Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball (29 page)

“When I sit back and think about things like that, it makes me feel good and it makes me feel lucky. On the other hand, when you’re a kid and you dream about being in the major leagues, you don’t dream about being a backup shortstop or second baseman. You don’t dream about being the guy who is up for a month, then down for a month.
You dream about being a contributor, being a star—not the guy who gets sent down eleven times.”

He sighed. “This is a really good place to play Triple-A ball. Really nice ballpark, good crowds, good people. But when you’ve been in the majors …” He shook his head. “Every time I hear the crowd at Comerica [Detroit] my body goes numb. I get goose bumps on my arms. It’s
so
loud up there. You can’t make ten thousand people sound like forty thousand people. I guess the only good news is I can make the drive up and down I-75 blindfolded by now.

“I still remember going to see the Dodgers play when I was thirteen. Alex Cora was the shortstop. He made a couple plays, and he made an error too. I remember thinking, ‘I can do that; I’m good enough to do that someday.’ I was right. I have been good enough to do that. I just need to be good enough to do it more consistently—with my bat.”

As difficult as it was to be back in Triple-A, Worth was a long way from giving up. He had played for Steve Rodriguez in college at Pepperdine. Rodriguez had produced many top players, nine of whom had been drafted by major-league teams.

“I still go back during the off-season and take BP at Pepperdine and I talk to Steve,” Worth said. “We talk about all the guys who have played for him and how tough it is sometimes to keep your head up as a baseball player. The game can be so negative. I asked him what he says to guys when they get down and talk about quitting.

“He said, ‘I tell them, guys, the grass outside the ballpark may look greener sometimes, but believe me it’s not. It’s a lot better to be inside the park than outside the park.’ ”

Whether the park seats ten thousand or forty thousand.

PIGS (NOT) IN THE BIGS … AND THE EVER-PRESENT REVOLVING DOOR

The newest franchise in the International League is the one in Allentown—the Lehigh Valley IronPigs.

The Pigs, as they are called throughout the valley, came into existence in 2008 when the Ottawa Lynx were moved by the Philadelphia Phillies to the brand-new ballpark that was only sixty miles from Citizens Bank Park in South Philadelphia. The Phillies had taken over the Lynx from the Baltimore Orioles in 2007 while that new ballpark—Coca-Cola Field—was being built, fully intending to move the team in a year.

The IronPigs have been a huge success almost since day one. The team’s affiliation with the Phillies helps greatly because there are lots and lots of Phillies fans in the area. Not only do the Pigs wear Phillies colors, but one of the first things people see when they walk into the ballpark is a mural that is called “Pigs in the Bigs.” On it are the names and uniform numbers of all the Lehigh Valley players who have gone on to play in Philadelphia.

Next to the elevator that leads to the suite level in the ballpark is an actual iron pig—complete with a definition for those who have never seen one before.

Certainly IronPigs was by far the best choice on that list.

The ballpark is full of reminders regarding the team nickname. During 2012 if you went to look for Ryne Sandberg, you didn’t look for the manager’s office—you looked for the office marked “Head Pig.”

The best one-liners in the ballpark, however, can be found in the men’s rooms. In a minor-league ballpark, every inch of real estate is for sale—including space in the bathrooms. The urinals in the men’s rooms are sponsored (seriously) by the Urology Specialists of the Lehigh Valley. That means when someone walks into the bathroom and steps to a urinal, he will be greeted by signs posted in the urinal.

Among the messages are:

“Standing here longer than the National Anthem? … Urology Specialists of the Lehigh Valley …”

“Back again? It might not be the beer’s fault.”

“Has your bat gone silent?”

“Can’t reach home plate like you used to?”

And, last but not least: “The only place for dribblers in the ballpark is down the first and third base lines.”

You simply
cannot
get entertainment like that in Yankee Stadium.

Which might explain why the IronPigs play consistently to sellouts or near sellouts. In 2012 they drew a total of 688,821 for seventy-six home dates—four more than normal because Scranton/Wilkes-Barre played four games as the home team in Allentown. For their seventy-two official home games, they averaged 9,034 fans per game—which is pretty good given that the ballpark seats 8,089. Frequently, the Pigs
draw crowds of more than 10,000—many fans paying for the right to stand or sit on the grassy knolls beyond the outfield fences.

“I honestly didn’t think you could have an atmosphere like the one we have night in and night out in a minor-league park,” said Sandberg, who managed in Lehigh Valley in 2011 and 2012. “One of the hard parts about being in Triple-A is that a lot of nights there’s no buzz in the ballpark. That’s not a problem here.”

The IronPigs’ clubhouse is comparable to many visiting clubhouses in the major leagues and much roomier than those in older parks like Fenway and Wrigley Field. The visiting clubhouse—as in the majors—is considerably smaller than the home clubhouse.

“If you have to be in the minor leagues, this is about as good as you can possibly hope for,” Scott Elarton said. He smiled. “Of course it’s still the minor leagues.”

