Read Online Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball by John Feinstein - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: John Feinstein
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international: there were teams from Canada, Puerto Rico, and, for six years in the 1950s, Cuba. The Cuban team had to move in 1960, two years after the noted baseball fan Fidel Castro took over the country. The team ended up in that most international of cities, Jersey City, New Jersey.
There are no longer any international teams in the International League. The last one disappeared in 2008, when the Ottawa Lynx, who were an affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies, moved to Allentown, Pennsylvania—which is a lot closer to Philadelphia than Ottawa—and became the Lehigh Valley IronPigs.
The I-League, as it is commonly called, has three divisions: North, South, and West. The North Division has six teams: Pawtucket, Rochester, Syracuse, Buffalo, Lehigh Valley, and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. The South and West have four teams each: Norfolk, Durham, Charlotte, and Gwinnett play in the South; and Columbus, Toledo, Indianapolis, and Louisville play in the West.
The playoff system is a simple one: The three division winners qualify, and there is one wild card team. The four teams play best-of-five semifinals and then a best-of-five championship series. In 2012, Pawtucket, the wild card team, won the Governors’ Cup that is given to the league champion. The Governors’ Cup was first presented in 1933 when the I-League became the first league at any level of baseball to expand its playoffs to include four teams. Major League Baseball didn’t follow suit until 1969.
The original Governors’ Cup, which was worth $3,000 and was sponsored by the governors of New York, New Jersey, and Maryland and the lieutenant governors of Quebec and Ontario, was donated tothe Hall of Fame in 1988. The new cup, which is a replica, was actually smashed by a drunken fan at a Scranton/Wilkes-Barre game in 2009 and had to be extensively repaired. The Pacific Coast League uses an identical playoff system.
Among the managers who have hoisted the Governors’ Cup in the past are men like Walter Alston, Dick Williams, Bobby Cox, Davey Johnson, Hank Bauer, Joe Altobelli, and Charlie Manuel—all of whom went on to manage World Series winners. And yet every manager in the I-League says the same thing about winning the championship: it’s nice, but it isn’t what you are paid to do.
“You try to win every night, but you know you aren’t ultimately judged on wins and losses,” said Durham manager Charlie Montoyo, whose team made the playoffs five straight seasons prior to 2012 and won the Governors’ Cup in 2009. “My job is to develop players, help them be ready for the big leagues, keep their attitudes in the right place, and be ready to do whatever the big club needs at a moment’s notice—no matter what it does to my team. Some nights, all I’m looking for is a way to have enough pitchers to get through nine innings. If I do that, then I’ve probably done my job.”
On a July night in 2012, Montoyo’s phone rang shortly after midnight. The Bulls had managed to pull out a 7–4 victory earlier that evening against Rochester, but Montoyo had noticed after arriving home that the Tampa Bay Rays game against the Seattle Mariners had gone fourteen innings. When he heard farm director Chaim Bloom’s voice on the other end of the line, he laughed.
“What took you so long to call?” he asked.
Bloom laughed too. The two men had done this drill before. The fourteen-inning game meant that the Rays had gone deep into their bullpen. They would need to have another pitcher available the next night. César Ramos was the choice. He would be on a plane to Tampa the next morning. How long he would stay in Tampa was hard to say, but for the moment, since it might be only a few days, the Rays were not going to send anyone up to Durham from their Double-A team in Montgomery, Alabama.
“Oh, one more thing,” Bloom added. “Don’t use [Brandon] Gomes tomorrow. We may need him Sunday if we have to use Ramos right away.”
Montoyo sighed. That meant he
There are no longer any international teams in the International League. The last one disappeared in 2008, when the Ottawa Lynx, who were an affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies, moved to Allentown, Pennsylvania—which is a lot closer to Philadelphia than Ottawa—and became the Lehigh Valley IronPigs.
The I-League, as it is commonly called, has three divisions: North, South, and West. The North Division has six teams: Pawtucket, Rochester, Syracuse, Buffalo, Lehigh Valley, and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. The South and West have four teams each: Norfolk, Durham, Charlotte, and Gwinnett play in the South; and Columbus, Toledo, Indianapolis, and Louisville play in the West.
The playoff system is a simple one: The three division winners qualify, and there is one wild card team. The four teams play best-of-five semifinals and then a best-of-five championship series. In 2012, Pawtucket, the wild card team, won the Governors’ Cup that is given to the league champion. The Governors’ Cup was first presented in 1933 when the I-League became the first league at any level of baseball to expand its playoffs to include four teams. Major League Baseball didn’t follow suit until 1969.
The original Governors’ Cup, which was worth $3,000 and was sponsored by the governors of New York, New Jersey, and Maryland and the lieutenant governors of Quebec and Ontario, was donated tothe Hall of Fame in 1988. The new cup, which is a replica, was actually smashed by a drunken fan at a Scranton/Wilkes-Barre game in 2009 and had to be extensively repaired. The Pacific Coast League uses an identical playoff system.
Among the managers who have hoisted the Governors’ Cup in the past are men like Walter Alston, Dick Williams, Bobby Cox, Davey Johnson, Hank Bauer, Joe Altobelli, and Charlie Manuel—all of whom went on to manage World Series winners. And yet every manager in the I-League says the same thing about winning the championship: it’s nice, but it isn’t what you are paid to do.
“You try to win every night, but you know you aren’t ultimately judged on wins and losses,” said Durham manager Charlie Montoyo, whose team made the playoffs five straight seasons prior to 2012 and won the Governors’ Cup in 2009. “My job is to develop players, help them be ready for the big leagues, keep their attitudes in the right place, and be ready to do whatever the big club needs at a moment’s notice—no matter what it does to my team. Some nights, all I’m looking for is a way to have enough pitchers to get through nine innings. If I do that, then I’ve probably done my job.”
On a July night in 2012, Montoyo’s phone rang shortly after midnight. The Bulls had managed to pull out a 7–4 victory earlier that evening against Rochester, but Montoyo had noticed after arriving home that the Tampa Bay Rays game against the Seattle Mariners had gone fourteen innings. When he heard farm director Chaim Bloom’s voice on the other end of the line, he laughed.
“What took you so long to call?” he asked.
Bloom laughed too. The two men had done this drill before. The fourteen-inning game meant that the Rays had gone deep into their bullpen. They would need to have another pitcher available the next night. César Ramos was the choice. He would be on a plane to Tampa the next morning. How long he would stay in Tampa was hard to say, but for the moment, since it might be only a few days, the Rays were not going to send anyone up to Durham from their Double-A team in Montgomery, Alabama.
“Oh, one more thing,” Bloom added. “Don’t use [Brandon] Gomes tomorrow. We may need him Sunday if we have to use Ramos right away.”
Montoyo sighed. That meant he
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