Pitt Gorilla
02-28-2005, 01:54 PM
Truby starter till Teahen's ready
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/baseball/mlb/kansas_city_royals/11002106.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
SURPRISE, Ariz. — The first steps of spring are always tough, but then Chris Truby already knew that. The rain had finally gone away, the sun burning off the light coat of mist on the grass. A coach manned a stopwatch, mentally counting the ticks. Fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen.
Truby was a few seconds behind his running partner, building up to game speed, sweat starting to form into drops and then beads and then rivulets. This is spring to him: hard work and not some idyllic chain of lazy days and light batting practice. Twelve. Eleven. Truby had this look on his face. He was either smiling or winded. Ten. Nine. Smiling or winded?
Turns out, both.
Only a career on the fringes of major-league baseball could prepare a man to smile as he begins his last best shot. That's because at least it is a shot, which is more than the Chris Trubys of the world usually get. At 31 years old, he's in the Royals camp, more than a decade of successes and failures behind him. Like many of his journeyman peers, chances come seldom, if at all. They are something to be coveted, protected, maximized.
“They've been high, and they've been rock bottom,” general manager Allard Baird says. “They've been told things. Some have come true. Some haven't. As they get older, there's more reflection on their future, their time left in the game.”
Truby has got a unique proposition from the club — play third base until prospect Mark Teahen is ready for the big time. Two days or two months, whatever. He's got that long to prove to 29 other teams that either he can play or he can't.
There's some strange peace in that, in knowing the score. He's tired of coming to camp, trying to make a club he's got no shot of making, then spending the year putting up good numbers in Class AAA, a member of the cursed Four A fraternity.
“I know you don't get opportunities very much,” he says, “and I know this is a good opportunity for me.”
Later, he leans back in his clubhouse chair, checking out the caboodle of stuff that comes with a big-league training camp. He smiles. He laughs. He looks around the room.
“I realize how lucky I am,” he says. “I really do. So I've never had to sit back and say, ‘I'm going to enjoy it.' Because I enjoy every day of it.”
***
Next door is a reminder that those days are running out: Teahen's locker. Both men smile when asked whether it's awkward. Both say it's not.
They're professionals and understand that in baseball, kinda like that Magritte painting, what might appear to be a still life of a sphere floating in the air is actually a moment frozen in time, and some people are going up and others are going down. Players become stars; players hang on. That's the game.
Teahen knows this. In the minors, he once roomed with a player he was replacing. He met up with the club, settled into his room and asked his new teammate, “What position do you play?”
“Well,” the guy responded, “I was playing third base.”
So he's been there. After being acquired for Carlos Beltran, he's been tapped for greatness, and his shot is coming.
“To see him at the age he is,” Truby says, “you hope he realizes what lies ahead of him, because it's a tough world.”
That world often isn't about Sweeney-size contracts. It often isn't about glory.
When Royal Zack Greinke signed, a press conference allowed reporters to ask him questions breathlessly before the ink was dry.
Truby?
After graduating high school and not getting picked in the draft, he found himself playing amateur games with other dreamers in Lodi, Calif. (Yeah, the song takes on a little special meaning for him.)
As Truby was walking to the dugout one day before a game, a scout grabbed his shirt and pulled him into a bathroom.
“Wanna sign with the Astros?” he asked.
“What?!” Truby said. “Talk to me after the game.”
They did talk later, and Truby signed his deal. That's how it began.
“It was wild,” Truby says. “Ever since then, I realize how lucky I am to play this game.”
He had dreams then of making it to one big-league spring training. That was his goal. If only.
“I'll be honest,” Truby says, “When I first signed, I never expected to get to the big leagues. But I knew if I ever did, I knew I'd probably put in at least seven years in the minor leagues. I knew that going in.”
***
Well, he made it to a spring training. It was all he'd imagined. But by 1997, working on his sixth year of Class A ball, he thought it was over. He'd been mediocre for three straight years in the minors.
“I was told that I was on the outs,” he says.
