Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball (8 page)

Lollo was in his second year on the list and was hoping for more major-league work in 2012. He knew that Randy Mobley, the president
of the International League, was a fan of his work because Mobley had told him so. Mobley was a good advocate to have, but it was still the major-league evaluators and those who were in charge of umpiring in the offices of Major League Baseball who made the final decisions.

“More often than not, it’s three years up or out,” Lollo said. “If you’re on the call-up list for three years and they don’t believe you’re major league ready, they’re probably going to move on. It’s not a choice for the umpire. Players can say, ‘I’ll deal with life in the minors.’ A Triple-A player can keep his job or go back to Double-A if necessary if he wants to keep playing. Not an umpire. If they don’t think you’re going to make it to the majors, you’re gone.”

Lollo knew he had already beaten long odds getting to where he was. About 1 percent of umpires who come out of umpiring school and are hired at the rookie-league level get to the major leagues. Almost one-third of those who get to Triple-A get there. And if you make the call-up list, your chances increase exponentially.

He had reached the doorstep. The last two falls he had been assigned to work in the Arizona Fall League, which was extra money and extra experience and meant he was being watched by a lot of major-league personnel because the league is full of top prospects on their way up to the majors.

In the spring of 2012 he found out that he was going to work major-league games in spring training. This was a big step. It was also a financial windfall. Like players, umpires make a lot less money in the minors than in the majors. A major-league umpire makes a minimum salary of $90,000 a year plus $420 a day in per diem. A top minor-league umpire—like Lollo—makes $3,200 a month in addition to a $48-a-day per diem. Major-league umpires pay for their own hotels out of their per diem and tip the clubhouse guys who take care of them in the ballparks about $40 a day, compared with about $10 a day in Triple-A. Even so, there’s a wide gap.

By working twenty-five major-league games in March at $175 a game while being able to stay in his grandparents’ home north of Sarasota most of the month, Lollo would increase his income for 2012

by close to 40 percent. Which meant he might not have to work quite as hard the following winter back home in New Lexington, Ohio, where he lived with his wife and two sons—the second of whom had arrived the previous December. He had done some substitute teaching in the past and had also done snow removal. The extra money from spring training meant he could cut back his hours and spend more of his off-season with his family.

“Which is a big deal,” he said. “Because during the season this isn’t a lifestyle conducive to family life.”

Umpires never have home games. The closest Lollo came was when he did games in Columbus—about fifty-five miles from home.

March, though, was a fun month, one of the most enjoyable Lollo had experienced since he had gone straight from high school to umpiring school eleven years earlier. The sun was warm, the games were relaxed, the facilities were comfortable, and the drives—compared with the regular season—were short.

He was looking forward to the season—to working in real big-league games again and to proving he was ready for the next and most important step of his career.

“The toughest steps you take are usually the first one and the last one,” he said with a smile. “I got through the first one okay. But we all know that the last one can be rough because a lot of it is out of your control. Players have numbers that don’t lie. Umpires don’t have that. We have to have good eyes to do our jobs well. You have to hope the guys evaluating you see things as clearly as they want you to see things.”

Unlike players such as Elarton, Podsednik, and Schwinden, who spent spring training hoping to begin the season in the major leagues, Lollo knew he would be heading back to Triple-A after he made the drive back north. That was fine with him.

For this year. He turned thirty at the end of March, just as spring training was winding up.

He was ready, he believed, to take that last long step.

ROLLING WITH THE PUNCHES IN … ALLENTOWN … PAWTUCKET … NORFOLK

On the first Saturday of June—June 2 to be exact—the Pawtucket Red Sox were in Allentown, Pennsylvania, preparing to play a twi-night doubleheader against the Lehigh Valley IronPigs. The teams had been rained out the previous night, and because there are so few scheduled off days (eight) during a minor-league season, the game was rescheduled for the next evening as part of a doubleheader.

That afternoon, a couple of hours before first pitch, Pawtucket manager Arnie Beyeler sat in his small office a few yards from where his players were dressing in the visiting clubhouse. Beyeler had a problem: Ross Ohlendorf had been scheduled to pitch the second game of the doubleheader. That wasn’t going to work, though, because Ohlendorf was no longer on the team.

Like a lot of veteran Triple-A players, Ohlendorf had a clause in the free-agent contract he had signed prior to the season that gave him an “opt-out” date. Almost everyone with an opt-out is someone who has pitched or played in the major leagues in the past who doesn’t want to commit himself to one team for an entire season if that means he won’t get a crack at returning to the majors.

“It gives a guy a chance to hook on with another club if it looks like there’s no chance for him to make it back to the big leagues where he is,” Beyeler said. “Sometimes it means a guy gets a specific offer to go. Sometimes they just want a change of scenery.”

Ohlendorf had a specific offer. His opt-out was June 1, and his agent had gotten a call earlier that week from the San Diego Padres, who were interested in signing him on his opt-out date and promoting him to the major-league team. Naturally, with no sign that the Red Sox were going to call him up, Ohlendorf let the team know that he was planning to opt out and head west and—more important—up and out of Triple-A.

