Chapter 1

When the Orioles broke for home on March 31 after spring training in Florida, I was semi-amazed to find that I was heading north with the big club.

I mean, all the cuts earlier in the spring had been made, right? I could count to twenty-five, and it certainly appeared that I was one of the twenty-five guys Paul Warren had decided to take with him to Camden Yards.

But I had been in similar situations before. Couple of times, in fact. Four years ago, when I was only twenty-seven, it looked as if the Brewers were going to take me with them for Opening Day.

Instead, they traded my contract to the Seattle Mariners, and the Mariners assigned me to their Triple-A franchise in Tacoma.

Pretty darn close to the big leagues. Seattle and Tacoma share the same airport.

The disappointment of not going north with the Brewers had been somewhat assuaged by my pleasure at being picked up by Seattle. Rightly or wrongly, I had a higher opinion of the Mariners' franchise and saw myself climbing to the top faster there, and I'd more likely be playing for a contender when it happened.

Well, the "top" proved elusive.

Oh, it's not like I never got a smell. I was brought up in September that year when the rosters were expanded. I got my first chance to play in the Bigs. But the Mariners were in contention right down to the final week, and that meant my chances to play in the waning days of the season were pretty limited.

Nobody misled me. I was reassigned to Tacoma's roster for the next season and was on notice, right from the outset, that I'd be spending my second straight year in Triple-A.

During my second year playing for the Mariners' top farm, I got traded to the Orioles late in the year and made the lateral move from Tacoma to the Orioles' AAA franchise in Norfolk, Virginia.

From the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic Coast.

Big move.

But a small result. Coast to coast, but still triple-A all the way.

I wasn't too pleased with my prospects. The Orioles were a solid contender these days, and they had an infield that I couldn't see myself crashing anytime soon. My hitting was only so-so, suggesting that even designated hitter wasn't a position I was going to be in line to inherit.

Second base was my best position, although I could fill in at shortstop or third without my club's having to sacrifice too much on defense.

It was my unimpressive power stats and mediocre batting average that were keeping me in Norfolk.

But the Orioles, still trying to build an optimum machine for winning over the long haul, made some major trades and acquisitions while I was in Norfolk. By far the biggest was when they picked up, during the off season of the same year that my contract had been acquired, Houston's heavy-hitting centerfielder, Zeke "The Streak" Taylor.

Inside of two seasons in Baltimore, Taylor, a free agent with an already stellar career in the National League, had moved the Birds from an outside contender to an AL East powerhouse. The long period of Red Sox-Yankee domination of the Division, if not exactly at an end, was at least being significantly challenged.

My "acquisition" by the Orioles made somewhat less of a splash. In fact, I would spend two more years in the minors before getting my shot this past April. Okay, so the Orioles had brought me up the previous September, just as the Mariners had two seasons earlier. It was like I wasn't allowed in a major league ballpark unless there was a fall chill in the air.

But not this year. Now it was July, and there was no sign of a chill in the air in Baltimore. Actually, a little breeze would have been welcome.

I was getting very little playing time, but there didn't seem to be any immediate likelihood of my being sent back down, either. Paul Warren, the Orioles' manager, told me I reminded him of David Newhan. I didn't know it at the time, but Warren was paying me a high compliment. Seven or eight years back, when Warren was himself still an Orioles infielder, the acquisition of utility man David Newhan had been the impetus for Warren's decision to call it a career as a player.

Newhan, like me, was a versatile defensive player who had performed competently at several positions -- including outfield. I had never played in the outfield and wasn't eager to start, but Warren still saw me as a "David Newhan type," and evidently that was a very good thing to be in his eyes.

So I stayed alert on the Orioles' bench, ready to play at a moment's notice: to go in as a defensive replacement in the late innings, occasionally pinch hit for a left-handed hitter, and start at second, short, or third now and again in order to give one of the regular infielders a one-game breather.

I was hitting .252 with eleven ribbies for the season, but that wasn't so awful, given the isolated chances I'd gotten to play. Warren seemed satisfied, and I'd already spent three times as much time in the major leagues as the combined periods of my two earlier extremely brief late-season shots in the majors.

After almost four months of drawing a major league salary, all my back debts were paid, I had a brand-new car -- a Toyota Camry -- for the first time in my young life, and there was an excellent chance that the Orioles would make the post-season and take me with them to the playoffs.

Now, wouldn't that be nice? I was a happy fella.

Well, I got one of my rare starts in the final game of a three-game home series against the Blue Jays, and in the eighth inning with the Orioles trailing 5-3 with a man on first, I got a double that moved the runner to third.

There we were, two on and only one out, and our leadoff guy, Josh Brennan, coming to bat.

Now, you gotta understand, Josh Brennan is the best hitter, year in and year out, in either league. The guy's on-base percentage is off the charts. Josh has no power to speak of, but with men on second and third, there's just about noooo-body a manager would rather have up at the plate.

So it wasn't exactly a shock when the Toronto manager signaled his pitcher to put Josh on with an intentional walk. With one out, it was a good, standard move. Sure, he'd be putting the go-ahead run on first with only one out, but he'd also be setting up the possible inning-ending double play.

