Although this series contains things from the world in which we live, including real persons, places, and events, it should be read as a work of fiction. All characters are fictional and not based on any actual living person. The events that take place are entirely the product of my imagination.
I was sitting around one late spring day in 1991, wondering what I really wanted to do with my life when the answer — at least a temporary one — came in the most unexpected of ways. I had decided to stay the summer in Oak Ridge after graduation and try to get some work so I could make money for grad school in the fall. I had played summer baseball after my freshman, sophomore, and junior years, and I had been invited to do so again this summer, but the way my college baseball career had ended had snuffed out most, if not all, my motivation to keep playing. At the same time, though, I wasn’t ready to go home to the big city and impose on my parents for the summer.
I was in a sort of no-man’s land; all of a sudden, somehow, I was a college graduate, and baseball appeared to be all but over. It all had flown by much too quickly. And I wasn’t ready to move on to whatever might be next.
Coach Randall was running his baseball camps early that summer and had asked me to work them, and this gave me the opportunity of staying one extra month in the dorm and making a little rent money. On this day in the middle of the first week of June, we had just finished the morning session, and I was cooking up some Ramen noodles in the microwave before I had to be back down at the baseball stadium for the afternoon workouts. The phone rang and I answered it, thinking it was another teammate working the camps with me. But it wasn’t a teammate.
“Neil?” asked a strange voice I didn’t know.
“Yeah?”
“This is Tom Clark. I’m a scout with the Oakland A’s. I’m calling to tell you we just drafted you in the 20th round of the amateur draft and we want you to come play third base for us.”
I was stunned. And quickly suspicious this was somebody playing a prank on me.
I hadn’t even played in half the games I suited up for my senior year. Coach Randall and his staff had cooled on me in mid-season and started playing a sophomore ahead of me at 3rd base most of the time. This was something that happened in all major D-1 sports programs if the season was deemed lost, which ours was by then; unless you were an All-American or All-Conference player or one of the top pitchers or hitters on the team, the coaches gave up on the older guys who were going to be graduating and started playing younger players to get them some experience for the future.
In their defense, at the time they essentially benched me, I was definitely not one of our best hitters; I had gotten off to a strong start, but after a few conference series I went into a slump, and my average dropped to an unimpressive .257. On the defensive side, my glove was as solid as ever; I had made but one error the entire season, but a third baseman was expected to hit with power and drive in runs if his average hovered where mine was, and my power production had dropped off to go along with the mediocre batting average.
I had scattered a few home runs in meaningless, late-season games and actually pinch hit for three doubles in the league tournament, but I never returned to the starting lineup. During the last month of the season, I all but gave up any hope of being drafted. But I played out the schedule like a dutiful teammate. I hadn’t gone out with a whimper, but it definitely wasn’t a bang either.
I woke up the morning following my last collegiate game in a funk, thinking my life as a baseball player was over. For the better part of 18 years, it had been how I defined myself, how I gained self-confidence, and how I actually related to the world. And now, it appeared, it was over. Just like that.
So when Clark called and told me the news that someone had actually drafted me — regardless of what round I had been picked — I sat there speechless for a few seconds. But I finally recovered.
“Uh, yes sir. Wow … I had no idea you guys were interested in me.”
“Well, I’ve been watching you since you were a sophomore in high school, off and on. You moved around schools so much we could never tell what you wanted to do. You scared some people off when you took the football scholarship, but I still kept track of you. I saw you play a lot the last two summers in the Jayhawk and Cape Cod leagues. I like your bat and your glove at third. You did well hitting with the wood bat last summer. A lot of guys have trouble making that transition.”
I never knew Clark was looking at me. Scouts got around, but kept an amazingly low profile. And they never told anyone who they were watching.
I still wasn’t quite sure this wasn’t one of my teammates playing a cruel joke. In fact, I resolved to myself, if it turned out to be such, I was going to kick his ass, whoever it was. But I couldn’t think of any way to assure myself this guy was legitimate. “Just keep talking,” I said to myself and maybe he would clear it up some way.
Clark continued. “So what do you say? I can sign you up and get you out to the team, but unfortunately, I need to know quickly. If you want to sign, we need to get you on a plane to Madison, Wisconsin, where our single A team is located. We were going to send you out to our rookie team in Arizona, but the single A team just lost their 3rd baseman to an injury last night. He’s on the DL for two weeks. I lobbied for you to go there instead, and management bought off on it. They still think you’re a better fit this summer at Rookie ball, but I saw an opportunity for you to skip past all that. I think you can make an immediate impact up there. But time is of the essence. Today’s an off-day, and they have a game tomorrow night.”
My head was totally spinning now. I actually hadn’t picked up a bat in two weeks except to show the campers how to take a stance and swing, and I had only thrown a few times with some other guys headed out to play summer ball to keep their arms in shape. I didn’t even know if I had all the gear I needed. I had three gloves of my own, but no wood bats.
“What about equipment?” I asked, worried at the suddenness of all of it.
“Just bring your glove and anything else you need. The club equipment manager will give you everything else when you get up there. Whatever you need.”
“Tom I haven’t taken BP in two weeks, and I can’t remember the last time I hit with a wood bat. It was probably last summer.”
“Look, don’t worry about that. Everyone’s in the same boat when they get to their first team. Every single draft pick. You decide which brand of bat you want, and the club will order them for you. The organization understands there’s a learning curve adjusting. The hitting coach will spend all the time you need getting you up to speed.”
I was out of questions and reasons not to do it.
It suddenly dawned on me that this was the realization of a lifelong dream. How could I turn it down? I was sure Coach Randall wouldn’t care if I left working the camps early; our program had guys drafted all the time this part of the year. He’d probably actually be happy to get rid of me because he could put one of his new juco transfers in my dorm room so the guy could take summer classes.
