Minor Moments, Major Memories: Baseball's Best Players Recall Life in the Minor Leagues

Almost every baseball player who makes it in the major leagues first has to survive a few grueling seasons in the minors, enduring long bus rides and endless afternoons in dull, dusty towns for a shot at the big time. In this book, several dozen players look back at their stints in the bush leagues with a mix of nostalgia and amazement. Lienweaver, a former minor league executive, and Bradley, a pitcher who enjoyed a brief stint with the New York Yankees in 1998, asked their subjects to recall their fondest minor league memories. The authors present these tales in the form of brief first-person accounts. Unfortunately, most of the participants are better ballplayers than storytellers. Drew Henson talks about how his pickup truck was once stolen and then found, but the CDs were missing. Darren Dreifort remembers watching kids tackle the mascot in San Antonio night after night. Then there's outfielder Adam Piatt, a self-styled prankster whose best memory involves breaking into a teammate's motel room, defecating on a towel and leaving it on the heater. Hilarious. Still, some of the essays are worthwhile, such as the story of Ray Fagnant, a career minor leaguer who was playing for an insurance company's slow-pitch softball team when a Connecticut club signed him as an emergency catcher. Just a few weeks after leaving the insurance team, Fagnant hit a home run off star major league righty Jack Morris, who was in the minors temporarily to rehab an injury. Fagnant bought 25 newspapers the next day and clipped the box scores. Few of the entries here are as interesting as Fagnant's, but those who skip around to find the rare gems in the mix will get a taste of life in the minors and the dreams that motivate all young ballplayers.