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

by John Feinstein

  Matsui was 0 for 3.

  Those nights were the exceptional ones—fans and media flocking to a Triple-A park because of who was going to be on the field.

  But Rich Thompson became a different kind of exception in Allentown. To begin with, he was a very good Triple-A player. He was a consistent, if not spectacular, .270 to .280 hitter each year, and he was a threat to steal whenever he got on base at a time in baseball when stealing had become a lost art at all levels. He stole 138 bases in four seasons, played an excellent center field, and was always available whenever the team did any kind of event in the community.

  He and his wife, Teresa, had started a family by then, and they felt very comfortable living in the Lehigh valley. In a league that had few players who could be described as fan favorites, Thompson became exactly that.

  “The funny thing is I never thought I’d play baseball this long,” he said. “And I certainly never thought I’d play it in the minor leagues this long. I’ve always understood that I’m lucky to still be playing. One bad year, maybe even less than that, and I could be out of baseball. I’ve been sent down to Double-A a couple of times, so I always knew where I stood in the pecking order.

  “Obviously, if I didn’t love it, I wouldn’t still be doing it. I have three children now and a mortgage, and I started 2012 making $15,500 a month for a six-month season. That’s not a bad living, but it isn’t going to mean I can retire or take it easy whenever I stop playing.” He smiled. “If I can get a month in the majors and get paid at that rate, maybe I can buy a nice car. But the idea that I’m going to play ten years in the majors and not need to work when I stop playing went away a long time ago.”

  Thompson began 2012 once again at Lehigh Valley. He had passed his CPA exam during the winter and was extremely proud of the fact that he had needed to take the test only once to pass it. “The stat I heard was that only 42 percent pass the first time,” he said. “I wanted to get it done the first time.”

  On the morning of May 16 he was having breakfast at home. The IronPigs had gotten home from a long road trip a day earlier, and he was happy to be back with Teresa and their three children—aged seven, five, and two. His cell phone rang, and he saw that it was manager Ryne Sandberg. Like most players, Thompson’s first reaction was, “Uh-oh.”

  Sandberg had called Thompson on only three other occasions. “It was either to tell me he was giving me a day off because he liked to let guys know before they got to the park or to tell me I was going on the phantom DL.”

  The “phantom DL” is a minor-league term for the seven-day disabled list that players are sometimes put on when their team needs a roster spot either to send someone down (players on rehab don’t count) or to bring someone up a level. It is usually a veteran like Thompson who is put on the phantom DL when needed.

  This time the call was different. Always to the point, Sandberg said, “Rich, you’ve been traded to Tampa Bay. They want you in Tampa tonight. Congratulations.”

  Thompson was stunned. Scott Podsednik had been traded to the Red Sox a few days earlier, so it seemed unlikely that Lehigh Valley would move another outfielder at that moment—unless an injury in Philadelphia forced a call-up. He’d been traded and not to Durham but to the major-league team. By lunchtime he was on a plane, and he was at Tropicana Field that evening before the Rays game against the Red Sox.

  With the Rays leading 2–1 in the eighth and trying to build an insurance run, manager Joe Maddon sent Thompson in to pinch-run for the painfully slow Luke Scott. Thompson didn’t steal a base, but he did induce Red Sox reliever Franklin Morales into a balk—which was just as good. He didn’t score, ending the inning on third base, but the Rays held on to win anyway.

  The next night Maddon had him in the lineup—batting ninth and playing center field. After striking out in the third, Thompson came up again in the bottom of the fourth, with Boston leading 3–1 and Sean Rodriguez on second base. Facing Red Sox star rookie Félix Doubront, Thompson lined a 1-1 fastball to center field for an RBI single.

  At the age of thirty-three, he had his first major-league hit—and RBI. His teammates all came to the top step of the dugout to applaud him. It had been 2,645 days since his first at-bat in Cleveland. In that time he had been to the plate in the minor leagues 3,711 times.

