Zink

PAWTUCKET — Charlie Zink’s route to McCoy Stadium was as circuitous as one of his fluttering knuckle balls.

California born and bred, Zink grew up a Giants fan and knew nothing of the East Coast, Yankees dynasty, Curse of the Bambino or the bitter Boston-New York rivalry. He was a freshman pitcher for Sacramento City College, hoping to attract Division I scholarship offers, when he received the first call that would change his baseball life.

“I got a call one day to throw in the bullpen for Luis Tiant,” Zink said yesterday in the Pawtucket Red Sox clubhouse. “I didn’t know who he was.”

And why should he have known El Tiante, the mustachioed, cigar-chomping contortionist who pitched the Red Sox to the 1975 World Series? Zink was born in 1979. But his dad remembered the pitcher famous for showing his back to batters during his windup and urged his son to audition for Tiant, baseball coach at NAIA Savannah College of Art and Design at the time. Zink wasn’t thrilled, but went and pitched on the side. Tiant was impressed and offered him a scholarship.

“I didn’t want to go, but my dad talked me into going. I got over there, and it was tough,” Zisk said of his cross-country move for the spring semester in 1999. He didn’t know the culture of the South. The pace of life was slower. He had no clue what to study.

“I jumped around from major to major because I had no idea what to do.”

He eventually adjusted and enjoyed his 2 ½ years in Savannah. Baseball with the Bees was a different story.

“Playing for Tiant was a blast. I checked him out a little bit, and most of the stuff I found was about his crazy motion. He had me work at it a little bit as a pitcher, trying to show my numbers to the hitter, turning my back and showing my numbers. It got me throwing a little harder,” Zink said.

But pitcher and coach also clashed a bit because of a difference in philosophy.

“He had grown up in a different time when they didn’t lift weights very much. I was on a weight program. You do a certain amount of lifting. When I went there it was different. He was trying to get us not to do that and do what he did, so we butted heads a little bit. It was just insane playing for him. His son was the assistant coach and his other son was our strength and conditioning coach. It was a little family thing. We’d go play golf all the time. It was a blast.”

Zink pitched three seasons for the Bees and compiled a 9-17 record with a 3.76 ERA in 35 games. He struck out 263 batters, a school record, and in 2000 set Savannah records for strikeouts in a game (14) and season (105). He was one of the best pitchers in the Florida Sun Conference, but nobody went to games to see him throw.

Zink thought his baseball career was over after the 2001 season. He played for an independent team for two weeks, didn’t like it and quit. He returned to Savannah that fall to finish his five-year master’s degree program, play golf and study for the Law School Admission Test. Then he got the second call that changed his baseball life. Tiant had left Savannah after the ’01 season and was working for the Red Sox. They wanted to see Zink pitch.

The Red Sox wanted to see Zink throw against competition. He told them he would show up when his quarter was over, which was with two weeks left in spring training.

“I missed three weeks of camp, showed up, didn’t give up any hits or runs in six or seven innings. They signed me the final day,” he said.

Zink spent the 2002 season with Augusta and Sarasota. Warming up in the bullpen one day, his catcher, the team trainer, asked to see the knuckleball that he threw only playing catch.

“It hit him in the face, split his eye open, and that was it. I was a knuckleballer,” he said.

For the rest of that season he used the knuckler only when he had two strikes on a batter, but he threw the pitch regularly in 2003 and was a smashing success. He won 10 games, was the Red Sox minor-league pitcher of the year with Sarasota and finished the season with AA Portland. The 2004 season, however, was a learning experience. He was not in shape, developed tendonitis in his right shoulder, spent time on the disabled list and was 1-10 between Portland and Sarasota.

Zink learned his lesson about conditioning and bounced back in 2005. Starting with that season, he is 33-17 for Portland and Pawtucket. He won 11 games last year, third among Red Sox minor-leaguers, and is 2-1 in five starts this season. He threw six innings against Syracuse yesterday, scattering nine hits. He didn’t walk anybody, and 63 of his 83 pitches were strikes.

Zink will turn 29 in August and says he is ready for the big leagues. He would prefer the next step be to Boston, now that he knows the organization and appreciates the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry. But if Tim Wakefield, Boston’s resident knuckleballer, keeps throwing, Zink will welcome an opportunity elsewhere.

“It’s a business,” he said.

A business he is in because he answered a call one day from Luis Tiant.

mszostak@projo.com