What’s it like…
Today I was trying to think of what I’d want to know about professional baseball when I was like 9 or 10. I would probably first wonder about the free stuff.
When we signed, we got spikes, a jacket, a fleece, shorts, hats, a glove, pants, a few shirts, a cool duffel bag (that I took to Austria last November), and a plane ticket out to Scottsdale for mini-camp. Since then, the free stuff has tailed off. When guys talk about getting 4 pairs of shoes in the mail, most of the time it comes from shoe deals with Nike or Reebok. To get these deals, you either have to be a high draft pick, or have a really good agent who can convince a marketing rep that you’ll be the next Roger Clemens. The perception of pro ballplayers that get everything for free is blown a little out of proportion. I had a guy ask me for my baseball bag at a game in Salem. I thought, “Um, yea, I’ll trade it for your briefcase and we’ll call it even?”
Next, I’d wonder what the whole deal with baseball cards was. When do you get one? When do you get a real one made by Topps or Donruss or Fleer or something.
I had a card made in Salem, my first year, then last year in Augusta as well. They’re cool because it’s a picture of me with my name on a baseball card, but not done by Topps or anything. That will happen when you’re invited to big league training camp, get called up in mid-season, or when someone at Topps thinks you’re going to be good enough to merit a baseball card. Each year, we all sign ‘contracts’ with Topps—the rep comes into the clubhouse, and cuts us $10 dollar checks. He explains that this means Topps can make baseball cards of us without telling us. We think this is cool. We sign the papers. He leaves. We wonder when our card will come out. For most, probably never. But it’s cool to officially be under contract with the Topps Company. The checks are fun too.
Finally, every young kid asks for a ball. I remember catching a foul ball at the High-A Potomac Cannons field when I was like 11 and holding it, thinking that I’d keep it forever and show it off to everyone. It was so clean and…new. That being said, I think that specific ball is buried out in the yard right now back home at my parents’ house…but that’s neither here nor there. I think kids’ fascination with the ball, and rightly so, is that all the balls you grow up throwing around and ratty, nasty, water-logged, boring leather rags. The balls that we play catch with at camp are white, dry, new, crisp ‘pearls,’ we call them. They smell leathery—just like baseball gloves—I guess because they’re leather too—duh—and the organization will break out cartons of new ones every week.
So every once in awhile at a game, you’ll hear a 10 year old behind you, with his glove on his head, half a sno-cone spread all over his little league jersey, whining “Can I please have a ball? Please?” And then you take the ball out of your pocket, and before even winding up to throw it across the fence to him, his eyes get huge, the glove comes off the head, knees bent, and he’s ready to play third for the Yankees. You toss it to him, he catches it, and then looks at it just like you did when you were 11 and caught one. We all lie and say that we never did it. But still, part of you knows that you made a kid’s night. Fast food, bus rides, and all, that’s a pretty cool feeling.
