Lavelle readies for another 'eye-opening' trip overseas

Gary Lavelle, International Man of Intrigue and Sinking Fastballs?

Well, the latter, at least.

Greenbrier Christian Academy's successful baseball coach - and a personal pitching instructor with a super-jammed schedule - still is thinking locally with his soft-spoken influence but reaching globally.

As he did last year, Lavelle, a lefthander who worked 13 major league seasons, is poised to pack off to Taiwan for another open exchange of ideas, baseball and a little personal religious testimony.

But it's not as if Lavelle, 59, will just open a suitcase at some busy intersection and start pitchin'. He's traveling again by official request; the mayor of Taichung, Taiwan's third-largest city, asked Lavelle through a mutual friend last year to come talk baseball on the government's yuan.

Now, not everybody knows people who know Taiwanese power brokers who pay expenses for two-week, Far East baseball adventures; Lavelle says he will tutor pro bono.

Then again, not everybody coached and befriended New York Yankees star righthander Chien-Ming Wang for three minor league seasons, as Lavelle did.

Wang is a celebrity sensation in his native country and he's not exactly anonymous in the Bronx. Wang, who debuted in the big leagues in 2005, won 19 games in each of the past two seasons and 54 of his first 74 decisions overall.

That includes the 8-2 mark he compiled before tearing a tendon in his right foot last month while running the bases in Houston, the circumstance that sent owner Hank Steinbrenner ballistic. Steinbrenner publicly railed against the National League's refusal to adopt the designated hitter after Wang went down.

The tear threw a wrench into the Yankees' season; Wang's return won't come until September at the earliest. But it will hardly detract from the welcome Lavelle, a Yankees instructor in between stints at Greenbrier, will receive as Wang's first American coach.

Last year, "the mayor wanted to meet me and have me come in and evaluate their baseball," said Lavelle, who departs early next week with his son Timothy and two out-of-town colleagues who teach hitting and fielding. "It was a great trip, so he asked me to come back."

They'll run larger coaches clinics this time and work with teams of all levels, he said, from the Taiwanese pro league to youth squads - an interpreter shadowing every step.

"The way they go about their business was very eye-opening for me," Lavelle said. "They take it a lot more serious at the amateur level than we do. They'll train six hours a day.

"They don't try to reinvent the wheel. They just try to do things in a very fundamentally sound way."

Lavelle first worked with Wang eight years ago with the Yankees' rookie league team in Staten Island, N.Y. They met again in Trenton, N.J., in 2003 and 2004, when Wang appeared in a combined 39 games at the

Double-A level.

Wang reached the majors by '05 and since then has been one of baseball's winningest pitchers. In April, he reached 50 wins as a starter faster than any big-leaguer since Dwight Gooden in the mid-80s.

"He's the most celebrated athlete in Taiwan," Lavelle said of his ex-pupil. Lavelle won't necessarily get a parade or wall-to-wall coverage on Taiwanese TV. But he will be an honored guest, for sure. And a gracious one at that.

"The government sets the itinerary," he said with a laugh. "Whatever they set up, we do."

Tom Robinson, (757) 446-2518, tom.robinson@pilotonline.com