Pursuing
THE DREAM

The odds may be against them, but you’ve got to root for these guys to make it to the Major Leagues.

I don’t recall who hit the first fly ball into rarified air that hot Sunday afternoon at Hammond Stadium in Fort Myers. I craned and squinted to make out that little white speck against the deep blue sky.

CRACK! There goes another one into the stratosphere. It came off the bat of Greg Sexton.

WHAM! A 90-mile-an-hour fastball rips into leather behind home plate. Southpaw David Newmann is throwing darts. Sounds like a muffled thunderclap.

THWACK! The ball tears down the third base line and into left field before I can look up from separating my right shoe and a wad of gum plastered on the dugout steps.

Who are these guys? Names like Sexton, Newmann, Nevin “Ash” Ashley, Pedro “Petey” Powell. They aren’t Tampa Bay Rays. Not yet anyway. They hope to be. Someday. And the clock is ticking.

These are the Charlotte Stone Crabs, the Ray’s Class High A affiliate minor league team. In the wake of the Rays’ first spring training at refurbished Charlotte Sports Park, these 25 guys were left to hone their skills during a grueling 140-game schedule from April to September.

None of them want to be here next summer. They aspire to move up to the Rays’ Double A affiliate in Montgomery, Ala., or to Triple A Durham, N.C. And eventually to St. Petersburg to find their names on the Rays’ roster alongside the likes of Matt Garza, Carlos Pena and B.J. Upton.

The odds are against them. Only a small percentage of the 3,000 or so players who toil each summer in the minors will ever wear a major league uniform, said Stone Crabs manager Jim Morrison. That includes making it with another club via trade or Rule 5 minor league draft.

Maybe 20 percent of the current Stone Crabs roster will be back next season, he said. The rest will either have moved up or down a rung or two on the ladder to the Big Leagues. Some may have career-ending injuries or retire from organized baseball, ending the dream and moving on to other vocations.

And yet there’s something exhilarating, inspiring about watching these young men pursue that dream. You want to root for them to make it, especially when you get up close and personal like I had the opportunity to do that Sunday afternoon in Fort Myers. Thanks to Morrison and General Manager Joe Hart, I got to ride the team bus to the game with the Miracle, High A affiliate of the Minnesota Twins, and sit in a far end of the dugout.

On the ride down, I sat next to Nevin Ashley, a 24-year-old catcher from Bruceville, Ind., a community of fewer than 500 residents in the southwest corner of the state. Holding a pad and pen, wearing a “Florida” cap and revealing knobby-kneed, 65-yearold legs below cargo shorts, I drew more than one curious glance from Ashley’s 20-something teammates. But as the bus began to roll, they fell comfortably into their travel routines — listening to iPods, dozing, playing cards, engaging in idle banter. An adult cartoon played on overhead monitors.

Once the ice was broken, “Ash,” as his teammates call him, fielded my questions with ease. He’s 6’2” and weighs 210 pounds. You want to know his batting average, slugging percentage, RBI’s and all the other on-field stats commonly associated with a ball player’s career? Check the Stone Crabs Web site, www. stonecrabsbaseball.com, or Google his name and be prepared for the dozens of blogs that track minor leaguers’ stats and offer critiques of their skills and chances of making it to the Bigs.

Ash was drafted in the 6th round by the Rays in 2006 out of Indiana State University. Assigned to the club’s Princeton, W.V., rookie league affiliate, he moved up in 2007 to its Low A affiliate, then located in Columbus, Ga. (now in Bowling Green, Ky.) Last summer, he played at Vero Beach, the High A team bought by the Rays and Ripken Baseball that moved to Port Charlotte as the Stone Crabs.

His father is a cattle broker and baseball memorabilia collector. Dad and mom, an accountant, also own two restaurants. Ash started playing organized baseball at age six. In the third grade, he met a pretty little girl named, coincidentally, Ashley Long. They grew up together. She would later tell me they were “best friends” through high school. That friendship eventually blossomed into something more, and they married last November. Most of the players are single.

Minor leaguers usually are drafted out of college, some out of high school. Many receive signing bonuses, but none of the 25 Stone Crabs on the roster at the start of this season garnered in the million-dollar range. A few got six-digit bonuses, but most far less. The Rays pay each High A player from $1,000 to $2,000 a month for living expenses during the season.

The bonuses help tide the players over during the off-season — for a while anyway. “They’re pretty crucial so you can concentrate on training during the off-season,” Ash said.

Some players supplement their income running baseball camps for youngsters back home during the off months. Morrison said his players “face the same stresses of modern life we all face, the same financial needs like car payments and living accommodations, and the same responsibilities to family.”

It’s a nomadic life — here today, gone tomorrow. Ash smiled. “We like to call ourselves modern day drifters,” he said of he and his wife. They rent a house in Port Charlotte month to month. Ashley, a graduate of the University of Southern Indiana, gave up a promising career as an account manager with computer giant Dell to help her husband achieve his dream.

She found a job as an assistant manager at a women’s store in the Town Center Mall. Management knows her husband could be uprooted at any time and hopes to be able to help her find employment at a sister store at their next stop.

