Big League Dreams: Chapter 03
I started this story a while ago, before COVID-19 and before the likely contraction of baseball's minor leagues. So, it exists in a fantasy world where these things didn't happen.
I hope that the quality of the story allows you to ignore that.
Also, while I never specifically say what baseball organization is featured, it is based on one team, which is pretty obvious, especially if you have read some of my earlier stories.
But I've taken liberties with locations of minor league teams, and my descriptions of the minor league cities and towns are completely fictional.
I'd suggest reading the prior chapters to understand what's going on.
As with all of my stories, they are not submitted until completed, so the chapters will appear every few days. Thanks for reading!
The next year was another crossroads year for me. I had a strong spring, and even pitched in a couple of major league exhibition games, allowing my parents to see me pitch for the first time as a pro on TV, although my appearances were late in the game when both teams had removed most of the major leaguers from the lineup. I hoped to have a full year at AAA, and if I was lucky, I might even get a shot to pitch in a major league game that counted. But if I didn't have a good year, I might get sent back down, and at my age, I was getting to the point that I ran the risk of getting released so that younger, more highly touted prospects could take my roster spot. At that point, I'd have to pray that some other organization was interested in me, or finally get a real job.
At the start of the season, I was penciled in as a setup man—one of the guys who pitched after the starter was out, but not the closer. At least I wasn't supposed to be a "long reliever," which would have meant that I would only be used if the starter had to come out earlier than expected, and I hoped that my success during the season would prevent me from ending up only getting mop up work, when the game was so far lost (or occasionally, if we had a huge lead), that the manager wouldn't want to waste one of the successful pitchers. Ending up in that role for any length of time did not bode well for a long career.
Back when my dad was younger, the setup man role was also not prestigious. The glamour guys were the starters and closers, but over the years, as analytics began to demonstrate starters' decreasing effectiveness the longer they pitched, and pitch counts took on more importance to preserving arms, teams began to rely more and more on effective set up pitchers. The big money for relievers was still for the closers, but you could have a long and lucrative career if you were a reliable pitcher in the 7
th
or 8
th
inning, and occasionally close a game.
I had been happy when I got moved up to AAA to reunite with Teo, who appeared to be working his way up the ladder, too, and occasionally got mentioned when big league jobs opened up. Not only had he been successful in the minors, but being Hispanic and fluent in Spanish was a plus. We also had a great pitching coach, Bobby Parker, who had spent five years on the big league team before injuring his shoulder and turning to coaching. He was a keen student of all aspects of pitching, including the physical, mental and analytical parts, and like me, was a college graduate, from Vanderbilt. We hit it off immediately, and I planned on taking as much wisdom from Bobby as possible for as long as he was my coach.
The city where our team was based had seen better days, back when there were active factories and mills, but there was a large college outside of town which provided some jobs, so it wasn't completely depressed. But there was a glut of housing in some neighborhoods, so I was able to rent a small one bedroom apartment in an ungentrified neighborhood for the season, on a month to month basis, for a reasonable price. The landlord, an older widower named Marco Balvetti, had been a machinist in his youth, and was a big baseball fan who rented the apartment to ballplayers each season. He was a nice guy, but private, so it wasn't like having the Pullmans around, which was fine with me at that point.
Our team looked to be strong. We had a bunch of the guys I played with before, including Roscoe Brownlow, Jamari Post, Caden Burris, Fonzie Arroyo, Al Balboa, Luis Correa, and Ramon Cardenas, who we all expected to be called up soon, some highly ranked prospects who I only knew from spring training, and a handful of veteran guys, who were considered "AAAA" players (although you would never say that to their face)—guys good enough to play in the majors, but not regularly, and who were stashed at AAA to fill in when the big team needed short term injury replacements. I think it was the great baseball writer Roger Kahn who once wrote something like the lowest level minor leaguer was better than any player that most people had ever seen, and I realized that even a fringe major leaguer was better than almost any minor leaguer, so I treated these guys with respect, and never made fun of them behind their backs, like some of my teammates. I did observe that a few of them really didn't want to be with us, and were a little standoffish. I was not on the top prospect lists, but was considered to be someone who, if things broke right, could help a major league team's bullpen. Which was a fuck of a long way from "organizations need a lot of arms," a phrase that I often considered getting tattooed on my arm, if I wasn't afraid of getting something tattooed on my arm.
