Greatest 21 Days Baseball Profiles

Gary Thurman at Metro Bank Park in Harrisburg, Pa., in August 2013. (G21D Photo) Called up to the majors in late-August 1987, Gary Thurman found himself called into the manager's office rather quickly, he recalled recently to The Greatest 21 Days. The meeting with Royals skipper John Wathan was because Wathan had gotten a call: Thurman's wife was in labor. "He said, 'You have two choices,'" Thurman recalled Wathan telling him. "'You can go home, or you can stay to play.' And I chose to stay to play." Thurman stayed, picked up his first major league hit, first major league stolen base and his first major league error, all in his first major league start. The team playing in Chicago, Thurman and his friends jumped in a car after the game and headed for Indianapolis. When they arrived, his new daughter Brytoney was waiting for him, born a half hour before he arrived. "She's a major league baby," Thurman noted. ...

Nationals roving outfield and base-running coordinator Gary Thurman at Metro Bank Park in Harrisburg, Pa., in August 2013. (G21D Photo) HARRISBURG, PA - A Royals first-round draft pick, Gary Thurman 's career started slowly. It started slow enough, he recalled recently, that he even thought about going home. "I was ready to hang it up and go back to college to play football," Thurman recalled to The Greatest 21 Days of that second pro season where he hit .228 and struck out 127 times, "because I knew I could be successful at football." What kept him in the game, though, he recalled, was advice from his mother. "My mother always taught me, 'hey, when you start something, you've got to finish it,'" Thurman said. "The Royals had confidence enough in me to draft me, if they've got enough confidence in me to stay with me, then I'm going to stick with it," Thurman recalled. "And I'm glad I did. Thirty-o...

Harrisburg's Metro Bank Park in August. (G21D Photo) Back in August, I had some extra time off from the day job, so I decided to burn a couple days of it on some blog stuff, and hopefully some interviews. After researching different options on the best place to go, I settled on Harrisburg, Pa. That's because the Harrisburg Senators were playing the Reading Fightin' Phils. In the ballpark, as far as I knew, were three players in my project. The Senators had two, hitting coach Eric Fox and pitching coach Paul Menhart . The Fightins had hitting coach Frank Cacciatore . All three, it turned out, were up for interviews. Add to those, there was also local youth instructor Gavin Osteen . He was also up for being interviewed. So that was my trip. Four interviews, worth it. As it turned out, though, I ended up doing five. That's because an off-hand mention by Eric Fox turned into a fifth interview, one with former Royals outfielder Gary Thurman. It was actually th...

Ed Quijada worked in 1991 to make the transition as smooth as possible, and have success . Quijada had played the last three seasons as an infielder. Now, in 1991, he was a pitcher . "It was tough," Quijada told The Houston Chronicle that August. "There was a lot of pressure on me coming out of the bullpen with the game on the line. The hardest thing for me was getting rid of the butterflies." Quijada never did make the majors, playing that year and parts of three more in the minors. He threw his last pitch after a return in 1997. More recently, though, Quijada has been trying to make the best of another transition, a life altering one . It's a transition forced by a 2009 car accident, one that left Quijada paralyzed from the neck down . In the months and years since, Quijada has been working to regain as much function as possible, as well as being a father to his kids and husband to his wife, according to a series of YouTube interviews . ...

Originally published Oct. 22, 2011 Jose Offerman was expected to do special things with his bat when he was called up to the majors in August 1990, just not necessarily so soon and not necessarily in this way. In his first major league at bat, leading off the Aug. 20 game against the Expos, Offerman hit a home run, something only 60 other players in history had done to that point. "I wasn't nervous," Offerman told The Associated Press later. "Baseball's the same, whether you play here, Albuquerque or San Antonio." Offerman never did live up to the expectations placed on him. But he did make the All-Star team twice and play in a total of 15 big league seasons , last playing there in 2005. But it's something else that Offerman has done with a bat , and his fist, since his last big league game that have perhaps eclipsed his playing career. Offerman's career began in 1986, signed by the Dodgers out of his native Dominican Republic. He f...

