Greatest 21 Days Baseball Profiles

Jon Matlack returned to the field in 2015 as a coach for the collegiate league Glens Falls Dragons and he brought with him decades of experience as both a player and as a coach. To The Glens Falls Post-Star that June, he explained his expected approach with the team's college players. "I'm going to be as hands-on as I need to be," Matlack told The Post-Star . "I almost look at this as like planting a garden. … If you water it and fertilize it every day, you're liable to kill it — you've got to let it grow, and we've got to let these guys work." Matlack's experience included time in 13 major league seasons , including a Rookie of the Year award. It also included years as a coach, much of it spent helping pitchers in the minors. Matlack's long career in baseball began in 1967, taken by the Mets in the first round of the draft out of Henderson High in Pennsylvania. He started with the Mets at AA Williamsport . He made AAA Tidewater in 19...

Great Falls Dodgers manager Joe Vavra assessed his new players in June 1990, among them a 19-year-old Raul Mondesi , according to The Great Falls Tribune . Vavra saw good things in Mondesi's future, The Tribune wrote . "He's got everything," Vavra told The Tribune . "He's probably the best outfielder in the organization for his age." Mondesi took his everything to the majors in his fourth pro season. He then won National League Rookie of the Year honors in 1994 and made the 1995 All-Star game. By the time his career was over, he'd seen time in 13 major league seasons and hit 271 total major league home runs. He later went from everything to politics in his home country - and then to prison for corruption. Mondesi's career began that season, having been signed by the Dodgers two years earlier out of his native Dominican Republic . Mondesi started with the Dodgers in the minors at Great Falls . He hit .303 in 41 games there. He the...

Eric Karros went out and won the Dodgers starting first baseman's job in 1992. He then went out and won the National League Rookie of the Year award. For Karros, though, he knew the award meant the past. He knew he needed to focus on the future, according to The Associated Press . "It keeps you going, knowing guys come and go in this game," Karros told The AP after winning the award. "The trick is not getting there but staying, having some longevity. I've only played one year, and my goal is to play a number of years." Karros won the award with a season where he hit 20 home runs , knocked in 88 and hit .257. He then went back out in 1993 and started on his path toward realizing his goal. By the time his career ended, Karros had seen time in a total of 14 major league seasons , hit 30 or more home runs in a campaign five times and turned in a career batting average of .268. Karros' career began in 1988, taken by the Dodgers in the sixth ro...

Pat Listach recalled his lowest point as 1994, according to The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel . Knee injuries meant the American League Rookie of the Year winner from only two years before got into only 16 games. But he fought back from that and returned to significant time with the Brewers in 1995 and 1996. Now, in March 1997, Listach looked for a new start with the Astros . "My knee hasn't felt this good since the summer of '93," Listach told The Journal Sentinel . "I've been running just about every time I get on base." Listach's Astros career ended up being limited. He got into 52 games and hit just .182. It marked the end of his playing career, but he has since gone on to stay in baseball as a coach and manager in the minors and also as a coach in the majors. Listach's career began in 1988, taken by the Brewers in the fifth round of the draft out of Arizona State University. Listach started at single-A Beloit . He made AA El Paso...

The Red Sox minor leaguer played well the previous season, but his prospects for advancement were slim. A third baseman, he had at least three players ahead of him , one of them being Hall of Famer and longtime Boston third baseman Wade Boggs. There just didn't seem to be room for Jeff Bagwell , The Patriot Ledger News Service wrote in spring 1990. "I really don't worry about anybody else," Bagwell told the news service . "I do what I have to do. If I keep putting good numbers on the board, something's going to happen." The minor leaguer did keep put up numbers and something did happen. He got traded to the Astros and became a Houston legend . Now, all the numbers Bagwell continued put up have him in a good position to become a Hall of Famer himself, if not in the 2012 balloting, in the coming years. Bagwell's career, though, began with the Red Sox, taken in the fourth round of the 1989 draft, out of the University of Hartford . He pla...

Coming out of Irvine High School, Bob Hamelin had the choice to go to Notre Dame on a football scholarship or wait for a baseball school to even send him an offer . For Hamelin, the choice was an easy one, he told The Los Angeles Times in 1986. "It didn't take a lot of time to think over," Hamelin told The Times . "I had told them up front that I wanted to play baseball. I had my mind made up, and they couldn't change it, I guess." Hamelin eventually stayed local, going to UCLA. And his choice paid off, with his selection by the Royals two years later in the second round of the draft. Always a player with promise, but slowed by injuries, Hamelin finally made the majors in 1993. The next year, he went on to win the American League Rookie of the Year. But Hamelin's career ended up bring a relatively brief one, playing in just six big league seasons . By 1999, his playing career was over, Hamelin walking off a AAA field mid-game, telling his...

Tim Salmon knew he got it, he told The New York Times afterward. With one on base, Salmon hit the ball over the left-centerfield fence. The home run proved to be the game-winner - the first of four games the Angels would win in the 2002 World Series. "I knew the situation, and I knew it was big," Salmon told The Times . "You had a feeling it was going to come down to something like that, the way both teams were playing. It's something I've been dreaming about doing for a long time, and watching it being done from my couch. It's unbelievable." In his 11th major league season , Salmon had become synonymous with his team, the Angels. And he finally helped the four-decade-old franchise to its first World Series and first World Series title. In all, Salmon played in 14 seasons , all with the Angels. He amassed a career .282 average and 299 total home runs. Salmon's career began in 1989, taken by the Angels in the third round of the draft...

Called up to the Braves in May 1990, Dave Justice spent his time platooning at first base . He got into his share of games, but he wasn't a regular . Then came early August and the Braves traded away the beloved Dale Murphy. Fans didn't like it and Justice wasn't even sure the price was worth the result . But the move made Justice the Braves' regular right fielder, a job he wouldn't relinquish until five years and three World Series appearances later. "You know, you'd think I'd be happy because I get to play everyday with Murph gone," Justice told The Los Angeles Times that August, "but I'm miserable. He meant so much to me. It feels strange without him." But Justice made do, enough so to win the Rookie of the Year award at season's close, an award he attributed directly to that trade and his move to regular right fielder. Justice went on to have a long major league resume, with 14 major league seasons, three All-Star...

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...