“You never know what’s going to happen,” she told me, “so we fly by the seat of our pants.”

While Ash has three years left on his minor league contract with the Rays, he gives himself two more years to break into the majors. Of course that could depend on whether his star continues to rise next year. Just in case, he plans to complete the requirements for a business administration degree after this season is over. “It’s a rough game,” he mused. “Injuries, anything can happen. I tell kids that school is the number one thing they should focus on.”

In the visitors’ locker room before the game, trainer Chris Tomashoff set out bananas, orange and apple slices, chips, peanut butter and bread slices for the players to eat before the 1:05 p.m. start. He joked around with the players, but he’s reluctant to get too close to any one of them because “he might be gone tomorrow.”

Steve Vogt from Visalia, Calif., another catcher on the roster, walked by me on his way to see Tomashoff. He isn’t in uniform today. He’s on the disabled list. Pitchers aren’t the only players to suffer shoulder injuries. Shortstop Shawn O’Malley, from Kennewick, Wash., sat in front of his locker slowly dressing. We traded fishing stories.

The banter on the bus carried over into the locker room and into the dugout. When the first pitch was thrown, however, the mood turned serious. It was time to perform.

A slight breeze provided little relief from the heat. But Ash said the guys like an afternoon game because it gives them the evening off for themselves. Most of their games are in the evening. The Stone Crabs jumped out to a five-run lead, but lost in the end 6–5. Ash didn’t play that day. Morrison gave him a rest. Pedro “Petey” Powell played. I sat next to him on the bus ride home.

Petey, an outfielder, is a 5’6”, 140-pound speedster on the base paths. He stole three bases in that game alone. He’s by far the smallest and, at 25, one of the oldest players on the Stone Crabs. In the minors for six years, he was drafted in the 18th round by the Pittsburgh Pirates after one year of junior college ball in Georgia. After climbing to the Pirates’ AA affiliate, the Rays picked up his contract last year and assigned him to Vero Beach, a notch down from Double A.

His Stone Crabs teammates describe him as fun-loving and sociable. He shares a three-bedroom condo in Charlotte Harbor with five of them, including players from Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. Having no roots, family or friends here, the players tend to socialize among themselves. “We sometimes go to a movie or bowling together,” Petey said, and try out local restaurants. “I love to eat.” I gave him a few suggestions.

An only child, Petey was raised in Hawkinsville, Ga., a small town 126 miles south of Atlanta known as the “Harness Horse Capital of Georgia,” winter home for harness horse training since the 1920’s. Dad had been in the military and mom worked for a lighting company.

The diminutive Petey was a star athlete in high school. Besides baseball, he was a stellar running back and cornerback on the football team, two-time state champion in the 100-meter dash and three-time state champion in his weight bracket in weightlifting. He ran a 10.3 in the 100 meters. His favorite sport by far was track. So why pursue a career in professional baseball? “My parents told me to stay with it, and now I love the game,” he said. He stays in close contact with family. Mom usually calls after every game.

After six years, how much longer professional baseball will love him is uncertain. “Whatever happens, happens,” he said. “It’s up to the man upstairs.”

Petey helps coach kids in the off-season. If his baseball career doesn’t pan out, he’d like to coach for a living.

So will Petey and Ash realize their dream? Morrison isn’t about to tell me or anyone else outside the Rays’ hierarchy whether he thinks a player has the right stuff. Looking at a minor leaguer’s stats certainly doesn’t tell the whole story about his chances. There are a number of intangibles.

Mental toughness is a big factor, said Morrison, who as an infielder spent 3.5 years in the minors before breaking in with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1977. His Big League career spanned 11 years and five teams. It’s one thing to have a passion for the game, Morrison said, but in the minors you have to spend hours a day developing your abilities — in the batting cage, on the practice field, in the weight room. And you’re under pressure to perform while playing day after day against equally talented opponents who are equally determined to climb the ladder.

During one stretch this summer, the Stone Crabs were to play 24 games in a row.

“If it isn’t working seven out of 10 times, do you stick with it, learn and improve” or do you regress? Morrison asked. “Mental toughness is what’s inside the man that makes him keep trying to learn and improve.

“These are men, not kids. I’m the manager, but I have to earn their respect. You want to hug and love them, but you’ve got to tell them the truth. That’s my job. There must be that separation between the manager and the players. I can’t be reluctant to give them the bad news because that won’t make them better.” The ultimate goal of each player when he takes the field is to impress the Rays or some other major league club. That doesn’t mean fan support is unimportant.

Having a good crowd and hearing the cheers “is like the caffeine boost you get from coffee,” Ash said. “It’s like you can hear the crickets all night when there are few fans in the stands.” By the time you read this, Ash, Petey, Sexton, Newmann or any of the other players who filled the Stone Crabs dugout during that game against the Miracle may be gone. Hopefully they’ve been called up the ladder.

You’ve got to root for all these “boys of summer” to make it. The clock may be ticking and the odds may be against them, but I’d get their autographs…just in case.