This article was from Mike Berardino, sports columnist for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. It is their copyright and has been modified in no way.
Rodeo upbringing helps Marlin rookie overcome obstacles.
Mike Berardino Sports columnist September 13, 2006
MIAMI GARDENS — Cody Ross deserved those chants Monday night. He deserved that curtain call, too, and not only because he hit three home runs in a single game and tied Mike Lowell’s franchise record. It’s not even because those homers gave Ross 12 for the season and traveled more than a combined 1,200 feet. No, Ross deserved all that attention because of everything he had endured to get to that moment. Playing high school baseball in the oil fields of New Mexico. Getting traded by three different organizations, all of them making the determination he wasn’t quite big enough or good enough. Dealing with a string of minor-league injuries, from a broken wrist to a blown-out knee to a broken big toe and a broken finger suffered when he slammed his hand in a car door. Even once he got to the Marlins on May 27, Ross sat patiently and quietly behind other outfielders who weren’t exactly tearing up the league. There were more injuries along the way, too. Atlanta’s Oscar Villarreal hit him in the mouth with a pitch on June 14 as Ross squared to bunt. Watching on satellite back home in Carlsbad, N.M., the Ross family recoiled in fear. “When he turned around and looked at the umpire with blood coming out of his mouth, I thought, `Oh, man,’” says Kenny Ross, Cody’s father. “I thought for sure he would break a jaw or lose some teeth and be out for a long time.” Incredibly, nothing was broken, although Cody’s lip is “still kind of screwy” when he smiles, his father says. Cody, 26, wasn’t just back in the lineup the next night; he hit a two-run homer off Jorge Sosa. Another scare came Aug. 16 at Dodger Stadium when Ross, playing right field, collided with second baseman Dan Uggla while pursuing a pop fly. They hit knee on knee, and Ross had to be helped off the field. “Here we go,” Kenny Ross thought to himself. “Another knee deal.” Two games later, his boy was back in the lineup. Sensing a pattern here? Connecting the dots yet? If there’s a better personification of the battling spirit that has carried these Mini Marlins to the brink of a wild-card berth, good luck finding him. “Cody is a tough guy,” Uggla says. “I know if you’re from New Mexico, you’re a cowboy, and cowboys are tough now.” Tough? You should have seen little Cody at age 5, roping and riding calves and steers on the Southwestern rodeo circuit. Kenny Ross, then a chiropractor who dabbled in rodeo through the ’80s, would take his youngest child with him as he competed as far away as Nevada, Arizona and Oklahoma. “It definitely toughened Cody up,” says the elder Ross, 56 and a manager for an oil-industry parts company. “He never had a fear of anything.” Kenny Ross, who played safety at the University of New Mexico, believes if the boy had stuck with rodeo he could have been a world champion. “He was such a natural athlete,” Kenny Ross says. Cody might have preferred being a rodeo clown. While living in Big Springs, Texas, the family befriended a man named Quail Dobbs, the most popular rodeo clown at that time. Dobbs took a shine to young Cody and treated him like a pint-sized apprentice. “He knew I had an interest,” Cody says. “Not many other kids did.” Eventually Dobbs incorporated Cody into his act. They even came up with something called Kindergarten Rodeo, for which Cody would put on his own costume and makeup before entertaining the crowds. Maybe 50 other kids would pile into the dirt ring as organizers tied ribbons onto the tails of a few small calves. For each ribbon they caught, the kids would get five or 10 bucks. Sometimes, if the adults really wanted to have some fun, they’d have the announcer say, “The bulls are loose in the arena.” You never saw so many kids run so fast in your life. Most times the kid with the most ribbons at the end was little Cody Ross. “My retirement fund,” he jokes. At his parents’ urging, Cody soon turned away from the dangers of rodeo and got into baseball and soccer. That same fearlessness carried him all the way to the majors despite a listed height of 5 feet 9. “He thinks he’s 6-foot-13,” Kenny Ross says. “It used to really upset him when somebody would say, `You know, you’re really not that big.’” If he’d chosen differently, they might have been chanting “Co-dy” at a rodeo ring instead of a multipurpose stadium. No matter the arena, you can’t keep a tough man down. Mike Berardino can be reached at mberardino@sun-sentinel.com.