  “I didn’t feel vindicated or validated by it,” he said. “But I knew the road I had taken to get to that moment, and it was very gratifying to get there, no doubt. Everyone was great about it. I did get a little bit choked up thinking about what it had taken to get back. I wasn’t sobbing or anything, but I was a little choked up.”

  He didn’t lose his focus, though, stealing both second base and third base. That meant in one inning he had gotten his first hit, his first RBI, and his second and third stolen bases—he’d stolen one as a pinch runner in Kansas City. After the game, Tampa Bay clubhouse manager Chris Westmoreland made sure he got the baseball that had been recovered from the Red Sox after the hit.

  Thompson stayed in Tampa for three weeks. When Desmond Jennings came off the DL on June 5, he was optioned to Durham. Which is why he was in a Bulls uniform when the team traveled to Allentown on June 15. That was the day the IronPigs decided to honor him by giving him a cake and a jersey.

  Four days after the modest ceremony in Allentown, Thompson was back in the big leagues. This time his stay lasted three days. Once again a player coming off the disabled list—Jeff Keppinger—was the reason he was sent back down. To some, it might sound like a waste of time to get called up to the majors for three days. For Thompson, it was worth almost $8,000 in prorated major-league pay, no small thing since he had taken a pay cut when he was traded by the Phillies to the Rays.

  As an IronPig, Thompson was being paid $15,500 a month—one of the higher salaries in the minor leagues. The Rays capped their minor leaguers at $13,000 a month, which meant the trade would cost Thompson about $8,000 in minor-league pay during the remainder of 2012. Fortunately, the twenty days he had spent in Tampa from mid-May to early June had been worth about $55,000, meaning his 2012 salary would be into six figures.

  When he returned to Durham he rented a town house, figuring that was where he would be for the rest of the summer.

  “I’ll be thirty-four next year,” he said. “I think I can still play, so if someone will have me, I’ll keep playing.” He smiled. “I’ve got plenty of years ahead of me as a CPA. In that business, you never win, you just do your job and hope you don’t lose anything. It can’t possibly be as much fun as this is—I can’t imagine any job being as much fun as the one I’ve got right now.”

  And, unlike Moonlight Graham, he did get that second chance in the big leagues.

  29

  Elarton

  FIGHTING FATHER TIME

  For Scott Elarton, the summer in Allentown was turning out to be long and hot.

  Which had nothing to do with the weather—although it was also very warm.

  On May 16, after he had pitched six innings of three-hit shutout baseball against the Indianapolis Indians, Elarton had a record of 5-1 and an ERA of 2.06. In the meantime, the Phillies’ pitching staff was struggling: Joel Piñeiro and Dontrelle Willis, the other veterans invited to training camp as starting pitching insurance, had both been released. Cliff Lee had gone on the DL in April. Vance Worley followed—on the day that Elarton dropped his ERA to 2.06. Less than two weeks later Roy Halladay was on the shelf.

  On three occasions, the calls to Lehigh Valley came—but not for Elarton. “This is not a business built for the elderly,” he said one afternoon with a smile. “That’s true in more ways than one.”

  Elarton pitched well enough to win against Gwinnett on June 7—giving up one run and four hits in six innings—but got a no-decision when the bullpen gave up a 1–0 lead soon after he left. His next start didn’t come until seven days later because of a rainout on June 12 and a rare off day on the thirteenth. Maybe it was working on six days’ rest instead of four, or maybe it was just a bad night. Eit
her way, Elarton was hit hard by the Durham Bulls: he allowed seven earned runs—including two home runs—and didn’t get out of the fourth inning. That started a string of seven starts in which Elarton gave up five runs or more every time out except once. By July 17, just after the All-Star break, his ERA had soared to 5.60, and he had dropped seven straight decisions. Any thoughts of a call-up to Philadelphia were in the past.

  “There’s a lot that goes into pitching well, including good luck, and a lot that goes into pitching poorly, including bad luck,” he said with a wan grin. “I’ve had seasons where I felt like all the breaks I got were good: I’d make a bad pitch, and someone would foul it off. I’d get a call when I needed it or an out when I needed it. I had really good run support.

