The Ballad of Stephen Strasburg

It was the fall of 2007 when my friend Eric and I decided to start a blog about minor league baseball. We were both bloggers already – Eric’s specialty was college basketball and mine was “esoteric bullshit,” at least according to a commenter on Awful Announcing, the blog where we met as commenters and ended up becoming fellow contributors and friends – but the goal here was to just kick back and have fun writing about a sport that was meant to be exactly that.

The timing of Bus Leagues’ debut was pretty typical for the way we approached life in general – for the uninitiated, the bulk of minor league baseball action ENDS in the fall; it was like we showed up to a game in the ninth inning – but we still took to it with a delight that never fails to surprise me when I think back on it. We were just a couple of random dudes, writing about random teams in a random sport, and we had a blast.

We tried to look at the game from a fan’s perspective, since that’s what we were (later, we gained experience as “insiders” and while that was fun as well, and led to a number of remarkable memories, it didn’t spark the same organic joy), which meant that one of the first things we focused on was the players. And ironically, one of the first players to catch our eye wasn’t a professional, but a promising college pitcher named Stephen Strasburg.

In 2019, Strasburg is a ten-year veteran with a career 3.16 ERA and more than 1,500 strikeouts, all with the Washington Nationals. In 2014, he led the National League with 34 starts and 242 strikeouts en route to a ninth-place finish in the Cy Young voting. In 2012, he was infamously shut down while the Nationals were still very much in the mix for a championship, the team putting long-term arm health ahead of short-term competitive goals (they still haven’t reached a World Series). In 2010, he turned in one of the most remarkable debuts in major league history, striking out 14 Pirates and walking none in seven innings to pick up his first career win. And sometime in 2009, Eric dubbed him Lord Vishnu, a nickname that was both completely nonsensical and one of my favorite things in Bus Leagues history.

But the moment Strasburg first appeared on our radar was in 2008, when as a San Diego State sophomore he took the mound one night in April and struck out 23 Utah batters. That was what started it all, both for us and the baseball world in general. That was when Stephen Strasburg announced his presence for all to see.

The reason I thought of this wasn’t Strasburg’s 1,500th career strikeout, which came on May 2nd this season against St. Louis, or his 100th career win, which he recorded on June 4th against the Chicago White Sox. It wasn’t even anything Strasburg did, though he is certainly putting together a nice Hall of Very Good career and looking back on his first decade makes me unreasonably happy. What made me think of Strasburg was a performance over the weekend by Vanderbilt freshman Kumar Rocker, who took the mound for his team in an elimination game and completely dominated Duke, striking out nineteen batters and pitching the first no-hitter in NCAA Super Regional history.

This performance scratches so many personal itches. The name, Kumar Rocker – even if this young man doesn’t reach the major leagues (and his performance this seasons – 3.50 ERA, 97 strikeouts in 87.1 innings – would seem to indicate that he’s well on his way), he should donate his name to someone who does, because that name BELONGS there. It’s like Madison Bumgarner. His size – at 6’4”, 255 lbs, he’s built more like an NFL defensive end than an elite pitcher (and according to his Vanderbilt bio, his father was a standout college football player who went on to play in the NFL). The age – he won’t turn 20 until November; my college “athletic” highlight when I was his age was running the table to win a pool tournament in my school’s game room. All of it together gives me Strasburg bumps. (That sounds weird but I don’t care.)

Kumar Rocker (I want his fastball to be named Harold, the pitch he desperately needs but spends all night trying to get a feel for to be named White Castle, and his out pitch to be Mary Jane’s Last Dance; if he doesn’t have three quality pitches, then GET MORE PITCHES) may be great, or he may amount to nothing. (If he enjoys even a portion of the success that Stephen Strasburg has, he’ll be doing alright for himself.) Most likely it will be somewhere in between, like the rest of us. But at the very least, he brought a nearly forty-year-old mostly former blogger a bit of joy and a flash of memory and awoke that old feeling of “this is great – I want to write about it!” And I appreciate that.

The Most Bus Leagues Game Ever

Back in 2007, my friend Eric and I started a blog called Bus Leagues Baseball. For five years we chronicled various aspects of minor league baseball: players, promotions, mascots, teams, oddities – anything that caught our attention, really.

