61 Days to Opening Day

Opening Day 2008 for the Timber Rattlers is April 3. That is 61 days from today. This off-season, the countdown will be based on books. Each day between now and Opening Day 2008, I will pick a random book out of my library and excerpt a passage off the page number corresponding with the number of days remaining to the first pitch of the new season. I will try not to repeat a book during the countdown.

Today’s book is Slouching Toward Fargo by Neal Karlen. This is a book about the St. Paul Saints and my old stomping grounds, the Northern League.

This is the first baseball book that has been part of the countdown. They have been saved as the season gets closer. I think just over two months is a good time to start.

About the following passage: Ever wonder how guys wind up in independent baseball? This excerpt -- from just before the 1996 season -- shows a prime example

All around, as players did their stretches in the outfield, different tales of woe came out. Veteran Marty Neff, one of the most renowned head cases (by Northern League players) and beloved showboats (by Northern League fans), was back with his pot belly and big swing for one more season of The Life.

The Pirates signed Neff, now twenty-six, as a sixth-round draft choice. As a child, his family had moved from Missouri to California so young Marty could play baseball all year round. In his final year of college ball at the University of Oklahoma, he made second-team All-American and hit .390. But as soon as he hit professional baseball, Neff somehow sensed that in some ways the baseball organizations were fixed.

“I was putting up numbers better than the number-one draft choice of the Pirates, but I was the one who got released for having a bad attitude. I’m not an ass kisser, but every day somebody was saying something bad about me. I got suspended, yelled at, and finally blackballed. It’s all because I get mad at myself and don’t know how to handle the fact that in baseball you’re going to fail seven out of ten times, and you can’t fly off the handle every time things don’t go right. Maybe I picked the wrong sport.”

Put today’s excerpt in a baseball context.