Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball by John Feinstein Page A
Authors: John Feinstein
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Braves’ spring clubhouse in Orlando and saw players being called into manager Bobby Cox’s office. Heart pounding, he waited for someone to come by his locker and say the dreaded words: “Skipper wants to see you.”
“Nothing happened,” Orr said. “Zach Miner [one of the team’s pitchers] came out after they told him he was going down and said I’d made the club. He said his agent had heard we were trading [infielder] Nick Green to Tampa and that’s why I was going north. I still didn’t believe it.
“Then we broke camp and went to Atlanta. I still hadn’t beentold I’d made the club, and I wasn’t sure. I bought a suit just in case I did make the team so I’d be ready to travel. The day of our exhibition game up there I walked by Bobby [Cox] and he said to me, ‘Hey, Petey, how’s it going?’
“I think I said something like, ‘Great, Skipper, thanks.’
“He got a few feet past me, and then he stopped, turned around, and said, ‘Hey, Petey, you know you made the club, right?’ I guess it occurred to him that no one had told me. I said, ‘I did?’
“He said, ‘Yup, way to go,’ and kept walking. Just like that I was in the big leagues.”
One man walks up a tunnel to get sunglasses and ends up in Syracuse. Another passes his manager in a hallway and finds out he’s a big leaguer.
“It’s a business,” Orr said. “We all know that. Some days it’s a great business to be in. Other days aren’t as great.”
One person who wasn’t surprised when the call came to go see the manager in the spring of 2012 was Bryce Harper.
Even if he wasn’t happy about it.
Harper was baseball’s most recent phenom. The Washington Nationals had chosen him with the No. 1 pick in the 2010 draft, although he wasn’t yet eighteen. He had split the 2011 season between Class A Hagerstown and Double-A Harrisburg, and it was clear he was close to being ready for the majors—at least as a player.
The question was his maturity. Harper had been ejected from a game while in junior college for drawing a line in the batter’s box to show an umpire where a pitch that had been called a strike had—in his opinion—
not
crossed the plate. He wore enough eye-black to be mistaken for someone playing an old-time movie Indian, and he drew a lot of attention when he blew a kiss to a pitcher in Hagerstown as he rounded the bases after hitting a home run.
He was cocky or, more accurately, cocksure, and he tended to draw attention to himself—especially as a No. 1 draft pick—in ways that didn’t always make the Nationals happy.
The funny thing about it all was Harper came off as anything
but
cocky in person. He was quiet, self-deprecating, and almost matter-of-fact about the incidents he’d been involved in. He didn’t deny them or defend them. They had just happened. He was religious, a Mormon who didn’t drink and didn’t use profanity, but he wasn’t one of those athletes who talked about his faith. It was just part of his life.
When he was invited to the Nationals’ big-league camp in the spring of 2012, he knew he wasn’t going to make the team even if he hit .500. Part of it was that he was still only nineteen and the Nationals didn’t want to rush him. Part of it was business: If the Nationals kept him in the minors until mid-season, he wouldn’t become arbitration eligible until after the 2015 season. If he came up sooner, it would be a year earlier. The Nats had done the same thing with pitching phenom Stephen Strasburg in 2010, keeping him at Triple-A Syracuse until mid-June to push his first arbitration-eligible season back a year.
The difference between Strasburg and Harper was that there was no doubt that Strasburg, who had gone to college for three years and was twenty-one in the spring of 2010, was ready to pitch in the big leagues when spring training ended. Harper was a question mark in March, although no one doubted he would be up by mid-season.
Manager Davey Johnson actually
“Nothing happened,” Orr said. “Zach Miner [one of the team’s pitchers] came out after they told him he was going down and said I’d made the club. He said his agent had heard we were trading [infielder] Nick Green to Tampa and that’s why I was going north. I still didn’t believe it.
“Then we broke camp and went to Atlanta. I still hadn’t beentold I’d made the club, and I wasn’t sure. I bought a suit just in case I did make the team so I’d be ready to travel. The day of our exhibition game up there I walked by Bobby [Cox] and he said to me, ‘Hey, Petey, how’s it going?’
“I think I said something like, ‘Great, Skipper, thanks.’
“He got a few feet past me, and then he stopped, turned around, and said, ‘Hey, Petey, you know you made the club, right?’ I guess it occurred to him that no one had told me. I said, ‘I did?’
“He said, ‘Yup, way to go,’ and kept walking. Just like that I was in the big leagues.”
One man walks up a tunnel to get sunglasses and ends up in Syracuse. Another passes his manager in a hallway and finds out he’s a big leaguer.
“It’s a business,” Orr said. “We all know that. Some days it’s a great business to be in. Other days aren’t as great.”
One person who wasn’t surprised when the call came to go see the manager in the spring of 2012 was Bryce Harper.
Even if he wasn’t happy about it.
Harper was baseball’s most recent phenom. The Washington Nationals had chosen him with the No. 1 pick in the 2010 draft, although he wasn’t yet eighteen. He had split the 2011 season between Class A Hagerstown and Double-A Harrisburg, and it was clear he was close to being ready for the majors—at least as a player.
The question was his maturity. Harper had been ejected from a game while in junior college for drawing a line in the batter’s box to show an umpire where a pitch that had been called a strike had—in his opinion—
not
crossed the plate. He wore enough eye-black to be mistaken for someone playing an old-time movie Indian, and he drew a lot of attention when he blew a kiss to a pitcher in Hagerstown as he rounded the bases after hitting a home run.
He was cocky or, more accurately, cocksure, and he tended to draw attention to himself—especially as a No. 1 draft pick—in ways that didn’t always make the Nationals happy.
The funny thing about it all was Harper came off as anything
but
cocky in person. He was quiet, self-deprecating, and almost matter-of-fact about the incidents he’d been involved in. He didn’t deny them or defend them. They had just happened. He was religious, a Mormon who didn’t drink and didn’t use profanity, but he wasn’t one of those athletes who talked about his faith. It was just part of his life.
When he was invited to the Nationals’ big-league camp in the spring of 2012, he knew he wasn’t going to make the team even if he hit .500. Part of it was that he was still only nineteen and the Nationals didn’t want to rush him. Part of it was business: If the Nationals kept him in the minors until mid-season, he wouldn’t become arbitration eligible until after the 2015 season. If he came up sooner, it would be a year earlier. The Nats had done the same thing with pitching phenom Stephen Strasburg in 2010, keeping him at Triple-A Syracuse until mid-June to push his first arbitration-eligible season back a year.
The difference between Strasburg and Harper was that there was no doubt that Strasburg, who had gone to college for three years and was twenty-one in the spring of 2010, was ready to pitch in the big leagues when spring training ended. Harper was a question mark in March, although no one doubted he would be up by mid-season.
Manager Davey Johnson actually
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