Eric and I live several hundred miles apart, but we would get together from time to time to catch a ballgame or two, meetups that I eventually began referring to as “Bus League Summits.” (I have a vague recollection of mentioning a Bus League Summit to Someone Important. They were intrigued by the concept until I was like, “Um, yeah…it’s pretty much just two dudes watching baseball.”) There was the Hall of Fame in 2008, an Orioles game in 2009 (where he was famously harangued by an usher to return to his seat because, “This isn’t general admission – we’re close to a sellout!”, and a Phillies game in 2010. I think that was the last of the Bus League Summits before we shut the site down following the 2012 season.

The last…until now. (Cue dramatic music. No, not that one, the other one. Right. Thanks.)

Eric came up north for a visit last weekend, and after attending a Red Sox-Twins game with my wife and son on Thursday (nothing exciting happened there, unless you count Blake Swihart’s first major league home run and the extremely drunk person behind us in the eighth inning who began profanely telling his friend that he planned on killing someone who said he had poured beer on his head; THIS…IS…BOSTON!), we got down to business on Friday, heading up to Manchester to see the New Hampshire Fisher Cats take on the Richmond Flying Squirrels in a tilt that he ultimately labeled, “The Most ‘Bus Leagues’ Game EVAR!”

One of my professors in college told me that bullet points are lazy writing and should be avoided. Apologies, Professor Frankfurter, but a) it’s late, and b) bullet points and numbered lists are also Bus Leagues Things. So away we go.

1) Food: We were in the ballpark for roughly four minutes before hitting up the concession stands. Eric got a sausage and a beer; I went with a sausage, fries, and iced tea. After enjoying a great sausage at the Sox game I expected to be disappointed by a minor league offering that was somehow almost the same price; it was a pleasant surprise, then, when the Fisher Cats’ version delivered.

2) Prospects: When I emailed my friend and Bus Leagues fanatic Craig Forde to tell him we’d be at this game, he said he wouldn’t be able to make it due to a prior commitment but noted that we would probably get to see Tyler Beede’s first Double-A start. I didn’t know who Beede was and honestly didn’t bother to look him up (that statement would have given 2011 Brian a stroke), though it was obvious that he was somebody since Craig deemed him worthy of mention.

Turns out he was the Giants’ first round pick in last year’s draft. A righthanded pitcher originally from Auburn, Massachusetts, he was originally drafted by the Blue Jays in the first round in 2011 but didn’t sign and ended up attending Vanderbilt, where he won a College World Series championship in 2014. So he’s pretty good, and he just turned 22 on May 23.

Against the Fisher Cats, he was obviously nervous, surrendering hits to two of the first three batters he faced and walking another to load the bases with only one out. A double play ball got him out of the jam, though, and the Fisher Cats did not touch him again. And by “did not touch him,” I mean, “he retired eight in a row before putting a man on with a throwing error, then got seven more outs before walking a batter.” He was, as they say, as advertised (even if I didn’t pay attention to said advertising). In the end, it was seven innings of two-hit, three-walk, four strikeout baseball.

Sadly, Beede’s success meant nothing good for one of my favorite players, New Hampshire’s Ronald Torreyes. My friend Chris laughs at me for how much I love Torreyes, a non-prospect I’ve picked up and released several times in our thirty team fantasy baseball league, and he’s probably right: the Venezuelan infielder is hitting .162 this season (including .098 for the Fisher Cats) and has played for four organizations (Cincinnati, Chicago Cubs, Houston, and Toronto) in six minor league seasons.

So why do I love him so much? Because he’s listed at 5’10”, 150 pounds (but I seem to remember reading at one point that he isn’t even close to that big) and he’s played at the upper levels of every organization he’s been in since he was 20 years old. Maybe he’s a weird sort of organizational filler, a guy who can be plugged in to hit .260 and do little harm. I don’t know. I don’t care. I just like the guy.

Alas, Tyler Beede did not agree with him, to the tune of an 0-3 day at the plate, which means I don’t like Tyler Beede. Sorry, Tyler.

On the bright side, K.C. Hobson hit a home run for the Fisher Cats, which is always fun to see, and a Flying Squirrel named Rando Moreno (I couldn’t figure out how to explain my delight at the fact that his name was Rando M.) went 5-for-5.

3) Seats: At Fenway the day before, Eric and I were crammed in side-by-side (at first; the rest of the row remained empty so we were able to spread out once that became clear), which was awkward considering we hadn’t seen each other in like five years. Northeast Delta Dental Stadium (Nedd’s to its friends…okay, only Craig and I call it that) presented no such problems. When ordering tickets, I correctly assumed that location wasn’t a huge concern; with that in mind, I avoided the sun drenched bleachers in right (you’re literally staring into the sun for a couple innings) and went with the General Admission seats (take that, Biff!) in left field.

