ShareThisSAN FRANCISCO - Tony Plush is the alter ego of Milwaukee Brewers centerfielder Nyjer Morgan, a Bay Area home guy and one of the oddest characters in sports. Morgan pulled on a "PLUSH" San Jose Sharks sweater, laced up the skates and zipped around with his favorite team at a morning practice this week.
Morgan/Plush didn't crack the squad, but the squad didn't crack him.
In a breakaway drill, Morgan got stoned three times by goalie Thomas Greiss. But on his fourth try, Morgan beat Greiss like a rented sled dog.
"He was giving me the stick side," Morgan said, "but for some reason, I saw that five-hole open up and I had to go for the five-hole ..."
I asked Greiss if that was the fastest shot he had ever faced.
"Probably, yeah," Greiss said.
In reality, Greiss gave Morgan a nice little gift. Morgan played high-level junior hockey in Canada, but he was noticeably slower on skates than any of the Sharks, and his shot, well, Greiss' mom could have spit on it.
Morgan then did some passing, but opted out of the scary-looking tip drill, where the player uses his stick to deflect pucks fired from short range.
"No tip drills for Plush," T. Plush said.
Yes, there was a bit of hokum involved in Plush swimming with the Sharks. He spent about as much time on ice with the team as I do walking to the end of my driveway to fetch the newspaper.
But everyone had a good time. Morgan and the Sharks laughed and bonded.
"We love him," Joe Thornton said, adding, "I'd give him a B-plus (for hockey skills), I was surprised at how good he was."
It was a rare opportunity for the Bay Area media to meet the strange young man who was born in San Francisco and raised in San Jose, was booted out of two high schools, moved to Canada at 16 to seek his fortune with a hockey stick, and emerged more than a decade later as a controversial major league baseball player with the Pittsburgh Pirates, then the Washington Nationals before hitting Milwaukee.
"The less you talk about him, the better off you are," Tony La Russa said of Morgan last season.
Some find Morgan charming and refreshing, but he grates on others with a number of tools. He poked Twitter sticks at Albert Pujols last season, impugning The Machine's masculinity. Two seasons ago, Morgan, 6-0 and 175, charged the mound against Chris Volstad, 6-8 and 230. Morgan loves to interact with enemy fans, one incident ending in a suspension.
Sharks coach Todd McLellan crossed paths with Morgan 12 years ago in the Western Hockey League.
"His (base)ball characteristics, and the way he stirs things up on the ball field, that's the exact same way he was on the ice surface," McLellan said. "He was a bit of a disturber, got under the skin of some of the other players, and competed hard."
Morgan took up hockey as a lad in San Jose, attended Mill Valley's Tamalpais High and El Cerrito High (he says he was kicked out of both schools for "behavioral problems") and, at 16, went to Canada. His hockey career ended with a seven-game stint in the WHL in 2000, after which Morgan switched to baseball, reaching the majors in '07.
Last season he hit .304 as a platoon centerfielder, and his Game 5, 10th-inning RBI single against Arizona sent the Brewers to the NLCS.
What kind of hockey player was he?
"Make it happen, just excitement, grind, make it happen," Morgan said. "Exciting player, just like I am on the diamond. Do what I do, crowd favorite."
Is he misunderstood?
"Yeah ... but people are going to have their own opinion. ... I'm not going to stop being me. I'm who I am. I'm going to go out and have fun, I'm living my life to the fullest."
(Contact Scott Ostler at sostler(at)sfchronicle.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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