The Three Hang On To Dreams

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RonCo
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The Three Hang On To Dreams

Post by RonCo » Sat Aug 04, 2018 11:26 am

Down on the farm, Santiago Lopez waits for a call that might never come and remembers a dream that will almost certainly never leave. Lopez is a catcher with the Indianapolis Downforce. He’s a switch hitter, meaning he’s struggling from both sides of the plate rather than just one. When he was 19, back in 2030, he hit .322 for the Alamogordo Road Runners. He hasn’t been over .250 since, which says to most people that the gig is up, that Santiago Lopez will never see a big league park from the perspective of being on the field.

And yet dreams die hard. Especially dreams that start with things as big as the hefty International Free Agent deal Lopez signed with the Yellow Springs Nine at 16 years of age. When he saw the number on the contract, Lopez’s father burst out crying. The $500K was more money than his family had ever seen.

“The guy that signed me was smoking a cigar as big as the island. I remember that,” Lopez said when I caught up with him.

That money’s gone now, sent to his parents and spent living.

Mostly what he remembers of his career are bus trips and notices that he’s been promoted or demoted, stints in Guantanamo, Fort Worth, Santa Clara, Flagstaff, an now Indianapolis—a city only two hours from Yellow Springs, but that two hours might well be an ocean. It would likely take two catastrophic injuries to get Lopez to the majors, and at 24 years of age, the clock is ticking. There are waves of guys younger than him pressing from below, and no place to go other than back to San Francisco—the one in Costa Rica, where his family lives rather than the one in California with the big bridge.

And yet Lopez presses on. He plays ball and he thinks of the guys he’s played with who made it. With every call up of a kid, he rejoices. And he thinks of the guys who didn’t make it, too. He thinks, for example, of his best friend: Fernando.
# Fernando Rodriguez. Zap, they called him for the way he stung a baseball. He was from Puerto Rico, and had 5 stars by his name on all the scout’s pages. He was a big guy. Boisterous. Filled a room with jokes, and strutted like he knew good things were coming. The same year Lopez got $500K to sign his deal, Zap got three million dollars.

They met up when the two were assigned as roomies. It made sense. Two catchers, both 16, both now rolling in money. They caught another kid on a signing bonus that year—Alejandro Duran, another 16 year old from Venezuela. Between them, they made a pact to make it. All three. That was what they called themselves: The Three.

“It was us against the world back then," Lopez said. "We were gonna take over. It was gonna be the peach.”

A year later the scouts said they were probably wrong about Zap. The power swing probably wasn’t coming. Those same scouts, well, they worried about Duran’s control. May not be major league material, one wrote. It was a year later for Lopez. The swing wasn’t coming in. Defense would never quite get there. That’s the thing about 16 and 17 year olds with promise. Mostly what they wind up as are 19 and 20 year olds who had a chance.

Looking back, it was obvious Zap was done even back then. The numbers didn’t lie. But Zap hung on, playing seven seasons in the organization, often rooming with Lopez when they were on the same team. “We’d talk about baseball and girls,” Lopez said. “He spent a lot of his money on one of those things.” Yes, Zap hung on. When dreams die, you see, they die slow. And Zap Rodriguez hung on until the team finally told him he was done. Now he’s back home. At least that’s what Lopez thinks. He’s selling couches or something, still waiting on another call that’s almost certain to never come.
# Duran is hanging on, too. Still pitching in AA Santa Clara, still hoping to find a few more miles and hour on the heater and a little more bite to a hook ball. He never really settled in, though. Never had the eye-popping numbers you want to see from a kid in the minors. Like Lopez, he’s almost certainly seeing the end being written before he makes good on that pact.

The Three. All were going to make it.

But life is like that. Baseball doesn’t care about pacts.

When Lopez looks back, he smiles. “We were pretty cool,” he says. “Three guys with big ideas. It was fun, even if it wasn’t always real.” That’s the thing about kids and money. A few times it works out. Sometimes the dreams they hit huge. But mostly these kids are just kids. They take the money, and then it’s gone, just like the dream itself. Sixteen. Seventeen. It’s a lot to take in. They leave home filled wit joy and loaded up with expectation. The ones that make it, get the lives everyone hopes for. The others? The guys like Zap Rodriguez, Alejandro Duran, and Santiago Lopez? Well, the world hits them upside the head and they go home to fade into the woodwork of the rest of humanity, maybe to sell couches or maybe to sit in the corner seat at a bar and have people whisper that at least they had their chance—they could have been someone. They remember times in the complex with other kids who are dreaming, times in locker rooms with young men who understood the truth of the fight—that it was a competition, that there are only 27 places in the organization set aside for the winners of the match they were all playing in.

And when the Zap Rodriguezes of the world sitting in that bar see the world, they carry around the memory that at one time they were worth $3M. Or more. Or less.

“I know he struggles with things,” Lopez said. “I try to text him and call him to keep up. But he doesn’t answer much. Everything just goes to voice mail. But, you know, it takes time sometimes. That’s cool. Maybe I’ll go to his place when the season’s over and we can tip a beer and talk about the game. Or we can work out. You never know who’s going to call up needing a catcher. He can still play. I know he can. Just like I know I can play, and like I know Alejandro can pitch. The game’s not over until it’s over.”

That’s the thing about a bonus baby, right. The money feeds the dream. The money fills it up until the seams are bursting. And the bigger the dream…well…

Sometimes they never really die.
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Re: The Three Hang On To Dreams

Post by Lane » Sat Aug 04, 2018 6:49 pm

Was just talking to another GM about the infrequent player spotlights. I love to see them... Thanks Ron
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Re: The Three Hang On To Dreams

Post by Ted » Sat Aug 04, 2018 8:54 pm

Great stuff.
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Re: The Three Hang On To Dreams

Post by starfox64 » Sat Aug 04, 2018 9:56 pm

Awesome stuff!

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