Glory Days
 

"I had a friend was a big baseball player
Back in high school"

Bruce Springsteen Glory Days

The Giants had known their Glory Days. Once upon a time.

From their days in New York. To the Shot Heard Round The World.

But by the time the 1980s rolled around, those days had passed them by.

By the time1985 rolled around, the Giants had the number one pick in the Amateur Draft.

And they used it on a first baseman from a tiny no-name school located in south Texas.

And this is where my Glory Days began.

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“Life’s been good to me so far.” – Joe Walsh

I thought it was my first professional home run that would be exciting.

It was certainly a memorable moment for sure. My first ever at-bat for the Everett Giants, I hit a solo home run. 352 feet to left. You really can’t get a better start to your professional baseball career than that.

Or can you?

In the bottom of the tenth, I came up to bat with the bases empty and one out. We were tied with the Tri-Cities Triplets. I got a fastball on a 2-2 count and ripped it past the shortstop for a base hit. I’m not exactly a speedster but they kept me in the game instead of going with a pinch-runner. Rafael De Lima came up and drew a walk on a full count pitch and I trotted over to second. Carlos Gonzalez was next and, with the count 1-2, he grounded the ball right back to the pitcher. I took off for third, knowing the pitcher was going to make it a 1-6-3 or 1-4-3. But, as I got to third, I heard our crowd cheering. I looked around the bases were loaded. Their pitcher had fumbled the ball, dropping it as he was shifting it from his glove to his throwing hand. E-1! And I was 90 feet away from sending us home winners.

Throw a wild pitch, just throw a wild pitch, I thought as I took my lead.

But, instead, the very first pitch to the next batter, William Smith, was grounded to our side of the field. I took off for home. Not looking back.

My foot slammed onto home plate.

Safe!

I saw teammates coming from the dugout.

Smith’s grounder had snuck between the third baseman and the shortstop.

I had just scored the winning run!

We had beaten the Tri-Cities Triplets 4-3 in 10 innings.

We jumped up and down as we improved our record to a whopping 4-3 on the season.

Not exactly the World Series but….

It could not have been a much better debut if I had scripted it.

Just gonna hazard a guess here: are you re-living the professional career of a certain Will Clark?

Maybe he's doing a crazy alternate universe where his middle name isn't Nuschler.

“She’s waiting for me but I’m a long, long way from home.” – Foreigner

The Everett Giants are located in Everett Washington and play their home games at Everett Memorial Stadium with a seating capacity of 6,000. The team began play in 1984.

Everett is the county seat of and the largest city in Snohomish County. It is located 25 miles (40 km) north of Seattle.

American settlement on the Everett peninsula began in the 1860s, with several sawmills built to serve the area's growing timber industry. Everett was platted by a group of investors seeking to build an industrial city and named for the son of co-founder Charles L. Colby. The city was incorporated in 1893, shortly after the arrival of the Great Northern Railway and prospered as a major industrial center. Everett's economy transitioned away from lumber and towards aviation after World War II, with the construction of Boeing's aircraft assembly plant at Paine Field in 1967.

2,316.2 miles from my small home town in south Texas.

After my fantastic debut, I would get only one more hit in the next two games against Tri-Cities. In a 7-6 win, I went 0-for-4 and struck out once. In a 4-1 loss the next day, I went 1-for-4 with a pair of strikeouts.