Jose Guillen's message has been as consistent as the smile that has rarely left his face since he walked into spring training with the Washington Nationals more than a month ago. "Leave all the negative stuff about Jose Guillen in the past," he said Monday. "Just let it fly."
Manager Frank Robinson has noticed the smile, particularly when he walks past his new right fielder in the clubhouse and feels a poke in his ribs or hears a joke at his expense. "I don't know how his personality was before," Robinson said. "Didn't ask. Don't care. But he has kind of fit in like the rest of the guys around here -- very open and light and enjoyable."
But just as spring training isn't about making premature judgments on performance and results, there are others who are taking a wait-and-see approach with Guillen and his attitude. Jose Rijo knew Guillen a dozen years ago, when Guillen was a teenager growing up in the sprawling Dominican city of San Cristobal, where sugarcane, plantains and baseball players are the primary crops. Rijo knew Guillen in 2002, when Rijo was finishing a comeback with the Cincinnati Reds and Guillen was trying to revive his itinerant career. And Rijo knows that, even though everything has gone smoothly during Guillen's first spring training with the Nationals, there is always work to do with him. Always.
"He has more talent than almost any player I've ever played with," Rijo said Monday. "He's in my top five ability-wise. But then again, he's not in the top 1,000 on my list of behavior."
It is the issue that will dog Guillen throughout this, the first season of what he believes will be the true U-turn, both on and off the field. Rijo, a special assistant to Nationals General Manager Jim Bowden, believes it will be, too. But he is cautious in his assessment because he knows the background inside and out. Take the situation that Guillen feels now unfairly defines him: his season-ending suspension in Anaheim last September, one that resulted from a tirade after Angels Manager Mike Scioscia removed him for a pinch runner.
"He's their best player, or one of them," Rijo said. "But he don't understand that the manager is the boss. He's got to do his job the best way he can go about it. If the manager thinks he's got to pinch-run for him, he's got to understand what's going to happen.
"The little things in life that make you a better person, he doesn't understand them yet. He hasn't started doing all of them yet. Will he start doing them? Yes, he will. But right now, he hasn't proven he can do them all the time."
Rijo, who came to the United States when he was just 15 and was in the major leagues at 19, believes he has evidence that Guillen's behavior -- and thus, his play -- will improve. Growing up in the Dominican Republic, in a place like San Cristobal, is in no way comparable to being raised in the U.S., Rijo said. The education is different. The nutrition is different. The attitudes are different.
"I don't think it's fair to compare a Dominican kid at 18 to an American kid at 18," Rijo said. "Dominican kids aren't as educated. They're not as mature. They come on later, after they learn."
The fields on which Rijo and Guillen groomed their games weren't groomed at all. Patches of grass here and there. Horses and cows roamed in what passed for the outfield. A walkway ran right through the middle, so games had to be stopped for passersby.
"We called them a baseball field," Rijo said, "because we had no other name for them."
All of those things, Rijo said, conspire against Dominicans' development at what Americans might consider a normal rate. Rijo said he saw it with Sammy Sosa, one of the Dominican Republic's greatest players who made what Rijo called "a huge change" in his attitude from his younger days. Other Dominican stars -- George Bell, Joaquin Andujar, Mario Soto -- developed late as well. All were known for emotional outbursts early in their careers. Rijo believes Guillen, 28, is in the process of doing the same. But it is a process. "He's getting there," Rijo said. "He's doing better, but he's still learning."
To outsiders, Guillen appears to fit nicely in the Nationals' clubhouse. He arrives at Space Coast Stadium when the parking lot is nearly empty, and is usually done with his one-hour workout by 9 a.m., when his teammates are just pulling on their spikes. He runs and lifts weights every morning. He told Kazuhiko Tomooka, the strength and conditioning specialist, during the offseason that he wanted to lose 10 pounds, so he could play at 215. "He has worked as hard as anybody," Tomooka said.
He isn't loud or disruptive. He frequently sits in small groups of teammates, chatting amiably.
"We got a great chemistry going here," Guillen said. "One thing all these guys are going to get from me: They're going to get the type of player that's going to come here and work hard, play every day, play through some tough injuries. . . . If it happens, they're going to get a great guy. Hopefully, we get no stuff going on throughout the season, and we can move forward."
On Monday, Guillen came up in the second inning against tough Florida Marlins righty Josh Beckett and doubled down the right field line, then scored in the Nationals' 1-0 victory. He singled in his only other at-bat, raising his spring average to .286, his slugging percentage to .500. He considers those modest numbers. When the season begins, "I'll be ready. It's just spring training."
If he is ready -- physically, mentally, psychologically, emotionally, all of it -- it will mean a potent addition to the Nationals' lineup, in which he will bat fourth. He is due to make $3.5 million this season. There is a club option for 2006 at $4 million.
"Trust me," Guillen said. "It's not going to be one year. It's going to be for many years to come."
