Baseball Leaves a Trail of Hearts

This based on true events. Don't judge. ;)

My last year playing baseball was the worst year of my life. I was 22 years old, just out of college and playing Single-A ball in St. Petersburg, Fl. I'd been drafted out of Clemson in the 20th round, so the parent club's expectations were low.

Mine were not. I could throw a baseball almost 100 miles an hour, though almost no one knew that. An elbow injury my junior year made me alter my throwing motion, and I was reduced to a "junk-baller" my senior season.

I was drafted as a favor to my uncle, who played in the majors for the Cardinals back in the day. He was a scout and convinced the organization to take a chance on me. It was a chance of a lifetime.

All I wanted was a shot at that elusive "cup of coffee," the term for a brief stay in the majors. Anything else would be gravy.

Florida in the '90s was a lot different place from now. The housing boom had just started but prices were low, and jobs were plentiful. In St. Pete, which the sunbirds called "God's Waiting Room," the life was slow and easy.

I'd bought a used convertible MG with my meager signing bonus, moved into an apartment on the Gulf of Mexico with three other players and settled into the unique lifestyle of a minor-leaguer.

Everything was taken care of. Wake-up calls at 8 a.m., breakfast spreads at the training facility, hitting and pitching practice in the morning followed by lunch, light workouts in the afternoon and then either a home game or a bus ride to one of the eight or 10 towns scattered across Florida.

On the road, we stayed in motels, two to a room, and hung out around the pool at night after our games.

And the girls followed us everywhere we went.

Not just any girls, but Florida girls, blonde, blue eyed, tall and tanned and willing to fuck any guy on the team. Baseball Annies, they were called. And while the guys all wanted the same thing - to have pretty girls to fuck in every little town in Florida - the Annie's had long-term plans.

They wanted to marry a baseball player headed to the major leagues. Of course, they had no idea that the chances of a player going from the low-A leagues like the Florida State League to the majors was about a one-in-a-million shot, but we never told them that. Hell, we all believed we were that one-in-a-million player.

I'd impressed the coaches in Spring Training. I won a few games, got moved up from the "back fields" to play with some guys from higher classifications and held my own. While most of my draft class was sent to rookie ball, I was started one level up.

So at least they'd noticed my potential.

I threw everything I had into it, literally and physically. I trained daily, drank rarely, dated sparingly and tried to eat properly. I avoided the partying that was all around me. I did meet one girl who I like a lot, though I would later find out that MaryAnne was actually five years older than me.

After that, I felt like she was an older sister. We had sex once or twice a week when we were in St. Pete, but unlike many of the other girls, she didn't show up on road trips. I actually felt sorry for those girls. They were headed for broken hearts in August when the season ended and the boys of summer left them behind.

It was a story that played out year after year in every level of baseball.

The truth is, baseball players aren't the smartest of athletes. More and more of us are college educated than in the old days, but almost none of us had a degree. I was one of the few.

So while I had no intention of doing anything other than playing ball for as long as I could, at least I had options. Having been around athletes most of my life, looking back on it, baseball players are the low IQ jocks compared to say, hockey players and even most football players.

Well, some football players. Most are dumb as a bag of rocks, but your average quarterback and offensive lineman are generally a pretty smart guy. Golfers are generally from well-to-do backgrounds though few finished college.

All this to say, ballplayers are pretty crude when it came to practicing manners or etiquette. Their grasp of current events is sketchy at best. And their treatment of women?

Horrible.

A typical night for minor leaguers was too many beers at the local bar, taking one of the local starry-eyed Annie's back to the room and then pulling a train on her. And sadly, she would be back at the ballpark the very next night, smiling and happy, the stars still in her eyes.

MaryAnne had schooled me on all of this and assured me she wouldn't be chasing me around Florida, much less marrying me. I was relieved. It gave me the freedom to concentrate on baseball without worrying about girls or sex or getting someone pregnant, which was common in St. Pete that year.

My season was better than anything I could imagine. I won my first three starts and finished June with 7-3 record, a 3.19 ERA and 60 strikeouts in 66 innings. It was good enough to put me in the FSL All-Star Game, where I pitched one inning and hit 98 on a fastball, the highest speed I'd touched since my junior year at Clemson.

Things looked good as we started the second half of the season. Our team was winning games, I was the ace of the staff and the Cardinals were sending scouts to watch me.

And then it happened. I was warming up for a game in Daytona Beach when I felt something in my elbow. It was a stinging feeling that I thought would go away. I started the game without mentioning it to anyone, but before I could get out of the first inning, something popped.

I didn't wait for the trainer. I just walked off the mound and into the dugout. And just like that, my days of playing baseball were over.

The Cardinals organization was good about it, but in 1995 the surgical success of a tendon or a ligament was 50-50 at best, and for a player the team didn't really have much invested in, well they were going to do what they could without worrying too much about long-term.

That was on me.

For seven months, I couldn't do anything more than exercise my arm, and when Spring Training rolled around in February, I had a choice. I could use the training facilities in St. Pete to try and get back to where I could at least throw again, but there would be no money, no apartment, no food and no real access to the teams, players or coaches themselves.

The game went on without me.

I walked into a seedy bar one night in March and crawled into a bottle of Jack Daniels, striking up a conversation with a couple of locals. A young girl overheard us talking and asked if I was a baseball player.

Yes, I lied. I told her I was on the Injured Reserve, which was also a lie, and that I would be joining the team when it broke camp in a week. She took me back to her place, which was a little apartment on the Gulf.

It was to be my last night in St. Pete, my last taste of the only life I'd ever dreamed of. I fucked her tight little pussy all night. She seemed was so eager, so naive and starry-eyed. I fell asleep with my broken wing around her, worried sick about what I would tell her in the morning.

I woke up early, alone in her bedroom surrounded by pastel and lace, the smell of deceit in the air, the taste of her sex on my lips. I walked out of her bedroom and into the kitchen where a Cinderella mug was on the counter with a note under it.

Last night was great. I hope your arm heals soon. Pour yourself a cup of coffee. Maybe I'll see you here again next year.

♥️

Annie.