Then someone got hurt. That's what it takes for a journeyman to get his shot sometimes. A heaping helping of luck.
He knew he had to do something with the chance, and, facing the biggest pressure of his athletic life, Chris Truby delivered. He did well enough in 1997 to stay in the organization, and, in 1998, he shot from A to AA all the way to AAA New Orleans, finishing the year with 31 homers and 112 RBIs.
Two years later, Truby got brought up to the Astros — if he could make it to San Francisco. The call came late at night, and Truby packed, getting to the airport early. He didn't want to miss the flight and what could be his only chance.
“That's happened to people before,” he says.
He settled into the clubhouse before the game, everything clean and shiny. He looked around the room and thought of the buses and tiny paychecks and naysayers. He got a little choked up.
“To go from nothing to being there and knowing how much work you put in it,” he says, “it's emotional. You get there, and you're like, ‘This is it.'?”
He played that night. Before his first at-bat, he stood in the on-deck circle, looking around at the crowd. The P.A. announcer called out his name, and he inched toward the plate.
“After that, it kinda went blank,” he says. “But then you sit back and think about it. No matter what happens, no matter how much bad goes on in your career, how many times you think you got screwed, the good memories are the ones that really stick.”
***
For the briefest of moments, he allowed himself to think that he'd made it. That first year was a success. He hit 11 homers and drove in 59 runs. He played outstanding defense. Yes, for a little while, he imagined a long career in the big leagues, the drudgery of the minors gone forever.
“I thought that,” he says now.
It wasn't to be. The next season, he began well again but hit an awful 30-at-bat stretch. He heard the whispers, and when Vinny Castilla became available, he knew what was coming next.
“If I'm a general manager,” he says, “I'd do the same exact thing they did, because they had an opportunity to get the guy for a prorated minimum.”
When the team arrived in Chicago about halfway through the season, he got a message: Go see manager Larry Dierker. Truby was headed back down, leaving on a flight for New Orleans the next morning.
“If you play in the game long enough, it's going to happen to everybody,” he says. “Unless you're one of those superstar guys.”
Late that year, he was called up but mostly pinch hit. His average spiraled, ending up at .206. Two trades later, he was struggling in Detroit, trying to find his place. His batting average was falling below .200, and management grew unhappy. So did he.
“I went about that whole situation wrong,” he says. “I would really like to have that back. I think after that season in Detroit, you get stuck with a little label that he can't play or he can't play at this level.”
He went back down, tagged fairly or unfairly as a AAAA player. He played 13 games in 2003 with the Devil Rays and never made it to the majors last year. He found himself pressing, trying to regain that feeling from the on-deck circle in San Francisco.
“When you dig yourself a hole, you start trying harder,” he says. “You want to put your work in because that's gonna make you better, but there's a line. You don't cross it; you don't go overboard because then you start becoming some kind of mental midget where you start thinking about everything. That's where I was.”
***
Now he's here. Chris Truby's been given a chance to show he's not a career minor-leaguer. That's what he wants now — one more shot at The Show. When he and his wife met with Baird, that was their main concern. Could this really work out?
“Tell me what I need to do to get to the big leagues,” Truby says. “If I've got no chance with you, then I'll look elsewhere. Because my goal is not to be a good Triple-A player. I know that you don't play forever. I've got I don't know how many years to play, so you do what you can to extend it.”
He thinks about that year in Houston, when everything was great. He thinks about the year in Detroit, when nothing was. Somewhere in those memories lies a secret, something he can use to make it work this time. There's a lot of pressure, but he tries not to obsess over it. No matter what happens, he's smiling. This is a memory that will stick.
He's just working on getting ready, the clock counting, eight, seven, six, down to zero. He knows he can't press, as he's done in the past. But sometimes, it's hard not to, when the thing you've always wanted remains tauntingly close, yet out of reach.
“I worry about one thing,” Baird says, sounding honestly concerned. “Trying too hard. Because he walks in here, and he has something in his hand that he probably hasn't had in a very long time, if ever. And I want him to just be himself.”
