Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball

by John Feinstein

  McLouth wanted to go to Michigan to play baseball, and he committed in the spring of 2000 to play for the Wolverines. That’s why he wasn’t taken until the twenty-fifth round of the amateur draft that spring by the Pittsburgh Pirates. Everyone in baseball knew McLouth was going to college. The Pirates took a late-round flier, figuring they had nothing to lose.

  That summer, McLouth played on a travel team and wowed scouts every time out—including those from the Pirates. After seeing him play up close one more time, the Pirates decided it was worth offering serious money to see if there was any chance they could talk McLouth out of going to college.

  “I was a few weeks away from enrolling,” McLouth said. “There wasn’t any doubt in my mind that this was what I wanted to do. Then the Pirates came in with this offer and I had to listen.”

  The offer was a $400,000 signing bonus, plus money to go to college if he decided at any point that was what he wanted. McLouth talked it over with his parents. “The good news was that they trusted me to make my own decision,” he said. “My ultimate goal was to get to the major leagues. I wasn’t sure one way or the other was quicker, but there was a lot of money up front regardless of how it turned out. I thought it was the right thing to do.”

  McLouth progressed steadily through the minor leagues for five years, making it to the majors in 2005 at the age of twenty-three. By 2007 he was the Pirates’ starting center fielder, and a year later he was their lone representative on the All-Star team. He also won the Gold Glove that season.

  “In some ways, everything was great,” he said. “I was playing well, doing what I’d always wanted to do. But the losing in Pittsburgh was tough. You tried to tell yourself that you had to go out every day and do your job even when the team was completely out of contention. But August was always difficult. We were so far out of it, the weather was hot, the ballpark was half full at best. That part was no fun.”

  That changed in June 2009 when the Pirates, knowing that McLouth was going to begin to cost them big money the following season, traded him to the Atlanta Braves for three prospects. That was one reason the Pirates were so bad for so long: as soon as a good player was in line for a big contract, he would be traded.

  But something happened to McLouth after he went to Atlanta—something he hasn’t completely figured out to this day. He was still a wonderful outfielder, but his hitting statistics went completely south. During his All-Star season in Pittsburgh, he had hit .276 with twenty-six home runs and ninety-four RBIs—and had stolen twenty-three bases. In 2009, his power numbers were still reasonable—twenty home runs and seventy RBIs—but his batting average dropped twenty points.

  A year later, he was involved in a collision in the outfield with Jason Heyward that left him with concussion-like symptoms. Even though he missed a good deal of playing time and struggled after the collision, he insists that wasn’t the reason for the falloff.

  “The thing is I don’t know what the problem was,” he said. “I struggled to hit before the collision. It was frustrating because I knew it was in there somewhere, but I couldn’t figure out how to find it. That’s the thing about baseball, especially hitting. You struggle and you make a small adjustment. That doesn’t work, so you make another one. The next thing you know you’ve made six different adjustments, you have a swing that looks nothing like the swing you had when you were going well, and you still can’t drive the ball with regularity.

  “It would be easier if you could point at one thing like an injury and say, ‘That was it,’ because then you think you know the answer. When it isn’t one thing, you spend a lot of time wondering if it’s ever going to get better.”

  The Braves sent McLouth to Gwinnett for a few weeks in August to try to take some pressure off him and to give him a chance to work out the issues with his swing. He came back in September, got hot for a while, and then slid back to where he had been during the summer. When Bobby Cox put together his postseason roster that October, McLouth was surprised to find he was one of the twenty-five names on the list.

  “After all those years in Pittsburgh, to be in uniform for postseason was a cool thing,” he said. “I honestly didn’t think I would make it with the way I’d played. I just wish I could have made more of an impact than I did.”

  Cox kept McLouth on the roster because of his defense, and that was how he got into three games—as a defensive replacement. He did get to bat twice and got a hit, but the Braves lost the division series to the Giants in four games.

  In 2011, his play was affected by injuries. He was on the disabled list on three occasions and hit only .228 when he did play. The Braves released him at season’s end, and the Pirates offered him a chance to return to Pittsburgh. By then, the Pirates had an All-Star, Andrew McCutchen, playing center field for them, but McLouth thought there was playing time there for him—and he would be back where he had enjoyed his best success as a baseball player.

  “It made sense,” he said. “I knew the organization, and it looked like the team was better than it had been when I was there. I knew I’d have to play well in the spring to earn playing time, but that was fine with me.”

  He played well enough in the spring to make the team as a part-time outfielder. But his bat was colder than spring in Buffalo. He wasn’t accustomed to playing one day and not playing the next, and he couldn’t get into any kind of hitting rhythm. “If I ever had a hitting groove in the spring, I lost it when the regular season started. I’m not complaining; I knew the deal when I signed with them. It just seemed like even when I did drive the ball on occasion, I hit it right at someone.” He smiled. “Of course that’s what everyone says when they aren’t going well.”

  That’s true. Chris Giménez, a catcher with the Tampa Bay Rays, spent most of the 2012 season shuttling between Tampa and Durham. After being sent down to Durham in July, he sat in the dugout one night and said, “I’d like to tell you I hit a really hard .190 up there, but I can’t say it with a straight face.”