When we walked in and determined that it was, actually, first come first serve as far as where we wanted to sit, Eric looked over at me. “I assume up close is good for you?” he said. In actuality, I don’t mind sitting further back and overseeing the action from afar, but when in Rome. He led the way down the steps, to the very front row, and parked himself squarely behind the Richmond bullpen.

For several innings, the banter amongst the pitchers provided us a pleasant alternative to the game, which was quickly out of hand in favor of the visitors. The first inning largely featured commentary on Beede and his struggles. Later, family members and friends stopped by to say hello and steal a few minutes of conversation. A nearby fan inquired about a Frozen backpack on the bench and was told that it belonged to the last bullpen pitcher to surrender a homerun. Someone questioned if “Bum” (I’m assuming Madison Bumgarner) had skipped Double-A; I resisted the urge to lean forward and let them know that I had watched him pitch on that very field several years before, when several of them were likely still in high school.

Midway through the game, a good-natured argument broke out: what year was the movie “Super Troopers” released? Guesses were submitted, but no one knew for certain. Finally, one of the pitchers caught my eye.

“Hey, do you know when Super Troopers came out?”

“Actually, I was intrigued by your conversation, so I looked it up,” I said. “Don’t any of you guys have cell phones?” Eric wondered out loud.

“And…?” the pitcher said to me while another told Eric that the fines for bringing a cell phone to the bullpen is very, very large.

“2001,” I said. Cheers erupted from the pitcher who had guessed correctly, groans from those who had missed.

“This is the most Bus Leagues game ever!” Eric exclaimed.

“I wonder when Barbie Girl came out,” murmured one of the other pitchers, who I had already pegged as the sarcastic cut-up of the group. I wasn’t falling for it, though; a line must be drawn somewhere.

Around the top of the seventh, another pitcher, Stephen Johnson, asked when the weather could be expected to improve, a question that began a half-inning conversation about crowds in Richmond, losing streaks, Eric’s job, and other mindless banter. For him, I’m sure it was little more than a way to pass the time in a blowout game with a couple guys who had been sitting next to him, mostly quiet, for a couple hours. For us, it was just a cool moment in general, one that ended when Johnson realized the entire team was standing at attention and “God Bless America” was starting.

As the game drew to a close, Johnson shouldered the Frozen backpack (the current holder was already in the game, so as the youngest member of the bullpen, Johnson was tasked with bringing it back to the dugout) and wished us well. Eric and I exited the ballpark at the final pitch. The decision not to wait for fireworks, and the cool weather (it had dipped into the sixties, but felt a good ten degrees cooler), saved us plenty of time getting out of the parking lot; minutes later, we were on our way home.

My Father, My Hero

Pride is one of the seven deadly sins; but it cannot be the pride of a [father] in [his] children, for that is a compound of two cardinal virtues -- faith and hope. – Charles Dickens in “Nicholas Nickleby”

For most of my life, from the time I was born until shortly before I graduated from college, my father was a full-time member of the Rye, New Hampshire Fire Department. As a kid, this was often more a cause for frustration than anything else – staying quiet during the day so he could sleep before overnight shifts, dealing with the overbearing smell of smoke when he came home from a fire, the knowledge that he might be pulled away at any moment (even on Christmas morning, which happened more than once) to go out on a call. There were times other kids made jokes about my dad’s job, especially in our small town, where nothing exciting like a FIRE ever seemed to happen, and all I did was smile and laugh along, wishing that he did something, anything else to earn a living.

As I got older and wiser, I began to understand, thankfully, the importance of and inherent danger in the career path that my father had chosen. Along with that understanding came the realization that my father was a good and selfless man, the type of man I wanted to be. In addition to working the long hours required to feed a family of six, he cared for both of his parents after they became ill in the mid-1990s, then did the same for my disabled Uncle Jimmy after my grandparents passed away. He could have complained – I would have complained – but we were more likely to win the Powerball (still one of his great unrealized dreams) than to hear my old man suggest that there was anything he couldn’t handle.

