Greatest 21 Days Baseball Profiles

Part of it was burnout, Chris Padget admitted to his hometown Dothan Eagle in 2008. Part of it was he wanted to concentrate on his teaching. But, that spring, Padget formally left the game he'd played for nearly four decades , resigning as Dothan, Ala.'s Headland High School head baseball coach. "I started playing baseball when I was 6 years old and I have been in it for 39 years, so it is a tough thing to leave," Padget told The Eagle . "But it was like I was telling a friend of mine the other day, I would love to go watch a Masters (golf tournament) practice. I couldn’t because of baseball. Now some of those little things that you looked at doing, I can do." "It is a little bit of burn out," Padget continued , "but I just wanted to teach and do more in my teacher's job. I want to concentrate on that." Of those 39 years in baseball, seven of them came as a professional player, drafted in the seventh round of the 1984 draft by ...

Drafted straight out of high school, Chris Johnson started his professional career thinking he was better than he was, he admitted to The Milwaukee Journal in July 1990. But, in his fourth professional season, Johnson relayed he then had a better perspective. "I couldn't blow past guys like I used to in high school," Johnson told The Journal of his transition from high school to the minors. "I kind of wondered why Milwaukee drafted me, and I'm sure the first couple of years they were wondering the same thing." "They've given me the best opportunity that anybody ever has," Johnson added to The Journal , "and it was just time for me to do something, especially with the way they've been patient with me." Johnson had regained his confidence by that time. Johnson spoke after going 12-2 over the first three months of the season, with a 2.34 ERA. But, while Johnson had his confidence back, he also would never make the majors . ...

Asked about his career in his new chosen sport, Tim Sherrill wasn't sure how to respond. He was a fisherman now, one with the title of former major leaguer. He didn't like to think of the fisherman part as a career, even though he had just won a major fishing tournament. He was just your average weekend fisherman, Sherrill told ESPN 1400 , of Springfield, Mo., in a radio interview Oct. 5, 2009 after his win. "I fish every chance I get," Sherrill told his interviewers . "I like to compete. I guess that goes back to the days I played baseball in college and professionally. It's not as much competing against the fishermen, as it is against the fish. "You know," Sherrill said , "that's what I'm gonna keep doing, I'm going to keep fishing and hopefully I can win another one of these these days." Sherrill's time competing against the baseball fish - or sharks - lasted six seasons. It was a baseball career that got hi...

The Vermont Mariners had just defeated the Reading Phillies 5-3 on the strength of a five-run sixth inning, Aug. 25, 1988. But it wasn't the sixth that Vermont manager Rich Morales looked to as the key to the game, it was the second inning and the defensive play of first baseman Greg Fulton , according to The Reading Eagle . "That was an incredible inning," Morales told The Eagle . "We made a first-to-home-to-first double play. One of the reasons I played (Greg) Fulton tonight was because of his defense with all those left-handed hitters. "He's the best defensive first baseman in the league," Morales told the paper , "and he did the job when he had to do the job. That was the ballgame for us right there; it really was." Fulton was the best defensive first baseman in the league - the Eastern League managers voted him so earlier in the year. But Fulton wouldn't get the chance to show off his defensive skills with Vermont's paren...

Royce Clayton had been named the top prospect in the minor leagues by The Sporting News earlier in 1991, but Clayton still didn't expect his call-up to come so soon, The Los Angeles Times wrote that September. He got the call and it was time to celebrate, The Times wrote . But Clayton was alone. "No one was there," Clayton told The Times . "I ran out back and celebrated with the dogs. I paced up and down saying to myself, 'I'm going to the show, I'm going to the show.' " It was a celebration that began a major league career that would span 17 seasons and end on another celebration, watching his teammates win the World Series. Clayton was originally taken by the Giants in the first round of the 1988 draft, directly out of high school. Clayton had committed to USC, but the Giants' offers proved too much for the 18-year-old, taking the $195,000 and signing, The Times wrote . Clayton made the Giants in 1991, playing in nine games...

Five years after the Twins took him in the first round of the draft, this was not where Derek Parks wanted to be. He'd made AAA Portland the previous year. But, by 1991, injuries and overall poor play left him back in Orlando, at AA. ''If I stay healthy, I know I can hit,'' Parks told The Orlando Sentinel that May. ''I was angry when they (the Twins) sent me back to Double-A ball this spring. But I'm over that. It doesn't matter where I play as long as I get a full season in and pile up some numbers.'' The catcher would eventually make it to where he wanted to be, the majors. But the former 10th overall pick would make it for three all-too-short stints totaling 45 games in all , his last coming days before the 1994 strike began. Parks was selected by the Twins straight out of Montclair High School in California as a 17-year-old. Baseball America had ranked Parks as the fifth best prep player going into the draft, according to The ...