  “This year it’s felt the opposite a lot of the time. A broken bat becomes a hit. I throw a pitch that I think is strike three, I don’t get the call, and the next pitch becomes a key hit. I can’t complain—that’s just the way baseball is sometimes. You figure that out as you get older. I haven’t been good enough the last couple of months, that’s the bottom line.”

  Elarton knew that part of his problem was that his legs weren’t as strong as they had been when he was younger. He had worked out hard to prepare in the off-season, but not having pitched regularly for almost four years and having to work harder at thirty-six to make good pitches than when he was twenty-six had taken their toll. He kept grinding, believing that what he had been doing in March, April, and May was still buried someplace inside him.

  Sure enough, on July 22 against Columbus, his pitches had bite again. He pitched six innings and gave up two runs. His next two starts were equally good—although he didn’t get wins in any of them. During that three-game stretch he pitched to an ERA of 2.55, and his ERA for the season dropped by more than half a run. Then came a bad outing against Rochester in which he gave up six runs and three home runs and came out in the sixth inning.

  “I wasn’t discouraged by that,” he said. “I wasn’t happy, but you have starts like that. I just wanted to come back and pitch well in Buffalo the next time out.”

  He did. But he might have been trying just a little too hard. With one out in the fifth inning, he felt a tweak in his leg while throwing a pitch. His legs had been sore, but he hadn’t paid attention, just figuring it was normal late-season soreness that any thirty-six-year-old pitcher was bound to feel. He threw one more pitch and induced a ground ball to first base—which, as it turned out, was the worst thing that could have happened at that moment.

  As he ran to cover first base, Elarton felt a sharp pain in the back of his leg, and he knew right away he’d done something to his hamstring. He made the play and then looked into the dugout for help.

  “I told them I had to come out,” he said. “Funny thing is I’d never done that before in my life. I remember a few years ago I got hurt during a game and I decided I was going to tough it out. No way was I going to ask out. There was a man on third base, and I was intentionally walking the batter to set up a double play. I threw the first intentional-walk pitch to the backstop.”

  He smiled. “After that I didn’t have to ask out. They came and got me. This time I knew to get out before I made it worse.”

  He ended up getting tagged with the loss that night to drop his record to 5-11. It was his tenth straight loss since the night in mid-May when he had been pitching so well and wondered if he was going to get the call to Philadelphia. Now, in August, May was a distant memory. His biggest concern at that moment was simple: he didn’t want to end the season on the disabled list or without pitching again. There were less than three weeks left to play.

  “The good news was it wasn’t my arm, and I knew it wasn’t that bad,” he said. “If you tear something down there, you can feel it. I knew I had to be careful with it, but I also knew it was just a strain. I wanted to get back on the mound before the season was over.”

  By now, Elarton knew for certain he wasn’t going to see the major leagues in 2012. “If they called in September, I certainly wouldn’t turn them down,” he said, laughing. “But I know they aren’t calling.”

  On August 28, having missed just one turn because of the hamstring, Elarton was back on the mound. The IronPigs were still mathematically in playoff contention, trying to chase the Pawtucket Red Sox down for the wild card spot, so this was one of those rare Triple-A games where the outcome has serious meaning for everyone on the team.

  The opponent was Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. The game was in Allentown, but it was technically a Yankees home game. That didn’t really matter to Elarton. He gave up two runs on three hits in the second inning but settled down and pitched solidly for five innings, not surrendering another hit. He ended the fifth inning by striking out Ronnier Mustelier. Sandberg had decided that eighty-two pitches was enough for him after the missed start.

  With Juan Morillo warming up in the bullpen to replace Elarton, the IronPigs scored two runs in the top of the sixth to take a 3–2 lead. Morillo pitched two shutout innings. Then Joe Savery, who twice had been called to the Phillies early in the season when Elarton thought he might get the call, pitched a scoreless eighth. Jake Diekman finished the job in the ninth, and the IronPigs had a 3–2 victory—giving Elarton his first win in more than three months.

