DAN WILSON ARTICLES PG. 35
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Close friend Elia a key to Wilson's torrid start

The work that makes the difference between batting .240 and batting .300 doesn't happen where most of us can see it. Like the golfer who fires balls into the driving-range darkness or the basketball player who stays late every day to shoot 1,000 free throws, a batter does his most important work out of the limelight. Pregame batting practice is great for getting loose and hitting souvenirs into the bleachers, but when things are going wrong, the solution is in the bowels of the stadium, in a windowless room containing buckets of baseballs, a maze of nylon netting and, if you're lucky, a coach who cares as much as Lee Elia does.  Elia has spent three decades throwing soft toss and placing balls on hitting tees, guiding hundreds of players as a major league manager and coach. Perhaps none appreciates him more than Mariners catcher Dan Wilson. "His approach to hitting, and the way in which he presents it, has been instrumental for me," Wilson said. "Without him, I don't know where I'd be." Wilson is off to the best start of his career at the plate, batting .382, 118 points above his career average of .264. It is little surprise that Elia, 64, a semi-retired coaching consultant, has been around to see it. "I've often said this, and I mean this with my heart and soul, that coaches can present things in many different areas of this game, but it's the player who makes the accomplishment," Elia said. "He realizes that it's a 162-game schedule, but you've got to be proud of the fine start he's had, and it comes from Danny Wilson's hard work." That hard work began in the Kingdome, where quarters were so close that, as Elia says, "you almost had no choice but to work on stuff."
Wilson struggled mightily at the plate early in his career, and when he was traded from Cincinnati to Seattle in 1993, he became a project for Elia, then Mariners hitting coach. Wilson hit .216 in 1994, then jumped to .278 in 1995 and a career-high .285 in 1996, when he set a club record for average by a catcher and earned a spot on the American League All-Star team. "I don't know if you can put your finger on any one thing," Wilson said. "Sometimes, between a player and coach, something just clicks, and something has definitely clicked between Lee and I. I can't explain it, I really can't, but it has made a huge difference."  Along the way, Wilson, the baby-faced catcher, and Elia, whose tanned face shows all the lines of a well-worn catcher's mitt, forged a close friendship. "Danny and I, we do have a special relationship, and it's beyond the game of baseball," Elia said. "He's good people, and I appreciate what he brings as a person. It's more of a friendship than a coach-hitter relationship. There doesn't have to be any frills to it, just a good friendship." "He's just a delightful person to be around," Wilson says of his mentor.
Elia, in the 41st year of a professional baseball career that has included managing the Chicago Cubs (1982-83) and Philadelphia Phillies (1987-88), is a valuable resource for Mariners hitters. Even the new guys have quickly learned to take advantage. "He has such an enthusiasm, you can tell hitting is definitely his passion," said third baseman Jeff Cirillo, who worked with Elia in the cage on Monday and that night, perhaps only coincidentally, hit two home runs. "He's got the mannerisms of a hitting coach. He's got the chew in, he's got the sweat working, he's totally into it. You can tell he loves hitting." Between Elia's enthusiasm, expertise and charisma, the lessons get through -- even though the content isn't groundbreaking. "We do a lot of tee work in the cage, just trying to stay inside the baseball and using the right-center field to left-center field gaps," Wilson said. "There's really no secret to it, nothing that's novel or unique in any way, it's just an approach that ... for me and the way I hit, it's been a great way for me to learn.  "I think what he brings to me is an overall approach to hitting. There are times when I get away from it for whatever reason, we all get into bad habits, but he gives me not so much a shot in the arm, but just a reminder of that consistent, focused, daily approach."
At this point, that approach is reinforced by Elia's mere presence. "There's times we can look at each other without talking and we can communicate. That's a special thing," Elia said. "There will be times he'll make a bad swing and we look at each other, and he'll just say, 'Yep, that was it,' and he knows what happened." So far, bad swings have been few this season. Elia thinks that Wilson, 33, has the experience to prove it's not a fluke, but a permanent improvement. "I think Danny discovered some things about himself this winter," he said. "I'm a proponent of believing that this game, for 100 years, has been about repetition. We've tried to maintain a certain approach that we think is the best for his abilities. It's something we talked about three or four years ago, and he can feel it now. I think we've reached a point where the peaks are going to last a lot longer than the valleys." If the valleys get too low, Wilson always has a friend willing to lend a hand.

THREE COOL THINGS ABOUT DAN WILSON
* Think you were a great athlete back in the day? You've got nothing on Wilson. His Barrington, Ill., team placed third in the Little League World Series, losing to a Tampa, Fla., team led by Gary Sheffield, before winning the third-place game behind winning pitcher Wilson. He was a three-time all-state selection as a hockey goalie at Barrington High School, pitched and caught for the baseball team and quarterbacked the football team.
* He pulled off one of the rarest of all plays: an inside-the-park grand slam by a catcher. When he cranked a Frank Castillo pitch into left-center field at the Kingdome on May 3, 1998, he became just the seventh catcher in the modern era to manage the feat.
* He was the saving grace of what otherwise was a disastrous 1993 trade: pitcher Erik Hanson and infielder Bret Boone to Cincinnati for Wilson and reliever Bobby Ayala.

THREE COOL THINGS ABOUT LEE ELIA
* Elia is perhaps best known to the public for committing managerial suicide in a spectacular tirade against Cubs fans in April 1983. With his team at 4-15, and upset by projectiles hurled at two of his players at Wrigley Field, the second-year manager erupted in front of reporters, including TV cameras, unleashing a 456-word barrage that included 43 expletives. The Cubs played all day games at the time, because Wrigley didn't have lights. Here's the most famous excerpt: "The (expletive) don't even work! That's why they're out at the (expletive) game. They ought to go out and get a (expletive) job and find out what it's like to go out and earn a (expletive) living. Eighty-five percent of the (expletive) world's working, and the other 15 come out here. A (expletive) playground for the (expletive)." Not surprisingly, Elia was fired before the season ended. Most Cubs fans actually recall the incident with affection for Elia, and recordings of the outburst are coveted souvenirs.
* He's been named manager of the year in four leagues: Western Carolinas League (managing Spartanburg in 1975), Eastern League (Reading, 1978), Florida State League (Clearwater, 1991) and International League (Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, 1982).
* Elia had only two stints in the majors as a shortstop, but they both came in Chicago and were under famous managers: Eddie Stanky (White Sox, 1966) and Hall of Fame skipper Leo Durocher (Cubs, 1968).


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