Chapter 3: Alex and the Boosters

We had a game that night against Toronto, but the civic club's meeting was at high noon, and my talk was only supposed to run a half-hour or less, so there was no conflict. As requested, I met with Paul Warren's wife, Orlie, a half-hour before the luncheon at the Sheraton in downtown Baltimore.

Orlie Martinez Warren was a tiny, forty-something dark-haired beauty who'd kept her figure and had a dazzling smile. She thanked me profusely for filling in for Brian Roberts on short notice, and sat me down in the still-empty dining room for a pre-meeting chat.

"This is just the typical rubber chicken dinner," Orlie told me, "but this group is kind of special. They're the Oriole Boosters, and most of them are huge fans!"

"Wow. Paul hadn't told me that!" I said. "I thought it was just the Rotary Club or some such."

"Don't be intimidated!" she said. "These people are fans! To them, you guys are all minor deities. They'll hang on your every word!"

"You realize, Ms. Warren, I'm barely a big-league player. I'm the greenest -- and the oldest -- rookie going."

"Call me 'Orlie, '" she said. "And Paul told me about your misgivings about being the new guy. As I understand it, you're going to talk mostly about what it's been like for you, in the minors. That's perfect! They'll eat it up, I promise!"

"OK," I said. "Bring on the Boosters. --And the rubber chicken."

The lunch they served me wasn't that bad, and it was free. Dessert was actually kind of good. Before long, I was listening to Orlie's introduction of the Club's speaker of the week.

That would be me.

Orlie had done her homework, and she told the Boosters, step-by-step, about my 8th-round college draft by the Dodgers, the years with Los Angeles (OK, Albuquerque), then the Minnesota Twins (spelled R-O-C-H-E-S-T-E-R), then Tampa Bay (Durham), and now, my rebirth as an Oriole. Orlie made it all sound like a trip to Disney World, but at least she wasn't patronizing or condescending to any degree. It was a professional job of introducing a speaker as positively as possible.

I stood up, arranged my notes on the little rostrum, and got started. "Y'know," I began, "Brian Roberts was going to talk to you about life as a major-league ballplayer. But he couldn't be here today. Brian's spent more time in the shower at Camden Yards than I've spent in the majors for my whole career, so if you don't mind, we're going to have to change the topic of the day."

I got the expected cheap laugh with the shower remark, and continued. "We're going to have to talk, mostly, about life as a minor-league ballplayer. But my story has a happy ending, because today, I consider myself..." and now I parroted the famous Lou Gehrig line from his poignant farewell speech to the Yankee fans -- "I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth."

I didn't do it for laughs, and -- happily -- the people there realized it, and didn't laugh at me. And I emphatically didn't do it to belittle Lou Gehrig's famous -- and highly emotional -- speech. When I'd thought about saying it, earlier, I worried that it might not go over very well. I was relieved that my statement hadn't, apparently, been taken in the wrong spirit, either.

I said the words because they summed up how I felt, after those long, tedious years trying to climb to the top, finally to have reached it. I tried to make clear, to those pretty- knowledgeable baseball fans in the audience, that I was all-too-aware that I was just 25th man on a 25-man ball club. I wasn't one of those Godlike creatures whose exploits made the papers every day. If anything, I felt closer to these people in the audience, some of whom probably, when it came to The Game, were "never-weres," -- just like me. Guys who had loved the game but never made it to the big time. Never even came close.

I hadn't yet made it far enough, I told them, to even hope someday to be a "has-been." It remained to be seen, I told them, whether I might end up being one of the "never-weres." It still wasn't clear whether I had really made it, or whether this year, once again, I was going to be just a management afterthought -- here today, gone tomorrow, and maybe -- this time -- gone for good.

But even if I was sent down next month, I told the Boosters, I would be OK with it, because Paul Warren, unlike all those managers and general managers who'd come before him, would have really given me My Shot. He was letting me fail -- or not -- without arbitrarily passing me an airline ticket to Nowhere before I'd gotten so much as a decent chance to succeed.

I wasn't going for Brownie Points with the bosses' wife; I really wasn't. But as I wound it up, I couldn't help but notice that Orlie Martinez Warren actually had a little tear in her eye. My emotional little soul-baring talk to the Boosters had gotten to her.

What a nice woman!

I listened to what sounded like enthusiastic applause, and answered a few scattered questions from the group, but it was a luncheon meeting, and most of these people had places to go and things to do, so it all broke up soon afterward. It was just Orlie, and me, and a young woman accompanying her, remaining in the dining room.

"That was the best presentation we've ever had here!" Orlie exclaimed, sounding like she really meant it. "It was absolutely -- it was wonderful!" she said, falling back on one of the tried-and-true clichés when she couldn't articulate her feelings adequately.