Miller Sam - The only rule is it has to work : our wild experiment building a new kind of baseball team

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For Jessie,
who didnt think a concert was a dumb first-date idea.

B.L.

For my dad,
who taught me what to take seriously.

S.M.

THE REST OF THE TEAM, IN ORDER OF DEBUT:

Josh McCauley RHP

Jose Canseco, DH

Ryusuke Kikusawa, RHP

Aritz Garcia, SS

Taylor Eads, OF

Santos Saldivar, RHP

Brennan Metzger, OF

Dylan Stoops, LHP

Cole Warren, RHP

Peter Bowles, OF

Connor Jones, OF

Matt Rubino, C

Eddie Mora-Loera, SS

Eric Mozeika, RHP

Chad Bunting, OF

Keith Kandel, OF

SPRING TRAINING INVITEES

Kyle Breault, INF

Collin Forgey, OF

Jesse Garcia, LHP

Billy Gonzalez, C

Marcus Kimura, INF

Danny Martinez, INF

Caleb Natov, RHP

Will Price, OF

In April 2015, the River City Rascals, a professional baseball team just west of St. Louis in the independent Frontier League, invited six left-handed pitchers to spring training, and entering the last day of intrasquad games Paul Hvozdovic was the only one left. His throwing partner, a lefty who had also been on the team the year before, had been the fifth one cut, and it was clear to them both that nothing remained in Pauls way. He was going to make the team. The throwing partner congratulated him and shook his hand. Paul called his dad, called his girlfriend, told them anything could happen but it sure looked good.

Then he gave up a solo home run in that final scrimmage, and afterward he got a text message from his manager. These texts at the end of spring training, innocuous and inviting on their surface, always had a hidden, ominous meaning. Paul walked down the hall to the managers office, knowing he was getting cut. The River City Rascals wouldnt carry a left-handed pitcher at all; they wouldnt even carry the full twenty-four-man roster they were allowed, opting to save money by employing just twenty-two players to start the season. Pauls dream was somebody elses unnecessary business expense.

He thanked his manager for the opportunity, then told him he was probably going to hang up his spikes for good and head back home to northern Virginia, where his girlfriend and his future (whatever that might be) were waiting for him. The manager told him to stick around for a couple of weeksmaybe hed find a spot once the season startedbut that was too painful for Paul. He suddenly realized how much he hated baseball, hated the anxiety of standing on the mound knowing that he was always a bad outing away from feeling the rejection he felt now. He stewed about the politics of these decisions, the seemingly arbitrary designs that stoked some guys careers and smothered the careers of others. He thought about all the time he had invested in something he believed would pay off, and how this manager had probably known all along that it wouldnt. Baseball hurt too much. He was done.

He called his agent, Brian McGinn, and told him thats where he was leaning. Brian didnt pretend Paul was going to be some sort of major league millionaire. He and Paul both knew the reality: Paul had just been cut by an independent minor league that was nine promotions from the majors. But, Brian said, youre in the prime of your career, and youve never been given the right opportunity. If nothing else, this is the perfect chance to see the world.

The world was a place called Sonoma, two thousand miles west of anywhere Paul had ever walked, somewhere in California in what was exotically described as wine country. There was a team in Sonoma that had seen something in his college stats and called his agent a month earlier, trying to convince Paul to come to a lower-level club that would give him a bigger role. It would mean a pay cut, from $600 a month to $500; it would mean moving backward, now ten promotions from the majors; it would mean, Paul feared, losing his girlfriend of four years, who was sick of seeing her boyfriend disappear every summer to pursue opportunities that could barely be called such. But it would also mean validation, that the sport hadnt rejected him after all. He chose validation. He felt, just as suddenly, at peace once more. He even went to the Rascals Opening Night game, and with his execution commuted he was free to enjoy it. His girlfriend dumped him that day, by text message.

The next morning Paul got into his Buick and drove west. He had no navigation, other than some pictures of freeway interchanges printed out from the Internet. He had no motel reservations. He just drove until he had to stop for gas, and then he drove some more. Hed been on long drives on the East Coast, but hed never seen the world change like this. He finally saw the flat of Kansas, and he finally climbed the mountain ranges in Colorado. He drove 95 mph and watched cars pass him on his left. He detoured only to follow signs for minor league ballparks, just to see them. Eventually he would notice it was 2:00 a.m., and hed find a motel, collect the Burger King bags and Red Bull cans from his car, sleep a few hours, and hit the road again.

He thought about going back to his girlfriend, but as the Buick went farther the cost of turning back got greater. Eventually, youre halfway through the desert and it feels like the only way out is forward. Or youre halfway over the mountains and the only way out is down. And after the deserts and after the mountains, well, hell, youre already there: The radio stations become Bay Area stations, and just like that youre pulling up to the office of the Sonoma Stompers at 234 West Napa Street, just as they directed you to on the phone, and soon youre in the office shaking hands with the owner, and somebodys telling somebody else about your incredible stats, and theyre giving you a card thatll let you eat free at Marys Pizza Shack, and it turns out the bartender there lets some of the players live with her family every summer. And then youre walking around the downtown square, with its historic city hall and no chain businesses, and there are ducks and two playgrounds and a farmers market, and this doesnt feel anything like the cold business of rejection that River City was. And now theres no part of you left that wants anything but to be here and pitch and maybe turn into a big deal.

* * *

This was our Paul. We knew him as a name on a spreadsheet. We had never seen him, never watched video of him, never held a radar gun for his pitches, never shaken his hand or assessed the swagger in his gait, never looked at his parents and extrapolated what it meant for the future development of his body, never inspected his elbow ligament through an MRI machine, never studied his temperament on the mound to deduce whether he was a thrower or a pitcher, whether he could bear down, whether hed take it one day at a time. All we knew about Paul was that the previous season he had struck out one hundred batters and walked eight for a Division II school called Shepherd University. He had gone 11-1 with a 1.80 ERA. On a spreadsheet of 2014 college seniors, adjusted for level of competition and various other factors, and sorted by Column Rwhere wed devised a metric for overall performancePaul Hvozdovic was at the top. Not near the top; at the top. We had a spreadsheet that said Paul Hvozdovic had been the best senior pitcher at any level of college baseball one year earlier.