Source: Newsday

TAMPA, Fla. - The absolute last thing you ever will hear in the New York Yankees' clubhouse is someone yelling at Chien-Ming Wang, saying, “Hey, keep it down!”

That takes in his pitching, because keeping it down goes without saying for the man with a devastating sinker. Mostly it refers to the fact that he is the club's least voluble player.

He minds his own business, smiles easily and razzes teammates after they razz him. For the most part, though, he is seen and not heard. As pitching coach Ron Guidry said, “You wouldn't know he was there unless you spoke to him.”

You wouldn't know Wang was on the Yankees if he weren't the only one who won a postseason game for them last year, if he didn't tie for the most wins in the major leagues in 2006, if he weren't one of the best starters in baseball.

“Under the radar” doesn't describe the pitcher who won 19 games (only American League Cy Young Award winner Johan Santana won as many). Wang is under the sonar.

“I was lucky,” he said about his 19-6 record with a 3.63 ERA 2006, as he sat in his chair at Legends Field, near a large white carton filled with fan mail.

Wang, a 26-year-old from Tainan, Taiwan, spends about 20 minutes every day answering such mail, mostly photos, cards and baseballs to be signed. He patiently seals every envelope in the meticulous way he does everything. When he was a child, he used to help in his parents' utensils business by packing spoons and chopsticks into cartons.

What really is impressive about Wang is that he is Exhibit A in the argument that an unassuming person can survive New York's tumult. Heck, Wang comes to New York for the peace and quiet.

The stir that happens when he leaves his house in Taiwan is what you'd expect here if Tiger Woods went to dinner with Tom Hanks and Britney Spears, which is why he described his off-season this way, “I didn't go out.”

During baseball season, he doesn't go out of his way to get noticed. He lives outside the city. “More relaxed. No traffic,” he said in English.

He isn't flamboyant on the mound or on the bus, only on the statistics sheets. “It's something I don't know if you can teach,” said Larry Bowa, the Yankees coach and chief needler, who uses Wang as one of his favorite pin cushions. “It's the way the ball comes out of his hand. People don't realize that this guy throws hard, too. It's one thing to have a sinker that's 87 or 88 (miles per hour), but he's 93.”

Relief pitcher Mike Myers, one of Wang's closest friends on the team, said: “He has a pitch that really nobody else in the big leagues has.”

These are nice compliments, but the true measure of respect in a baseball clubhouse is being verbally disrespected. So the Yankees get on him.

With Robinson Cano, who came up through the system with him, “It's my Spanish,” Wang said. Does he speak Spanish? “A little,” the pitcher said. “Como esta?”

There's a huge difference between “quiet” and “boring.” Cano, the second baseman from the Dominican Republic, said: “He's not nice, he's very, very nice. He's a humble guy. I know it's hard for him because he's the only one from his country here, so I try to talk to him, make him feel comfortable.”

Bowa, the third-base coach, asks Wang before every start how many runs he is going to need. “He always says six. I said, `I could go out there and win with six,' ” the coach said. “Well, I was getting him five or six a game. But once we only got him one and he comes up to me and says, `Where's the six?' ”

After a rocky first outing in live batting practice at this camp, Guidry deadpanned, “Whatever you did in Taiwan this winter, never do it again.” When Joe Torre asked Wang about his effort that day, the pitcher used a nine-letter word that begins with “horse.”

So Wang is getting there. And he really is a true Yankee even though he doesn't have a massive ego or get into verbal hair-pulling episodes.

You know he's around by the way he pitches, and by the stacks of letters he gets now. “Last year,” he said, “only a couple.”