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Here comes the stuff I like. Spring Training. Back out on the field with stories of hopeful rebirth. Let's get out on some freshly mown grass, close our eyes, lean back, feel the morning sun on our faces and breathe again.
Certainly thought I'd be the first on All-Baseball.com to write that Ozzie Smith's son was one of the final 24 on American Idol (the resemblance is there). Since I'm not, here is a small sampling from the thousands of stories going around baseball at the approach of March.
In Texas, Astacio is reunited with Chan Ho Park and Orel Hershiser, who were teammates of his during his time with the Dodgers (1992-97). Park is trying to remain in the Rangers rotation and Hershiser is now Rangers pitching coach.
"Chan Ho is my buddy and I have so much respect for Orel," Astacio said. "I feel like this is the second time Orel is my pitching coach. He was always helping me with the Dodgers. This is a great situation for me."
Nen, 35, amassed 314 career saves, 13th on the all-time list, and made three All-Star teams. He was still at the peak of his powers midway through the '02 season when he decided to continue pitching despite a rotator-cuff injury that the training staff privately told him at the time was career-threatening.
The Giants made it to the World Series that year, thanks in part to seven postseason saves by Nen, before losing to the Anaheim Angels. Nen has yet to throw a big-league pitch since, enduring a frustrating comeback effort that several times has allowed him to sustain a 90 mph fastball, if only for a day.
On Jan. 23, shortly after beginning her ninth month of pregnancy, Finley's wife was hit in the face by a line drive while attending her son's Little League game in Del Mar, Calif.
Amy Finley suffered a broken nose, but when doctors couldn't stem the bleeding, they were forced to induce labor, some 3 1/2 weeks before her due date. Amy gave birth to a daughter, Sophia, on Jan. 26 <97> the same day Steve Finley's 61-year-old father, Howard, underwent quadruple bypass surgery in Kentucky.
"That's not a three weeks I'd wish on anybody," said Finley, the former Dodger who signed a two-year, $14-million deal with the Angels in December. "It was scary because I was worried about my wife and the baby. Then, the day after she got hit, we found out my dad needed open-heart surgery."
Amy Finley was hospitalized for 10 days and still suffers from fatigue and light nosebleeds, but the baby is fine. Howard Finley's recovery is going well.
I know the conventional wisdom is that you're not supposed to make excuses, but sometimes I'd like to hear them. I'd rather know that Odalis Perez is hurting mentally, or Shawn Green or Hideo Nomo is hurting physically.
... there is one challenge in her life that she doesn't see as a competition, a puzzle that she may never finish: getting to know her late father, former major leaguer Alan Wiggins. At 32 and with a history of drug abuse, he died from complications of AIDS on Jan. 6, 1991 -- a month shy of Candice's fourth birthday. "I feel I know him so well, yet I don't really have any idea who he was," says Wiggins. "It's sort of a life quest, to get as much of a picture of him as I can."
How serious some of these stories are. Don't be surprised to hear this from me, but I'm invested - although I lean heavily on statistics in player analysis, my personal attachment to the game is very much involved in the backstories of the players ...
It<92>s all about backstories. The Pedros have backstories. Kevin Brown has a backstory. Hiram Bocachica has a backstory. Jackie Robinson and Babe Ruth - all-time backstories. All the teams, from the Dodgers to the Devil Rays to the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, have backstories. The sport as a whole has its own collective backstory. And then, when these actors take the field - either at the ballpark in front of you, or on television, or in a book or newspaper clipping, you have all this set-up to appreciate the significance of everything they do.Yes, the ballplayers make more money and probably have less trouble getting a date than most of us, but they still dream and hurt and grieve and hope. If talent in sport gives these players encourages us to pay an undue amount of attention, at least sometimes we know it isn't wasted.Baseball is a stage, a movie set, a comic-book world in which all these characters enter and exit and live and die. As you begin to care about one character and watch his journey, it snowballs and you begin to care about others upon others. It is not waxing mystical or fantastical to say that it is a world filled with drama and comedy and exhilaration and heartbreak. It just is - in a deeper, more evolved sense than any movie honestly can ever offer.
What a movie offers <85> for better or worse, is that it ends. Baseball doesn<92>t.
The good news is, we've already had the best story of all this spring: After five months, Detroit pitcher Ugueth Urbina's mother was recently rescued from her kidnappers.
Harbinger away.
Sources: Los Angeles Times, Tampa Tribune, MLB.com, The Associated Press, Los Angeles Daily News, San Jose Mercury News, Sports Illustrated
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