Play by Play
Our main segment in our second hour today is on The Show, a new TV series that follows the fortunes of six baseball players for the Tuscon Sidewinders, the AAA affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks. As some might remember, I have some experience in minor league baseball -- in 2000, I took the season off to broadcast play by play for a team in Maryland called the Aberdeen Arsenal. And while there's a huge gap between the Sidewinders and "the Bigs," there's an even wider gap between teams in the independent leagues, like the Arsenal, and AAA. The facilities, the equipment, the transportation (they FLY in AAA!), the trainers, the pay, even the post-game spread in the club house. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in a lot of places. And, I have to admit, the food in the press box. After that year, I vowed never to eat another hot dog again -- there were parks where nothing else was available -- and I'm proud to report, so far, so good.
But there is one great similarity -- hope. In a book I wrote about that experience, I described the Atlantic League, the independent circuit in which the Arsenal played, as "the Last Chance League." It was for players who washed out of affiliated, or organized ball for one reason or another. Too old, a step too slow, a fastball that needed to be five miles an hour quicker, too many surgeries, good hit/no field or vice versa, and all the varieties of troublemaker. Some had risen as high as AAA, a few had even made it to the big leagues, but there was a reason they were in independent ball. And, almost to a man, they believed that if they could finally learn to throw that good slider for strikes, or corrected the tendency to chase pitches out of the strike zone, or just got the full range of motion back in the knee or the elbow or whatever it was... and a few, a very few, actually made it all the way back and played in the Majors.
Though the odds are still long, the players profiled in The Show have a much better chance to make it to the ultimate level, and face the next challenge. Staying there.
11:09 AM ET | 06- 4-2007 | permalink
