DUNEDIN, Fla. -- He is with another team in another city, another country and yet it's all, oh, so familiar.
It is as it has been and likely shall forever be: David Eckstein has to prove himself all over again.
He is in his usual role -- unappreciated, undersized and under a mircoscope, just as he was as a small man on the University of Florida campus.
Eckstein has proved everyone wrong and now, at age 33 and standing at 5-foot-61/2, he will try to be Mr. Reliable at shortstop for the Blue Jays and an igniter out of the leadoff spot.
What's not to like about Eckstein? Well, he committed 20 errors in 2007 with the St. Louis Cardinals. Like Mike Bordick, Eckstein's throws from the hole are will-they-or-won't-they make it?
Eckstein won the state championship with Seminole High, earned all-American honours with the Florida Gators, won the 2002 World Series with the Anaheim Angels and again in '06 with the Cards, as the most valuable player.
WRITER, SPEAKER
He has dined at the White House, was a guest speaker at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library after 9/11 and has written a kids book entitled Have Heart.
The fifth of five children born in a five-year span to Patricia and Whitey Eckstein, he grew up in Sanford, Fla. Whitey insisted his youngsters didn't drink, smoke, swear, do drugs and, on the diamond, don't pop up.
Some hills that Eckstein has climbed:
Despite winning the state high school championship, he didn't receive a scholarship offer. And when Eckstein reached the U of Florida in 1994, he was more student than athlete, making the Gators as a walk-on and getting only 10 at-bats his freshman season.
Eckstein played second base for the Gators while Mark Ellis, who later would play for the Oakland A's, was at short. Ellis did not have a pure shortstop's arm, but Florida coach Andy Lopez felt it was better than Eckstein's.
A 19th-round selection of the Boston Red Sox in 1997, Eckstein reached double-A Trenton, where coach Arnie Beyler told him his swing wouldn't work and changed it.
Eckstein's new swing was so bad that the Bosox placed him on waivers to make room for Lou Merloni, who played 93 games at shortstop in parts of nine seasons in the majors.
When the Jays open the 2008 season at Yankee Stadium on March 31, Eckstein will appear in his 966th career game ... including 126 in 2001 as an Angels rookie, besting Merloni's game totals in one year.
While Orange County fans loved Eckstein, the Angels didn't. In a salary arbitration hearing in February of 2004, the Halos compared his range and arm to that of a triple-A shortstop and knocked his .325 on-base percentage.
Of course, mean things often are said during arbitration. We remember Bill Gullickson losing because he did not pitch enough shutouts and management telling Marquis Grissom that his 76 steals were of little import.
Funny thing, underdog Eckstein, a winner all his life, won in arbitration, gaining a $2.15-million US salary for 2004.
That loss for the Angels was a factor in deciding not to tender Eckstein. They let him walk after 2004 and signed free agent Orlando Cabrera.
Eckstein headed for St. Louis and a three-year, $10.25-million deal. But after three seasons there, the Cards low-balled him on a one-year offer. They were worried he'd gotten all he could have out of his body and might be breaking down. In his previous two seasons, he had played 123 and 117 games.
Forget his size. He is not your average major-league player. With the Angels, Eckstein constantly was teased, for going to the library, as he didn't own a laptop -- though his fiancee (now wife), actress Ashley Drane, gave him one as a Christmas gift in 2004.
He also was given the gears for pulling into the players parking lot in his 1999 Nissan Maxima, which he gave to his brother Rick, two years ago.
"You're in the big leagues. You need a better ride than that," teammates would tell him.
"The car was fine with me, I needed something to get me from Point A to Point B," Eckstein said.
After Brandon Inge of the Detroit Tigers struck out to end the 2006 World Series, Eckstein was presented with a Corvette as MVP after hitting .364 with four RBIs. He gave that car to Rick, as well.
TOOK HIS MOM
George Will of the Washington Post made the call to invite Eckstein for his White House dinner, as a guest of President George Bush, following the Angels' win in 2002.
Eckstein's date that night?
"I took my mother," Eckstein said. "My father still gives me grief for that."
At the table of 12 were Curt Schilling, then of the Arizona Diamonbacks, Charles Johnson (Florida Marlins), Todd Helton (Colorado Rockies), Boston Red Sox co-owner Larry Lucchino and their wives, Eckstein and his mom.
"What did I say? To tell the truth, I didn't talk much," Eckstein said with a laugh.
Schilling? More laughter.
"I'm not saying," he said. "The President asked about us winning the Series and we talked how the game was on the upswing."
Eckstein had been to Washington, D.C., before. In 1985, his family made the trip from Florida to visit his teenage brother Ken, a Congressional page.
"He won page of the year," Eckstein bragged the way younger brothers do.
After the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on New York, Angels outfielder Tim Salmon and Eckstein were asked to speak at the Reagan library in Simi Valley, Calif.
"I am not a public speaker so it was stressful," Eckstein said. "I don't remember all that I said, just that they told us to speak from the heart.
"I said we had to stick together, how we'd been strong as a country in the past and had to rely on that."
Eckstein was back at the Reagan museum after his book Have Heart came out in 2003 as part of a Positively For Kids series, which also featured Michael Jordan, Emmitt Smith and Mike Cameron.
Eckstein signed books for six hours. After St. Louis won in 2006, he was back with an updated version and was there the "whole day," selling and autographing 1,500 books.
On Eckstein's website (davideckstein.com/links.html) there are links to Autism, Donate Life (how to become an organ and tissue donor), Mid-America Transplant Services and his wife's website, before an ESPN baseball link.
Siblings -- Kenny, Christine and Pat -- all live on transplanted kidneys. Kenny underwent dialysis for 20 hours a day in Florida, going to class the other four. Two are lawyers, one has a Master's degree.
And then there is David, a master at proving people wrong.
