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St. Louis Cardinals starting pitcher Kyle LohseScott Rovak/St. Louis Cardinals/ stlouis.cardinals.mlb.com

The Other Native Baseball Player

By Dalton Walker

Forty-one million dollars isn't bad.

Congratulations to 30-year-old Kyle Lohse for receiving a huge pay raise.

Lohse, the eldest of three current Native Americans who play Major League Baseball, recently agreed to a four-year $41 million deal with the St. Louis Cardinals. He is a member of the Nomlaki Nation in California.

Boston Red Sox outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury, Navajo, and New York Yankees pitcher Joba Chamberlain, Winnebago, are the other two.

Ellsbury and Chamberlain may have the East Coast and Indian Country giddy, but it's the veteran Lohse with the proven résumé

Solid Season

The Cardinals failed to make the postseason but don't blame Lohse. He finished strong with a 15-6 record and a 3.78 earned run average in his first season as a Cardinal. He also had 119 strikeouts and 49 walks.

His solid effort led to a reported contract of $41 million. Last season, he earned about $4.2 million. In 2002, he banked $215,000.

To put it in perspective, Lohse made more last season than Ellsbury and Chamberlain made combined — they are both in their rookie contracts. Chamberlain received $390,000 and Ellsbury $406,000. Both should get a hefty raise in the near future.

The Chicago Cubs drafted Lohse in 1996, but he didn't make his big league debut until 2001 for the Minnesota Twins. Lohse was traded from Chicago's minor league system to Minnesota's in 1999

Three Teams

Since his Minnesota days, he has played for three teams: St. Louis, the Cincinnati Reds and the Philadelphia Phillies.

Some baseball fanatics would refer to Lohse as a journeyman, while others would say he was consistent enough to stay on a major league roster when so many pitchers fall through the cracks and never return.

Lohse has appeared in 251 games and logged more than 1,300 innings with a career 853 strikeouts. He has a career record of 78-80.

Impressed? I am. I was lucky enough to catch Lohse in action when he played for the Twins.

Kyle, you deserve it.

Dalton Walker, Red Lake Anishinabe, is a reporter at the Argus Leader newspaper in Sioux Falls, S.D. Walker is a graduate of the University of Nebraska in Lincoln and the American Indian Journalism Institute. A longtime reznet staff writer and a Chips Quinn Scholar, Walker had reporting internships at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis and The New York Times.

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