John Kruk was a hit for the 1993 Phillies and ‘solid gold’ for David Letterman on late night TV

No one disliked extra innings more than John Kruk, which explains why he had little interest in the limo that was scheduled to take him in the morning to New York City. The Phillies were in the midst of a magical season — they spent every day of 1993 in first place after finishing last the year before — and Kruk could’ve used some rest after the 152nd game of the season lasted 12 innings and nearly four hours.

Kruk told a Phillies public relations staffer that he wasn’t going to New York. Tell David Letterman, then the king of late night TV, to find a new guest.

“She’s like, ‘Are you kidding me? It’s David Letterman,’ ” said Kruk, who had already been on the show a year earlier. “Why do I care?”

The Phillies were a sensation that summer as a group of castoffs — “a bunch of gypsies, tramps, and thieves,” Darren Daulton said — captured the hearts of the city on their way to winning the National League pennant. Everyone wanted a piece, even Letterman.

Baseball was still the national pastime and Kruk was one of the game’s characters. He routinely hit among the league leaders but was known as much for his mullet, portly figure, and the witty things he said to reporters. Kruk was late-night gold. So he obliged and spent his day off in New York.

Now tell me how this happens …You’re leading both leagues in batting, yet the Phillies are in last place?

Although Kruk is currently batting a .353 average, he says somehow “other teams score more than we do. We’re just not too good.” When I asked him whether he was optimistic about the rest of the season, he laughed and said, ‘Yeah. I think we’ll be able to suck it up and finish out the season.” — David Letterman’s show notes from producer Daniel Kellison; July 23, 1992

Steely Dan stopped by Veterans Stadium in September 1993 and hung with the Phils before a gig at the Spectrum. They heard Kruk was headed to Letterman and told him he should wear one of their band’s T-shirts. Sure, Kruk said. But he would have to match it with a hat from Sawyer Brown, the country band he had long been buddies with.

“I remember when I walked in and David Letterman was like, ‘Thank you for getting dressed up for this.’ This kind of is dressed up, really,” Kruk said. “They said be comfortable. I was pretty comfortable in jeans or a T-shirt.”

‘He thought I worked there’

Kruk played that summer in his third straight All-Star Game and was the leading hitter for the red-hot Phils. But he didn’t look like a star athlete as he sat in Letterman’s green room in a cap and T-shirt alongside Mike Myers, who dressed a month later as a Phillies player in a skit on Saturday Night Live.

“He tells me to get him something,” Kruk said. “I’m like, ‘Who’s he talking to?’ He said, ‘Hey, didn’t you hear me?’ I’m looking around and finally I said, ‘Who the heck are you talking to?’ He thought I worked there. … I didn’t look like a professional baseball player. I looked more like a truck driver. My manager in Triple-A used to call me that. He used to call me an Alabama truck driver. Never lived in Alabama, never been to Alabama at that point in my life.”

It was hard to tell then and it’s easy to forget 30 years later that Kruk was one of baseball’s premier hitters. He hit .309 over six seasons with the Phillies and he finished 1992 with the NL’s third-best batting average and had the eighth-best mark in 1993. He held his own with stars like Tony Gwynn, Barry Bonds and Gary Sheffield. Kruk was much more than a guy with a mullet who could time a joke.

“It started young for me,” Kruk said of how he learned to swing.

Kruk had three older brothers and each of them were right-handed. So the older Kruks didn’t have to worry about their balls landing in Mom’s vegetable garden when they played baseball in the yard. But the younger brother’s left-hand swing often yielded line drives into the corn, green beans, and tomatoes that were growing in right field.

“One of my idiot brothers would run in there and try to catch it,” Kruk said. “I mean, she would go ballistic. I had to learn to hit the ball to left field because they were tired of getting yelled at and I was tired of getting my ass beat by her. I had to learn to hit the ball the other way. That was the start of learning my swing.”

Kruk took the swing with him years later to the minors, where he roomed with Gwynn during rookie ball. A year later, Gwynn was on the cusp of the majors while Kruk learned before spring training that he was on a list of players the Padres planned to release.

“I said, ‘Holy crap. I didn’t realize they made that decision before spring training started,’ ” Kruk said.