The high-A Osceola Astros ran over the Baseball City Royals in this May 1991 game , 7-3. Helping them do it was outfielder Gershon Dallas . Dallas picked up two doubles in this game, two of 16 he picked up on the season. Dallas hit those doubles in his third season as a pro. He got time in just one more . Dallas' career began in 1989, taken by the Astros in the seventh round of the draft, out of Hillsborough Community College in Florida. With the Astros, Dallas played in the rookie Gulf Coast League , hitting .213 over 47 games. For 1990, Dallas moved to single-A Asheville. There, he played under manager Frank Cacciatore. Cacciatore recalled Dallas years later as Dallas' college coach was a college teammate of Cacciatore. "He was a pretty good talent," Cacciatore told The Greatest 21 Days in August 2013 of Dallas. With the Tourists, Dallas improved his average to .278, hitting three home runs and 55 RBI. He went 1 for 3 in a May game. Dallas mo...

The Gulf Coast League Astros had a tough start in 1989. A consistent force, though, was infielder Craig Curtis , his manager Julio Linares told The Orlando Sentinel . "Curtis has been one of the bright spots this year," Linares told The Sentinel . "He's doing a good job for us with the bat. The guys are struggling, but they will come along." Curtis ended that year hitting .323 for the GCL squad . But he couldn't keep it up. He played just three more seasons, never making AA. Curtis' career began that year, taken by the Astros in the 8th round, out of North Kansas City High School . Curtis started with the GCL Astros, hitting one home run and knocking in 14. For 1990, he moved to single-A Asheville . There, he hit just .228, but his home run total increase to 17. Curtis moved to high-A Osceola for 1991. His average dropped that year to .207. His home run total also dropped to zero . Curtis returned to Asheville in 1992, getting into 59 g...

Originally published May 16, 2010 It was Shawn Holman 's major league debut. He pitched the final two innings of a 10-2 Tigers win, giving up one run, Sept. 5, 1989. It was also a day Holman thought he might never see. He was in his eighth year of professional baseball, getting his first taste of the majors . "It felt great," Holman said in a wire story of his debut. "It was a long time coming. At times, it seemed like it would never happen. I got a warm feeling all over going out there in the eighth inning." Holman took the mound four more times that September, posting an outstanding sub-2 ERA of 1.80. But in a professional career that spanned 14-plus seasons, those would be the only five major league games in which he would play. A late pick in the 1982 draft, Holman was taken in the 14th round by the Pirates out of Sewickley High in Sewickley, Pa. He had expected to go to college and play at West Virginia. But Holman was taken by the Pirate...

Kevin Scott didn't hit a lot of home runs. But he hit one when it counted . In the fifth inning of Game 1 of the 1992 Florida State League playoffs, Scott put his team ahead in the fifth with a solo round-tripper, according to The Orlando Sentinel . While it put the team ahead, his team couldn't hold that lead, eventually falling in extras. In his first four professional seasons, though, Scott hit only six regular season home runs . He would hit just one more, his career ending after the next season, Scott never making the majors. Scott's professional career began in 1989, taken by the Astros in the 32nd round of the draft, out of Washington State University. At Washington State, Scott hit .306 as a redshirt sophomore . With the Astros, Scott started at short-season Auburn, getting into 60 games , 17 behind the plate. He hit .245. For 1990, Scott moved to single-A Asheville, moving to catching almost full-time. He ended up hitting .274 over 129 games. Years...