It was pretty much Baseball 101.

Then, too, our number two hitter -- Spider Welch -- was a fine offensive talent, but he was a long way from the Josh Brennan class. Not as far away as yours truly, perhaps, but anyway -- far.

With the bases loaded it was pretty much a run-on-anything situation. We could get within one run of the lead even on a feeble ground-ball infield out, and I knew our runner at third was ready to head home on any ball hit on the ground.

And that's what we got from Spider. It was a hard ground ball deep on the third base side of the shortstop, and I knew the runner on third was going to score, no matter what.

I figured to make third on the play, and it looked like a tough-enough fielding chance that Spider might even beat the throw to first base for an infield single.

Trouble was, I had to skip and jump to avoid getting hit by the batted ball, and it threw my stride off, going to third.

Damned if their shortstop didn't just make a last-second decision to try for me, going into third, instead of making the long, chancy throw to first. I beat the ball there so there was no force play, but the throw surprised the hell out of me. Instinct took over, and I slid in head-first as a way to avoid overrunning the bag.

I think the throw surprised Toronto's third sacker, too.

The umpire was signaling "safe," and I was trying my damnedest to stop my momentum before I slid on past and got tagged out anyway.

The Blue Jays' third baseman lost his balance and started falling over my prostrate body. All of me was past third except for one foot, my toes dug awkwardly into the bag and trying not to get separated from it.

The third baseman, a big bulky dude, fell on my foot and, oh, Jesus God, but it hurt! I drew my leg up close to myself, forgetting all about maintaining contact with third base, but the play was over, and I never did get tagged. The ball ended up rolling free into short left field, and our third base coach was hollering at me to get up and head for home, but, shit, I wasn't going anywhere.

Finally I scooched around on my stomach, got a hand back on third base, and officially ended the play.

Then they came and got me. Next stop, Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Well, it could have been a lot worse. He had stomped on my foot -- hard -- and it hurt like a sonuvabitch, and I had the whole Curt Schilling thing going -- blood on my sock, the works. Everything but a Purple Heart.

But, unlike Curt Schilling, I wasn't soldiering on, I was lying on the ground, writhing some and feeling damned sorry for myself the whole time.

Turned out that the crash had damaged, but not severed, my Achilles tendon. He'd left some nice spike marks on that little strip of skin there, whatever you call it. The one on the back of your foot, between the tendon and the ankle bone?

Dirty, filthy spike marks.

At the emergency room they gave me some kind of local down there so that they could play with my foot to their hearts' content and I could watch the whole thing but not suffer unduly while doing so. I got the blow-by-blow, including reassurance from some nameless doctor that the tendon was still more or less intact, although shredded a bit here and there.

The surgery and cleanup were perfunctory. Mostly I had to be protected from the likelihood of infection and X-rayed to assure that there were no broken or cracked bones involved.

My foot was swollen and black and reminded me of those old trench foot movies they'd shown us back in Army Reserve training.

But the news, essentially, was reassuring. I'd be in the hospital overnight and probably released the next day -- midday at the latest.

The Orioles would be leaving in the morning for Detroit and then Cleveland. They'd be gone for seven days.

I would be out of the hospital, but I would also be out of action. Probably, the ER resident told me, I wouldn't play for something in excess of seven days.

It worried me a lot, simply because I knew I was a fringe player, and when a fringe player is disabled for longer than a day or two, the first thing his club does is to find themselves another fringe player to take his place.

If Fringe Guy Number Two turns out to get a few lucky scratch hits during my extended absence, I might find myself once again a mainstay of the Norfolk Tides.

I'd be Triple-A Dushay, once again.

Probably if the club hadn't been flying out of Baltimore-Washington International the following morning, somebody -- maybe my fellow bench-jockey, the outfielder, Travis Horton -- would have come around to see me in the hospital.

But I did at least get a phone call from the manager, Paul Warren, late that night. He told me the team doctor had been unavailable that night, but that the doc would be by to see me in the morning before I was released from the hospital. The Johns Hopkins administrative staff had already assured Paul that I was going to be okay, and that I was being held overnight only because of the substantial painkillers I'd been given.

Warren said they'd probably put me on the fifteen-day disabled list, but that it might be made retroactive so that I'd be out for less than the full fifteen -- if the doctors agreed that I'd be ready to play sooner than that.

"You bringing anybody up to take my spot?"

"Nobody's going to take your spot, Todd. We might have to bring somebody up temporarily, depending on how long you're going to be out."

"It'll be Cassidy, right?"

Herm Cassidy was in Bowie, right down the road from Baltimore. He was playing in Double-A, but it wasn't because he couldn't have made the team in Norfolk. He was young and highly regarded, and had signed out of college two years earlier for a big, big bonus. Herm Cassidy was a threat -- a job-security threat looming just over the horizon. And he wasn't just a threat to me, either. He was a threat to the Orioles' starting second sacker, Gomer Fitzroy.

Like yours truly, nobody was ever going to mistake Gomer for Ryne Sandberg in the field or at bat. But the threat to Gomer Fitzroy was more in the scenario of Cassidy's coming in and turning Gomer into me -- a reserve infielder.