Brian Ross

Somewhere tonight, in a hotel room, the future sits before him, the past nags at his memory, and the present tears at his being.

He has been groomed and trained to play his sport. His gifts have taken him far along the way, where many others have dropped behind, or out. He has learned the drills; followed the rules; taken the instruction; been the consummate team player.

Circumstance and the critical time dice that roll some to the bigs, and some to the minors, have rolled against him a time or two.

Does the past fortify his soul enough to deal with the pain of the present?

He works for a Sixth Sense franchise that doesn't realize that it's dead yet. An organization where the work ethic stinks, and petty people fight over control of their part of the outhouse pile. A team with no honor, no heart, no game.

You go where your contract goes, or you go home. You go home, you might as well stay there, because the phone only rings for the working.

Does his character carry him through the night, the week, the month, until, maybe, the dice roll his way? Tonight, he is having his doubts, whether he lets them seep past his game face or not.

———

There is a particular player that I have in mind on this chilly spring evening, but I can look into the rooms and hearts and minds of a score more like him in just about every city and every sport where there is a minor league.

Set adrift from the shelter of the University of Unlimited Possibility to the deep waters of the talent pool.

It is a place run by millionaires who aren't multi enough to be the big time, or often have the character to fashion a franchise which develops athletic ability.

They staff their teams with coaches who range from the gifted passing through to the frustrated who lack the emotional, social and mechanical skills to develop the talent of the athletes in their charge. The lucky find themselves in the care of the former. The majority find themselves in the clutches of the latter.

Our player could be like so many around him, and lose his way. A beer or a joint or two takes a little edge off of going from the roar of college nights to the sparse applause in a leaky auditorium which holds a handful of enthusiastic fans.

Go to Europe. Play where the money for the second-tier is good, the schedule lax, and the expectations low.

Let the stats, once so critical to a career moving forward, slide a little bit... just this one week.

———

Our friend is not a slacker, though. He fights for playing time. He fights for the discipline which has carried him through his whole playing life.

His opponent isn't the other team, a bad coach or another player. It's despair. If it sounds cliche, I'm not painting the picture well enough. It is the heart of darkness. The athletic abyss. Career quicksand.

If the athlete, at the ripe old age of 21 or 22, can achieve that moment of mental clarity long enough to know what the dream is really about, they have a shot.

Sadly, most are here because they just don't understand it. Some probably never will. For them there is settling, or quitting.

———

Ask a player and they'll tell you that the expectation, the secret hope, is that shot at the majors. Yet what bars 90% of them is not their athletic gifts, but their state of mind, and their point of focus.

For many the majors are an illusion. Their gifts lend themselves to being heroes in smaller towns. There may not be shoe contracts in Peoria, or guest shots on the Tonight Show in Fayetteville, but there are fans, particularly young fans, who may never see a real live sports hero right in front of them if these athletes weren't there.

They provide their local fans a level of talent that is not attainable in a college or high school program, the stock and trade of most small and mid-sized bergs.

———

How high you float in the sports world isn't just about athletic talent. There are many, many players in the minors with the physical gifts to be a Jordan, a Piazza, a Howe.

What makes the Jordans of the world though, isn't something from without. It's the thing within. Their drive to achieve self-perfection is as true a force as gravity, as unstoppable as time.

The dream isn't about the majors, or the undefeated season. The dream is about the game. Loving the game, whatever it is, rabidly enough that the athlete pushes themselves to their physical and emotional max.

———

Success is the athlete intimate with victory over self. Free of the doubts, beyond the physical pain, above the emotion, in the zone. Focused control not for one game, but for every game.

Those athletes fortunate enough to achieve it at any level of their sport have found a peace and a power that can allow them to hang it up without regret.

You would think that nothing would stop the Jordans of the world from being Jordan. Yet without proper opportunities, the proper support, and the right blend of coaching and personal management, you can't fire up that athletic nuclear reactor. There isn't enough emotional fission to carry the player through the bad times.

———

The fiction of the minors is the stated goal is to develop talent. Grinding that talent down, burning it out, breaking it gets rid of the 97% chaff, leaving the kernels of the physically and emotionally dominant to get their shot at the big time.

There are so many athletes with promise in the minors. There in the quiet of their hotel rooms, alone in the dark with themselves. Searching for the answer which their coach or their agent or Jay Leno schticking them into a restless sleep can't cure.

———

They have my admiration for their courage. They have the support of this publication which reminds them that their efforts are not in vain, that they are more than a collective stat sheet on a website, or a transaction notice of their movement in the system.

Tonight I say a quiet prayer for my friend, and for all of the lost Jordans.

Brian M. Ross
Sr. Editor
MinorLeagueNews.com

The Lost Jordans