Sports

THE PARTY’S OVER FOR IZZY ; WIFE HELPS MET PITCHER GET HIS LIFE TOGETHER

“I just don’t feel like going out anymore. There’s no sense in it. No urge.” JASON ISRINGHAUSEN PORT ST. LUCIE – Jason Isringhausen is a little like the immature-but-innocent pitching phenom in “Bull Durham,” the one played by Tim Robbins and called “Meat” by Kevin Costner. Even Izzy, as he is known here, would have to agree.

“A little bit,” he said with an endearing smile.

But like that character, Isringhausen is growing up and maturing. And he has much better stuff than Meat, who had “ungodly breaking stuff,” as Costner put it in the movie.

No longer a cocky, headstrong kid prone to the most outlandish and self-destructive acts of immaturity, Isringhausen would have to be described now as quiet, professional, just a good guy. At age of 26, Jason Isringhausen finally has settled down and it may be the true beginning of his long-delayed career.

“I’ve changed a lot in the last year,” he said.

That is about the time he started going out with an old college girlfriend, the woman who would help bring him under control. On Jan. 23, Isringhausen married Lorrie Reis, who sells private jets for a living near his home in Brighton, Ill. Now instead of going to a bar, getting hammered and driving home when he shouldn’t, a typical night for Isringhausen now is sitting at home and watching TV, playing video games or reading a mystery novel.

Yes, Izzy does read, probably more than any other member of the team, sometimes sitting with his head buried in his locker before a game with a book in his hands.

“I just don’t feel like going out anymore,” he said. “There’s no sense in it. No urge.”

And what would he have done in the old days?

“Get so blitzed up that I couldn’t see,” he said, “and drive home.”

The old days were scary. A carefree jock who could always do anything at night and then pitch perfectly the next day, Izzy got in a lot of trouble back then, and probably is lucky to be alive.

Once, back in 1993, he got completely trashed, climbed up to a third-story balcony near here and fell off onto his head. He sustained serious injuries, including 30 stitches on his cranium, and a crushed sternum. Paramedics told him if he hadn’t had the benefit of being drunk and relaxed, he might have died that night at the age of 20.

Steve Phillips was the minor-league director back then and woke Izzy up a little by threatening to release him, as a bluff. Although he knew Izzy was a little wild, he never expected anything so severe as drunkenly falling off a building.

“We knew he was Izzy,” Phillips said. “But we didn’t know he was that Izzy.”

Although there would be more incidents, that was when the slow maturing process began, with each incident another notch in his gunbelt of growth. In spring training 1997, while recovering from elbow and shoulder surgery, he foolishly played in a softball league.

Then, after a bad outing in Triple-A, he punched a water cooler and broke his wrist. Thanks partly to experience and partly to Lorrie, those days are over.

“I might still punch it,” he said. “But I’d do it with my left hand.”

Isringhausen has faced more serious dangers, too. In the summer of ’97, doctors told him he had a lump in his chest and that there was a chance it was cancer. Alone in a New York hotel room, a frightened Isringhausen broke into tears for half an hour, and then dealt with it as he had dealt with everything else.

“I went out by myself and got drunk,” he said.

Thankfully, the lump turned out to be tuberculosis, but Isringhausen still had to deal with recovering from that serious disease. Now, if heaven forbid he should face a similar stress, he would not be out alone getting drunk in a Manhattan bar, but home getting loving support from his wife.

Others have noticed his increased maturity and sense of calm. Pitching coach Bob Apodaca said there was trepidation about how Isringhausen would react to the news that, after reconstructive surgery on his elbow over a year ago, he is definitely starting 1999 in Triple-A.

“A few years ago he would have sulked when we told him and then tried to do too much to prove us wrong,” Apodaca said. “But now he just nodded and got to work. I’m so impressed with how he’s handling his workouts.”

Said pitching soulmate Paul Wilson, “Now that he’s married, he knows that the things he does have an impact on someone he loves. He’s definitely grown up, but he’ll always be goofy Izzy to me.”