What the hell else was I going to do? Sit on my ass and get fat all summer waiting to start something in the fall I wasn’t even sure I really wanted to do?
I never expected this chance after what I deemed a poor senior season. Grad school would always be there, but this would not. I hadn’t even talked to my parents or anyone else, but I said, “Okay Tom, what do I need to do?”
“Great! That’s what I wanted to hear. Just get packed and get your head ready to play ball. We’ll get you signed when you get to Madison. Have you got representation?”
What was he talking about?
“You know. An agent, a lawyer, anybody like that?”
I was a total blank. “No.”
“Well the typical signing bonus where we picked you isn’t much, but you have to sign to play. Below the 10th round, bonuses are standard based on which round you’re picked. You went in the 20th, so we’re going to offer you .. (he sounded like he was looking at a list).. $15,000.”
Signing bonus? Holy shit. Fifteen thousand dollars? The thought of getting paid hadn’t yet entered my still-scattered mind. And I had never had more than a few hundred dollars to my name in a checking account. I came from a middle class family. As paltry as that amount looks now, it sounded like a million dollars to me at the time. I sat there dumbfounded, unclear about how to respond.
I was speechless, and sensing some hesitation on my part, Clark filled the gap again.
“You want to talk to your folks or Coach Randall about it before you really decide?”
No. He didn’t get it. “No, no, Tom. That’s fine,” I said in the best professional tone I could muster. “That’s actually a lot more than I thought it would be,” I managed to sputter. He laughed.
“Well, it’s really not much actually. And I wouldn’t spend it all at once, because your weekly pay is going to be only slightly more than what goes through your hands on your scholarship to buy a little food and gas. But if you want to play pro baseball, that’s just how it is; you move up and you’ll make more money, as you know. Everything right now is incentive-laden.”
“Okay. Well what do you want me to do now?”
“Get your stuff together and get ready to catch a flight. I’m going to have someone call you with your itinerary from there up to Madison. When you get to the airport go to the ticket counter and show them your ID and they’ll give you your tickets. Don’t worry about anything else. Once you get up there, the team will tell you where your apartment is and get you set up with a small cash advance for some spending money. You’ll sign the contract tonight. Make sure you call your folks and tell them everything. I mean, you’re 23 and can do whatever you want, but the organization doesn’t want to get off on the wrong foot with them.”
He continued, sounding like he was flipping through some papers. “They have three more games on this home stand this week, and then they’re headed out on a road trip. That’s another reason I want you up there today; it’s always easier to get you set up with living arrangements and equipment, that sort of thing, when the team is at home. They might put you in a hotel tonight, but it’s a night game tomorrow, so you can sleep late in the morning before you go to the ball park.”
“What about my car? I mean, I’m sure y’all aren’t giving me a car up there. Can’t I just drive up?”
“Well you’re talking about an entire day’s drive. I mean, you could drive it, but you won’t get up there until the middle of the night and we need you in the lineup tomorrow night. We can have somebody go get your car and drive it up for you if that helps.”
“Okay. I guess that’ll work. Thanks.”
That’s when everything hit me fully for the first time; these guys were not messing around. This was professional baseball. One minute I was sitting in a dorm room eating a 25-cent bag of microwave noodles, and the next minute someone was asking me to sign a professional contract, about to cut me a $15,000-dollar check, buying me an airplane ticket that would leave in a few hours to fly me to a town and state I had never been to, and sending someone to retrieve my car and drive it from Oak Ridge up to Madison, Wisconsin, some 800 miles away.
“Oh, uh, Tom, one more thing,” I asked. “I guess I should ask you what team I’m going to be playing for. So I can tell my family.”
“Oh yeah, good question, right?” he laughed. “You’re going to our Class A affiliate, the Madison Muskies. They play in the Midwest League in a brand new stadium up there. I think you’re going to like it.” The Muskies?
“What’s a Muskie?” I asked, having never heard the word. He laughed again.
“It’s a big fish native to that area, or so they’ve told me.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Look, write down my number,” he said, and I did as told. “Hold onto it and if anything comes up call me immediately. Otherwise, get your stuff packed and head over to the airport. Go to the American Airlines counter in an hour and they should have your ticket. Someone from the team will meet you at the airport tonight when you get up there. And Neil?”
“Yes Sir?”
“Just relax. Listen to the coaches and the staff up there. Do what they tell you. You’re gonna be just fine. We wouldn’t have picked you otherwise.”
“Thanks Tom. I appreciate your faith in me.”
I searched for the words to describe how I was feeling as the tears started to well up in my eyes in the realization of the moment. “Thank you for drafting me.”
“You’re welcome. Now get your stuff ready. I’ll talk to you later.” And he hung up.
I was 23 years old. Fresh out of college. Green as can be. Naive. Just a kid really. With the exception of the three summers I had played baseball in the Jayhawk League and out on Cape Cod, I had never been out of my home state or the state where I had gone to college, certainly never to Wisconsin. All I knew of the state were the Green Pay Packers and the Milwaukee Brewers, neither of whom were very good teams in 1991. And the three summers I had been away from home had gone by very quickly as we had played about 6 games per week over June and July, while living with host families in very nice houses who acted as foster parents.
As I would soon come to learn, the adventure I was about to embark on was something a lot different.
To be continued.
Copyright© 2017, all rights reserved
Glen Hines is the author of two books, Document and Cloudbreak, available at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. His writing has appeared in Sports Illustrated, Task & Purpose, and the Human Development Project. If you enjoyed this story, let him know and recommend it to others.
