Life in the Minors

By Brendan Sagara

All-Star game a trip
to the Twilight Zone

In a word I would have to describe my experience at the Frontier League All-Star game this past week as surreal. The three days I spent in Kalamazoo, Mich., were tinged with a rosy tint that seemed to warp my perception of reality.

It really seemed like I was engulfed in a strange dream sequence in which I lived in a series of scenes from movies I had seen before.

The experience was quite enjoyable, make no mistake. But everything kind of moved at a pace a click below the normal cadence at which I live my life. It all just seemed to progress in slow motion. The 212 hour drive in our manager's forest green minivan from the south side of Chicago -- where we had just finished a three-game series against the Cook County Cheetahs -- to Kalamazoo was so peaceful it appeared as though it was a road that bridged two worlds, the real and the surreal.

Upon arriving in "K-Zoo" as all the cool kids call it nowadays, we drove up to the lobby of the Radisson Hotel, a major upgrade from the five-TV channel motels we usually are holed up in during the Frontier League season. Walking through the lobby of what had to be a five-star hotel, I made my way over to the reception desk, where a group of cheerful Kalamazoo Kings front-office staffers handed us our keys, took our dirty laundry, and gave us each a packet of information and materials for our All-Star experience.

After making my way back to the van to grab all of my luggage, I walked across the speckled white marble floors to the elevator to get to my room on the seventh floor. Seventh floor -- heck the motels we usually stay in only have two stories. Looking back across the lobby from the elevator as I waited for the doors to close, I felt like I might have been an extra in "The Natural," one of Roy Hobbs' teammates checking in before him with the New York Knights. I would have had to be an extra, because I know I could never pass for Wilford Brimley.

A shower and a nap later, I woke to get ready for the All-Star banquet, which is when the weekend really got interesting. The Dubois County Dragon party of 12 -- including six players, coaches, our team owner, our radio guy and other staffers -- arrived first. We soon realized that the Kings' staff had mixed the personnel of the league's 12 teams over the dozen or so banquet tables. So we sat.

Well, as fate would have it, I ended up sitting at a table full of Richmond Roosters, a team we had some heated situations with last year, complete with a mild beanball war and a bar-room confrontation. Seeing as how the Roosters left me off of their Christmas card list this year, I knew the situation would be a little uncomfortable, at least for a little while. As fate would have it again, I was seated next to a former Rooster who, with the Cheetahs this season, was hit by a Dragon reliever the day before the All-Star break.

It was almost laughable. In fact, it was laughable to our radio guy and our hitting coach, Andy Haines, who took great pleasure in seeing me surrounded by Roosters once again, this time at a dinner table. It felt like I was in that scene from "Heat," in which cop-criminal adversaries Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro sat face to face for a cup of coffee.

I would like to think that I was good-guy Pacino in this whole scenario, since I'm telling the story and all. And as in the movie, the Roosters, past and present, and myself, were civil, bordering on friendly.

To boot, the Kings' owner, making his speech at the banquet, opened by saying, "Well I'm sure it is strange to be sitting across from the guys who have been throwing at you all season long." Hah, hah. Funny guy.

As much as I'm sure we all probably weren't exactly looking forward to the scenario, it seemed like the dinner seating actually took the edge off, and made the next day's game a lot less tense.

The festivities of game day were surreal in their own right. With players in 12 different uniforms running around, and television crews and radio broadcasters and newspaper writers roaming free, it seemed as though the only thing missing was the big top.

Walking into the coach's office of the Kings' visitors clubhouse, I saw an All-Star name tag with my name on it on the door and I had to take a step back ... and smile of course.

It was a strange situation to make introductions and see the faces of all the hitters we had tried to get out all year, in the same clubhouse as myself. All the pitchers from opposing teams that had driven us crazy for the first 42 games of the year now were holding the ball for us, at least for a day.

With all of the fallout from the tie at the Major League Baseball All-Star game the day before, Bill Lee, our league commissioner, and others involved with the All-Star game decided to institute a home-run derby as a tiebreaker should a deadlock be intact at the end of the scheduled nine innings. What are the odds of another tie at another All-Star game?

Well, as fate would have it, the score was 4-4 at the end of nine frames. With television cameras rolling, the Frontier League was making history. Long story less long, we won. River City's Brody Jackson slammed the decisive shot over the left-field fence to give us the win in extra time, as I'm sure every soccer nut throughout the 50th state, including my pals Wendy and Wanette Miyashiro, would call it.

Overtime in baseball. Will the baseball gods strike us down for that?

The seven-hour van ride back to Huntingburg, Ind., was much like the ride to Kalamazoo, except that it returned us from the surreal to reality. As we laughed and shared our favorite Chris Farley and Adam Sandler moments, complete with left-handed pitcher Cody Fisher's right-on rendition of about 15 of Mr. Farley's funniest TV and movie moments, it felt like we were the four guys in the movie "Road Trip," save the fact that none of us was trying to hijack a handivan to go cross country.

A few hours after returning home, I received a phone call from our manager, who informed me that the Frontier League All-Star game's home-run derby tiebreaker had made national headlines. Besides making news on the Web sites of Baseball America, CNNSI and the New York Times, the story had made ESPN.

So I immediately clicked to Channel 25, as it is in Southern Indiana. As all the members of my host family watched along, we eagerly awaited the highlights on SportsCenter.

Well, as luck would have it, my bladder got the best of me. As I "wrapped-up" in the upstairs bathroom, everyone downstairs yelled for me to come down. By the time I got down the stairs, the spot was over. But five hours later, SportsCenter was back on and this time I caught the clip. And there I was, high-fiving Brody Jackson after his game-winning blast.

As I laughed about my five seconds of fame, I just shook my head and exhaled. My return to reality was now complete.