Here’s what Mickey Mantle wrote in his biography about his first minor league baseball team in Class D ball in the Kansas-Oklahoma-Missouri League in Independence, Kan. — when he was 17 years old:
“I felt I had to be the best. I couldn’t stand failure, didn’t want to know the meaning of the word. That K-O-M League was a real test for me. Up to then, I’d outdistanced the other kids by a mile. But now I was a pro and the competition got a lot stiffer. I was surrounded by kids who had been stars in sandlot ball or whatever. And while hitting .300 was great in any league, I had to learn that I was going to make seven outs for every 10 times I went to bat.
“We traveled by bus, bouncing along black-topped road to the various ballparks — Bartlesville, Carthage, Chanute, Pittsburg — long dusty rides.”
What will Bryce Harper write in his biography about his first minor league baseball team?
The Washington Nationals’ highly touted prospect is scheduled to make his debut on the road Thursday night in Rome, Ga., playing for the Hagerstown Suns in the low Class A South Atlantic League. And while the experience of playing minor league ball in 1949 will be far different than 2011, the lesson for Harper — repeatedly compared to Mantle, his idol, already in his young career — will be the same.
Harper, at the age of 18, will be learning not just how to be a baseball player but how to be a professional baseball player.
The lesson will be how to deal with the daily failures over the course of a long season, how to deal with the failures and the grind of traveling to places like Rome, Ga., and Asheville, N.C., and small towns around the various minor leagues where they have events like Michael Jackson look-alike night and the Dynamite Lady blowing herself up.
This is why Harper, who got a taste of this briefly in the Arizona Fall League, is with the Hagerstown Suns. It is not because of his ability to play baseball.
Nationals manager Jim Riggleman was impressed with Harper’s ability on the field during his time in spring training. I asked Riggleman recently on my radio show, “The Sports Fix” on ESPN 980, whether Harper was starting the season with Hagerstown more to learn how to handle the life of a pro player than how to play pro ball. Riggleman answered, “That’s the main reason, to get used to the grind of a long season, the ups and downs of a long season.”
The conservative estimates predict Harper will rise through the minor league system over the next two seasons. If he is a quick study on the life of a professional ballplayer, it could be much sooner.
“Who knows, he may be here this year,” Riggleman said. “But certainly in the near future.”
Examiner columnist Thom Loverro is the co-host of “The Sports Fix” from noon to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on ESPN980 and espn980.com. Contact him at [email protected].
