tosses in the pen and (manager Phil) Garner headed to the mound. He put Weaver in left field and wanted me to face (Rafael) Palmeiro with the bases loaded and then he was going to bring Weaver back in.
“I walked Palmeiro. I was told the next morning after being told I was being sent down to Triple-A that all I had to do was throw strikes and I made the team. Even if Palmeiro had hit a grand slam. The manager, Garner, had said the night before in the meetings that he had to have a lefty strike thrower. Talk about being distracted and not ready. The most important one hitter I ever had to face and my mind was elsewhere and I didn’t even get my arm fully loose. The old saying you gotta be at the right place at the right time and at that moment get the job done. Well I was at the right place and right time for one hitter and I didn’t get it done.
“I have thought 10,000 times at least what would have happened in my career if I wouldn’t have walked Palmeiro in that last spring training game. If I would have made the team I would have gotten the ball on a regular basis and been able to truly find out if I belonged and if I could have stayed. I did get called up a couple times that year, both as an insurance policy knowing it was going to be temporary. It is very hard to make it to the big leagues, and then twice as hard to stay.
“It’s like (Bay grad Tom “Tombo” Martin). He had a great year in winter ball and his Triple-A pitching coach got called up to the big leagues. The last half of spring training he pitched better than he ever had and had a real good year. And one good year buys you two or three more. For me, it came down to one hitter to make the ballclub.”
It should be noted that Palmeiro was a perennial all-star at the time. Not coincidentally, he wound up with 569 career home runs, testified before Congress that he’d never used steroids and tested positive for performance enhancing drugs in 2005.
Tolar would see him again two years later, but not before spending all of 2002 back in the minors in his third stint with the Pirates. Instead of having an opportunity for a breakthrough season which could have given him leverage to “buy” a couple more years in the major leagues, walking Palmeiro bought Tolar a one-way ticket to Nashville in Triple-A.
He had an outstanding season with a 6-1 record and 2.54 ERA. Tolar mixed in seven starts in 44 games and wound up with 82 strikeouts and 27 walks in 78 innings against 66 hits allowed.
Tolar signed with Boston in 2003, again excelled in Triple-A at Pawtucket (5-1, 2.27 ERA, more strikeouts than innings pitched) and was called up when left-handed reliever Alan Embree had arm trouble.
After a few good outings with the Red Sox came defining moment No. 2. Again in his words:
“I pitched fantastic at home, but had a little trouble when we went to Texas. The wind was blowing out and we were getting beat. The mound there is like a mountain and was steeply sloped. I allowed a couple runners to get on — I think a walk and ground-ball single. Guess who was next? Rafael Palmeiro.
“He hit a 2-2 pitch four rows from the top of the second deck. It almost left the stadium. Juan Gonzalez was next. After throwing him six consecutive changeups he took my 92 mph fastball and almost took my head off. I remember thinking just before the sixth changeup, this is more changeups than I have thrown all year. I probably should have not shaken off the catcher (current Tigers manager Brad Ausmus) and thrown a seventh changeup. A week or so later I was sent down to Triple-A. By the way, I was taken out after Gonzalez’s hit. The very first pitch my relief threw landed 450 feet away making it four earned runs. I went from a 0.00 ERA to 6.75.”
Tolar said he was unable to recall too many at-bats, but the experience of pitching in the majors is etched into his persona.
“In Boston it was so close-knit. The chemistry was unbelievable,” he said. “The coolest thing was in Yankee Stadium when I punched out (Jorge) Posada and then (Tino Martinez). It was 3-up, 3-down. I never cared about who I was facing. It was the outside stuff that bothered me.
“I knew I belonged there so much that I tried to control it. Some guys jumped me in the minor leagues and were playing in the big leagues when they couldn’t buy their way into a ballgame in Triple-A. I sabotaged myself in some regards.”
What he does remember is that in parts of the three years he pitched in the major leagues every one of the inherited runners he left on base at the time of his departure wound up scoring.
“Nobody ever saved a single run,” he said. “They all scored.”
Tolar was a fixture in spring training camps for nearly a decade, even though he’d never again get a call-up after his time with the Red Sox. He signed with the Twins in 2004, was traded to the Cubs in spring training and spent the entire season in Triple-A. He made the all-star team.
For most of his career he was regularly tested in the minors for PEDs, even during the era that Major League Baseball was turning a blind eye to steroids and there was no mandatory testing at the highest level.
“It’s not very often talked about but it’s expected” that some use, Tolar said. “A guy comes back and he’s 30 pounds heavier …. Hmmmm. Were there a few guys a little open about it? Yeah, but not many. I’m not going to throw anybody under the bus, but people would be very surprised if they knew the ones that were actually doing it.
“I’m human. I don’t want what I worked so hard for taken from me. I can’t say that I wouldn’t. Many of the guys play the game for the right reasons. It’s a tough subject. I think with baseball you have to love it to be any good at it.”
Kevin Tolar was 34 years old and in his 17th season of professional baseball in 2005 when he signed with Arizona. Again, he said, he made it through to the final game of spring training before being told he wasn’t going to make the team. However, he was informed before that day’s game that a team in Japan was about to purchase his contract.
Defining moment No. 3:
“I was excited because Japan is big money ($800,000) and the contract is guaranteed once I sign it. I went out and had a good outing, however, I pulled my hamstring on the third-to-last pitch. I tried to hide it, but at that level they see everything. Japan decided to go to their second choice, a guy from the Seattle organization. I went to Triple-A.”
Tolar said he had an “out” in his contract with the Diamondbacks if he wasn’t promoted to the parent club by July 1. He decided to take it and signed with Toronto.
“I pitched OK, but got hit on the index finger of my pitching hand with a line drive with the Triple-A playoffs starting in a week. I pitched, but I wasn’t overly effective.
“Little did I know that was the last time I would play in the U.S.”
Next: In Part IV, Winter Ball and traveling the world