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Chasing a

July 11, 2004 1:11 am

John Maine's baseball career has been a rocket ride since the Baltimore Orioles drafted him out of North Carolina-Charlotte, carrying him from Maryland's Eastern Shore to the brink of the big leagues in a little more than two years.

Maine, the top prospect in the Baltimore Orioles' organization, earned a spot in the starting rotation at Triple-A Ottawa prior to his 23rd birthday. Barring injury, he'll be pitching at Camden Yards sooner than later.

But for every John Maine, there are hundreds of professional baseball players whose biographies read more like Gregg Ritchie's or Tony Beasley's.

They're guys who started playing the game as soon as they could walk. Guys whose skin still tingles at the crack of the bat or the smell of a freshly mowed infield. Guys who don't cash big paychecks, but would gladly play for free on even the most dusty, neglected sandlot.

Then there's Rickey Henderson. A sure-fire Hall of Famer who has 3,000 hits and the major leagues' all-time runs record in his back pocket, Henderson still toils in obscurity for the independent Newark Bears, waiting and hoping for one final call to The Show.

For most, it's a call that will never come.

"Everybody knows less than one percent make it to the highest level in any field," said Ritchie, a North Stafford High School graduate who played 11 years in the minors and is now the hitting coach for the Chicago White Sox Triple-A club in Charlotte.

"The window of opportunity slams shut in your face in a flash. You can be on the highest of highs one day and the lowest of lows the next, and it won't be because of anything you did. That's just the way it is."

North Stafford High School baseball coach Craig Lopez, once a prized pitching prospect in the Baltimore Orioles' organization, described the situation more bluntly.

"There are still a lot of guys out there," Lopez said, "who are chasing a ghost."

It never starts out that way, of course.

With few responsibilities--save for showing up at the park on time, working on their game and staying out of the local police blotter--life for many young pros is about as uncomplicated as it gets.

"That probably is the purest time. No worries, just go and do," Ritchie said. "Go to the ballpark and have fun playing the game. Go out with the guys and have fun after the game. Then go to sleep, get up and do it all over again the next day. It's pretty perfect in the most selfish way possible."

It doesn't take long, though, for players to realize that baseball isn't only about running out weak grounders to second base, hitting the cutoff man and executing rundowns.

It's a business. A huge, multibillion-dollar business. And like all businesses, baseball has a brutal, nasty side few outside the game ever see.

"My first couple years I was definitely naïve about that," said North Stafford alumnus Juan Piniella, who passed up a full scholarship from collegiate baseball power Wichita State and is in his ninth year of pro ball. "Then you see guys get released and you learn real quick. You have to know it's a business, and you have to develop a thick skin."

Ritchie certainly did. Drafted in the eighth round out of George Washington University by the San Francisco Giants, Ritchie signed for $3,000 and promptly began climbing the organizational ladder.

A skilled outfielder with speed, Ritchie began his career in 1986 with the Giants' rookie club in Everett, Wash. He performed well at every level and eventually found himself in the starting lineup at Triple-A, but hit a glass ceiling there and would go no further.

Ritchie's final opportunity to procure a roster spot in San Francisco ended when the Giants signed reigning National League MVP Barry Bonds as a free agent in 1992. He lost another chance to play in the majors when the players' union ended its strike and returned to the field in 1995. He was in discussions with the Chicago White Sox when Michael Jordan retired from basketball and decided to give baseball a whirl.

Ritchie chased his baseball dream overseas, in Mexico, Taiwan and Korea, before hanging up his spikes for good in 1996.

"You reach a certain point where you realize that your chances of getting a shot somewhere are extremely limited, so why not take a chance," Ritchie said of his baseball adventures. "I've talked to guys who are 28, 29 years old and have never been on a 40-man roster, and they can go overseas for $50,000. I tell them to go because they'll never get an opportunity like that [in the U.S.] if they wait 10 years."

Orange County native Chris Haney took that route after his career stalled in the States.

Traded to Kansas City in 1992, Haney won a career-high 10 games for the Royals in '96. After a stint with the Chicago Cubs, Haney failed to earn a roster spot with the Texas Rangers during the spring of 2001 and accepted a fairly lucrative offer from Japan's Fukuoka Dalei Hawks.

He didn't enjoy his time in Japan and stayed only one season, but at the time it seemed worth the gamble.

"I could have stayed with Texas, but I had to sign a waiver saying I'd make minor-league money if I pitched in the minors," Haney said then. "Or I could go to Japan and make big-league money guaranteed. It was a no-brainer."