He responded with a strong camp and ended it with a triple in his last at-bat.

“I slid into third base,” Kruk said. “Jack Maloof was coaching third and he said, ‘I want to tell you, congratulations.’ I said, ‘For what? Hitting a triple in spring training? He said, ‘No, you’re going to A-ball in Reno with me.’”

Kruk’s career rolled on and another player’s knee injury — “divine intervention,” he said — aided him again. Kruk went to college to play basketball but joined the baseball team when the right fielder blew out his knee playing football. He turned himself into a major league draft pick. In Reno, Kevin McReynolds was limited to being the designated hitter because of a knee injury he suffered in college. They needed an extra outfielder. Kruk got a chance.

“I didn’t get to play a lot,” Kruk said. “Got a few starts here and there. Jack Maloof said to come out early, I want to try something with you. I said ,‘Yeah, whatever.’ I never had a hitting lesson. I didn’t know squat. It was just Tony Gwynn’s approach that he told me: See it, hit it, and run like hell.”

Maloof told him to open up his batting stance and hold his hands where he felt comfortable. It felt good in practice so Maloof told Kruk to use it in the game. Kruk said it looked a bit funny. There’s nothing funny about it, Maloof said, if it works.

‘This might work’

Kruk homered that night to right field, crashing the ball off the building that sat behind the fence. He never pulled a ball like that before, not even the ones that landed in the vegetables.

“I was rounding third and he said, ‘You like that stance now? Yes indeed, I love it,’ ” Kruk said. “That was the first time I thought, ‘This might work.’ I ended up having a good year and that’s when I thought maybe I can play in triple A. Maybe I can play in Double-A. I never thought the big leagues was ever going to be an option.”

And we have some video of President Clinton talking about you during the World Series. …How’d you like playing in that SkyDome in Toronto?

The tape is of Clinton making fun of his hair. He says he thinks it takes a bit of nerve for Clinton to say anything at all after he wasted $200 of taxpayer money for that haircut he got. As for the Toronto Skydome … it’s his new favorite stadium. They’ve got a McDonald’s right inside the park. It used to take the clubhouse kid 30 to 45 minutes to bring back the McDonald’s. In Toronto, you can get it in less than three minutes. — Letterman’s show notes from Kellison; July 21, 1994

Kruk appeared as calm on Letterman as he did in the World Series, when he reached base 15 times in six games. He visited the show four times between 1992 and 1995, becoming a semi-regular on one of TV’s most-watched shows.

“The first time, I was scared,” Kruk said. “My goodness, it’s the David Letterman show. It’s different than standing in front of a bunch of reporters and talking after a game. It was nerve-racking there for a while. It was funny because I didn’t know what to expect the first time. They had me in a dressing room and he came back and talked to me and I thought it was normal. We just sat and BS’d for about five minutes and then someone came over and he said, ‘Wow. He never does that with a guest.’ I was like, ‘Huh? Now I don’t know if I should be more nervous or more relaxed.’ I couldn’t figure it out.”

Letterman, Ellison said, was “at best apathetic to most of our guests.” Comedians worked because they usually came prepared with some bits. But actors were tough because they were used to reading lines, not telling stories. Letterman loved ones like Kruk, who inherited his humor from his father. Moe Kruk was Archie Bunker before Archie Bunker, Kruk said.

Kruk was funny, insightful and self-deprecating with Letterman. He riffed on teammates and himself, carrying on the same way he did in the clubhouse, where he wasn’t afraid to poke himself.

“The John Kruks, the Bob Ueckers,” Kellison said. “That’s gold. It’s solid gold because they’re funnier than comedians and they’re not comedians. Guys like John Kruk made us look good.”

Retirement plan

Ideas of what you’re going to do for work? Hard to believe but maybe movies? Farming — what kind of animals?

It is hard to believe, but he did a call from some guy the other day asking whether he’d like to be the lead actor in a movie. He’s never acted before. What’s the movie about? “It’s a movie about something. Must not be too big of a movie, if he’s asking me to do it. This guy has to be scraping the bottom of the barrel if he wants me to be in it.” John says he’ll consider it “as long as it’s not a drama. I don’t think I’d be any good in a drama.”

