(Published May 2001 in The Daily Reptile, the game program for the Canton Crocodiles
Professional Baseball Club)
In October the San Diego Padres released me from my contract. Later that month I watched the World Series not knowing if I would ever play baseball competitively again. Four years after signing my professional contract, I was suddenly without a job. I looked to other teams for a fresh start, but I was turned away. They said I was too small. They said I couldn’t run. They said my arm would not hold up over a major league season. For the first time in my life I started to listen to Them, the scouts and directors who had given millions to players you’ll never see in the big leagues and who refused to sign players like Mike Piazza and Morgan Burkhart. But foolishly, I listened. For a brief time I considered my career a failure. I blamed baseball for the broken relationships and the years away from my family. I blamed the game for taking my heart and soul and leaving me with a broken dream and an empty bank account. It was then that I turned away from the sport I had played all my life.
After my release from the Padres I signed a new contract. I was to become a member of the Frito-Lay management team in California. Using the business degree I earned while attending Middle Tennessee State University on an athletic scholarship, I was finally making good money. Unlike the job I held the four previous years, I had money and a place to call home. I had the weekends off and would not be required to sleep on a bus.
Co-workers rode me for stories of life in professional baseball. I obliged and watched them shake their heads as I described back spasms, sprained wrists, and broken ribs that made the 140 game season one of constant pain. I talked of the small paychecks that forced several players into the same one-room apartment for six months. The same small wage that made drinking an imported beer an impossibility and late night meals at Waffle House a necessity, forced players to order water instead of tea to save a buck. Long distance phone bills covered on credit were a way of life. I thought about all the aspects of my former life that I should hate, but I could not help wanting back in.
My alarm went off every morning and I awoke with the smell of a ballpark in my nose. I could close my eyes and be at the plate in a tie game facing the league’s best pitcher. When I watched the major league teams playing spring training games on TV, I saw pitchers in big league uniforms that had been unable to get me out the year before. I saw infielders miss plays I was sure I could have made. The dream of beating the odds and making it up the ranks to play major league baseball was beating with strength and consistency inside me still. Playing in the Frontier League and performing well was my shot to get back in the game. I said good-bye to Frito-Lay and began working out for the coming season.
Without a map but with a steely determination, I drove to Canton, Ohio where I joined 40 other players at Thurmon Munson Stadium to compete for a roster spot with the Crocodiles. My spikes hit the infield dirt and an electric current ran through my body. I stretched muscles I had not used in six months and hungered to start facing the best pitching the league could offer. The grass was green and the bats cracked as the balls began to fly in all directions. I saw familiar faces around me. These were players that I had battled in the minor leagues years earlier, good players who had suffered the same fate as I. My current teammates have returned to the game like me to prove that their skills are still ready to make a run at the Major Leagues. We all come to play and to prove Them wrong.
The first day of camp ended early in the afternoon, and the players were dismissed for the day. I offered a ride to a fellow player, and we roamed aimlessly around our new town. We found a sturdy wooden table and a TV at a local speak-easy and we watched major League highlights on ESPN. Watching the games and discussing the action was not the same as playing, but it would have to do. My new buddy looked curiously at the TV screen and said, to no one in particular, “I can’t wait to start this season.” I didn’t have to acknowledge his remark. He wasn’t telling me. He said it aloud as if to tell the world he was ready. He was here like me to compete, and the name of the game is baseball.
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