  That was nice. What was nicer was that he had pitched pain-free. The hamstring had felt fine. Sandberg told him he would get one more start—on September 3, the last day of the season. Elarton’s family had gone home to Colorado while he was working his way back from the hamstring injury. By the weekend, the IronPigs knew they weren’t going to make the playoffs, that their Labor Day game against the Buffalo Bisons would be their finale.

  Elarton’s car was packed and ready for the trip. “It’s 1,575 miles from here,” he said on the season’s final Sunday. “As soon as the game’s over on Monday, I head down the road. The kids have told me I better be home in time to pick them up from school on Wednesday.”

  He was ready to go home. He was not, however, ready to stay home. “I want to play next year,” he said. “I’m not sure about a lot of things. But I’m sure about that.”

  30

  Voices of the Minors

  Having managed in the International League for six years, Charlie Montoyo is familiar with just about everything and everyone associated with the league.

  Including the umpires.

  “They’re no different than the rest of us down here,” Montoyo said one morning in early August. “This time of year, they get a little cranky. It’s hot, they’ve been on the road all year, and they’re wondering how they’re doing. They’re not like us—they don’t have standings to tell them if they’re doing well. They have to wait to hear.”

  While it was certainly difficult for umpires to make the jump from Triple-A to the majors, at least they knew that openings would occur and there was a chance they might be next in line to fill them. There were seventy full-time major-league umpires, and even though it seemed as if some of them never retired, they did, in fact, retire—usually by the age of sixty.

  Not so with broadcasters.

  Getting a major-league broadcasting job isn’t quite as difficult as getting appointed to the Supreme Court, but once someone gets there, he isn’t likely to leave unless he’s dragged to the door—usually kicking and screaming. For those sitting on the doorstep but not inside the door, that can be remarkably frustrating.

  “What’s frustrating about it is you never know what it is that will get you hired or what it is that isn’t getting you hired,” said Steve Hyder, who had been doing play-by-play for the Pawtucket Red Sox for nine years. “Umpires, at least, have some kind of evaluation system even if it’s subjective. For us, it’s a question of a job opening and then having someone in a decision-making position who happens to like your work.”

  The PawSox have a great tradition of being a stepping-stone to major-league jobs for broadcasters: Gary Cohen had been hired by the Mets in 1988 after two seasons in Pawtucket; Don Or
sillo had moved up to the Red Sox in 2001; Dave Flemming had been hired by the Giants in 2004; Andy Freed moved on to Tampa in 2005; and Dave Jageler was hired in Washington in 2006 after one season in Pawtucket. All five of those men still work for the big-league teams that hired them.

  The PawSox are one of a handful of Triple-A teams that use more than one radio play-by-play man. Traditionally, Triple-A radio is handled by one play-by-play man, perhaps supplemented by an ex-player who does color. In Pawtucket there have been two play-by-play men for years.

  After Jageler’s departure in 2006, Hyder worked with Dan Hoard in Pawtucket. Twice he had been a finalist for major-league jobs: in 2005 when the new Washington Nationals were hiring and that same year in Oakland. He hadn’t gotten either job but had thought his time was bound to come.

  “I grew up in Rhode Island and I went to UMass, so this area has been my home for a lot of my life,” he said. “When I got the job here in 2004, I felt like I was in the front row of Red Sox Nation and the timing couldn’t have been better. For the most part, I loved the job. I loved knowing the guys who came through here like Dustin [Pedroia], [Kevin] Youkilis, and Jacoby [Ellsbury]. I always felt part of it, even in a small way, and I loved that.”

  Two things happened in 2011 that forced Hyder to rethink his life. First, he had a heart attack. He had just turned fifty, and he knew that the job had taken a toll on him through the years. It had already affected his personal life—he’d been divorced twice. Now it was affecting his health.

  “The minor-league life isn’t easy, especially as you get older,” he said. “The players are young, and they don’t plan to be around very long. Even the ones who are still playing in their thirties are relatively young. It’s not a fluke that you don’t see a lot of managers and coaches who do this at this level for very long. The travel wears on you. Working 144 games in 152 days wears on you.”