Snow Stays Cool, Despite a Flurry of Trade Rumors : Baseball: After an MVP season in the minors, Yankee prospect from Los Alamitos High just wants to play, wherever it may be.

Word spreads quickly when a major league general manager is in the stands at a minor league ballpark. So almost before Whitey Herzog took a seat for a game in Columbus, Ohio, last summer, J.T. Snow knew he was there.

Every triple-A player knows the majors might be just an injury or a trade or an expansion draft away. With the Angels’ general manager in the park, the pressure was on, and Snow didn’t hurt himself the next few days. In no time, his name was on the rumor mill, as if he would be traded here or there the day after tomorrow.

“I heard the Angels first,” said Snow, a Yankee minor leaguer from Los Alamitos High School who won the International League batting title by hitting .313 this season. “Then I heard San Diego. Then the St. Louis Cardinals.”

But the days went by, and Snow stayed in pinstripes.

“When I first heard some of the rumors, I got caught up in it a little bit,” said Snow, who is the son of former Ram receiver Jack Snow. “I’d sit down and try to figure out what was going to happen.”

Before he knew it, Snow’s fantasy about playing in front of family and friends had turned to worry about having to leave so many tickets every night. Then he caught himself. It hadn’t happened yet.

“It’s best not to worry about it,” he said. “That’s what an agent is for, to relay information to you so you don’t have to worry about it.”

While other people speculated, Snow played. The 6-foot-2, 200-pound first baseman finished with 15 home runs and drove in 78 runs to help his team win the International League title. He also was named the league’s most valuable player and rookie of the year. It was only his fourth season in professional baseball, but Snow finished it in the big leagues, spending the last two weeks with the Yankees as a reward for his work.

“There was a moment when I first got there, and the only thing I could do was think about the past three years in the minor leagues,” he said. “This was what everybody was striving for.”

Of course, everybody is striving to stay in the big leagues, and Snow doesn’t know what his prospects for next season are yet.

At the end of the year, Snow says, the Yankees told him he could go into spring training with a chance to make the team as a fifth outfielder who would occasionally play first or as the designated hitter. That scenario might have gained strength if Snow had agreed to go to winter league and work on his outfield skills, as the Yankees reportedly requested.

The trade possibilities persist, too. And Snow says he remains curious to see how the expansion draft Tuesday will play out. He once saw expansion as an opportunity to play in the big leagues. But it is believed that the Yankees put him on their 15-player protected list, making him ineligible for the draft.

However, those lists aren’t made public, and Snow said no one with the Yankees gave him any word. He’ll take it as it comes.

“I’ll sit down and watch the expansion draft on TV Tuesday, and if my name’s called, then I’ll know I wasn’t protected,” he said.

Playing for the Marlins or the Rockies next year probably isn’t in Snow’s future. But he still recognizes the appeal of expansion. It isn’t playing on a 100-loss team. It’s playing, period.

“I’ve got Don Mattingly ahead of me and Kevin Maas is doing a good job,” Snow said. “There’s a logjam at my position. That’s what expansion is about--creating jobs. If I wasn’t going to get a shot with the Yankees, I would like to play anywhere. Most guys feel that way when they get to that point, on the verge of breaking into the major leagues.

“Sure, I’d love to play for the Yankees. I came up with them, they drafted me, I’d like to play in New York. But I also look at it from another standpoint, that I’m ready to play.”

Instead of packing up for a season in an unglamorous winter league, Snow is intent on enjoying the off-season. He is living in Long Beach, and his regular workouts include three or four racquetball games a week with his father, who is now a Rams radio broadcaster.

Last weekend, a college buddy from Arizona was in town--Minnesota Twins pitcher Scott Erickson--and the two players sat in on part of the Ram broadcast. They also went to the Kings game Saturday, then called Jack Snow’s radio show on Monday morning and bragged about Arizona’s football victory over Washington.

Snow says it wasn’t until the baseball finally stopped that he was able to appreciate what he had done during the season.

“I can now,” he said. “It was weird, because during the season and even right after it, I didn’t think too much about the season I had. Now that I’ve had time to sit back and kind of let it sink in, I’m happy with the way things went. The thing that kept me going during the season was I never stopped to realize what kind of season I was having. One of the things I pride myself on is never being satisfied. You can always be better.”

When all is said and done, he might be right back in Columbus next year, sent back to triple-A so he can play every day. Or he might not be. The possibilities, like the trade rumors, are many.

“It’s a tough situation, waiting on your fate or your future to be decided,” Snow said.