But All Matt White Wants To Do Is Play Ball

MAGNATE	EST. NET WORTH
DONALD TRUMP	$2.9B
MATT WHITE	$2.4B
TED TURNER	$1.9B
OPRAH (right)	$1.5B
MAGIC JOHNSON	$800M
Sources: Forbes , Seattle Times

Matt White is a Triple A pitcher bidding to become the Los Angeles Dodgers ' left-on-left specialist, the guy who strides out of the bullpen to face Mr. Barry Bonds or Mr. Carlos Delgado . In the sixth inning of a somnolent spring training game, however, White encounters Detroit Tigers utility infielder Mark Haske, who hit .239 with one home run in A ball last year and is no bigger than Ryan Howard 's thigh. Still, a lefty hitter is a lefty hitter. White, who has been lowering his arm angle to broaden the bend on his curveball, gets ahead 0 and 2 with Frisbee curves, misses with two overhand fastballs, induces a weak foul ball with a sidearm hook and finally strikes out Haske with over-the-top, 92-mph heat. "He could have been Bonds and the pitches wouldn't change," White says later. "It's a 3--3 game. I'm not worried about velocity. I'm looking for location and execution of pitches." He throws two hitless innings, striking out three, the type of airtight outing that, if it came in the chill of October, might get White on the cover of a magazine other than Geology Today.

Yes, he's that Matt White, the lucky dude who bought 50 acres from his great aunt in 2003 to help cover her nursing-home care, hoping one day to build a house there. He later found some rock--well, not just some rock, 24 million tons of highly prized rock--that sells for around $100 a ton. On paper, and in the papers, he became the "baseball billionaire."

Certainly the estimated value of the quarry in Cummington, Mass., has a line of zeroes any pitcher would envy. Forget for a moment the huge cost of excavating the stuff and stick to the fantasy math. White's $2.4 billion windfall would place him 131st on the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans in 2006, $100 million ahead of Mark Cuban . He could buy the A's, Angels , Mariners and Rangers and turn the AL West into the AL White. Or he could purchase the Dodgers , as teammates suggested this spring, and pay himself to be the closer. The rock is worth almost 10 times more than Alex Rodriguez 's record 10-year, $252 million contract. "White," Los Angeles pitcher Randy Wolf says, "should be A-Rock."

The mica schist rock that formed some 400 million years ago during the Devonian Period--predating the Mesozoic and Julio Franco Eras--belongs to a square-jawed, 29-year-old bachelor from Windsor, Mass., who thought he was getting a $50,000 plot of land and wound up with the Lord's lottery ticket. Still, $2.4 billion and middling stuff won't buy you a big league roster spot. After allowing just two hits in 9 1/3 innings during the spring, the Dodgers assigned him to the Triple A Las Vegas 51s. "We like his makeup and his arm, but something has to make him stand out," L.A. pitching coach Rick Honeycutt says. "If we have issues with our pen, he's a guy we'd consider. But to get here and stay, he has to dominate lefthanders."

White is with his eighth organization and hasn't had a cup of coffee in the bigs as much as a few sips: 9 2/3 innings, in which he allowed 17 hits and eight walks. His 16.76 ERA looks like the APR on a lousy credit card. White can now squeeze money from a stone, yet it is still the game that enriches his soul. If he never pitched another big league inning, he says, "I wouldn't be happy. When you go up to the big leagues and see how awesome it is and get sent down to Triple A again, you realize this isn't where you want to be. I want to get called up and make a career out of this thing, be known as a big leaguer and not a rock-quarry man."

To White, his time in the bigs, however shaky, is the residue of unwavering commitment. As for what made him famous ... well, sometimes mica schist happens.

White and his Las Vegas teammates were wolfing down sandwiches and salads before an exhibition game against the Double A Jacksonville Suns last week when Ken Huckaby, a 36-year-old journeyman catcher, said, "Hey, Whitey, where's the lobster?"

Considering that moneybags jokes have been making the rounds since MLB.com reported the story in mid-February, they'd seem old--except for White's delight in the people who have told them. Outfielder Luis Gonzalez , for example, often sang the theme song from The Beverly Hillbillies when White was in the room, prompting the pitcher, unfamiliar with cultural imperatives like the cee-ment pond, to buy the movie DVD a week ago. "It's neat being in the big league camp and hearing the perspective of guys like Gonzalez and Jason Schmidt , who've been around and made good money," says White, who will earn $12,000 monthly in the minors. "You get to know people by talking about the stone. The guys were interested."

In the spring, high-number hopefuls are segregated less by race or language than by status. But with the ultimate conversation starter White had an equalizer--even if he found the media attention embarrassing. He wouldn't make the club, but he had made, well, the club.

White usually has found a niche. He graduated from the regional high school in Dalton (which also produced major league pitchers Jeff Reardon and Turk Wendell ) in 1995 as a 150-pounder with a fastball that traveled at speeds that barely turn heads on the Mass Pike. His plans to attend North Adams State were derailed when a Clemson coach attended his no-hitter that summer in an AAU tournament. White was hardly a headliner as a freshman on a Tigers staff that included Kris Benson and Billy Koch , but he gained enough weight and miles per hour that the Indians drafted him in the 15th round after his junior season. White served three tours in the Cleveland organization but never pitched for the Indians . His major league debut came with the Red Sox in New York on May 27, 2003. Grady Little, now the Dodgers ' manager, summoned him in the eighth inning with Boston trailing 5--2. "I don't remember running in from the bullpen," White says, "but there I was pitching for the Red Sox against the Yankees . Being from Massachusetts , it was a dream come true."