Everybody wants to be a player

On a perfect day, what better place to be than on a baseball field?

The fresh-faced kid, bright red baseball cap on, big smile on his face, walked out of Legends Field late in the night, practicing his swing.

Another young kid wound up as if to throw his best pitch, then fired an imaginary 100 MPH fastball past an enemy hitter.

The ballpark employee, smiling as he watched both kids walk out, one hitting the ball over the fence in his mind, the other recording yet another strikeout, clapped his hands together, laughing. Then he took his own cut, not unlike the way Johnny Carson used to wrap up his monologue.

Everybody wants to be a ballplayer, don’t they?

Yes, another beautiful day for a ballgame — if only you got to play, too.

Just about everybody has played baseball at some point in their life. The rules are pretty clear and simple. Three strikes and you’re out. Three outs and it’s the other team’s turn. You play nine innings, most of the time. Somebody wins, somebody loses.

Everybody knows something about baseball or at least they think they do. Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, you’ve have to guess the average person would know of them or at least, certainly heard of them.

Yet what most people don’t know or maybe don’t think of or perhaps don’t want to think of is how many hundreds of thousands of ball players have hoped for a chance to play professional baseball and how few of them ever get to make the Everestian climb to the major leagues. Take a look at this graphic:

Cleveland’s Progressive Field would only be barely over half full.

My son, John, is one of those who make up the 61%. He made it to the major leagues with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2020 and 2021 and the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2021. He is still chasing his dream, playing for the Kansas City Monarchs in the American Association, currently fourth in the league in batting at .345. He hit .346 last year, nearly winning the league’s batting crown.

He’s been playing professional baseball for 12 years now and according to Baseball Reference, has played 1,289 games, counting 171 at Florida State, had 4,358 at bats, over 1,200 hits, a career .284 average at all levels, majors, minors, Dominican Republic, Mexico. And on Sunday, an absolutely perfect day for baseball — you can see my photo, that’s him at bat — in Kansas City, Kansas, it just hit me how fortunate we are as parents to get to watch him play that much baseball all these years and to appreciate just how talented a baseball player you have to be to have a career last that long and to sport a career mark of .284 against some pretty formidable competition, that’s pretty remarkable.

His stint in the majors was brief, sure, 53 games — so far (wink!) but it was memorable; a dozen hits in his first 19 at bats with the Pittsburgh Pirates, throwing a shutout inning against the Braves and collecting four hits in that game. Could he still help a major-league team? Absolutely, if you ask me and his manager in Kansas City.

But it ain’t up to us. You look at the batting averages of the regulars on these major league teams and you shake your head. This is where the game is now. Strikeouts and home runs. Stranding runners. Missing the cutoff man. Swinging and missing.

We were in Kansas City for the last few days, watching him play, seeing a three-run homer, playing great, having a ball. And seeing him walk in from the clubhouse on a perfect Sunday afternoon, a big, hearty wave to Mom and Dad in the stands, I couldn’t help but think of the little freckle-faced kid, begging Dad to come hit him whiffle-ball fly balls the length of the yard at age 5. I told him it wasn’t easy to catch fly balls, didn’t want him to get discouraged.

And of course, he caught about the fifth one I hit him, came running the length of the lawn with the kind of smile no Dad will ever forget. That he’s still playing this game that, with all the frustrations and disappointments (Imagine getting released by the Pirates after finishing fourth in the National League in batting in July, 2021? Or getting released on the last day of Spring Training by the Oakland Athletics, the day after giving him a Gold Glove for being the Best Defensive First Baseman in the organization (with Matt Olson ahead in Triple A!) And he plays on. A big game tonight against his old team, the Sioux City Explorers. We’ll be watching, of course.

You could see the smile on his face all the way to the seats atop the third base side. He was going to play another game of baseball. And we were going to get to watch. Again.