Great Scott!

That's how good looking Scott Erickson is.

Since you'll never be Tom Cruise, and you couldn't hang out with Scott Erickson even if you wanted to, you're only left to run your fingers through the five follicles left on your head, hitch your pants up past the undulating blubber of your midriff, and ask yourself why a guy with waves of mahogany hair, rows of ultra-brite teeth, and 6 foot 4 inches of raw-boned power would spend all his time in a smelly Baltimore locker room with a bunch of sweaty jocks when he should be in Hollywood filming scenes with beautiful starlets.

The short answer: Despite all appearances, Scott Erickson ain't no pretty boy.

In fact, Erickson is less tomorrow's movie stallion than yesterday's workhorse. He's a throwback to an era when successful pitchers wracked up big innings, and won big games. At the All-Star break this year, he was already on course to snatch well over 20 victories with an ERA hovering just around 3.00--the numbers of a serious Cy Young candidate.

And yet, no one seems to focus on him. His impressive first-half performance notwithstanding, he was overlooked for All-Star selection. And, even in Baltimore where ballplayers are practically deified, the fans lavish their attention on the likes of Mike Mussina, Jimmy Key, and Randy Myers.

Erickson takes it all in stride. "I don't perform for the media," he said. "I do it for myself and my teammates."

Curiously, when Erickson is noted, it's not because he has something to say, but because he has even less to say. Much has been made in the press about his bizarre pitching-day ritual, a routine that includes an all-black wardrobe, hours alone with the head-banging strains of AC/DC, The Scorpions, Motley Crue, and The Doors, and a vow of silence.

This mysterious process earned Erickson an eerie nickname--"Dr. Death." "When I was still with the Twins, we'd come to Baltimore on road trips. The Orioles clubhouse assistant, Butch, would see me in black and say, "Here comes Dr. Death. Dr. Death is here."

Of course, Erickson understated as ever, sums up his routine in far less dramatic terms. "It's just something I do for concentration," he said. "I can really only help this team once every five days, the rest of the time, I'm stuck on the bench and I can act like a fool if I want to. But on that one day, I owe everyone my complete concentration and dedication to my job. For me, that's what it takes to be successful in the Major Leagues."

For a long while, people wondered whether Erickson could be successful anymore. His career has been a manic-depressive affair that has brought him both jubilation and frustration. Like a character in Bernard Mallamud novel, Erickson began as a can't-miss prospect who burst into the Major Leagues…and then almost blew up.

He was so good as a young collegian, professional baseball couldn't even beg him into the game. He spurned offers from the Mets in '86, Houston in '87, and Toronto in '88. Then, in 1989 the Minnesota Twins came calling and enticed him away from the University of Arizona. That ended a storied collegiate career in which he was a Junior College All-American, a Pac-10 Southern Division co-MVP, and Baseball America All-American.

But it was just the beginning of a life-long dream. "I've wanted to be a baseball player ever since I was seven years old," he said. He was so well-prepared for that goal, he spent less than a season and a half in the minors. He got the call to join the Twins in 1990.

Minneapolis' Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, a.k.a. the "Homer Dome," has been poison to many a great pitcher, but the young Erickson thrived there. With a talent-laden squad around him, he flashed the brilliance everyone expected and hurled eight victories with a 2.87 ERA in just a sliver of a season.

The next year was even better. His first full season in the majors, the Twins won the World Series, and Erickson played an enormously important role. He won 20 games and was runner-up to the great Roger Clemens in Cy Young voting.

Erickson seemed poised for a brilliant future. In addition to his already formidable accomplishments, he was young, strong, and possessed the most devastating pitch in the American League--The Erickson Sinker.

"I started experimenting with the pitch when I was still in high school," he remembered. "Most people throw and their fingers are either with the seams or across them. My idea was to go diagonally over the seams."

This produced two things: a huge callous in Erickson's middle finger, and a sort of disguise for the baseball that made it appear like "a smaller circle to the batters."

"The better they see it, the better they can hit," Erickson said. "If the can't see it, they can't hit it."

More precisely, they can't get a base hit. Futile swats at the sinker only sends the ball pounding into the dirt like so many frustrations.

Unfortunately, Erickson found that if your own team can't hit, it doesn't matter how well you throw. After the world Series, the Twins dumped many of the players that made them great: Jack Morris: Greg Gagne, and even a little-used catcher named Junior Ortiz, whom Erickson credited with being an enormous help to his career.

