Rocker turns down the volume on visit to Miss. Gulf Coast
BY JIM MASHEK
Knight Ridder Newspapers

LONG BEACH, Miss. - John Rocker is standing on a ladder and knocking down drywall. He's still a big, strapping guy, and he's got a tire iron in his hands.

I'm not sure what to think.

Rocker, the former Atlanta Braves closer, is working with a church volunteer group on the Coast. He steps off the ladder, looks me straight in the eye and shakes my hand. Sure, he'll answer some questions. His publicist had notified media outlets throughout South Mississippi that he was going to be in town.

Make no mistake, though. He's here to work, to lend a hand. It was Rocker's first trip to the Coast since the landfall of Hurricane Katrina. He'd been here before. You get the impression he plans to come back.

"I'd heard all the stories and stuff. But to see it firsthand, it's shocking," Rocker said softly. "I'd been here several times and I knew most of the landmarks on U.S. 90. It's a little disheartening, to know just how much time and effort that it's going to take into building this place back."

Rocker, 31, was the most vilified man in Major League Baseball just a few years ago. He had an unbelievable season in 1999, striking out 104 batters in just 72 1/3 innings on the mound. He was fiery, he was flamboyant. Then he gave that fateful interview to Sports Illustrated's Jeff Pearlman, when Rocker insulted just about every ethnic and minority group known to man, not to mention New York City.

His life turned upside down.

Rocker had another solid season in 2000, but he had a polarizing presence in the Braves' clubhouse. He was traded to the Cleveland Indians the next year, and rotator cuff surgery would later short-circuit his career. He tried a comeback with the independent league Long Island (N.Y.) Ducks last year - an ironic twist, to say the least - but no longer had the velocity that made him such an effective left-handed pitcher.

"I might have been able to come back as a situational pitcher, throw the ball 86, 88 mph against left-handed hitters," Rocker said. "I was hitting 95 and higher (with the Braves). I would have been beating my head against the wall."

Rocker was knocking down some more drywall when he was asked about Barry Bonds' chase of Babe Ruth and ultimately Hank Aaron as baseball's all-time home runs leader.

"Barry would just like to be left alone," Rocker said. "He's one of those lone wolf kind of guys ... I hope Barry breaks every record out there."

Rocker, too, is one of those lone wolf kind of guys. But talk to some of his friends from the Lake Oconee Presbyterian Church, which is working with Camp Hope and First Presbyterian in Gulfport, and you get the idea that there's more to the man who used to make a mad dash from the bullpen to the pitcher's mound at Atlanta's Turner Field.  (Dodging projectiles, if it happened to take place at Shea Stadium.)  "We feel like the country's forgotten what's going on here," James Lakeman said. "John jumped right on board."  Fitness model Alicia Marie, who dabbles as a part-time sportswriter in New York, agreed.

"I was doing a story on controversial athletes, and before I met John, I was sure I was going to loathe him," she said. "Hey, I'm from New York! He's very opinionated. But when I met him, he was such a sweetheart. A real teddy bear."

The 6-foot-4, 225-pound "teddy bear" started a real estate development business in Dothan, Ala., with some friends last year, and he recognizes the endless possibilities on the Coast on that front. For the moment, though, he's thinking about little more than an elderly woman's gutted home on West Alicia Street.

"If you live in the Southeast," Rocker said, "and you can afford a plane ticket to Biloxi, it would mean a lot to somebody putting their life back together. I'm just one person, but whatever I can do, I'll do it."