On an early summer night, Elarton was the starting pitcher for the Pigs against Pawtucket. His mound opponent was Brandon Duckworth, who also had extensive major-league experience. In fact, the two men were almost the same age: Duckworth had been born January 23, 1976, and Elarton had been born exactly a month later. The matchup could just as easily have taken place in the big leagues except that both pitchers had gone through enough ups and downs that they found themselves trying to pitch their way back to that level.

They had been teammates briefly, in Kansas City in 2007, and had pitched against each other in 2008 after Elarton landed in Cleveland. That was the last year either had pitched in the majors. “We were joking that we’ve come a long way since we last pitched against each other,” Elarton said. “Problem is we’ve gone in the wrong direction.”

Both men pitched reasonably well in their rematch. Duckworth came out in the fifth inning in large part because his pitch count had reached ninety. He had given up three earned runs to that point, which pushed his ERA to 4.34 for the season. Not awful, but probably not good enough to merit a serious look from the Red Sox.

Elarton was a little better. Even though he gave up ten hits, he kept pitching out of trouble and left a tie game having given up four
runs—three of them earned. His ERA crept up a little bit to 3.55—again, not bad, but not as good as he had been hoping for when he had walked out of Charlie Manuel’s office in Clearwater back in March after being sent down.

“I was lucky,” he said afterward. “I really didn’t throw the ball very well, but I got some outs when I had to.”

Which is what good pitchers do. Like hitters, they know they aren’t going to have their best stuff every night. How they perform on those nights when they are being knocked around the ballpark a little usually determines how their season—and ofttimes their career—will turn out. Elarton was old enough and wise enough to understand that, but it still bothered him that he wasn’t pitching better.

“The funny thing is it’s no different now than when I was young and pitching well in the major leagues,” he said. “There are very few nights when I walk off the mound feeling good about the way I’ve pitched. Sometimes I’m being hard on myself. Other times I’m not.”

And other times—most times—the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Elarton knew that the middle wouldn’t be good enough to get him to the major leagues. At thirty-six, he had to be better than that to get the Phillies’ attention, even with the team having its worst season in years. In fact, the team’s struggles made it more likely that a young pitcher would be called up, if needed, because the focus would be more on the future than the present.

“I don’t have a single regret about doing this,” he said the morning after getting the win against the PawSox. “Just being healthy and being able to take the ball every time it’s my turn has made it fun.”

Elarton sighed. “But there are days and nights when it’s tough. The road trips are tough, especially those last few days when you feel like you’ve been looking at the same walls in the same hotel room for a month. I miss my family at that point. I occasionally catch myself saying, ‘Do I want to be
here
?’ I want to play baseball, I know that, but do I want to be back at this level?

“I think every guy who has ever been in the majors, especially for an extended period, is going to have issues with coming back down. You do it because you believe you can get back up. But if you’re looking
in the mirror at night and you know the person looking back is pretty much stuck in Triple-A if he’s being realistic … sometimes it’s tough.”

Elarton had his hand on his forehead as he spoke, as if he were thinking the whole thing through one more time. He paused, then nodded. “The easiest thing in the world is to say, ‘I’m done, I’m going home.’ I did that once when it wasn’t time yet. I’m going to make sure I don’t do that this time around.”

Lehigh Valley’s starting third baseman in the game Elarton had pitched on that Saturday night had been Timothy Craig Hulett Jr., known to one and all since he was little as Tug—because his mother’s second-favorite major-league baseball player was Tug McGraw, the great and colorful relief pitcher for the Mets and the Phillies.

Her favorite major-league player was Tim Hulett, Tug’s father, who had played in the majors for twelve years with three different teams. Tim Hulett was never a great player—his career batting average was .249—but he was a solid infielder and was always considered a positive clubhouse presence wherever he played.

Tug was the oldest of the four boys born to Tim and Linda Hulett. The three other boys—Joe, Sam, and Jeff—all came along within the next five years. They were a close family, although, ironically, it wasn’t Tim who taught his sons to play baseball, it was their two grandfathers.

“Dad was on the road a lot playing,” Tug said. “He helped us whenever he could, but I can remember my dad’s dad taking me to the park all the time for batting and fielding practice. I was a field rat right from the beginning. Always loved to play, to practice, just to be around baseball.”

When Tug was nine, his dad was playing for Baltimore, and the four brothers walked to a nearby apartment complex that had a baseball field to play one July afternoon while the Orioles were in Chicago. It was only a short walk to and from the little park, and after they had played, the boys started home. They were about a block from
their house when, for some reason, Sam, who was six, darted into the street. Tug remembers yelling at him and grabbing Joe—two years older than Sam—before he could follow Sam.

He probably saved Joe’s life by grabbing him. He couldn’t save Sam. A car coming down the street couldn’t stop in time, and Sam was hit. He died several hours later. Phil Itzoe, the Orioles’ longtime traveling secretary, got the phone call in the press box that afternoon while the Orioles were playing the White Sox. Itzoe had to go down to the clubhouse to tell manager Johnny Oates that Tim needed to come out of the game and get home as soon as possible.