As for farming — he’s got a big place in West Virginia. He’s thinking of getting some chickens. Ask if he has any experience with chickens. He’ll tell you his grandmother used to raise them. “She used to cut their heads off and put them under buckets so they wouldn’t run all over the place. I don’t know why we never thought to just put a cinder block on it — actually, maybe my grandmother did think of that, and this was just her way of getting us to sit on the bucket all day.” — Letterman’s pre-show notes from Kellison; Aug. 8, 1995

Kruk thought about retiring after the strike canceled the 1994 World Series. The game had changed, Kruk said. It was too much of a business and he lost his drive. A free agent, Kruk stayed home during spring training in 1995. Teams called but he wasn’t interested. And then Ozzie Guillen — whom he knew since they were starting out together in the minors — called and urged Kruk to join him on the White Sox for one last season.

He returned to the majors that May but his knees were shot. Kruk told Jim Abbott, the team’s top pitcher, that he would just retire if the White Sox traded Abbott. In July, the pitcher was dealt to the Angels.

“I go up to his hotel room, we’re having a couple beers and Jim looks at me and says ‘Are you going to retire?’ ” Kruk said. “I was hoping he didn’t remember, but he did.”

The other White Sox in Abbott’s room said they had to hatch a plan so everyone would remember how Kruk retired. Whatever, Kruk said. They told him he should just call time after his next hit and walk off the field. Kruk was game. He told the manager and general manager his plan and then went 0 for 8 during a series in Boston.

The road trip took the White Sox next to Baltimore, which meant Kruk’s parents could be there as it was a short drive from their West Virginia home.

“I told them the game plan,” Kruk said. “If I get a hit and I’m walking off the field, don’t think there’s anything wrong with me. I’m retiring. Of course, my dad being the man that he is said, ‘Well, get that [expletive] tonight because it’s supposed to be 100 degrees this weekend and I’m not sitting in the heat waiting for you to get another hit.’ There’s some pressure.”

Kruk went hitless in the series opener and wasn’t in the lineup for the second game. He asked Orioles reliever Doug Jones, Kruk’s teammate the year before in Philadelphia, who was pitching Sunday for Baltimore.

“Can you do me a favor and ask him to throw me a cookie so I can get a hit?” Kruk said.

Jones said he would tip his cap from the Orioles dugout before Kruk’s first at-bat if pitcher Scott Erickson agreed. But Jones was nowhere to be found as Kruk walked to the batter’s box.

“I’m on my own and being on my own at that time wasn’t good. It was awful,” Kruk said. “Then I see Jonesey running down the tunnel and he’s tipping his cap. Thank God.”

Kruk dropped a bloop single into left field, reached first, and told first-base coach Ron Jackson that it had been a pleasure to play for him. He was retiring. Jackson was confused, as was Orioles first baseman Rafael Palmeiro. Kruk was hitting .308. Why walk away? He had enough, Kruk said.

The conversation dragged on and Kruk forgot to call time. The next hitter singled. Kruk had to run to second. That’s OK, Kruk said, as he would have a chance to say farewell to Cal Ripken Jr.

That conversation — the guy who crushed it on Letterman liked to talk — dragged, too, and the next batter flied out. The inning was over. Kruk’s career was, too. He just didn’t get his dramatic moment. Kruk walked into the clubhouse and Guillen was waiting with a bottle of Dom Pérignon.

“He poured a glass for him. He poured a glass for me,” Kruk said. “We toasted. ‘Love you brother, keep in touch.’ He went back out to play shortstop and I got back in the car to drive home.”

Kruk watched the final innings of the game at home and heard the White Sox announcers say they saw him limp off the field. They didn’t know about the plan and assumed Kruk injured his hamstring.

“I said, ‘That hamstring is going to be a lot better tomorrow because I’m golfing with my buddies,’ ” Kruk said.

Kruk left a statement with Guillen to hand to the reporters after the game. He thanked the Padres, Phillies and White Sox and laid low for a week. It was soon time to get back to New York.

“Our first guest was one of the best and most beloved players in baseball. A week ago, last Sunday, he decided to hang up his cleats. Making his first public appearance since then, please welcome back our old friend, John Kruk,” — David Letterman, Aug. 8, 1995