Paradise Lost: The Craig Monroe Story

Many major league ballplayers tend to follow the same career arc. They struggle to find their way early on, start making the necessary adjustments to big league pitching, mix in a couple of allegations of steroid use, enjoy a prime somewhere between the ages of 27-33, and then slowly trail off over their last couple of seasons before finally hanging it up and making a living off of a slew of $5 bat signings at the Gibraltar Trade Center. This path is about par for the course. Which brings us to our old buddy Craig Monroe, a man that defied this traditional route, creating a unique career all his own.

It's safe to say Monroe was never a "lock" to even make it to The Show. He was drafted by the Rangers in 1995, and proceeded to spend the next several seasons hacking it up in high A ball, displaying occasional power and a consistently inconsistent batting stroke. By the time he finally made his major league debut for the big club in 2001, C-Mo had already been to the dish nearly 3,200 times as a minor leaguer. Not exactly the pedigree of a future star. In the off-season to follow, the Tigers decided to take a flyer on the semi-anonymous Monroe, maybe hoping to catch lightning in a bottle and unleash some of that raw power that just needed a hint (or truckload) of refinement. It didn't take long for the gamble to pay off. Monroe burst onto the scene for the infamous 119-loss '03 Tigers, cracking 23 homers and driving in 70. Perhaps the Tigers' endless search for a legitimate left fielder was finally coming to an end. Craig proved it was no fluke by putting together back-to-back solid seasons again in 2004 and '05. With his maturation in full bloom, it was time for Monroe to take that next step, and the pennant-winning season of 2006 was the perfect setting.

C-Mo was Captain Clutch throughout the summer. He led the team with 28 round-trippers, and many of them were game-changing blasts. His signature moment came in mid-July during a pivotal home clash with the defending champion White Sox. The Tigers were holding a slim lead in the division, and were trailing by one in the 6th with Javier Vazquez cruising on the hill. Monroe sauntered to the plate with the bases jammed and the crowd just begging for a reason to erupt. Vazquez obliged by hanging a slider in C-Mo's wheelhouse, and the rest was history. He put that classic whip-around swing on the rawhide, and sent it screaming into the left field bleachers. The fans at Comerica went berserk and Monroe delivered an ultra-rare curtain call to the home fans. It was almost like we didn't know how to react. Curtain calls weren't exactly "the norm" during the old glory days of Luis Polonia, Billy McMillon, and Jose "I am the human equivalent to rice pilaf" Macias. Monroe had found the perfect moment to collect his first ever grand slam, while putting his own personal stamp on this historic Tigers' season in the process.

(Sidenote: Amazingly enough, that shot by Monroe came during one of his biggest power outages of the season. He went to the plate 71 times during that stretch, and he only muscled the ball out of the park one time. Thankfully, he saved that big swing for a very big moment.)

Monroe's playoff performance that autumn was more or less a metaphor for his entire career. He bopped five homers in 12 games, the most meaningful one coming off of Jeff Weaver in the opening frame of Game 2, the only Tigers victory of the series. But like many of the Bengal sluggers during that stretch, Monroe's sizzling stick from the Oakland series had turned into a glorified strand of linguine in the Fall Classic. In those final three losses to the Cards, Monroe carved out a Grand Canyon-like hole in the order, putting together a sickly 0 for 13 stretch while operating out of the critical two spot. It was an anti-climactic conclusion for the Tigers, and Monroe in particular. He had enjoyed his most prolific season as a pro, and in the blink of an eye, it had ended sharply, and without forgiveness.

Still, there were plenty of reasons to be excited for Craig Monroe heading into 2007. He was 30 years old, the prime year for a rising power-hitting outfielder. It's the year when the body's ultimate power meshes gracefully with the wisdom gained from a decade's worth of experience. The Tigers were chomping at the bit to defend their first American League flag in 22 years. The sky was the limit for C-Mo. But then Opening Day arrived. And that sky started falling...fast.

Roy Halladay and the Blue Jays visited the CoPa to kick off the campaign. The field was soaked in sunshine, with temperatures ticking into the mid-60's, unseasonably pleasant for early April in TigerTown. What could go wrong? As it turned out for C-Mo, everything. Monroe batted four times that day, all with the same end result; a vicious cut at the approaching two-strike offering, an audible "whiffff" echoing throughout the stadium, and Monroe trudging back to the dugout with a look of frustration melted on his face. It was a look we'd become all too familiar with in the days and months to follow.

That entire first month was simply disastrous for Monroe. He was striking out more than a third of the time he came to the plate. He connected for just one home run, a random 12th inning grand salami in Camden Yards off of Orioles' legend Kurt Birkins. And to top it all off, Craig accounted for just one sacrifice fly after leading all of baseball in that department just two years prior. It was a meltdown of the highest order. I remember thinking after that game-winner in Baltimore, "All right...now C-Mo is finally gonna turn it on." After all, it was no big deal to have a couple shaky weeks to start the season. Tony Clark used to take a good four and a half months to shake off the winter cobwebs. But the optimism for a Monroe resurgence was always met with another round of silly strikeouts and missed RBI opportunities. Time was running out.

