JAX OR BETTER
It was a nothing intrasquad game nobody will remember.
Or it was a physics-defying exercise in time travel, parallel realities and temporal displacement, a cosmic melding of past glory, current toil and future promise.
Grady Little, managing something approximating his first game as a Dodger, simply said it was “quite exciting.”
A number of prospects who forcefully exited this double-A outpost last summer with a championship, presumed never to return, were back for a day, facing a peculiar mix of fellow Dodgers ranging from Nomar to no-names and caring deeply about the outcome.
The prospects peeled off their blue warmups upon arrival, donned their familiar Sun uniforms and careered through space and time, jogging the fondest of memories, adding another in an 8-3 victory Tuesday in front of an adoring crowd at the picturesque Baseball Grounds, and peering forward with even greater assurance.
“That was fun and that was weird,” said first baseman James Loney, one of those who resides in the now-and-when netherworld reserved for top prospects until he succeeds or fails.
“We came all this way for an intrasquad game. I thought I’d said goodbye to this place. So much stuff came to mind.”
It was like a high school student returning to his middle school for a day, making small talk with teachers, present again in body, fleetingly. Gone in spirit, permanently.
The players spilled out of two buses after an early-morning, 3 1/2 -hour ride from Vero Beach. Steve Yeager, the 57-year-old former Dodger catcher and a Jacksonville coach last year, stood in the clubhouse with coffee in one hand, a doughnut in the other.
“It’s just like old times, boys,” he rasped.
Pitcher Eric Stults reached into his locker and grinned. “Hey, I found a Russell Martin autographed baseball card.”
Martin is the catcher of the group. He reminisced about the banana bread a Jacksonville booster gave him before 12-hour Southern League trips on a bus, driven by a man named Woody, that leaked oil and once caught on fire.
“The banana bread was money, the best I ever had, even better than my grandma’s, don’t tell her that,” Martin said. “The fans here took care of us. It was a family feeling.”
Groundskeeper Ed Attalla hugged everyone in sight and showed players his championship ring. The players won’t receive theirs until a ceremony in Vero Beach in late March.
A few years and several million dollars from now, these players might not acknowledge the existence of the guy who cuts the grass and manicures the mound. But in this clubhouse they are buddies, equal in all respects.
“They always put a smile on my face no matter how bad a day I was having,” Attalla said.
Chad Billingsley, the most highly regarded pitching prospect, asked Attalla if he’d drawn something in the dirt behind the rubber for him. It was a tradition, and an inspiration, Billingsley said, Attalla’s risque brick-dust etchings.
Of course he had, one more time for his friend, how could he forget? But Billingsley was wobbly in the first inning, giving up a single to Oscar Robles and walking Dioner Navarro on four pitches. Nomar Garciaparra stepped in for his first at-bat as a Dodger.
Billingsley threw two balls. Ken Howell, another former Dodger player turned coach, went out to calm him. The young right-hander responded, getting Garciaparra to pop out, then striking out Olmedo Saenz and Jose Cruz Jr.
In his first Dodger at-bat, third baseman Bill Mueller homered to lead off the second against Billingsley. As he trotted around the bases, Mueller caught the eye of third baseman Andy LaRoche, a top prospect who had sat next to him during dinner a night earlier, absorbing any life lesson the veteran might offer.
Mueller, all business, didn’t smile. A recently signed free agent, he is preparing for the present, expected to deliver now. The moment was his.
None of last year’s Suns, brilliant though they may be, are projected to make the Dodger opening-day roster. Meanwhile, the likes of Garciaparra and Mueller, of Kenny Lofton and Brett Tomko, were brought in to hold down the fort.
It makes for different agendas. The spacious clubhouse in Vero Beach has two distinct vibes, the prospects on one side, veterans on the other. The younger players developed a swagger at Jacksonville that a big-league clubhouse hasn’t tempered. They’ve commandeered a lunch table; they shout across the room.
