Looking For His Pitch

"I'm not the best defensive player in the world," says Johnson . "I'm not the worst, either. My dad always told me, 'If you hit, they'll find a place for you in the field.' But I know I make my living driving in runs."

It hasn't helped that while he has served as proprietor of the Runs Batted Inn, Howard Johnson has never really had a home away from home plate. Last season he commuted, without complaint, from third base to shortstop to rightfield. When new Mets manager Jeff Torborg asked Johnson over the winter if he wouldn't mind making yet another move, HoJo might as well have been John Fogerty—"Look at me/ I can be/Centerfield"—so enthusiastic was his response. "I'm certain," said Johnson , "that this will work."

Torborg was a bit uneasy with Hojo in center during spring training, saying, "He hasn't shown the instincts yet," but he's certainly impressed with his work habits. "My biggest concern is that Howard's working too hard out there. I've had to give him a couple of days off so he doesn't wear himself out."

That is typical. Even Johnson 's "problems" are productive, his "vices" virtuous. Johnson is a slave to his insatiable thirst for instant iced tea, which he shovels from a personal clubhouse canister the size of a grain silo. "It's really annoying," his wife, Kim, says of Howard's two-gallon-a-day habit. "I think it's a real problem."

"I drink a lot of Lipton 's," HoJo confesses, slaking his thirst and smacking his lips. Lipton 's. It is yet another pitch the slugger has missed. Which brings us back to our original question, the one too intriguing to ignore for long: When an All-Star named Howard Johnson offers to endorse a hotel chain, practically pro bono, how could hoteliers turn him down like hotel bedding at bedtime?

"You don't read about Howard getting drunk, or fathering illegitimate children," his father was saying a few weeks ago, just 24 hours before it was revealed that three Mets players had been accused of rape. "Give me a break!"

"It's amazing, isn't it?" Mets pitcher David Cone says of HoJo's snubbing by HoJo's et al. "I think it's testimony to the fact that he is not a vocal guy. That's something that has probably helped him to survive in New York . We've had enough vocal guys here in the past."

"I'm very surprised I've lasted here," admits HoJo. " New York is a tough place to play. I never thought I'd be here longer than Strawberry, Hernandez, Carter...."

Interesting, Hoj, but we digress. Back to our burning question, if we may: Cone and HoJo. How obvious is this ad campaign? How conspicuous is its absence from the airwaves? Hel-lo HoJo's, is there anybody home in your marketing department? Please note that as a child in Clearwater , Fla. , Johnson really did receive a free ice-cream cone after church each Sunday at the HoJo's on Clearwater Beach, simply because of his name. (That's a 30-second spot right there.) Howard Michael Johnson was named, by the way, for his grandfather, Charles Howard Densmore. "People sometimes ask," HoJo's father admits, " 'Gosh, how could you name him that?' "

"I took my share of abuse for it," Johnson says. "But I guess it makes me unique." His was an otherwise idyllic childhood on Tangerine Street, with the Philadelphia Phillies ' spring training field as his sandlot. In fact, it is a perverse tribute to his tight and traditional upbringing that young Howard never even had cause to fix a meal for himself until he was a teenager, turned loose from his home for a Babe Ruth baseball tournament on the other side of the state. Assigned to stay with an eccentric octogenarian, "Uncle Sherm" in Fort Pierce , Howard fired up a TV dinner one night on a stove-top burner—while the dinner was still in its package. Who knew? Mercifully, the future first-round draft pick somehow remained the only house afire on that road trip, but it was close.