We were not quite clicking early in the season, as Teo and Bobby tried to figure out the right mix on the field and on the mound. We were winning more than we were losing, but not as much as we had expected, and were hovering around third place. I was doing OK in my setup role, mostly retaining leads, or keeping us in close games when we were losing, although like most pitchers, I did have one game where I couldn't get anyone out. Bobby kept me in longer than he should have, telling me later that he wanted to see me work out of it, but it was still embarrassing. But maybe he was right, because it didn't happen again that season.
And it was then that I met Erin Connolly, a stereotypical, red haired, fair skinned Irish beauty. To be fair, Erin's family emigrated from Ireland in the 1800s, but she looked the part. I met her the way ballplayers often met women, in a bar, after a game, and while it wasn't the same instant infatuation I had felt with Jillian, I couldn't keep my eyes off of her. She was sitting at a table with two men and another woman, and from the second I set eyes on her, I watched to see whether there was any indication that she was with any of the men in the group. Or, I guess, the women.
I was drinking with some of my teammates. We had won our third in a row, I had pitched effectively in the first and third games, we were in second place, and had a rare day off the next day, so we were drinking pretty heavily.
"Earth to Ray," Roscoe said to me as I continued to stare at the redheaded beauty at the table across the bar. "Dude, are you still with us?"
I nodded, "Yeah, dude. All good." I took a swig of my beer and turned to stare again.
"Shit, Ray. Either stop starin' or go over and say something to her."
"What are you talking about?" I responded unsteadily.
"Here we go again," said Jamari Post.
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
Brownlow responded, "Dude, it's like that super hot chick you met in that bar playing pool. The one who hustled you. You're looking at her the same way."
"No, I'm not."
"Bullshit," Jamari replied. "And then you were banging her the rest of the season."
Memories of Jillian flooded into my drunken brain, and I felt surprisingly warm all of a sudden. "One thing I do remember from that night, Jamari, was leaving with Jillian, while you were passed out on a table with, shit, what's his name. Oh yeah, Tyler Parks."
"Whatever happened to him?" Roscoe asked.
"Hurt his knee, and never made it back," Jamari responded. "Moved back to Cali, I think."
We all drank from our beers as we contemplated the knife edge that our careers sat upon, although I don't think either of my drinking buddies would have used that metaphor.
"Wait, Poole, stop trying to change the subject. Are you going to make a move, or are you just going to act like a stalker?" Jamari asked.
Eddie Bolton, who none of us knew before this season, but was a good guy, had appeared to be asleep, but woke up and slurred at me, "Who were you banging?" before his head slumped down on his chest again. We all laughed, but he didn't wake up.
At that moment, I noticed that the redhead stood up and went to the bar, and I could see that she looked incredible in a pair of tight jeans. It was time to put up or shut up. I stood up, and when I stopped swaying, I headed toward the bar, hearing my so called friends whooping it up behind me.
I heard her order only one beer, which was strange, since she was with three other people, and I made it to the bar in time to say to the bartender, "Let me get that for you, and I'll have one of the same." The bartender, Gerry O'Sullivan, was a great guy, and a fan of the team, so he often didn't charge us for every drink. He eyed me in a funny way, and said, "Are you sure, Ray?"
"I don't need you to buy me a drink," the woman responded before I could answer.
"I'm not saying that you do. I'm just asking if I can," I replied with a smile, and felt like I had come up with a pretty good line under the circumstances.
She picked up her beer. "Suit yourself," she replied before turning and heading back to her table without another word. I stood there, watching her ass as she walked away and thinking that I just wasted money on a beer.
"Don't worry, Ray, I won't charge you for that. I tried to warn you."
"Warn me about what?"
"About Erin Connolly."
"Her?" I asked, motioning with my head toward the table where she was sitting, but now only with the other woman. I took a drink from the beer I had ordered.
"Yeah. She's here a lot, but I've never seen her leave with anyone who tried to pick her up."
"What's her story?"
"Not really sure. I think she works at the college. She might live in the neighborhood."
