Ramon Montoya: Ressurection Man

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Ramon Montoya: Ressurection Man

Post by RonCo » Sun Jan 21, 2018 1:08 pm

There’s this thing about baseball, you see, this thing that latches onto a man and holds on tighter than just about anything. There’s a feel to horsehide on fingertips as you hold the slider. The feeling of what freedom means in the motion of letting go a true fastball, rising up on four seams, dipping down on two. The look on a hitter’s eyes when it’s 2-2 and the game is on the line. Baseball is about life, in the end. You stare down the hitter and you feel the men behind your back as the catcher pounds his mitt and waits. It’s a feeling that for some men is eternal, a feeling that is bigger than the inside of your chest.

ImageOmaha’s Ramon Montoya is one of those men, though you won’t hear him giving that kind of a talk—no, you won’t. I know because I went to Hawks’ Field to size him up, and in talking to him I could never get that particular can of corn to open up. Instead of waxing poetic about the game, you’ll see him laughing with a teammate or spitting sunflower seeds as he leans up against the fence and signs autographs for three kids who got to the park early. Ramon Montoya is 41 years old now, but you still see him chewing bubble gum with Adam Barnard, a 21 year-old phenom who carries the weight of the Hawk’s future on his back like it’s some kind of invisible mantle. “I’m just hoping I can help him a little,” Montoya says after he walks away from the conversation.

IN THE BEGINNING

Montoya isn’t a big rah-rah guy, but he’s been around, you know? The old dude from California has ridden his fair share of waves. The guy’s seen the world—enough that sometimes it’s hard to really remember what it was like to be drafted by Phoenix out of high school at 18, but choose to go to college instead “My mama wanted me to be smart,” Montoya said when I asked him about it. “I was the first of the family to go to college. She cried more when I graduated than she did when I got a real contract.” That contract came after a labrum injury as a Junior and after graduating as a 5th-year senior when he was drafted in the second round by the then Baltimore franchise (now Brooklyn) and given $265K to become a pro.

“Doesn’t seem like a lot of money to some, I suppose,” he said then. “But it changed my life.”

It also set him up to dream.

Second Rounders go to the show, right? Second rounders make money that moved families. Ramon Montoya was 23 and making his way through the minors, but his eyes were filled with stars. His first outing as a professional pitcher was a five-hit shut-out against the AA Van Nuys Bulldogs. He ended the season 8-4, 2.77. Life was going to be very, very good.

Then came the second labrum problem, and the realization that a 25 year old body doesn’t heal quite as fast as a 21 year old body, nor, perhaps, as fully. He had been 6-3, 2.52 that year. Rumors were surrounding him. He was maybe going to go straight to the show. Skip AAA all together. Ramon Montoya was a frog’s hair from the bigs when the pain came. It took two more years to make it back, but in 2019 and at age 27, the call finally came. Ramon Montoya wore a Brooklyn uniform for 60 innings—the first 30 were brilliant, the second 30 not-so-much.

At 28 he was demoted.

COMEBACK KID

Waived. Claimed. Bounced around. You know, the minor league Hokey-Pokey. Along the way he won a minor league pennant and scored up high in a few Pitcher of the Year votes. It was enough to remind him of the idea of greatness, but not enough to draw a lot of eyes. “I was 29 and washed up,” he recalls now with that smile he gets. “I thought I was pretty much done.” But there was always that thing, you know? That baseball thing that you’ll never get Ramon Montoya to tell you about in any direct fashion but that you see in everything he does. He may have got a degree for his mother, but he lives for the game. The details. It’s there in the way he plots out his exercise schedule and memorizes the videos he watches of every hitter on the opposing team before every game.

Yes, there it is as you see him toe the dirt in front of the rubber to get it just so, there it is as he twists the corner of one lip as he goes into the stretch. He’s 41 and he’s still got enough gas to make a hitter sit down, and his slider is still making ground balls.