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/baseball/mlb/kansas_city_royals/11002106.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
SURPRISE, Ariz. — The first steps of spring are always tough, but then Chris Truby already knew that. The rain had finally gone away, the sun burning off the light coat of mist on the grass. A coach manned a stopwatch, mentally counting the ticks. Fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen.
Truby was a few seconds behind his running partner, building up to game speed, sweat starting to form into drops and then beads and then rivulets. This is spring to him: hard work and not some idyllic chain of lazy days and light batting practice. Twelve. Eleven. Truby had this look on his face. He was either smiling or winded. Ten. Nine. Smiling or winded?
Turns out, both.
Only a career on the fringes of major-league baseball could prepare a man to smile as he begins his last best shot. That's because at least it is a shot, which is more than the Chris Trubys of the world usually get. At 31 years old, he's in the Royals camp, more than a decade of successes and failures behind him. Like many of his journeyman peers, chances come seldom, if at all. They are something to be coveted, protected, maximized.
“They've been high, and they've been rock bottom,” general manager Allard Baird says. “They've been told things. Some have come true. Some haven't. As they get older, there's more reflection on their future, their time left in the game.”
Truby has got a unique proposition from the club — play third base until prospect Mark Teahen is ready for the big time. Two days or two months, whatever. He's got that long to prove to 29 other teams that either he can play or he can't.
There's some strange peace in that, in knowing the score. He's tired of coming to camp, trying to make a club he's got no shot of making, then spending the year putting up good numbers in Class AAA, a member of the cursed Four A fraternity.
“I know you don't get opportunities very much,” he says, “and I know this is a good opportunity for me.”
Later, he leans back in his clubhouse chair, checking out the caboodle of stuff that comes with a big-league training camp. He smiles. He laughs. He looks around the room.
“I realize how lucky I am,” he says. “I really do. So I've never had to sit back and say, ‘I'm going to enjoy it.' Because I enjoy every day of it.”
***
Next door is a reminder that those days are running out: Teahen's locker. Both men smile when asked whether it's awkward. Both say it's not.
They're professionals and understand that in baseball, kinda like that Magritte painting, what might appear to be a still life of a sphere floating in the air is actually a moment frozen in time, and some people are going up and others are going down. Players become stars; players hang on. That's the game.
Teahen knows this. In the minors, he once roomed with a player he was replacing. He met up with the club, settled into his room and asked his new teammate, “What position do you play?”
“Well,” the guy responded, “I was playing third base.”
So he's been there. After being acquired for Carlos Beltran, he's been tapped for greatness, and his shot is coming.
“To see him at the age he is,” Truby says, “you hope he realizes what lies ahead of him, because it's a tough world.”
That world often isn't about Sweeney-size contracts. It often isn't about glory.
When Royal Zack Greinke signed, a press conference allowed reporters to ask him questions breathlessly before the ink was dry.
Truby?
After graduating high school and not getting picked in the draft, he found himself playing amateur games with other dreamers in Lodi, Calif. (Yeah, the song takes on a little special meaning for him.)
As Truby was walking to the dugout one day before a game, a scout grabbed his shirt and pulled him into a bathroom.
“Wanna sign with the Astros?” he asked.
“What?!” Truby said. “Talk to me after the game.”
They did talk later, and Truby signed his deal. That's how it began.
“It was wild,” Truby says. “Ever since then, I realize how lucky I am to play this game.”
He had dreams then of making it to one big-league spring training. That was his goal. If only.
“I'll be honest,” Truby says, “When I first signed, I never expected to get to the big leagues. But I knew if I ever did, I knew I'd probably put in at least seven years in the minor leagues. I knew that going in.”
***
Well, he made it to a spring training. It was all he'd imagined. But by 1997, working on his sixth year of Class A ball, he thought it was over. He'd been mediocre for three straight years in the minors.
“I was told that I was on the outs,” he says.