"Without great players, the team can't win," Erickson said. "But a pitcher's job is to just pitch and go down with the ship if necessary."

The year after winning 20, he slipped to 13-12, even with a relatively excellent 3.40 ERA. The next season, he bottomed out with 19 losses.

Now it was Erickson's star that was sinking. Despite signs that he was still a top-notch major leaguer--he threw a no-hitter in 1994, and his innings pitched levels were still very high--Minnesota began to frown. He was traded to Baltimore for Scott Klingebeck and Kimera Bartee--hardly the marquee names one would expect for a recent 20-game winner.

The deal turned out to be steal for the Orioles. In his first season and a half in Baltimore, his performance dramatically improved. But questions still persisted. He was good all right, but still in the prime of his career. Why was he so far from greatness?

Then, about midway through the second half of last season's pennant push, Erickson did something completely unexpected: he put it all together. With the O's in hot pursuit of the Yankees in September he went 4-1 with a 3.19 ERA. One memorable day in the Bronx, he out dueled Andy Pettite, arguably the best starter in the game last season, for seven grueling innings before giving way to the bullpen.

This year, on a team of great pitchers, he could very well be the best. Or at least the most important. "Before the season even started, I said that the key to the Orioles team success this year would be Scott Erickson," Jim Palmer said. "If Scotty had a career year, the team could win the American League. The Orioles staff would be as good as Atlanta or Toronto with three number one or number two pitchers in the starting rotation."

Palmer's prediction has come true. Erickson has been sensational in 1997, and the Orioles have led the league since the season's first day. Of course, Erickson's success only spawns more questions about him. If he was so dominating early in his career, and he's back on top again, where was he for five seasons? What resurrected Dr. Death's career?

Theories abound. At the end of last year, many writers and broadcasters hypothesized that his September romp was due to a tired arm. The bane of most pitchers, prevailing thought held that Erickson's finely tuned body had to deaden a little before the famous sinker would, well, sink. But Erickson's strong performance out of the gate this year has put an end to that silly notion.

Palmer felt that it was primarily a matter of mechanics. "Scotty had a tendency to drop his arm down. That made it look like the ball was moving more, but he was less effective," the Hall-of-Famer said. "When he made the adjustment to go over the top and bring his arm through the proper slot, he started throwing more ground balls than anyone in the league."

Erickson wasn't convinced by what Palmer had to say, but offered a couple theories of his own. "I think that in September last year my arm loosened up a bit, and that was a help for the sinker," he said. "Also, Mark Parent really made a difference."

Parent, a well-traveled veteran catcher, assisted Erickson in his pitch selection. "I'm basically a two-pitch pitcher," he said. "Parent would help me mix up the selection a little big and at least suggest a third pitch to the batters. However, the year before, I was 4-0 in September with Hoiles behind the plate," he said. "So who knows why things turn around?"

Perhaps the answer isn't so much in the substance of what he's done--that is, winning--as it is in the style with which he's done it. Though Erickson is an elite athlete with relatively few peers, he is in a society of many such men.

The real difference, if there is one, is ghostly. It is in the metaphorical pieces of himself that he's scattered on pitcher's mounds from Camden Yards to the Great Lake shores of Toronto to the red clay of Atlanta, Georgia.

The difference can't be summed up by a simple W in some egghead's stats column. Although that's exactly was he earned when he out-gutted Roger Clemens. In a game tight enough to squeak, Erickson beat the finest pitcher of his generation, in the midst of perhaps the greatest year of his storied career, because he outlasted Clemens on the browiling-hot turf of Skydome.

"I really get up for Roger Clemens," Erickson modestly noted, "but so does every other pitcher in the league."

Even more amazing than outlasting Clemens was the fact that three days earlier, Erickson worked in relief of his own beleaguered star teammate, Jimmy Key. Facing down a tenacious Montreal team, Key had pitched superbly. But, in the eighth inning of a 1-0 ballgame, he found himself with two runners on base and just one out.

With the bullpen depleted and a right hander coming to the plate, manager Davey Johnson asked Erickson to intervene. Unaccustomed as he was to the role, the pitcher walked in and retired both men he faced, striking out one and fielding, what else?, a ground ball from the other.

It is in these selfless performances that Scott Erickson is changing the way people see him. After all, it's easy to overlook the surface of a handsome face when a man is willing to show you the very depths of his heart.