Not for Baker. Released after a stint in the St. Louis Cardinals spring training camp during the '95 strike, the former Southern Illinois star stepped back and weighed his options.

By the following spring, he had established contacts with the Chicago Cubs and White Sox. Both teams offered him an invitation to spring training, with a catch: he'd have to pay his own way.

With a wife and young son at home, Baker considered the offers and promptly declined both.

"It was tough, but eventually I came to realize I wasn't really good enough to get big league hitters out on a day-to-day basis," Baker said. "Being right-handed and throwing 88 [mph], I was a dime a dozen."

Piniella hasn't reached that career crossroads yet. He's been released once--by Texas in 2001--but signed with the Chicago White Sox the next day and spent the next two seasons in their minor-league system before being acquired by Colorado this season.

Still, he's 26 years old and on his second tour of duty in Double-A Tulsa--which, ironically, switched affiliations from Texas to Colorado the year after the Rangers released him.

If he aspires to be something more than the mayor of Tulsa, Piniella knows he'd better do it soon.

"This is my one shot," he said. "All I can do is take care of my business. If I get there, I get there. If not, I guess it wasn't meant to be."

Ritchie never appreciated Rickey Henderson's propensity for arrogance and showmanship while Henderson was stealing bases and hitting leadoff home runs for one of his nine major league teams.

Now, with Henderson playing for peanuts in the Independent League, the old-school Ritchie feels a sort of kinship with the future Hall of Famer.

"I don't like it when people make sarcastic comments about the guy," Ritchie said. "If people are willing to give him a job--at whatever level--for God's sake leave the guy alone and let him play. He's the essence of baseball. He's playing for the love of the game."

If anyone knows how hard it is to walk away from the game, it's Ritchie. He's been without a baseball job for just one year out of the last 19, but it was the worst year of his life.

"My wife knew I was miserable. She didn't even want to be around me," Ritchie said from his hotel room in Ottawa, where his Charlotte club was in town for a three-game series against Maine and the Lynx.

"I loved playing the game, but I also love just being around it--learning and teaching, the cameraderie of being part of a teamthere's not really a day that I don't want to be at the ballpark. If you can make a living at it, what better job is there?"

Former players find different ways to satisfy their baseball jones.

Like Ritchie, former Caroline High School star Tony Beasley jumped right into coaching on the professional level after he retired as a player in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization in 1998.

Ritchie has a wife and four children in Stafford, while Beasley lives in Bowling Green with his wife and young son. Signing up for a pro job meant more long road trips, more time spent communicating through the Internet and cell phones, more time being anywhere but home.

It also meant relying on the understanding of the one person with the moral and legal standing to demand they find more "normal" ways to make a living: their wives.

"You have to be a special person to be home by yourself and take care of the house and the kids, while knowing that he'd rather be home if he could," said Craig Lopez's wife, Terri.

The time commitment is only slightly less onerous for Lopez, who got into high school coaching after an elbow injury hastened the end of his pro career in the early 90s.

He no longer leaves for weeks on end, but between coaching football and baseball at North Stafford, he's still gone as much as he's home.

"It's therapeutic," Lopez said of his coaching career. "When you have baseball in your blood and you've lived it 365 days a year, I don't know how you could just go do a desk job or something like that."

Like Lopez, Baker has found an outlet for his competitive juices in the high school arena. After a couple years as the head baseball coach at Brooke Point, he now serves as pitching coach at Colonial Forge.

Unlike Lopez, Baker still has the desire and ability to play the game.

The soon-to-be 38-year-old, a longtime member of the dominant Meadows Farms club, is the Virginia Baseball League's all-time leader with 98 career wins. Last year, his Fredericksburg Giants club joined the 28-and-over Virginia Baseball Congress and Baker went 12-2, earning the American League's Cy Young Award.

"The only reason I keep playing is for the love of the game," he said. "I may not look young, but it keeps me feeling young. And I'm still throwing in the low- to mid-80s, so I feel like I can compete."

Regardless of their current occupations, former players are unanimous in their need to give something back to the game.

Even Henderson, widely regarded as one of the most egocentric guys ever to don a baseball uniform, said part of his motivation to continue playing is to pass on the knowledge he's acquired to his eager, young teammates.

Added Terri Lopez: "Craig teaches the kids about baseball, but he also teaches them about how to grow up and be men.

"Baseball is something fun and something he loves. The other stuff is how he can look at himself in the mirror and sleep well at night."

To reach JIM McCONNELL: 540/368-5045 jmcconnell@freelancestar.com