http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/b...12-12_robin_ventura_is_rockin_once_again.html
Former Mets third baseman Robin Ventura is rockin' once again
BY
Mitch Abramson
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER
Saturday, December 12th 2009, 5:01 PM
Shaw/Getty
The Mets celebrate Robin Ventura's 'grand slam single' in Game 5 of the 1999 NLCS.
Robin Ventura, a two-time All-Star during his MLB career, now says he's 'out of the loop' when it comes to the game.
<!-- ARTICLE CONTENT START -->With the
Mets down 3 games to 1 to the
Braves in the 1999 NLCS,
Robin Ventura, the hard-nosed Mets third baseman, stepped to the plate in the bottom of the 15th with the bases juiced and the Game 5 tied at 3-3.
Facing
Kevin McGlinchy, Ventura mashed a 2-1 pitch over the right-field wall to hold off the Braves and send the series back to
Atlanta for Game 6. The final score? Mets 7, Braves 3? No. What should have been a grand slam home run will forever be known as the "Grand Slam Single" as Ventura was mobbed by teammates (particularly
Todd Pratt, the runner on first, who hoisted him in the air), preventing him from even reaching second base. Since he failed to touch all four bags, his clutch bomb was ruled just a single, and the only player declared to have crossed home plate was
Roger Cedeno, the runner on third, giving the Mets a 4-3 victory.
"That was a fun moment," says Ventura, after a 16-year big league career that saw him play with the Dodgers, Mets,
Yankees and White Sox. "Those were good times."
Today, Ventura, a six-time Gold Glove winner and two-time All-Star, spends his time watching his four children (he has three girls in high school and an 11-year-old boy) and managing his various real estate investments. Aside from calling the College World Series on
ESPN and showing up to the occasional White Sox spring training workout to hang with the coaches, he is pretty much out of baseball.
"I'm out of the loop," he says. But he is still reminded of the impressive career that he left behind.
A not so good time for Ventura, who played for the Mets from 1999 to 2001, was when he mauled his right ankle sliding into home during a 1997 spring training game while playing with the
Chicago White Sox, where he started his career. He suffered a compound fracture. It would change the course of his career and his life forever.
By 2004, his final season with the Dodgers, he wasn't playing much, and his ankle was still a problem. He had spent the previous seven years injecting himself with cortisone shots just so he could suit up, but enough was enough.
"I was just to the point where I couldn't do to much anymore," he says from his home in Royal Grande,
Calif., where he has lived for the past two decades. "(My ankle) wasn't going to allow me to play much anymore. It was time to stop."
A year after he stepped away from baseball, his ankle degenerated to the point where Ventura was now walking around with a cane. He considered having titanium plates and screws inserted into his ankle as a remedy, but that wasn't a long-term solution, he was told.
"The titanium could have worn out after like five years," he said. "So I decided to roll the dice and do something different."
On the advice of the White Sox trainer
Herm Schneider, Ventura opted to undergo a new-fangled surgical procedure called ankle transplant surgery in which a piece of a bone taken from a cadaver is inserted into his ankle. The process was successful and Ventura, who had the operation in 2005, no longer walks around in pain.
"I know it was a gamble but so far it's worked out," he said. "I didn't know if it was going to work but it has. It was frustrating not being able to really get around too much. It was definitely worth the risk. So far, so good."
You do not charge the mound on Nolan Ryan 