Somewhere, lost in the importance of family obligations and work responsibilities, my father introduced me to the game of baseball, beginning a love affair that has lasted nearly twenty years and figures to continue to the end of my days. A pretty fair player himself as a young man – he once told me that even now, forty plus years later, he wonders how far he could have gone – he was always available to play catch for a few minutes, watch the Red Sox on TV (assuming they weren’t on NESN – this was in the days it wasn’t a part of our basic cable package), or hit some ground balls in the back yard. Most importantly, he did all this without being the type of overbearing parent that appears all too often on the news these days, choosing instead to let me stand or fall on my own. He cared about my success and was pleased that I loved the game, but was not going to ruin that love by forcing it upon me.

The result was, by the spring of my junior year at Portsmouth High School, a reasonably talented player. I had entered ninth grade with high hopes, thinking of all I could accomplish in the next four years, but not much had gone right for me on the field my first two seasons on the team; twelve at-bats as a freshman, followed by a .300 batting average as a platoon outfielder on the junior varsity squad as a sophomore. By the time 1997 rolled around, it was becoming clear that I was a JV lifer: supremely capable of beating up on less talented and slightly younger opponents, but virtually unable to compete against varsity caliber talent, even in a state like New Hampshire, where the overall level of play was generally unexceptionally.

But that junior year; what a year! It’s almost a cliché to talk about athletes who enter “the zone”, that magical place where the ball looks like a grape fruit and the bat feels like a toothpick. Before I knew it, before I even considered that it might be possible for someone at my relatively low level of play, I was there, charting a course that would take me on the greatest hot streak of my baseball life, the magnum opus of my high school career. Nothing was impossible with a baseball bat in my hands – I was invincible, if only for a couple of hours three afternoons a week. If our field had had fences, I might have slugged a handful of homeruns; as it was, I managed my fair share of doubles and triples, all on balls that were hit far enough to allow my squat 5’9”, 220 lb. frame to careen around the bases, usually ending up with an awkward flop and a cloud of dust.

Despite his unbearable schedule – by this time, my grandfather had passed away and my grandmother was growing steadily sicker - my father was there to see every baseball game my team played in high school, with the exception of two, whether I was on the field or not. Until I got a car my junior year – my grandmother’s old Ford Escort wagon, which my dad figured I could use – and could drive myself to and from games, I assumed his presence was a matter of practicality: he needed to pick me up anyway, so why not take a break from the day and attend the game first? My final two seasons, I realized how untrue and naïve that mode of thinking was: he was there to see what the fruits of his instruction had wrought, to witness firsthand the application of the skills he had handed down. He understood that my meager talent and lack of 100% focus on the sport – I was starting to discover money and girls by this point – meant that I would never progress much beyond high school in terms of ability, but I think he hoped that I would one day take what I had learned and use it to do something special.

Every athlete at every level should have at least one game to remember, one game that they can look back on years later and appreciate as a fine moment in their athletic careers. Mine was late in my aforementioned junior year. We were playing a home game against Spaulding High School of Rochester, and things were not going well. Our pitchers couldn’t pitch and our hitters couldn’t hit, two sad realities that resulted in an 8-0 deficit and a no-hitter for the opposing pitcher through four innings. Yeah, it had all the makings of a great afternoon.

Then things changed. In the bottom of the fifth, facing the top of our lineup, the Spaulding pitcher started to wear down, walking the first two batters. I remember thinking, as I headed up to bat, that he really wasn’t anything special – didn’t throw very hard, didn’t come at you with a lot of junk, didn’t have a deceptive delivery. This wasn’t Nolan Ryan shutting us down; it was Bobo Holloman. I knew, even with an 8-0 deficit to overcome and just nine offensive outs at our disposal, that this game was completely winnable. All we had to do was be patient and wait for our opportunity.

It didn’t take long for opportunity to arrive. Early on in the at-bat, the pitcher left one out over the plate and I turned on it, driving the ball to deep right-center; both runners scored, I ended up on third and our bench went nuts with the sudden and shared realization that this was OUR game. From there, we never stopped scoring. The next inning, I found myself on third base again, two outs, now trailing 8-7, and knew – KNEW – that I was going to score. It wasn’t a question of if; it was a question of how (it ended up being a passed ball).

After the game, which we ended up winning 9-8, I walked toward the parking lot with my dad, still absolutely giddy about the way the final three innings had unfolded, the heart our team had shown in erasing that daunting deficit.

“Whaddya think of that?” I asked as we crossed left field, a huge smile creasing my face.