It took the guy from California five more seasons in the minors to make it back to the bigs, but you can tell from looking at him that it wouldn’t have mattered. Five years. Ten. Fifteen. Never? When you look at him at age 41 you can see him at 18, winding up and throwing, at age 25, stretching to heal, at age 27 twisting a slider, at age 31 hustling to cover first base. You can see him at age 34, wearing a Greenville uniform and making it back to the league—a feat that would be legendary among young men who strive to make the league all on its own if there wasn’t then the third cycle. Yes, that’s right. When you see Ramon Montoya today you can feel the four seasons he spent with Greenville/Jacksonville, throwing 67 mostly nondescript games before being released as a 37-year-old.

THAT THING, YOU KNOW?

So many men would have hung them up there. But, yeah, the thing.

Ramon Montoya shows it to you by the way he holds a baseball during the game, sometimes palming it, sometimes twirling it to lay his fingers alongside the seams to throw the slider, sometimes giving it the knuckler. “I’d love to throw one in a game sometime just to say I did it,” he’ll say later. His eyes will glitter as he says it, and you can see that baseball thing inside the shifting light that reflect off his wide pupils. So, of course Montoya didn’t do the sensible thing and hang up the glove when he was released as a 37 year-old. No, he did not.

He played triple AAA ball for Omaha in 2030, then got released.

When no one called in 2031 it looked like baseball might be done with him before he was done with baseball (”I did some commercials,” he says of that year. “And I did some guest shots calling games. But mostly I helped coach some high school kids. It was fun,” … see it there? Do you see it?).

But a year later, Brooklyn came knocking again

LET'S PLAY THREE!

At age 40, Ramon Montoya threw pitched in a AAA All-Star game, drawing a standing ovation from players on both teams as he left the field. Ramon Montoya finished that season with 24 saves and a 2.17 ERA. In fact, Ramon Montoya currently ranks as the #5 all-time save leader in the BBA’s AAA ranks. It’s a fact that he still chuckles at, and you can sometimes hear his teammates call him #5 even today, a season later.

Of course, that ranking isn’t getting any better now. Not at all. It’s hard to improve your AAA stats when you’re playing in the majors, after all, and—there’s that thing again—at age 41, Montoya has found himself back in the saddle, the owner of a three-season deal worth $1.8M a pop assuming the team executes it’s option. But why would they not? The guy’s dropping a 2.81 ERA on the league (an 85 FIP- for thems that care about the high-falutin’ newfangled numbers)

The fastball still hums.

The slider still breaks.

And the guys still love him.

What will happen when this, his third stint in the bigs, breaks? Will he go back to broadcasting? Head to coaching?

“You never know,” he says when I ask. He reaches up and takes the cap off his head and the sun glints off the gray streaks in his hair as he peers up into the sky. I notice there’s still a baseball in his other hand. “It might be nice to shoot for #4, don’t you think?”

Then he puts the cap on, and spins the ball over his fingertips.

Yes, I think.

There it is. That thing. It's all over Ramon Montoya, and nothing he can do will ever be able to hide it.

[hr]

If possible, please give Tyler one of my Participation Points, as he pointed this out to me!
Last edited by RonCo on Sun Jan 21, 2018 4:39 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Ramon Montoya: Ressurection Man

Post by udlb58 » Sun Jan 21, 2018 4:32 pm

:bow:

Great stuff!!!

I had thought about writing a piece on Montoya when he was with us years ago, but never did. When I saw he was not only back in the majors, but having a good season at 41, and the talent was still there, I knew something had to be written. After thinking on it some, I realized the piece deserved better than me. Thank you Ron for doing this crazy journey justice!

Amazing to see a 41 year old be able to hit the mid-90s and keep his stuff steady while guys like Mike Swanson, Skip Glendenning, Billy Chapel, and Manny Bautista see their talent evaporate at 33, 34, 35.
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Re: Ramon Montoya: Ressurection Man

Post by indiansfan » Sat Feb 17, 2018 5:44 pm

I had to do a double take, yep that's the same guy that I did a reliever conversion on and he still couldn't make it out of AAA! Glad he finally had a decent season.
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Re: Ramon Montoya: Ressurection Man

Post by RonCo » Mon Feb 19, 2018 8:20 am

I'm rooting for Montoya to find another team, or become a coach soon.
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