Mack Ade - Mack On Baseball – Chapter 5 – Introduction To The Minors

Mack On Baseball – Chapter  5 – Introduction To The Minors 

I attended my first minor league baseball game in 1965 while stationed at Lowry Air Force Base, in Denver, Colorado. The team was the Denver Bears, the AAA-PCL affiliate of the Minnesota Twins.

I don’t remember much about that day because we were drinking “3.2” beer we had smuggled in and I had to keep going to the bathroom. What I do remember was someone hit four hits and they were gone the next day.

That’s how minor league baseball works sometimes.

The game was played at Mile High Stadium which is where the Colorado Rockies played their inaugural season in 1993. The Bears went on to be named, first, the Grizzlies, and then, the Zephyrs and moved to New Orleans when the city was granted a major league franchise. This same team eventually became the Mets AAA franchise. Go figure.

I don’t remember much about the team, but there was some guy that hit a lot of home runs. I was a hockey nut that year. A bunch of us had formed an ice hockey team that past winter and we’d practice on the frozen reservoir outside of town.   Eventually, we spent Saturdays drinking free Coors Beer at their refinery and then take the game to the Littleton Arena. We actually scrimmage the University of Denver one night and lost respectfully.  I was the goaltender, using an old first baseman’s mitt as my glove.

The next time I went to a minor league game was in 1991, 26 years later. You see, I lived mostly in major cities so, though there was plenty of baseball to follow, all of it was at the major league level.

It was only after I had moved to South Carolina did I have the pleasure of attending my first Savannah Sand Gnats game. They weren’t Mets affiliates at the time, but still provided me with a live experience I could both afford and enjoy.

Most people never do the math on how hard it is to get to the professional level. There are over 100,000 school and organization baseball teams every year. Multiply that by the 20-30 members of each team and you get a rough estimate how many people compete every day for the honor being one of only 30 people that play that position professionally.

Yes, that’s correct. Two to three million ballplayers turn out 30 first basemen.

People that know me can attest to my lack of empathy for a starting professional athlete that makes an error. How can I possibly have any tolerance for a field goal kicker missing a 35-year field goal? There are only 32 people in the entire world being paid to do that job. There is no room for error at that level.

Can you imagine having open heart surgery performed by one of the top 35 surgeons in the world and he sews you up leaving a clamp inside your chest?

In baseball, the best kids in the street leagues become starters on their church league. And those stars go on to playing varsity high school. One, or possibly, two members of that school’s conference get drafted, while a dozen more get college scholarships. We whittle it down even more as each minor league level is played and, eventually 750 baseball players become professionals.

Two to three million baseball players become 750 professionals.

The Mets cut eight minor leaguers the other day. One of my readers asked me if any of them were important to the organization. I told him, no they were just utility players that had underperformed.

Do you have any idea how good these guys would have been on your street team, or church league, or even your high school varsity? They could have been the best ballplayer you every played against and I’ve reduced them to fodder.

We’re going to spend a lot of time discussing a typical journey through the minor leagues, but most of that will be left to other chapters. Suffice to say that you are an exceptional baseball player once you have been signed to a professional baseball organization. It is a medal you will proudly wear for the remainder of your life.

All the hard work, determination, blood, sweat, and tears that you shed have now given you the opportunity to be paid less than a bus boy, live with people you can’t even understand, no less like, and eat ramen noodles for breakfast. You’ve spent your entire baseball “career” being the big man on campus and you’re now getting your ass chewed out every day in extended camp. The guy next to you in infield drills can’t wait for you to bobble a ball and some roving coach told you he’s going to change your entire swing.

Oh yeah.

Now the game’s going to be fun.