After speeding his way through college ball, Darrell Sherman had no doubt in 1989 that he eventually would make the majors. It was just that scouts didn't think the same . Sherman was quick. But he was also small, as in 5 feet 7 inches small . "I was pretty disappointed, because everything (not being drafted) was based on my height," Sherman told The Spokane Spokesman-Review in August 1989. "(Scouts) didn't think I was a prospect." But it took one scout to notice and see the potential, convincing the Padres to use their sixth round pick in the 1989 draft on the not-so-tall outfielder from Cerritos Junior College in California. Sherman repaid that faith by challenging for the short-season Northwest League's stolen base record his first year and making the majors for 37 games in his fifth . Sherman was certainly speedy. For Cerritos College, Sherman swiped 46 bases . That first year with Spokane, Sherman stole 58. At single-A Riverside in 1990...

Read the May 2015 interview: Kevin Tahan, To Himself Kevin Tahan had just finished a three-hit performance with a home run to lead his Vigilantes to a comeback win in August 1998. The win kept the independent Mission Viejo team in position for the playoffs and Tahan's efforts helped take pressure off his teammates, Tahan told The Los Angeles Times . "If you want to go to the playoffs, you have to step up," Tahan told The Times . "You can't rely on one guy to get you there, and we had been doing that with (teammate) Alan [Burke]. "Tonight was my night ." It was also one of his last. Tahan was in the 10th and final season of his professional baseball career. It was a career where he spent five seasons in independent baseball, all after a career in affiliated ball where he never made it higher than AA. Tahan's career began a decade earlier, taken by the Cardinals in the 43rd round of the 1989 draft. He was taken out of after grabbing a...

The Greatest 21 Days caught up with Vic Rodriguez in August 2011, read the interview: Vic Rodriguez, Something Special The single A Red Sox affiliate Greenville Drive got a new manager this past year in Billy McMillon and Boston's minor-league hitting coordinator Vic Rodriguez saw good things coming . "I think he's going to do a good job," Rodriguez told The Sumter Item about McMillon. "He's very knowledgeable about baseball. We already know he can do hitting coach. This is not going to hurt us. It's going to help us a lot." With more than three decades in baseball under his belt, Rodriguez would be in a position to know. Rodriguez has spent almost that entire three decades plus in the minor leagues , including 19 seasons as a player and years more as a minor league coordinator. He did get to the majors, his big league resume consisting of all of 17 games . Rodriguez' baseball career began in 1977, signed by the Orioles as a free ag...

Chuck Knoblauch had just had a whirl-wind year in 1991. The year before he was at AA Orlando. He not only made it directly to Minnesota for 1991, he was an integral part of the Twins' championship run. He also won himself the American League Rookie of the Year award along the way. "I can't spend too much time thinking about what has happened since last March," Knoblauch told the St. Petersburg Times as the Twins took on the Braves in the World Series. "My head might spin. "It was good from the beginning this season," Knoblauch added , "and it's kept getting better and better." Knoblauch stayed with the Twins through 1997, unable to stop thinking about that championship year and the team failures that followed. When he moved on to another contender, the Yankees, his thinking continued, especially about throwing. Some said he was thinking too much. Years after it was all over, Knoblauch's name showing up in the Mitchell Re...

The first time I was in Burlington, Iowa, for a baseball game, I was on a mission. The visiting Appleton Foxes, the single-A affiliate of the Seattle Mariners, had the top pick in the draft and he probably wasn't going to be in Single-A very long. Or at least long enough to make it to Appleton's visit to Cedar Rapids, where my dad and I usually went to games. My mission was Alex Rodriguez and his autograph. And my mission failed. He stayed warming up in the outfield too long and the autograph window closed before I could get him to sign. He did hit two home runs that night, before we had to leave. I had school in the morning. I returned with my dad to Burlington's Community Field at least one more time, the next year. Last month, I returned with my wife, with the Bees a late addition to our vacation back to my home state of Iowa. It was down the first base line, just beyond the dugout, that I waited in vain for Alex Rodriguez The main games were Omaha's Rose...

Into his third season of major league ball, Chito Martinez found himself in a slump in April 1993. There was a line of lefties, whom he didn't face, according to The Baltimore Sun . When he did get into games, he didn't hit. In 19 plate appearances, he got zero hits. So, in late April, Martinez was sent down - to AA. "I never wanted to go back to the minor leagues, but I'm here," Martinez told The Sun in late April. "I'm going to try to keep a good focus and do what I can to get back there [the major leagues]." Martinez didn't spend long at AA Bowie, he spent five games there. He also spent another 43 games at AAA Rochester that year. But Martinez never played another game in the majors. Martinez, a native of Belize who grew up in New Orleans, got his start drafted by the Royals in the sixth round of the 1984 draft. He stayed with the Royals system for seven seasons , never getting called up to Kansas City. He started at short-seas...