Then someone got hurt. That's what it takes for a journeyman to get his shot sometimes. A heaping helping of luck.
He knew he had to do something with the chance, and, facing the biggest pressure of his athletic life, Chris Truby delivered. He did well enough in 1997 to stay in the organization, and, in 1998, he shot from A to AA all the way to AAA New Orleans, finishing the year with 31 homers and 112 RBIs.
Two years later, Truby got brought up to the Astros — if he could make it to San Francisco. The call came late at night, and Truby packed, getting to the airport early. He didn't want to miss the flight and what could be his only chance.
“That's happened to people before,” he says.
He settled into the clubhouse before the game, everything clean and shiny. He looked around the room and thought of the buses and tiny paychecks and naysayers. He got a little choked up.
“To go from nothing to being there and knowing how much work you put in it,” he says, “it's emotional. You get there, and you're like, ‘This is it.'?”
He played that night. Before his first at-bat, he stood in the on-deck circle, looking around at the crowd. The P.A. announcer called out his name, and he inched toward the plate.
“After that, it kinda went blank,” he says. “But then you sit back and think about it. No matter what happens, no matter how much bad goes on in your career, how many times you think you got screwed, the good memories are the ones that really stick.”
***
For the briefest of moments, he allowed himself to think that he'd made it. That first year was a success. He hit 11 homers and drove in 59 runs. He played outstanding defense. Yes, for a little while, he imagined a long career in the big leagues, the drudgery of the minors gone forever.
“I thought that,” he says now.
It wasn't to be. The next season, he began well again but hit an awful 30-at-bat stretch. He heard the whispers, and when Vinny Castilla became available, he knew what was coming next.
“If I'm a general manager,” he says, “I'd do the same exact thing they did, because they had an opportunity to get the guy for a prorated minimum.”
When the team arrived in Chicago about halfway through the season, he got a message: Go see manager Larry Dierker. Truby was headed back down, leaving on a flight for New Orleans the next morning.
“If you play in the game long enough, it's going to happen to everybody,” he says. “Unless you're one of those superstar guys.”
Late that year, he was called up but mostly pinch hit. His average spiraled, ending up at .206. Two trades later, he was struggling in Detroit, trying to find his place. His batting average was falling below .200, and management grew unhappy. So did he.
“I went about that whole situation wrong,” he says. “I would really like to have that back. I think after that season in Detroit, you get stuck with a little label that he can't play or he can't play at this level.”
He went back down, tagged fairly or unfairly as a AAAA player. He played 13 games in 2003 with the Devil Rays and never made it to the majors last year. He found himself pressing, trying to regain that feeling from the on-deck circle in San Francisco.
“When you dig yourself a hole, you start trying harder,” he says. “You want to put your work in because that's gonna make you better, but there's a line. You don't cross it; you don't go overboard because then you start becoming some kind of mental midget where you start thinking about everything. That's where I was.”
***
Now he's here. Chris Truby's been given a chance to show he's not a career minor-leaguer. That's what he wants now — one more shot at The Show. When he and his wife met with Baird, that was their main concern. Could this really work out?
“Tell me what I need to do to get to the big leagues,” Truby says. “If I've got no chance with you, then I'll look elsewhere. Because my goal is not to be a good Triple-A player. I know that you don't play forever. I've got I don't know how many years to play, so you do what you can to extend it.”
He thinks about that year in Houston, when everything was great. He thinks about the year in Detroit, when nothing was. Somewhere in those memories lies a secret, something he can use to make it work this time. There's a lot of pressure, but he tries not to obsess over it. No matter what happens, he's smiling. This is a memory that will stick.
He's just working on getting ready, the clock counting, eight, seven, six, down to zero. He knows he can't press, as he's done in the past. But sometimes, it's hard not to, when the thing you've always wanted remains tauntingly close, yet out of reach.
“I worry about one thing,” Baird says, sounding honestly concerned. “Trying too hard. Because he walks in here, and he has something in his hand that he probably hasn't had in a very long time, if ever. And I want him to just be himself.”