Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball Read Free Page B

different teams in a period of five weeks. “No one goes into his backyard and says to himself, ‘Here’s Schwinden on the mound for the Buffalo Bisons.’ ”
    He smiled. “No one dreams of pitching in a minor-league park when it’s forty degrees at first pitch and there are two thousand people in the stands. And yet almost all of us do it—some for a little while, some for a long while. The reality is almost always different than the dream.”
    Schwinden is in many ways symbolic of the reality. In 2012 he was called up to the major leagues on three different occasions. He was also released by four different teams. While his case may beextreme, being moved from team to team and level to level is something many—if not most—baseball players go through. Almost without exception they all spend time in the minor leagues. All of them—even those who go on to be multimillion-dollar-a-year stars—can remember that first call-up. For others, who dance with stardom and then return to the minors, getting called back up may be even more gratifying because the first time around they take it for granted. For some, a brief trip to the majors, even if it lasts only a few days, is the highlight they carry with them long after they have retired. And there are others who never get that call even once.
    As Schwinden points out, they all grow up dreaming of playing in the big leagues—in the massive ballparks with forty thousand or more fans screaming their names as they make a heroic play on the mound, at the plate, or in the field. No one dreams about playing in Triple-A.
    Charlie Montoyo has managed the Durham Bulls since 2007. He has spent most of his life in the minors and still hopes his chance to prove himself in the majors will come someday soon. Ron Johnson, who returned to the minors as Norfolk’s manager in 2012, hopes for the same chance.
    “The good news is we’ve got a great bus,” Johnson said one night prior to a nine-hour trip to Gwinnett. “Nobody beats our bus.”
    Both men love their game and are devoted to it but have seen firsthand how unimportant it can feel when real life—in the form of crises involving their children—has intervened. Montoyo keeps a photograph of his two children inside his cap at all times as a reminder to himself that a missed umpire’s call isn’t
that
important.
    “Doesn’t mean I don’t argue,” he said, smiling. “But I try to remember that the ump has a family too, and he’s probably trying just as hard as I am.”
    There are so many stories about minor-league life that telling even a handful of them in one book is virtually impossible. But some stand out because they are about persevering. A lot of baseball is about persevering.
    “It’s very easy to say, ‘Wait a minute, I’m a big leaguer, I don’tbelong here,’ ” Scott Elarton said of minor-league life. “But the game usually gives you what you deserve—good or bad. And you realize, especially when you get away from it, that you’re going to live a lot of your life as an ex-ballplayer. That’s why a lot of us figure out that hanging on for as long as you can possibly play the game is a good thing. It really isn’t hanging on—it’s savoring what you’ve got.”
    Of course
that
is easier said than done.

    Every player knows how much the first call-up means. Which is why there is almost always a celebration of some kind in a Triple-A clubhouse when someone gets the call for the first time. Everyone understands what an extraordinary moment it is in a player’s life. Those who have been called up remember what it meant to them; those who have not know how much they want it to happen.
    J. C. Boscan’s story isn’t quite the same as Jimmy Morris’s, because he never stopped playing. He signed with the Atlanta Braves in the summer of 1996 at the age of sixteen and spent the next fourteen seasons bouncing around the minor leagues. He first reached Triple-A in 2002 but couldn’t take the next step,