Greatest 21 Days Baseball Profiles

The save had been a rocky one for the veteran reliever, but Rick Lysander got it. "A bad hop, then some little dribbler through the middle," Lysander told The Daytona Beach News-Journal , outlining the rough patches. "If I can make them hit the ball like that all the time, I'd be happy." Lysander spoke to The News-Journal in November 1990, in the midst of his second season in the Senior Professional Baseball Association. After his first season, Lysander got another look at the minors, after four seasons away from the pro ranks. Lysander returned to the minors in 1990, pitching in 10 games for the AAA Syracuse Chiefs. In his first stint with the pros, Lysander pitched 11 seasons, starting in 1974. He also got time in the majors during four seasons. And his return in 1990 wasn't his only return. Lysander returned in spring 1995, playing replacement ball at the age of 42, finally ending his playing days. It was in 1974 that Lysander's career ...

Former star center fielder Paul Blair had helped teams he played with become winners, winning four world championships. But, in 1998, he found it harder to make Coppin State a winner, The Baltimore Sun wrote . "I still enjoy working with the kids. That's helping me get through the year," Blair, then Coppin State's head coach, told The Sun in the midst of his first season, a losing season. "Everything I've gotten is through baseball. If I can help and send some kids to the big leagues, that can be my way of giving back." Blair was continuing a career in baseball that began more than three decades earlier when he broke into the majors as a player with the Orioles , soon becoming a star. His playing career concluded in 1980, ending with the Yankees and the Reds. He retired from playing and went into coaching . Blair signed as a roving minor league instructor and a scout in spring 1980, though he did return to play 12 games for the Yankees that ye...

A manager in the Florida State League in 1991, Bobby Molinaro had certain expectations of his players and he made sure let them know about them, according to The Sarasota Herald-Tribune . After one May game, where his Charlotte Rangers lost 5-4 in an effort the paper called lackluster , Molinaro held a 15-minute, closed-door meeting with his players, the paper wrote . "We have some players on this team who are not taking the game as seriously as they should be," Molinaro told The Herald-Tribune of his class-A team. "All I ask is for them to stay on top of the game mentally for the 2.5 hours they're between the white lines. We haven't done that with any consistency. We haven't developed mentally." Molinaro, a former major league player, joined the Charlotte Rangers for 1991, marking his fifth year as a manager in the minor leagues. Molinaro's managing career began after a major league career that saw him play in eight big league seasons and 18...

Read the February 2011 interview:  Rick Lancellotti, Christmas Morning His playing career nearing its endpoint in 1992, Rick Lancellotti had received offers to coach in the minors, play in Mexico City and even play baseball in Italy . He chose Italy, but not without much thought given to his young daughter and son, he told the New York Times that year. "You wonder a lot of times, is it all worth it?" Lancellotti told The Times , noting his son sometimes would ask him to fly home for a day. "Then I wonder: Could I get this kind of a job back home? The answer is no. Things are tight back there." But he had another problem. A veteran of 13 minor league seasons , brief stints in three major league seasons and two in Japan, he loved playing. "If I quit and go onto something else, am I going to be happy?" he added to The Times . "My biggest fear is someday I'll be behind a desk somewhere and I know I'll hate it. I know things won'...

In the top of the 11th, Johnny Grubb came to bat. The Tigers were looking to go up two games to none in the best of five American League Championship against the Royals. A two-run double later and Grubb showed why the Tigers had him . "John is one of those guys who does the job when you ask him to," Tigers Manager Sparky Anderson told the Associated Press after the game. "What he does speaks for itself. What more can I say?" That post-season game in 1984 was the first for the 36-year-old Grubb. He was originally taken by the Padres in 1971, the team his Tigers would play in the 1984 World Series. Grubb made the Baseball Digest Rookie All-Star team in 1973. Padres then-Manager Don Zimmer gave Grubb similar praise as Anderson would give 11 years later. "He's done everything we could have asked of him," Zimmer said in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in November 1973. "I think we've got the rookie of the year." Along with sto...

As much as a pitcher doesn't want to hang a curve, a pitcher certainly doesn't want to hang drywall . But after his pro career was seemingly over, that's what former Padres and Astros pitcher Danny Boone did. He did that for nearly six years, until, that is, the Orioles came calling . Out of professional baseball since 1984, Boone heard about a new senior league in Florida. With the support of his wife , he went. And he did well enough for the Orioles to hand the 36-year-old a AAA contract. "Deep down inside, every athlete wishes he could play until he's 100," Boone told a Washington Post columnist that spring, adding he was amazed his wife had been so supportive. "She realizes that now is the time." Boone spent the summer at AAA Rochester before, improbably, returning to the majors that September - eight years after throwing his last major league pitch. Boone entered pro ball, taken in the second round of the 1976 draft by the Angels. I...

Up to bat in the 11th inning of a 2-2 game, Ron Washington did on April 20, 1980 what he did only once the year before, hit a home run. This one would be a game winner for the AAA Toledo Mud Hens. It was enough for The Toledo Blade to feature the 27-year-old who'd seen only 10 major league games in a decade of minor league service. "I've had a lot of adversity," Washington told The Blade after the victory, noting a decade that included a late entry into baseball due to the draft, the military kind, and torn up knees that almost ended his career in 1978. Washington is going through another type of adversity , now 30 years later, a kind that is entirely of his own making. In July 2009, Washington, now the manager of the Texas Rangers, admitted at a press conference last week, Washington used cocaine. A random drug test prompted him to inform the Rangers of his cocaine use. He only used the drug once, he told the team. "I had a very weak moment," Washingto...