MLB '24 Regular Season Thread

It ain't the destination, it's the journey.
They sign with a team and see places they'd never otherwise see. Get exposed to things they never would otherwise. Maybe they meet a girl and get married and have kids and settle down in one of those places and become a pillar of the community. They make friends. They make business contacts. Playing isn't in their future, but coaching or front office work or video work is, and they learn the ropes of that side of baseball and make a decent career out of it. Maybe they just go and have fun for a couple of years when they're 21 or 22, while they figure out what they really want to do with their lives. Playing baseball is as good a dead-end early-20s job as any other.
Or they can just say, "Well, I'm probably never going to get a 10-year, $300 million contract so even though I'm offered this incredibly rare opportunity to at least give it a shot I think I'll go bartend at a dive bar instead."
Whatever works, I guess. Saying it's a good thing that they never even have the chance to have that experience because the chances of making it are slim just seems like a depressing, nihilistic view of life.

 

That’s very well said. Good points all.

 

Great post … my cousin lived the minor league life in the early 1990s. Could throw in the low 90s and spent a couple summers playing minor league ball in the south in the Expos organization.

An arm injury ended the dream, but he ended up going to college and a career in sales afterward. And as he likes to say, “I can still recite the entire menu of Waffle House by memory.”

 

Did you play steel guitar?

 

Tonight's anthem performed on the cello, by Andrea, the wife of cap night sponsor. My idea is to bring all the different anthem instrumental performers together for the final home game for our own version of the old Brooklyn Dodger Sym-phony.

 

Phillies second half pitching already in form.

 

Sounds like the premise of "The Music Man."

 

I’m still Facebook friends with a (then) young woman who was in my same training class at AT&T. A year or so intro he job she married her college sweetheart, who was a golfer at their SEC school. They knew it was a long shot, but they soon moved to Florida so he could pursue his dream on what is now the Korn Ferry Tour.

He didn’t get his card. Don’t think he even won an event. But from there he caught on as an assistant golf coach in the college ranks. The family’s gotten to live on both coasts and now he’s with a top school in a terrific college town. And his wife’s career has thrived as well once she got out of the Birmingham bubble.

 

Mariners — How to Blow A 10-Game Lead in 24 Days. Quickest ever.

 

Great post. No one can take your life experiences away from you.

For a lot of these guys, they’re able to tell their kids, and eventually their grandkids, about how they were able to play pro ball. Maybe as a teammate with a future MLB star. They’ll be able to tell the story of how they got the game-winning line drive hit off a future HOFer, even though in reality it was a broken-bat dunker that the shortstop lost in the lights. It’s a life experience.

 

Forty years ago my friend was a first round pick out of high school. Couldn't hit in rookie ball, so took a schollie with a D1 football power. Caught a TD in a bowl game, then hurt a knee. Today he owns a small car wash bought with the MLB bonus his dad put away. He still does the actual pre-washing with a hose, takes the money, manages three employees, every day. He's a grounded guy with two great kids and has zero regrets.

 

IIRC, the HOF inductions are tomorrow. Looking forward to Jim Leyland's speech.