“I’m proud of you,” he answered in his deep, quiet voice. It wasn’t necessarily the response I had been expecting. My father has always been a quiet man, slow to deliver both criticism and praise. One of the only previous memories I had of either was from elementary school, when I had come home with a less than stellar grade on a test. Even then his reaction hadn’t been so much outspoken as a reflection of the years of baseball instruction I had received: he had simply declared with a certain forceful insistence that this was not my best work and such results would not be acceptable in the future, then left it to me to apply the appropriate amount of effort to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. This scenario felt slightly different, however, in that it was the first time in my ten years as a ballplayer that any of my athletic achievements had elicited this type of reply.

He didn’t get many more chances to express that feeling, if in fact he ever felt it again. My senior year was similar to my freshman campaign, right down to the coach; I made the varsity, but played sparingly and had only eight at-bats in eighteen games. My dad actually missed my first varsity hit, a seeing eye single past a diving second baseman during a mid-week makeup game that I forgot to tell him about, but he was there for my second and final one: a two-run homerun in a 10-5 loss on the last day of the season, the final time I ever came to bat in a baseball game that meant anything; my Ted Williams moment, as I have often referred to it since. This time, however, he seemed more bothered than proud, more upset than happy, wondering if perhaps, with a little more playing time and a few more plate appearances, I could have done that a few more times.

I’m twenty-seven years old now, nearly ten years removed from my days as a high school JV baseball player/benchwarmer, and a lot of good things have happened in my life since then. I graduated from college with honors, met and married a woman I love, and eventually settled into a good job. Along the way, I’ve come to appreciate the way my father taught me to play baseball, realizing that it has a lot to do with the way he taught me to approach life: by giving me an outline and allowing me to fill in the blanks to the best of my ability. Free will at its finest. Still, I look in the mirror sometimes and wonder what my father thinks of me, if the way I have lived my life jives with any expectations he had when he conducted these subtle lessons. Is he happy that I have become a somewhat successful, well-adjusted young man? Does he ever think to himself, “What else could I have done to help him along the way?” Does he know that in everything I do, a part of me wonders what he will think or say when I give him the news? When he tells people where I am and what I’m up to these days, does it make him proud to refer to me as his son?

That’s what it all comes down to in the end: that word, “pride”. Like any son, I’ve always wanted my father to be proud of me, of my accomplishments, of my life. Explicit acknowledgement of such a feeling was not always forthcoming as a child, which could be difficult for a young boy looking for acceptance. When those compliments were handed down, however, it was a feeling like no other.

Recently, I have begun to experience a fundamental change in my relationship with my father; it started to take shape six years ago, around my 21st birthday, an otherwise happy occasion that was marred by the passing of my Aunt Evie, my grandmother’s sister. A physically diminutive woman in her early 90s, Aunt Evie for years had helped care for my Uncle Jimmy and my grandparents’ house; it was not unusual to drive past the home on the way to visit my parents and see her working in the yard, raking leaves or cutting the grass. The continued physical activity undoubtedly helped her remarkable mental acuity – it could be said that the only sure things in life were death, taxes and a card from Aunt Evie on birthdays and Christmas. She never missed an event, and her last Christmas was no different. As always, my father suggested I write a “thank you” note; he knew that she appreciated, but never expected, the small gesture of thanks. Teenagers are strange creatures, however; something always comes before doing the right thing, something that seems more important at the time. My father said I should write a note, and I kept telling myself that I would get around to it eventually.

Of course, I never did. After awhile, it seemed crazy to write a thank you note for something that had happened months before. “I’ll just wait,” was the final decision. “She’ll give me a nice card and $20 for my birthday. Then I can write a note telling her how much I appreciate her thoughtfulness.” Sadly, she didn’t live long enough for my plan to come to fruition, passing away three days before my birthday.

From great sadness came enlightenment; Aunt Evie’s funeral was the first and only time I cried in my wife’s presence, the only time I can ever remember being overcome to that degree and literally burying my face in her shoulder and sobbing. Simultaneously, there was the realization that this was one of life’s great lessons, one of those moments you make a point to file away and remember for future reference. In this case, I was learning that the biggest mistake we can make in life is to wait until it’s too late to tell those close to us how we feel about them.

I’ve never told my father, who turns 61 years old today, any of this. I’ve never mentioned how much I appreciated those long hours in the back yard, learning to play the game I love. He has no idea that as much as I want him to be proud of me, I am as proud of him for the stoic and fearless way he has guided his family through nearly four decades, in both good times and bad. He has never heard that I believe I am a better man, and will be a better father, for having been his son. I have never told him, until now, that he is the best man I have ever known.