Veteran Mora steps into new role with Rockies

TUCSON — On a rainy Sunday morning when the Rockies never took the field, an unexpectedly pretty sight unfolded shortly before 8 o’clock. Melvin Mora sat at his locker, his back to the wide clubhouse doorway. A few feet in front of him, sitting next to each other at a corner locker were pitcher Jhoulys Chacin and infielder Jonathan Herrera, both of whom like Mora are from Venezuela.

Mora, 38, was doing the talking. He was speaking Spanish and speaking about baseball. The younger players listened intently. Moments later Wilin Rosario, who is from the Dominican Republic, sidled over, sat on a stool in rapt attention and joined this baseball tutorial. Five minutes passed, and Franklin Morales, another native of Venezuela, wandered over.

Mora held forth for over half an hour, the younger players mostly listening but also joining in. They were at the feet of a master, and they knew it. Mora, 38, has just over 10 years of service time in the majors. But after beginning his professional career with two seasons in the Dominican Summer League, Mora, who originally was in the Astros organization, then slogged through the minors for six more seasons and part of a seventh before making his major league debut with the Mets on May 30, 1999, starting at shortstop. On July 6 of that season and 13 hitless at-bats at the outset of his career, Mora finally got his first big league hit. Pinch-hitting for third baseman Robin Ventura, Mora singled off Montreal’s Miguel Batista in the bottom of the seventh.

Mora’s career even included a detour to Taiwan where he began the 1998 season with the Mercury Tigers before signing with the Mets organization on July 25 and going to Class A St. Lucie and a month later to Triple-A Norfolk. That 1999 season, when Mora played 66 games in three tours with the Mets, is the only time he has gone to the postseason. And in the National League Championship Series against the Diamondbacks, Mora went 6-for-14 (.429) with one homer and two RBI.

He was one of four players traded to the Orioles in July 2000 for shortstop Mike Bordick. Mora became a fixture in Baltimore. He played 807 games at third base for the Orioles, second in club history to Orioles icon Brooks Robinson. And Mora ranks among the top 10 all-time in Orioles history in hits, home runs, doubles, RBI, runs and at-bats.

At the funeral of longtime Orioles coach Elrod Hendricks, who died suddenly in December 2005, one day before his 65th birthday, Mora was the only player seated in the section reserved for active Oriole players.

A couple days ago, manager Jim Tracy praised Mora and did so in a way that came vividly to light on this rainy Sunday morning when Mora, the willing and patient professor, sat with a group of eager young students.

“This guy is a professional,” Tracy said of Mora, “and I respect professionals. To me, there’s one thing in being a veteran. Then there’s another thing where you’re a veteran, but you’re a professional veteran. That professional veteran for me is one that absolutely loves what he does and he’s willing to reach out to younger people and tries to make them better with experiences he’s realized over the years.”

Read more about Mora in Jack’s story for the Associated Press here.