“It looks like our Jacksonville team here,” Billingsley said a few days earlier, surveying the clubhouse. “We have a chance to keep that team together for many years.
“Honestly, we felt that team could have competed at a higher level last year.”
This was their first chance. Delwyn Young hit a two-run homer against Dodger starter D.J. Houlton in the second inning to give the Suns a 2-1 lead. But errors by LaRoche and Loney led to two Dodger runs in the third -- a reminder why triple-A Las Vegas is their next destination.
Yeager and Howell will move up along with the players. Jerry Royster will be the manager, allowing John Shoemaker to remain in Jacksonville.
“You can get in trouble in Vegas just as easy in the middle of the afternoon as in the middle of the night,” Yeager said. “But these guys are too close to get into trouble. They’ll govern each other.”
They remind him of the Dodgers he came up with in the early 1970s -- Steve Garvey, Ron Cey, Davey Lopes, Bill Russell and others, a swell of talent the likes of which hasn’t been seen since at Chavez Ravine.
“Quite a few of these guys have an opportunity to get to the big leagues at the same time too,” he said. “I have a great deal of fondness in my heart for them.”
Yeager knows the perils ahead, on and off the field. So does Little, who managed in the minors for 16 seasons. He once had a Southern League championship team, the 1992 Greenville (S.C.) Braves, and their record of 100-43 was far better than the Suns’ 79-61 mark last year.
His staff ace was Nate Minchey, whose 13-6 record was identical to Billingsley’s with the Suns. Minchey won only three games in the major leagues.
“Nobody is a sure thing,” Little said. “I learned that a long time ago.”
No wonder these prospects are as good as stamped “Fragile: Handle With Care.”
Most were drafted by former general manager Dan Evans and a team of scouts supervised by Logan White. Farm director Terry Collins has brought them along, and the next two general managers, Paul DePodesta and Ned Colletti, have resisted trading them.
Colletti was skeptical when he took the job in November, but has been thoroughly won over by the talent he has observed the last two weeks.
It’s dollars and sense -- a home-grown player will make about $1 million in his first three seasons combined.
Compare that with the more than $200 million the Dodgers have shelled out to free agents the last two off-seasons. Closer Eric Gagne and reserve outfielder Jason Repko are the only players developed in the farm system expected to make the team.
It’s something the prospects basking in their Sun uniforms Tuesday can’t fathom, but the chance of their staying together is slim.
“They disperse faster in a large market, where you have to win every year,” said Garciaparra, who came up in the Boston Red Sox system. “The organization doesn’t have the patience to go through the lumps and hardships.”
As the game wore on, breaking up the old gang was the furthest thought from their minds. Outfielder Andre Ethier, a prospect acquired from the Oakland Athletics for Milton Bradley and Antonio Perez, hit a two-run homer in the fifth.
Ethier has strong double-A credentials of his own, earning player-of-the-year honors in the Texas League last year. He was batting third to the dismay of LaRoche and Jon Weber, who were eighth and ninth despite their big seasons at Jacksonville. But Ethier’s blast, which bounced completely out of the stadium, got him a high-five from LaRoche and a chest bump from Weber.
Nearly all the Suns excelled. A third two-run homer was hit by Joel Guzman, who has been rated the top hitting prospect in baseball. And Stults, Justin Orenduff, Greg Miller, Eric Hull and Jonathan Broxton followed Billingsley and did not give up an earned run.
The Suns were jubilant, the Dodger veterans matter-of-fact. After all, it was a nothing intrasquad game nobody will remember, right?
Maybe not. The experience was surreal to Guzman.
“I had the oddest sensation running around the bases,” he said. “It felt like last season never ended, that it just went right into this year. It’s like I’d been here forever.”
Guzman waded through a crowd of well-wishers on the way out of the stadium, posing for photos and signing autographs. This strange day of nostalgia and promise was over, and he climbed on the bus headed back to the future.