Growing up in West Virginia, Jeff Wood loved baseball. He just couldn't play very well, he recalled years later to CSTV.com . But there was another way into the game, he recalled : Being a trainer. "I just wanted to get into baseball," Wood told CSTV.com . "I loved baseball although I never had any talent in it. I wanted to get into it, be involved with it, and athletic trainers were needed in baseball." So, Wood became a trainer. And he's been involved in the game since, in both the minor leagues and, later, in college ball . Wood's training career began in 1983, signed by the Orioles to serve as trainer for their rookie team in his home state, Bluefield. From there, Wood served as a trainer in the organization for a decade . By 1986, he was serving as trainer for the organization's AA club in Charlotte. In 1989, he moved up to the AAA club in Rochester. He continued with Rochester in 1991. That year, he watched over the recovery fr...

Originally published Nov. 10, 2010, updated September 2013 When Cardinals manager Joe Torre announced his new pitching coaches for 1995, much of the pitching focus went to Torre's new bullpen coach , not his new top pitching coach. That was perhaps understandable. The new bullpen coach was Hall of Famer Bob Gibson . The new pitching coach was longtime AAA Louisville pitching coach Mark Riggins . "Mark Riggins can definitely teach people how to pitch," Torre told The Associated Press after the announcement. "Bob Gibson can teach people how to win." Riggins - along with Torre and Gibson for that matter - only lasted through that 1995 season in his big league Cardinals post. But Riggins would go on continue teaching pitching in the Cardinals organization, serving as the team's minor league pitching coordinator for the next 12 seasons . Until Riggins jumped to the Cubs in 2008, becoming Chicago's minor league pitching coordinator, Riggins h...

It was a hot day in Savannah. It had to be 110 , Ken Wheeler 's old manager Frank Cacciatore recalled. But, there Wheeler was, pitching marathon outing for Asheville in 1990, an outing that his manager remembered 23 years later . "Back then, we had a little more leeway with innings pitched," Cacciatore told The Greatest 21 Days in August 2013, noting pitch counts remained closely watched. "He threw like 10 innings and only had like 90 pitches." "He just threw a hell of a ballgame," Cacciatore added . Wheeler was in his second pro season that year with Asheville. He went on to get three more. He never made AA . Wheeler's professional career began in 1989, taken by the Astros in the 11th round of the draft, out of Chillicothe High School in Ohio. With the Astros, Wheeler started in the rookie Gulf Coast League . in 14 outings, eight starts, Wheeler went 1-4, with a 4.00 ERA. For 1990, Wheeler moved to single-A Asheville, playing unde...

Updated Nov. 1, 2013 Mark Small waited into his eighth pro season to get his taste of the majors. Once he got it, though, he wanted another, he told his hometown Seattle Times . "I always had said, 'I want to get there (majors) even if it's just for one day,'"Small told The Times . "Then you get there and you say, `Man, that's not enough.' " Small got that first taste in the form of 16 outings for the Astros in 1996. For Small, those outings would have to be enough. In a career that spanned a dozen seasons , those were the only major league games Small got. Small's professional career began in 1989, taken by the Astros in the 17th round, out of Washington State University. Small also followed his older brother Jeff Small into the game, according to The Times . Jeff Small played nine seasons as a pro, but never made the bigs. With the Astros, Small started at short-season Auburn, moving to single-A Asheville for 1990. At Ashevill...

Originally published Dec. 31, 2011 Jeff Fischer just wanted to go five good innings to help his Florida Gators to the 1984 conference championship, he told The Gainesville Sun . He helped his team to the championship and he did so by pitching a complete game . "Man, I really felt good," Fischer told The Sun after the win. "I'd had an up-and-down year, and I just wanted to make sure tonight was on an up." Fischer finished out his college career the next season, before being selected by the Expos in the seventh round of the draft. He went on to make it up to the majors twice, over two seasons. But his stay up in the bigs both times was brief, Fisher's major league career ending up consisting of all of six outings . Fischer started his professional career playing in his hometown, at single-A West Palm Beach , There, Fischer went 6-5, in 13 starts, with a 3.51 ERA. Fisher told The South Florida Sun-Sentinel that August it was another "up...