Bulls catcher shuns comparisons

DURHAM -- The Durham Bulls aren't exactly shunning their cinematic past. In the display window of their store at Durham Bulls Athletic Park hangs a poster of that actor who played the main character in that movie about minor league baseball.

He who must not be named, as far as current player Mike DiFelice is concerned.

"Whatever you do, I wouldn't bring up Crash Davis," warns Matt DeMargel, the Bulls' director of media relations.

Twenty years after the release of "Bull Durham," the team roster happens to include a 39-year-old player, DiFelice, who bears some similarities to the Kevin Costner character.

Plays for Bulls. Check.

A catcher. Check.

Nearing end of career. Check.

Mentors young pitching prospect. Check.

Taken alone, these facts add up to an overly simplistic image of a veteran who's not really all that much like Crash Davis, who's spent almost as much of his 18-year professional career in the major leagues as he has in the minors, who's only one step away with the Triple-A Bulls (the movie Bulls were Class A), who's got no Annie Savoy but a wife and three daughters living in Palm Harbor, Fla.

So, why is he here?

"Because I love it, plain and simple," DiFelice says of baseball.

"We had a similar situation four years ago with Pat Borders, who was kind of in the same role as Mike DiFelice -- he was in his later 30s," Bulls general manager Mike Birling says. "Tampa really likes these veteran catchers that are able to work with their young pitchers."

DiFelice, who spent most of last season in Triple-A, signed as a free agent in January with the Tampa Bay Rays, the Bulls' parent club.

"Mike knew coming in that his role would be as an emergency catcher at the major league level," says Gerry Hunsicker, senior vice president of baseball operations for the Rays. "He seemed not only content with that but seemed very interested in playing the role of a mentor to the young catchers and pitchers at the minor league level."

That said, DiFelice certainly had his own ambitions.

"Every year, he thinks, well, if he doesn't play well in spring training, then he'll give it up," says his wife, Tish, "but then he just has a better spring year after year. And he keeps going, you know?"

DiFelice batted .389 in 10 exhibition games, so it came as a "huge surprise" when he was sent down to Durham, Tish says. Rather than walk away, her husband decided to make the best of it.

"The first day when he came here, he said, 'Don't anyone ever call me 'Crash,' and so I always call him Crash," Tish DiFelice says. "He's like, 'I just told all the guys not to call me Crash,' and I'm like, 'Yeah, but I'm your wife. I can call you Crash.' We have a very sarcastic relationship."

Though Hunsicker says the Rays haven't assigned DiFelice to catch anyone in particular, he's starting about two games a week -- those pitched by 24-year-old Mitch Talbot and 22-year-old Wade Davis, two of the Rays' better young arms.

Before it is brought up, manager Charlie Montoyo quickly dismisses the obvious comparison.

"Don't use that word 'Crash Davis,' 'cause he don't like that," Montoyo says of DiFelice.

Talbot describes himself as a "pretty complicated pitcher" who's sometimes inclined to change his mind and shake off the catcher's sign for a certain pitch, Nuke LaLoosh-like. DiFelice's approach with Talbot is quite basic: throw strikes. Get ahead in the count.

"Some of them tend to think too much," Birling, the Bulls' GM, says of pitching prospects, "and when you have a guy like Mike DiFelice who has caught so many games in the big leagues, whatever finger he puts down -- fastball, curveball, changeup, whatever -- there's no need to shake him off, because he understands how to get hitters out."