Not that it matters, really.
But Bryan Longstaff has a new perspective on life.
“Let it go, right?” he says as he sits poolside at the Forever Land Resort Hotel, where he keeps an apartment leased by the week. You never know how long this is going to last. He sips a tall glass of iced team and pushes his sunglasses up his nose. The life hasn’t really settled on him yet. He hasn’t come to grips with the idea that maybe he’ll actually make it now. He’s thrown 14 innings of 0.63 ERA baseball, good for a win and two saves to go with that one blown save—which occurred on the only run he’s given up all year.
You see, Bryan Longstaff is a rookie, though at age 33 he’s not your usual rookie. The man has been through the wringer. Started as a real prospect in the Yellow Springs organization, and a few years back it all came to a head when the Nine said he was done, and the rest of the league seemed to pretty much back them up.
A couple years teaching high school back home in Litchfield Park, Arizona brought it home pretty starkly.
“I figured the phone would ring and I’d be back in the game, but it never happened.” He draws a breath and ignores the fac that a pair of young women are giving him the universal stare that says is that a big league star right there? It’s like he’s totally unaware that the two are there, really. “It never happened for me, anyway,” he continues with a big breath. “So this whole thing. It’s like … I can’t hardly imagine it.”
That next day, after blowing the save, Longstaff got a pair of outs in a victory over San Fernanado, then pitched three scoreless against the Sacramento club favored to win the division. To say the guy bounces back well is, perhaps, an understatement.
He spends the next ten minutes telling stories about the kids he was teaching.
American History, mostly. But he got to help the baseball coach here and there.
“Along the way kids learned I’d been a minor leaguer, and it never failed they’d ask about the bigs. I tried to keep it cool, you know? Tried to tell the truth and at the same time keep the kids dreaming. But it was hard because the game is so hard. And when it’s over. Well.” He pauses for a long time, and for just that moment I think he might actually realize those two women have now asked the tiki bar’s bartender and are certain they have a big leaguer in their sites. Most natural thing I the world, I guess. “The game can be pretty adamant about telling you you’re not as good as you thought you were.”
He must have been a good teacher, though, because eventually the phone did ring.
Bikini GM Ron Collins was on the other line. They guy who was around when Longstaff got his first start.
Would you like to come try out? Collins said.
I don’t know.
Well, think about it. Offer stands.
Longstaff wasn’t going to do it. Wasn’t going to show.
Then the kids found out about the call, and they pestered him. And pestered him. And fed him lines about dreams and how Litchfield Park wasn’t where he was supposed to end up. They pestered him and pestered him until he couldn’t well say no, now, could he?
So he stepped through the Come Together Door.
And he pitched.
And the rest, as they say, is history. Untouchable in the spring. Made the roster. Pitching like an All-Star.
Really, blown save aside, it doesn't get much better.
“Whatever happens from this point on,” he says as he gets up to go to the park. There’s a game starting in a few hours. He needs to be ready. He stands tall, and breathes the clean salt air, smiling at the pair of women who he’s going to leave there un-converesed with. “I owe those kids big. This has been the greatest month of my life. I know now that I'm not a failure, you know? There's a hundred million guys like me, though. Guys who are good players, but for whatever reasons the straws don't fall for them. Like they didn't for me, until they did. Without those kids, though...I wouldn't be here. I won’t forget any of them.”
Then he’s gone. Off to stretch and throw long toss before the next game. Off to pull on the uniform of the Bikini Krill.
I glance at the women.
They smile at me, but I know they don’t care.
I’m not a big leaguer, you see. And, at least for the moment, Bryan Longstaff is.
