SA's Mark Hutton was the Crocodile Dundee of baseball as he wowed the New York Yankees

"AUS SOME" read the headline in the New York Daily News, announcing the arrival of South Australian baseballer Mark Hutton.

"AUS SOME" read the headline in the New York Daily News.

"The Crocodile Dundee of Baseball", other New York media dubbed Mark Hutton on July 24, 1993.

A day earlier the 200cm giant from Belair, South Australia, had thrilled a packed house at Yankee Stadium, pitching the dream debut game to help baseball's biggest club beat the California Angels 5-2.

Hutton pitched eight innings that night and struck out five Angels batters while conceding only three hits.

For a brief period that followed he was the toast of New York City.

"It wasn't something that I expected when I went over there,'' reflects the 43-year-old, who now lives in tranquil Lower Mitcham, just down the hill from where he grew up but seemingly a million miles from the Big Apple.

"I was having some pretty good success in the minor leagues and all of a sudden, write-time write-place, and my opportunity came along and away I went with the Yankees."

For much of the next three years Hutton lived the boyhood fantasy.

Five years after leaving Scotch College to chase his dream in the US as an 18-year-old, his scorching fastball had taken him through minor leagues and on to the mound at the Yankee Stadium, a place no Aussie had ever tread before.

"I always had a heavy fastball and was my calling card,'' Hutton says.

"I could throw it about 95-96 miles per hour and that was what I became renowned for …

"It was a surreal when I reflect on it now.

"The Yankees and New York City. It was a place that nothing that could really prepare you for.

"Even when you travelled with the Yankees it was a big show because they are such a big club. Everywhere we went there was intense interest and big crowds."

Hutton himself was a favourite among the New York media and with fans.

Hot on the heels of the hit Crocodile Dundee movies, he added to the popular New York stereotype of the Aussie male - big, strong, laid-back and handsome.

"When you performed in New York you had to be ready to talk to about 20 different microphones,'' he says.

"And, obviously with me there was a fair bit of interest because I was an Aussie. It was fairly intense but it gave me a great insight and prepared me for the rest of my career."

But, all of a sudden, a phone call midway through the 1996 season changed everything.

"If you've ever seen the movie Moneyball, that's how it was,'' Hutton says.

"I was in Texas at the time, the trading deadline was midnight and at five-minutes-to-midnight I got a call from the Yankees general manager Bob Watson and he said 'you're heading to the Florida Marlins'.

"I flew out with the Marlins the next day. I rang my wife Tracey straight after I got off the phone and told her the news and we were both devastated to be honest.

"I'd been with the Yankees about eight years all up including time in their minor league system.

"Tracey was stuck in New York with everything to tidy up and stack and move to Florida."

New York would win the World Series that year and Hutton got a ring in recognition of playing on their roster that season.

These days he proudly shows it off to stunned onlookers from time-to-time, but at the time it was hard to absorb the disappointment of missing out on a potential World Series pitching spot.

"It is a dog-eat-dog industry and it took me a while to come to terms with it,'' Hutton says.

That said, the Marlins were good to him, and he played regular Major League ball throughout the 1997 landing another ring at the end of the season.

Once again he'd come agonisingly close to playing in a World Series, narrowly overlooked for spot on the squad, but earning a ring for his efforts earlier in the season.

And then, almost in the blink of an eye, a whirlwind five years in the Major League ended. A season spent largely languishing in the minors leagues at the Colorado Rockies led to another trade to Cincinatti.

Just as Hutton made the Reds' starting squad he tore his groin and by midway through 1998 his Major League career was over.

By 2000, he and Tracey were back where they first met, in Adelaide, Hutton's professional baseball career over.

Having tasted some of the more dizzying highs life could throw at him, Hutton tasted some lows upon his return.

Jobs came and went, and where baseball once lived, a massive void existed in his life seemingly impossible to fill.

"Coming back to Adelaide was a huge shock to the system,'' he says.

"All of a sudden I thought 'damn, what am I going to do now'.

"To be honest, there were some rough times going through that period, I really battled to understand 'wow, I'm going to have to work for a living here'.

"I was 30 years old and it was tough, I was in and out of different jobs, and it was the support of my wife that got me through."

In more recent years, Hutton has found peace in Adelaide, partly through a renewed acquaintance with the sport he loves.

He is currently working part-time as the Adelaide Bite's fill-in pitching coach and also coaches at the Mitcham-based Sturt Baseball Club, where sons Jack and Harry play.

And, when he wants to hop in a time-capsule and revisit the different world he once lived in, Hutton only need open pull out the rings.

"Looking back now I wouldn't change anything,'' he says.

"Once you put those pinstripes on you're a Yankee for life and I can look back now and think that was pretty special thing to have done, a pretty fair accomplishment."