In the 70s, there was The Mad Hungarian.  Today, there’s The Mad Dominican.

A generation ago, Al Hrabosky was a mustachio’d, excitable-type left-handed reliever for the Cardinals, Royals and Braves.  Those of us old enough to have seen Hrabosky pitch will principally remember his histrionics prior to facing a new batter.  He would take the ball behind the mound, rub it up roughly, then slam it into his glove.

Sammy Gervacio, righty middle reliever for the Astros, isn’t exactly mad.  In fact, his unusual pre-pitch routine drew mostly laughs from the Giants dugout when he entered in the 8th inning of today’s season opener.  Before each pitch, the wiry 25-year-old holds the ball up and looks directly into the third-base dugout, pausing for a second before coming to the set position.

As pre-pitch routines go, it’s unlike anything I — and apparently the visiting Giants as well — have ever seen.  The Astros announcers were ready for it, and the Fox Sports cameras caught most of the pauses, and got some good shots of the San Francisco players yukking it up.  It helped that Gervacio retired the Giants in order with relative ease, and after an impressive 29-game stint (1-1, 2.14 ERA, 25K in 21 innings) with Houston last year, he looks like he has the stuff to stick.

I remember Hrabosky mostly as a Royal, even though only two of his 13 seasons were in Kansas City.  But those were 1978 and 1979, when the Yankee-Royal rivalry was in full bloom.  Even though, to this young Yankee rooter, he was on the “enemy” team, Hrabosky made a positive impression on me as a baseball fan.  To know that there were unique personalities like Hrabosky made watching the game a richer experience.  I hated him and was especially pleased when Reggie Jackson took him into the Royals Stadium waterfall, but having that emotion made the game much more fun to follow.

I hope that some young fan today, learning the game and its players for maybe the first time, saw Gervacio and had some of those same thoughts — that if you look closely, you’ll see something unique in different players, something that might make you gravitate towards (or away from) a particular guy.