John U. Bacon

A few years ago – okay, a bunch of years ago – I bit on a bet I never should have touched.

I was writing for the Detroit News, and a top minor league hockey team called the Detroit Vipers played at the Palace. So, I got to thinking: just how big is the gap, really, between the pros, and beer league players like me?

Good question. And even better if I didn’t try to answer it. But, being the hard-hitting investigative journalist that I am, I had to go down to the Palace and find out. Bad idea.

I called the Vipers, and they said, sure, come on down to practice. Now, I couldn’t hear them laughing themselves silly when they hung up – but I bet they were. I should’ve known I was biting off more than I could throw up.

But I actually had reason to believe I might survive. Okay, so my hockey career on the Ann Arbor Huron varsity squad consisted of two phases: the first – “This kid’s got a lot of potential” – and the second – “This kid had a lot of potential.” I sort of skipped the middle part, where I was supposed to realize all that potential. My career was like Rudy’s, minus the game-ending sack.

But hockey is a war of attrition, and I was still standing. I even played on the best men’s team in Ann Arbor. I had gotten a little smarter, and a little better, but I was still slow, short and weak.

To get ready for Monday’s practice, I bought a new pair of pants – the kind with padding. I went to the weight room a few times, I played in a couple pick-up games and I even replaced my usual dinner of pepperoni pizza and Stroh’s with mushroom pizza and Pepsi. I know it sounds extreme, but my attitude was, “Hey, whatever it takes, baby.”  I was playing to win. Or at least survive. When I showed up in the Vipers’ locker room, I was a lean, mean 160 pounds of blue, twisted steel.

I’d be replacing John Craighead, because his fists were too banged up from a fight he won the night before. He bet me lunch I wouldn’t survive practice. With more brass than brains, I said, “You got it.”

Coach Rick Dudley, as tough as they come, ran through the drills we’d be doing that day. Then he looked at me and added, with a sinister grin, “And don’t forget, we’ve got laps at the end.” Fifteen laps one way, then 15 the other.

On the first few drills, I actually managed to score three times. And yes, I was counting. The key was my change-of-pace.  While everybody was ripping slap shots, I was baffling the goalies with my off-speed wrist shots – which were, of course, intended to be full-speed.

But it wasn’t long before my lungs were working so hard, I felt like I was trying to breathe peanut butter. I was dying, and I knew it. I think my new teammates did, too. I was so spent, I couldn’t even do simple things correctly, like I was drunk.  And my new pants felt like I was wearing an oak barrel. After 30 minutes, I could no longer even lift the puck. Hey, the goalie wants the damn puck, he can get it on the ice, just like the rest of us.

I lathered sweat like a stallion, and started looking for a place to puke. Right when I thought I was about to lose it, Coach Dudley blew the whistle. Relief! Mercy! I had made it!

No! I hadn’t. Time for laps: 15 one way, then 15 the other. All timed.

But, amazingly, something magical happened. I got my second wind, my legs back, and I finished. A few laps behind everyone else, but so what?

Back in the locker room, I sat, sweating, while the guys played ping-pong. I would have joined them, if I could have raised my hands above my waist.

Okay, I survived, but I’m not gloating. I lost six pounds that day – the hard way. Any weekend athlete who thinks he can do what the pros can do, had better have another think or two.

When Craighead saw me in his stall, frozen like a prizefighter who’d just gone 15 rounds and lost, he laughed, then said the words I longed to hear.

“How ’bout lunch?”

We went dutch.

About the writer: Ann Arbor resident John U. Bacon is the author of “Bo’s Lasting Lessons” and “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football” – both national bestsellers. His upcoming book, “Fourth and Long: The Future of College Football,” will be published by Simon & Schuster in September 2013. You can follow him on Twitter (@Johnubacon), and at johnubacon.com.

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John U. Bacon

If you’re sick of the big leagues, but not baseball, check out your backyard.

Here in Michigan you can watch the Beach Bums in Traverse City, the Lugnuts in Lansing, the West Michigan Whitecaps near Grand Rapids, the Great Lake Loons in Midland, and the Kings in Kalamazoo. Michigan fans can see six minor league teams if you count the Toledo Mud Hens – and seven if the Tigers start slumping again. Michigan baseball fans haven’t had it this good in decades.

In 1949, the U.S. boasted almost 500 minor league teams, supported by 42 million fans. But their ranks shriveled when major league baseball expanded, TV blossomed and air conditioning made staying at home much cooler. In just three years, attendance dropped almost 80%.

But when major league baseball turned its back on its fans with strikes and lockouts, the minor leagues aggressively courted them. Almost every fan-friendly custom you see at major league stadiums today they stole from the minors, including fancy food, daily promotions, pop music and endless stunts to keep the fans coming back, win or lose. As a result, the minors have grown back to a robust 176 teams nationwide.

Visit one, and you understand why.

You park your car for a couple bucks, and in a couple minutes, you’re in your seat. Every employee you meet seems to be working overtime to keep you fat and happy. They remember the season ticket holders’ names, and welcome them back each night.

The workers shower the fans with free frisbees, candy bars and bunched-up T-shirts fired from sling-shots. Between innings, they sponsor the usual potpourri of minor league gags, including the dizzy bat race, the hula hoop contest and a sumo wrestling match – always involving fans pulled from the stands.

A minor league baseball park is no place for the self-conscious. You should expect to let your hair down and join the show.

Kids play on the grass embankments, stand on the dugouts and sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh inning stretch – while waving to their parents – and get to run around the bases when the game’s over.

Fans don’t leave minor league games early, because they’re enjoying the whole experience, not just the outcome.

In the minors, even the players aim to please. Unlike the lollygaggers in the majors, the bush leaguers take their at-bats as if they’re being timed, they don’t whine about the umpire’s calls and they actually run all the way to first base on hopeless ground balls. Of course, they’d better, or they’re gone.

The players put their hearts in their work for less than they could make flipping burgers at McDonald’s. So, why do it? Because after four or five years of flipping burgers, McDonald’s will never give you a big league contract. Do any of these guys really have a chance? As one manager told me, “If you got a uniform, you got a chance.”

These guys are doing what they’ve dreamed about all their lives: playing baseball.

Some dreams are a little more modest. I met two brothers who had good jobs at Oldsmobile, but asked the Lansing Lugnuts if they could walk around the park with trash cans. They only got minimum wage – and all the cans they could find. “If it wasn’t fun,” one told me, “we wouldn’t be here.”

He then picked up his trash can, turned toward his buddies in the stands and bellowed, “Get yer trraaaaaash. Cold trash here! Get yer trash!”

And that, in a peanut shell, is the difference between the majors and the minors: Everyone in the minors is making less money, and having more fun.

About the author: John U. Bacon lives in Ann Arbor and has written for Time, the New York Times, and ESPN Magazine, among others. His most recent book is “Bo’s Lasting Lessons,” a New York Times and Wall Street Journal business bestseller. Bacon teaches at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio; Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism; and the University of Michigan, where the students awarded him the Golden Apple Award for 2009. This commentary originally aired on Michigan Radio.