CHICAGO— Walking with Clay Zavada through the maze of narrow corridors that lead from Wrigley Field's oft-criticized visitors locker room to the first-base dugout, one thing about the Arizona Diamondbacks rookie became abundantly clear to me.

"Babe Ruth walked down these stairs," he told me when I asked him if Wrigley's visitors quarters were really as reviled as I'd always heard. "Babe Ruth. How could I complain?"

Yeah, the Streator southpaw is still just another down-to-earth, La Salle County guy. He just happens to have a major-league arm.

For the first time since being called up to the Diamondbacks in late May, Zavada was in uniform and within 100 miles of his hometown this weekend as he and his D-backs visited the Cubs for a season-ending, three-game series. Clay — whom I haven't seen pitch since his days at Streator Township High School, TVand Internet excluded — was nice enough to take a few minutes out of his pregame routine Saturday morning to talk to a fellow Streatorite lucky enough to get a press credential.

This was some 18 hours after he took the mound at Wrigley for his lone appearance of the series and worked a perfect 1-2-3 ninth inning against his boyhood favorite team, the Cubs.

"It was a dream come true," Zavada told me, looking out toward the mound as we sat in the visitors dugout. "Just being able to pitch in front of my hometown fans from Streator, I was nervous. It was probably one of the most nerve-racking outings I've had since I've been up here. It was rainy, it was cold, and a lot of people stayed the whole game wanting to see me pitch. I didn't want to disappoint them."

That didn't happen. Zavada — after a smile-inducing seventh-inning mishap which saw him, acting as a protector for his teammates in the D-backs' bullpen, grabbed a smash hit (which was fair, unbeknownst to him) down the first-base line, then quickly tossed the ball back onto the field as if it were on fire when the umpire told him it was fair — took the hill in the ninth and closed out the first of two Arizona wins last weekend.

"I kept the ball," he said, talking about the ball he ended the ninth inning with, not the one he mistakenly grabbed in the seventh. "I'll remember that for the rest of my life. The last time I was here at Wrigley Field, I think, was in 2007. My hand was broken, and I was watching them play, and I was just like, 'Whatever.'

"I'd always wanted to play here. I just never thought it was possible."

Zavada hasn't just gotten the chance to pitch in the big leagues. He's excelled at it.

After his weekend at Wrigley, Zavada finished his rookie season with a 3-3 record, an ERAof 3.35 over 51 innings pitched, and allowed opposing hitters to bat just .236. The left-hander earned a win in his first major league appearance back on May 21 and went on to open his career with 13 consecutive scoreless innings and 18 innings worked without surrendering an earned run — the fourth-longest such stretch among relievers to start a career since 1954.

As smooth as his introduction to the majors may have looked from the outside, Zavada definitely knows better.

"There's a lot of stuff I've still got to work on," he said, citing his desire to develop sharper breaking pitches, cut down on walks and develop a pickoff move that, to use his word, isn't "awful." "But to come in and prove that I can compete against these hitters ... They're unbelievable hitters.

"I didn't think the difference was going to be extremely noticeable between the minor leagues and the big leagues, but it is. The minor leagues have great hitters. Then you go up to the big leagues, and you just go, 'Man, they can get better than that?' Everyday you have to be on. If you have a little bit of an off-day, they're going to pound you. They're swinging for the fences every time, and they know how to hit.

"But I wouldn't change a thing. I've had a fun time. I worked hard. We struggled as a team, and that was a grind, but next year's going to be different, I hope."

This year ended with a perfect capper:Zavada pitching against the Cubs in front of busloads — literally busloads — of fans from his hometown on Friday.

"It's been unbelievable," Zavada said of the support he's received from fellow Streatorites. "It's been unreal. Everybody seems to be on board and just having a good time, and that's what it's supposed to be about."

"Just having a good time" would also apply to Zavada's sudden — and unexpected— rise to national prominence after joining the D-backs, including appearances on ESPN and a multitude of feature stories in national media outlets.

Part of that sudden celebrity was due to his great start, sure. And some of it certainly came about because of his inspirational life story:a young, small-town man who left the game just as he was finding success due to his father's unexpected death, then returned to ascend from an unaffiliated minor league team in far southern Illinois to major league sensation in fewer than two years.

But Clay wasn't fooled. He suspected the main reason he got the majority of that attention back in May and June was as plain as the handlebar-groomed hair on his face.

"I couldn't believe people were that fired up about a moustache," he said, still shaking his head about it some four months later. "There have been a lot of guys in the game who have had them, and there are a lot of guys in the game who have them now.

"It was cool, though. I enjoyed every minute of it. I didn't think, 'Oh my God, I've made it!I'm a superstar!' It was a fad. People freaked out about it for a little while. Fans still give me a hard time about the 'stache every once in a while ... but if you want to have fun with it, have fun with it. Most people are used to it. I'm just a normal dude now."

With his rookie season at an end, Zavada is looking forward to spending the offseason back in his hometown unwinding. Then, in the spring, he's certain to get an invitation back to the Cactus League with the Diamondbacks after his success as a late-inning reliever in 2009.

And while his role on the Arizona staff hasn't been one of baseball's most glamorous ones — such as starter or closer — it is one with which Zavada seems perfectly content.

"I don't care," he said. "I just want spikes and a glove. Whether it's closing out a game or not, I don't care. I have no preference. I want to win. Whatever role that puts me in is fine with me."

As for how he plans to spend his offseason back in Streator?

"I'm going to go golfing. I'm going to hang out," he said. "I'm probably not going to answer my phone too much. I'm going to do a lot of hunting, listen to Swap Shop, pet my dog. That's about it."

And if that ain't Streator, I'll kiss your 'stache.