Because of the way the calendar fell, the Red Sox didn’t have to release Ohlendorf until Monday the fourth, meaning he could pitch on Saturday night in Allentown if they so desired. But Ben Crockett, the Red Sox’ farm director, had called Beyeler that morning to tell him the team was going to release Ohlendorf right away. The thinking was twofold: why pitch someone who isn’t part of our future, and, as a courtesy, let him go to his new team fresh and ready to pitch.

Beyeler hung up the phone with Crockett and walked into the cramped clubhouse to find Ohlendorf and give him the news. He stopped at Tony Peña Jr.’s locker to let him know he would be pressed into duty that night as an emergency starter. Peña, who had played in the major leagues as a starting shortstop for the Kansas City Royals before becoming a pitcher, wasn’t shocked by the news.

“He’s been my most versatile pitcher for two years,” Beyeler said. “Anything I ask him to do, he does it. Down here, guys know things change every day—sometimes every hour. Nothing surprises him.”

As Beyeler talked to Peña, he glanced up at one of the clubhouse TV sets. Every Triple-A clubhouse has at least one TV set in it, and most—if not all—are wired for the Major League Baseball package. That means when a Triple-A team’s big-league squad is playing, that game is on the clubhouse TV.

At that moment, down the hall in the home clubhouse, the Phillies game was on in the IronPigs’ clubhouse. In Beyeler’s visiting Pawtucket clubhouse, the Red Sox game was on all the screens.

Most of the time, players just glance at the televised game or pay no attention to it at all as they get ready to play. Beyeler kept an eye on the Red Sox games because—as always—he knew that if one of the Red Sox got hurt or if a pitcher had a bad day, his phone might ring
and Crockett would be on the other end asking him who would be the best fit for whatever hole he needed to fill in Boston.

As Beyeler was finishing his talk with Peña and was about to go and find Ohlendorf, he noticed a commotion. “About ten guys had jumped up and were crowding around the set,” he said later, smiling. “It usually doesn’t take a genius to figure out why that happens.”

This time, it didn’t take Beyeler long to confirm that his instinct was right. Red Sox shortstop Mike Avilés had closed on a ground ball just before it took a wicked hop and ricocheted off his wrist. He had come up in pain, grabbing the wrist right away, and trainer Rick Jameyson and manager Bobby Valentine had come out of the dugout to see how badly Avilés was hurt.

“If he’s down, someone’s going up,” Beyeler said. “If someone goes up, other guys’ playing time and their place in the lineup is affected. I’ve seen it hundreds of times. It isn’t as if any of those guys are sitting there waiting for someone to get hurt, but the minute they see Avilés come up holding the wrist, their first thought is, ‘Could I get the call?’ ”

As it turned out, Avilés hadn’t broken any bones and was able to shake off the injury. Everyone returned to what they were doing.

“You never know, though,” Beyeler said. “It could swell, or they could find something wrong with it after the game. They’re all thinking the same thing.

“The good news in a situation like that is you get to call someone in and say, ‘Pack your bags, you’re going to the major leagues.’ Those moments are the best part of this job—by far.” He smiled. “Of course, once that guy leaves with a big grin on his face, you have to deal with the five who didn’t get called up.
That’s
the hardest part of the job.”

Or, as Baltimore Orioles manager Buck Showalter, who spent his playing career waiting for the call-up that never came and then managed in Triple-A for four years, puts it: “Managing at that level is the worst job there is in baseball. Why? Because
no one
wants to be there.”

Baseball’s minor leagues have a long and storied history, at least in part because almost every great player in the game has played in them at some point in time.

Years ago, baseball had so many minor leagues and minor-league teams it was almost impossible to track them all. Leagues were classified from Triple-A down through Class D. More often than not, the minor-league teams were completely independent from the major-league teams they did business with, their affiliations being informal as often as they were formal.

Minor-league teams are still owned independently nowadays, but with the exception of a handful of teams that play in what are called—cleverly enough—independent leagues, they all have formal ties to major-league teams.

The major-league teams control the baseball operations: they assign the manager and the coaches and provide the players to each team. The owners take care of everything non-baseball, from owning (or leasing) their stadium, to tickets sales and marketing, concessions, licensing, and parking.

There are now six levels of minor-league baseball: rookie-league; short-season A (the teams begin play in June since most of the players are high school and college draftees); low-A; high-A; Double-A; and Triple-A.

Players in Triple-A like to say that they are “one accident away” from the big leagues—an approach that might sound a bit ghoulish but is quite real.

Echoing the words of Arnie Beyeler, John Lindsey put it bluntly one night: “It isn’t as if you sit around hoping for someone to get hurt, but you know that it’s a fact of life that people
do
get hurt. The phone is going to ring. The manager is going to call someone in to his office. You just hope when that happens it will be you. When you’re in Triple-A, you’re ‘this close,’ but you can also be a million miles away.”

There are two leagues at the Triple-A level: the Pacific Coast
League, which has sixteen teams, and the International League, which has fourteen teams. Although the tie-ins change frequently, each team has a working agreement with one of the thirty major-league teams. The minor-league ownership stays the same; those on the field switch uniforms.

The oldest of the minor leagues is the International League, which has existed in one form or another since 1884. Once, the league truly was international: there were teams from Canada, Puerto Rico, and, for six years in the 1950s, Cuba. The Cuban team had to move in 1960, two years after the noted baseball fan Fidel Castro took over the country. The team ended up in that most international of cities, Jersey City, New Jersey.