Some years back, I had a friend who had the same dream as millions of other American boys.
He wanted to be the next Mickey Mantle, and even though he never played for his high school team, he was apparently impressive enough in summer baseball that the Baltimore Orioles offered him a contract to play for their short-season Rookie League team.
I didn’t hear about it till years later, and in those years I learned a great deal about why baseball teams sign players to minor-league contracts. My friend believed — and so did I when I was younger — that teams only offered contracts to players they thought could make it to the majors one day.
My friend told the Orioles scout that he would only sign if he were offered a Double A contract, two steps from the Show.
The scout didn’t laugh.
He just said the Orioles couldn’t do that.
What my friend didn’t understand and I didn’t either until 1982, when I covered a truly awful Cardinals farm team in North Carolina was that 80 percent of the players in the low minors will never even make it to Double A. They’re only there to fill out the lineups so the real prospects can play.
The Gastonia Cardinals manager told me in 1982 that if two players from a Class A team make it to the big leagues, that team is considered a success.
In fact, the team I covered that summer was so pathetic that no one even made it to Double A.
They all went on to do other things and they’re all on the far side of 60 now. At least they have memories of being paid to play baseball. Over the next 10-12 years I covered Class A farm teams of five different organizations — St. Louis, Montreal, Pittsburgh, Atlanta and San Diego.
I covered a number of players who made it to the majors, including one borderline superstar. Derrek Lee hit 331 home runs, was third in the voting for National League MVP in 2005 and is in the Chicago Cubs Hall of Fame. He made it big.
He lived a dream that more than 600 kids who were drafted earlier this week have been dreaming for most of their lives.
Some, like No. 1 pick Eli Willits, will almost certainly make it. Others, like those picked in the final rounds, are longshots at best.
Then there are the interesting ones, the ones in the middle. They won’t get million-dollar bonuses, but they’ll get some money and depending on what the teams drafting them need, hard work and luck might get it done for them.
When the Dodgers drafted Mike Piazza in 1988, it was largely because his father was a friend of Manager Tommy Lasorda. He was drafted on the 62nd round, 42 rounds past the length of the 2025 draft.
He’s in Cooperstown now.
I have never met the eighth-round draft choice of the Arizona Diamondbacks, so I don’t know much about Arizona State pitcher Jack Martinez. In fact, what little I do know comes from frequent posts on Facebook by one of his grandmothers.
It seems odd to call her a grandmother. I have known her for 45 years and I don’t think there are any women to whom I’m not related that I value as highly.
She is actually a step-grandmother, a similar situation to my youngest sister. Neither had children of their own, but both married men who had children by earlier marriages and became stepmothers.
One of my friend’s stepdaughters gave birth to Jack, who was a good enough pitcher to play for ASU and had a good enough year this year to be drafted in the eighth round the other day.
Every pick in the first 10 rounds has a slot value assigned to it, and pick No. 243, the pick the Diamondbacks used on Martinez, is valued at $223,100. That sounds pretty good, but consider this. If Martinez has been in the major leagues on opening day and stayed on the roster all season, his salary for the year would be $760,000.
That’s the minimum. The average major league salary this year is $5.2 million.
My friend who dreamed of playing big league ball went to batting cages for fun until his late 30s/early 40s. He was 37 the first year I covered the Dodgers, and he honestly believed if he could take a month or two to get into shape, he could still make it.
Shame on me. I laughed.
I’m not laughing at Jack’s chances, though. The odds are against him, but with hard work and good fortune, he’s got a decent chance.
And when you’re dreaming the same dream as millions of other kids, that’s all you can really ask.