Thankfully, the rest of the Tigers were picking up the slack. Justin Verlander was enjoying a spectacular sophomore campaign. Curtis Granderson was slapping triples all over the place. Magglio Ordóñez was hot as a pistol on his way to the AL batting championship. Even the right shoulders of Gary Sheffield and Joel Zumaya were still semi-functional. It was all good. The Tigers barreled into the All-Star break in first place and riding a five-game winning streak, capped off by a dominating home sweep over the Red Sox, the team with the best record in all of baseball. But Craig Monroe was still firmly entrenched in the worst slump of his professional career.

His batting average sat depressingly at .223, and he was somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 for 112 in clutch situations during that first half. His low point came in mid-June when he went 0-5 with five strikeouts against Milwaukee, becoming just the third Tiger in history to record such an ignominious feat. In the 25 ballgames leading up to the break, C-Mo went homerless, a frightening span of futility covering 101 plate appearances. All for a guy that less than one year ago had been clocking tape-measure home runs in playoff games against the likes of Chien-Ming Wang and Rich Harden. Go figure.

The Tigers' brass had given Monroe every opportunity to shake out of his funk and return to his past form. I mean, we're still talking about a player that had averaged about 22 homers and 80 RBIs over the last four seasons. It's awful hard to just write a player like that off without giving him every chance to get back on track. They kept running him out to left field every day and hoping upon hope that the old C-Mo explosion was just around the corner. But as the second half began, it became alarmingly clear that this was no regular slump. This was the end of a career.

After a few more punchless weeks, the inevitable happened. Monroe was traded to the Chicago Cubs in exchange for the famed "player to be named later." (This player turned out to be Kerosene Clay Rapada, which goes to show you where Monroe's value was at the time.) Craig picked up a few spot starts and a pinch-hitting opportunity here and there for the playoff-contending Cubbies, but even the magic of Wrigley Field couldn't bring him back to respectability. He puttered to the finish line and was eventually left off Chicago's 25-man roster for the postseason. All told for his nightmare 2007 season, Monroe tallied 12 home runs go with a paltry .219 average and an almost unfathomable .268 on-base percentage. But the question remained...why did this happen? What in the world happened to Craig Monroe?

Perhaps it was Monroe's violent tomahawk swing that led to his downfall. It was one thing for Pedro Cerrano to have this kind of hack in Major League. It's another thing entirely to have it in the major leagues. C-Mo had the big Ruben Sierra leg-kick, the exaggerated follow through...maybe there were just too many moving parts. Monroe eventually became susceptible to things such as "breaking balls" and "inside fastballs." In other words, you could throw just about anything up there, and chances are it was gonna make a thwack! in the catcher's glove a couple seconds later. His walk rate was laughable, and it became painfully clear that Monroe was about as selective at the plate as a blind man is in selecting a date for the prom. If there was any chance whatsoever of hittin' it, he was just gonna stick his big bat out there and hope for the best.

As in almost all baseball discussions nowadays, there is always that one guy who still thinks he's breaking some kind of story by suggesting about a certain player, "That guy was probably juicing." Now with certain guys, obviously, their downfall can be directly related to such a thing. But I don't think Monroe is one of those guys. First off, his power numbers were pretty steady over the years. There was no sudden Bret Boone-like ascension to the 40 HR, 135 RBI territory where you could practically see the syringe sticking out of the guy's arse as he walloped another 98 MPH offering 470 feet the opposite way. Secondly, C-Mo's physical stature never really seemed to change too much during his time with the Tigers. He was always solidly built, but he never developed a massive upper body like Manny Ramirez or grew 4-5 hat sizes like Barry Bonds. C-Mo was just an average dude with an average body who just happened to lose all of his skills in a matter of a few months. I'm still shaking my head...

I guess Craig Monroe was just never an easy guy to figure out. I mean, the guy's middle name is "Keystone." I don't recall seeing that one in any baby books recently, but maybe that's just me. Hell, this is the same man that was arrested for trying to walk out of a Florida department store in 2004 with a $30 belt wrapped around his waist. C-Mo made 335 large that year, and here he was trying to get loose with a freakin' belt for thirty bucks. Where's the logic behind that? There is none, just like there will never be a definitive answer as to why Monroe's career went down so far, and so fast. He was a healthy 30-year-old left fielder coming off the most memorable summer of his career, and in a matter of months, his game was gone and his bags were packed. C-Mo bounced around for a couple more years, putting in part-time duty in Minnesota before making his way to Pittsburgh, where he was released to make room for a hot prospect. And it is well known in baseball circles that once you get released by Pittsburgh, your career is over. It's like being told by Andrew Dice Clay that you don't have any class.

Craig Monroe was never the best player in the league, and there were never any dreams of one day seeing him give an acceptance speech in Cooperstown. But still, to witness his seemingly burgeoning career go up in flames inexplicably at the snap of a finger is something I will never quite understand. The Tigers head into 2010 with a pretty large hole still occupying left field at Comerica Park. That shoulda been C-Mo's territory. But if his last at-bat in baseball was the one he had as a Pirate back on June 16th, then I think Monroe can sleep easy. In that sequence, Monroe unleashed one final hack at a tumbling waterfall from knuckleball specialist R.A. Dickey. True to form, Monroe missed badly. But as luck would have it, the ball trickled away from the catcher and Monroe trotted down to first without a throw. It was clear that this was now C-Mo's only viable route to reaching base safely; a tragically poetic conclusion to a mysterious big league career.


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