Mark Funderburk

Field Of Dreams This Baseball Season, These Three Menshare Life In The Minor Leagues. But Their Sights Are Set Higher:two In The Future, One In The Past.

August 11, 1985|By Philip Singerman

Mark Funderburk looks like the sound of his name. When the 6-foot-5, 238- pound left fielder for the Orlando Twins steps to the plate, he consumes the batter's box. He overwhelms an opposing pitcher's field of vision, dominating it the way a Kodiak bear, standing on its hind legs next to the dresser, would dominate the landscape of your bedroom. Curling his prodigious body slightly over the plate, he narrows his otherwise wide, expressive eyes, stares intently at the man who is about to try to throw a pitch by him, and rolls his shoulders slightly, a gesture that, given Funderburk's size, is as menacing as a brandished fist. His enormous hands clench and open several times around the handle of his bat in a manner not unlike the wringing of a neck. When he swings, the bat comes around with the speed of a lion-tamer's whip, and if he makes solid contact with the ball, using even half his power -- a semi-Funderburk, as it were -- the ball will clear the fence. If he connects with full power, the sound echoes through the ball park like a rifle shot in a deep canyon, and the ball disappears from the playing field in the time it takes for one collective intake of breath from the crowd. It winds up in places like someone's front yard a half a block from the stadium.

In his previous seasons in the minor leagues, Funderburk, though physically intimidating, was not that frightening to opposing pitchers. True, he could wallop the long ball, but he couldn't hit a curve, he struck out with unfortunate regularity, and he was easily rattled. The Minnesota Twins, who drafted him in the 16th round in 1976, kept him in their farm system until 1982 before releasing him. Kansas City gave him a try in 1983 but let him go in May of that year. The rap on him was that he didn't have the goods to be a big-leaguer.

This season, is different. This season, Funderburk, 28, has returned to Orlando, Minnesota's Southern League farm team, after a season in Mexico and another in Italy, with single-minded determination to finally make it to the major leagues. This season, aware that time is growing short and that he may never get another chance, Funderburk, also called ''Big Bird'' or ''Bird'' by his teammates and O-Twins fans, is hitting the ball better than ever before in his career.

In the past, a .270 batting average, 80 runs batted in and 25 home runs constituted a good year for Funderburk. This season, after 89 games of the Twins' 146-game schedule, he has a batting average of .299, has driven in 87 runs and has a league-leading 26 homers. Now, when he comes to the plate, opposing pitchers quiver. Outfielders, who don't have to be told to move back, glance nervously at the fence behind them, and his teammates in the dugout begin to shout and cheer with as much enthusiasm as the fans in the grandstand. The Southern League's season is divided in half, and in the first half, Orlando finished last in the eastern division. Currently, the Twins are in second place, only a gamebehind Charlotte, N.C., and much of their success has to be credited to Funderburk's bat. ''Bird's just plain hot,'' says Twins catcher Rick Colbert. ''He's carried us. It's as simple as that.''

''I used to be very nervous,'' Funderburk says. ''I used to get upset all the time. Now, things don't bother me the way they did. I used to have a real short fuse. Once, a few years back, I got so mad I chased an umpire into right field. I learned to control myself, and that's helped my game a lot.''

It is late afternoon, a couple of hours before the Twins' game against the Chattanooga Lookouts, and Funderburk is sitting in the Twins' clubhouse under the grandstand at Orlando's Tinker Field. The clubhouse is clean, orderly and air-conditioned, but it's a long way from the spacious opulence of a major-league locker room. Orlando, a double-A team, is two steps from Minnesota, the next one up being the triple-A farm team in Toledo, and the aura in the Orlando clubhouse is distinctly minor-league. Most of the players moving about are in their early 20s, hopeful, expectant and just a little uncertain, without the big-league ballplayer's self-assured swagger. At best only a few of them will make it to the top, and, because of this, there is a vague tension in the room despite the banter and horseplay. All the players want to be someplace else, none more than Funderburk, who almost made it once before.

In 1981, Funderburk was actually called up to Minnesota near the end of the season and played fivegames with the Twins. He didn't feel that was enough of a test, and in 1982, when he was sent back to Orlando instead of Toledo, baseball ceased to be fun for him and he played with little enthusiasm. He felt he had nothing to prove in double-A ball. At the end of the season Minnesota released him.