  Just as a bloop single looks the same as a screaming line-drive single in the box score, a screaming line-drive out looks the same as a pop-up. In the end, the numbers don’t lie. By late May, McLouth was hitting .140, and it really didn’t matter if it was a hard .140. “Actually, there is no such thing as a hard .140,” he said, laughing.

  It was no laughing matter when Pirates manager Clint Hurdle called him in to his office just before Memorial Day. McLouth knew what was coming. Hurdle told him he had two options: He could go down to Triple-A Indianapolis, play on a more regular basis, and try to work out his hitting problems down there. Being honest, though, Hurdle couldn’t promise how much he’d play, because the Pirates had some prospects there who needed at-bats. The second option was to be released and see if he could make a better deal someplace else.

  McLouth asked Hurdle if he could think about it overnight. When he thought about it, the answer was easy: he needed to go someplace where he would have a chance to get more at-bats. He wasn’t sure where that was, but at the moment it wasn’t going to be with the Pirates or, for that matter, with Indianapolis.

  The next day he went back to see Hurdle and asked for his release. Hurdle wasn’t surprised: players want to play. McLouth is one of those guys everybody likes. Hurdle wished him well, and he went to clean out his locker.

  “The next week was torture,” McLouth said. “I wondered if maybe I wasn’t going to get a chance to go someplace. I was thirty years old, and the thought that I might be done crossed my mind.”

  One man’s bad break is another man’s good break. In this case it actually was another man’s break—Nick Markakis’s broken right wrist—that gave McLouth the chance he needed. When the Orioles had to put Markakis on the disabled list in early June, they needed to sign someone for Norfolk after Bill Hall had been called up to the Orioles as an extra bat on the bench.

  McLouth’s agent, Mike Nicotera, got a call offering McLouth a spot in Norfolk. After ten days at home, McLouth would have walked to Norfolk if n
eed be. The good news when he got there was that manager Ron Johnson had him in the lineup regularly. The bad news was that his bat still hadn’t warmed up. He hoped the three-hit, two-RBI performance on Cowboy Monkey Rodeo Night was a start.

  “Funny game,” he said later. “At 4:55 in the afternoon we’re sitting on the runway in Philadelphia, and I’m thinking there’s no way we’re getting to Norfolk in time for the game. Then we get here, I get three hits, and we win. Maybe it’s a sign. Maybe I’m about to get something going.”

  All Ron Johnson knew as the rain thundered down with the clock about to strike midnight was that his team had won a game he never expected to win. “All I want to do right now is go home and get some sleep,” he said. “If those umpires hadn’t called the thing, I’d have gone in there and called it for them.”

  It had been a long, hot, rainy day—and night—in Norfolk.

  There were no incidents with the protesters. All the animals survived their romp in the outfield.

  11

  Elarton

  STILL ONE STEP AWAY

  The rhythms of a Triple-A baseball season are very different from those of a major-league season. In the majors, stability is a key to success: the fewer roster changes that are made because of injuries or nonperformance, the better off teams are most of the time.

  Many players have long-term contracts that include no-trade clauses so they know with absolute certainty where they will be working, which brings a sense of security that can be felt in a clubhouse. For years, when you walked into the New York Yankees’ clubhouse you knew that, sooner or later, Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, and Andy Pettitte were going to be there. They would talk about almost any situation with the calmness that comes from having seen just about everything there is to see.

  There’s no such calm in Triple-A. No one wants to get comfortable in a Triple-A clubhouse. The air inside a Triple-A clubhouse feels different because there are different people breathing it every day. Players come and go on an almost daily basis: some get called up to the big leagues; some get traded; others get sent down to Double-A; and every once in a while players are released.

  “You almost never get too close to anyone when you’re in Triple-A, for two reasons,” said pitcher Pat Misch, who began the 2012 season pitching in Lehigh Valley. “First, you don’t want to get too comfortable at this level. Second, that guy you’re having dinner with on Monday could easily be gone on Tuesday.”

  There’s another reason: Triple-A teammates are also competing with one another. When a starting pitcher goes out and pitches well, that’s good for the team. But it might not be all that good for the other starters, because he may have leapfrogged ahead of them in the organization’s pecking order.

  “It doesn’t sound very nice to say, but it’s true,” said Scott Elarton. “You never root against your teammates. But the fact is, in Triple-A, they’re also your competition. Everyone has one eye on what’s going on with the big-league club—in fact, you have one eye on all thirty big-league clubs because any one of them could be scouting you when one of their guys gets hurt or isn’t doing well.

  “Am I happy when someone I know and like and share space with in a clubhouse gets called up? Or traded to someone that gets him to the majors? Of course I am. Do I wish it was me? Of course I do.”

  Elarton had done exactly what Charlie Manuel had told him to do after being sent down to Lehigh Valley. He had maintained a positive attitude, and he had pitched well at the start of the season. Many—if not most—International League hitters had never faced him before, and with his gangly, all-arms-and-legs delivery coming out of a six-foot-seven-inch frame, he was not easy for hitters to figure out the first time around the league.

