Spring Training: It's Like Heaven Only Better

I learned something while working for the Braves. I was not alone.

The team general manager and I were waiting out a rain delay in his office one evening when he reached into his desk and pulled out a worn shoebox full of audio tapes and threw it on his desk. He waited for me to ask what they were.

I obliged.

"Every year, I get hundreds of demo tapes from guys across the country wanting your job. Lawyers, doctors, delivery guys, you name it, they watch a game on TV and record themselves announcing the players. Most offer to do it for free. Some are willing to do just one game."

Pretending not to understand, I asked Rai why these men would humble themselves before a rookie league general manager so that a few hundred fans can hear them speak?

"It's not about them", he began, "It's about being part of baseball, it's about connecting with something that is more a religion than a sport."

"Oh," I said, as if I just had an epiphany. "I didn't think of that."

The rain finally let up, and I walked up the stairs to my perch directly above home plate, and after downing a hot dog and a Coke, and as I was about to key the microphone and introduce the lineups, I thought about all those men who were unable to live their dream because I was standing in their way.

And I was perfectly satisfied with the situation.

And I keyed the microphone.

In 1991, I was the photographer for the Pocatello Posse, who moved from Salt Lake City when Derks Field collapsed and stayed a single season before returning to Utah and becoming the Ogden Raptors.

The Posse was an independent team, so you’d assume that no one on that club ever made it to the major leagues.

You’d be wrong if you so assumed.

I took pictures of the players and usually gave them free 8X10’s for their families. It was highly doubtful, after all, that any of them would ever get out of the short-season rookie league and I wanted them to have a memory of their time in professional baseball.

It was learned that the team was moving a day or two before the season ended. I said my goodbyes and was heading to the parking lot when one of the players shouted my name. I turned around to see something flying towards me.

I snatched it out of the air.

It was a black home Posse jersey emblazoned with “Pocatello” in teal and bordered in silver. Though the players were supposed to turn in their uniforms, this player—Cory was his name—gave me his. I think I’d given him five or six 8X10’s. He was a nice guy.

It wasn’t until a small plane crashed into a tall building in New York City a few years ago that I realized that sitting in the back of my closet was the first professional baseball jersey of Yankee pitcher Cory Lidle.

He really was a nice guy.

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