  He started the season 4-0, pitching to an ERA of 2.39 during his first seven outings. He beat the Louisville Bats on May 11, pitching six innings and giving up no runs and one hit in a 4–1 win. The losing pitcher that night was Brett Tomko, who pitched well—three runs in seven innings—but dropped to 0-4 in spite of a solid ERA of 3.55.

  The Phillies’ pitching staff had been in flux all season because of injuries. Cliff Lee had gone on the DL in April. Elarton had thought he might have a shot to get called up then. Instead, the Phillies had called up Joe Savery, who had been their No. 1 pick in the 2007 draft and also had the benefit of being a lefty. Once Lee was healthy, Savery came back to Lehigh Valley. On May 16, Vance Worley, the Phillies’ No. 5 starter, went on the DL. Again, Savery got the call: he was younger (twenty-seven), and the Phillies had a lot more invested in him. When Roy Halladay went on the DL at the end of May, the Phillies decided to stick with the pitchers they had on the roster and called up a catcher to take his spot.

  Through it all, Elarton didn’t complain.

  “They’re giving me a chance to pitch here,” he said. “I’d like to get the call, we all would, but if I don’t, I’m enjoying what I’m doing right now. The best thing about this season is that I’ve stayed healthy. It’s been a long, long time since I could say that about any season.”

  Elarton was one of those athletes who had ridden his talent for a long time—right into the major leagues in fact. He had grown up in Lamar, a tiny town in southeastern Colorado, and had been a star in both the classroom and as an athlete all through high school. He played football, basketball, and baseball and starred in all three. The son of two schoolteachers, he was the valedictorian of his graduating class in the spring of 1994.

  As a senior, he committed to go to Stanford to play baseball, which by then had clearly become his best sport. Then came the baseball draft in June: the Houston Astros used their first pick, the twenty-fifth in the draft, to take Elarton—even though he had told people he was planning to go to college.

  After the draft, the Elartons did some research. It turned out that no pitcher taken in the first round who had opted to go to college had improved his draft status by doing so. The Astros offered a $750,000 bonus plus another $100,000 for college down the road. Elarton took it and headed for the buses and the back roads of the minor leagues.

  He arrived in the minors when steroids had become a true “thing” in baseball. It wasn’t just stars who were using PEDs but minor leaguers, guys who believed if they could get an extra edge, it would make the difference between playing in the majors and playing in the minors.

  In those days, even though Commissioner Fay Vincent had banned steroids in 1991, there was no testing. Which was a little bit like posting a speed limit on a highway and not hiring any policemen to patrol.

  Elarton saw players around him who were clearly taking steroids. He could see their bodies change, particularly from one season to the next. He was never truly tempted.

  “You have to remember that most guys started to use during the off-season,” he said. “They’d go home and think, ‘If I can recover more quickly when I work out, maybe the extra work will get me to the majors.’ It was all very hush-hush. It wasn’t something you sat around in the clubhouse and talked about. No one ever said, ‘Do you think so-and-so is using?’ You just knew. I never held it against anyone. It was one of those things where you knew they were just trying to keep their jobs, extend their careers. I guess I didn’t begrudge anybody that.

  “It’s all very different now because of testing,” he said. “There’s a lot more risk in doing it, and even though there are still going to be guys who think it’s worth the risk, you just don’t see it now the way you did when I was coming up through the minors, or even my first couple of years in the majors.

  “I lived in a very rural area. It’s not as if I was going to gyms in the off-season and seeing a lot of bodybuilders who had access to the stuff or knew where to get it—which is what I think happened with a lot of guys. I just never really thought about doing it.”

  As it turned out, at least early in his career, he never really needed the extra help. His ability was enough.

  By 1998 he had reached the major leagues. A year later he had his first shoulder surger
y. In 2000, after starting the season on a minor-league rehab assignment, he went 17-7 for an Astros team that finished 72-90.

  But his shoulder began to ache again the following season, and he tried to pitch through it. The Astros traded him to Colorado. His shoulder continued to hurt, and he continued to try to pitch through it. By the end of the season his ERA was 7.06, and he needed major reconstructive surgery on the shoulder. He missed the entire 2002 season.

  “Looking back on everything now, with the perspective of time, I know that a lot of what happened to me was the result of immaturity,” he said. “I don’t think I became a grown-up until I was just about done [playing] the first time.

  “I lived the major-league lifestyle. I enjoyed it. I was young and I had money and I had fun.

  “I made some bad decisions. When my shoulder started to hurt, it never really occurred to me that anything could be seriously wrong—even after my first surgery. I had always been sore after I pitched, even when I was a kid. So now I was a little more sore. I was pitching to big-league hitters, being a little more sore was to be expected.

  “My way was to fight through things. Then, when I had surgery, I always tried to come back too fast. Well, it feels better, I’m ready to pitch. Except I wasn’t ready to pitch. I’d come back, and people would blow me away. I was terrible because I never let myself get completely healthy.”