9/10/2014: Bridgeport, CT – The hike to the top of Saddle Mountain isn’t the most popular destination. After all, most people drive right by the turnout on Route 26 that leads to the uneven parking surface where the trailhead starts. Plenty of folks will stop at Camp 18 for a bite.  Until a storm knocked the old tree down, the largest Sitka spruce in the nation was a fun stop just before the junction with Highway 101. The hike, however, can take a couple of hours and most people are understandably headed straight for the beach.

Whether it’s Seaside, Cannon Beach, or a little further south to Manzanita, the drive along Route 26 builds the anticipation while passing through dense forests, small towns, and logged hillsides. At about an hour, it’s not far from Cornelius, but long enough that by the time the car finds a space amongst the rows of shops and beach houses, even the most patient child is aching to run free along the sand. For Big Al Brown and his family, the sand and the surf could wait.

From April through October, the first Saturday of every month and many in between involved a trip to the coast. Big Al has been heading out that way since the Mount St. Helens eruption interrupted a planned hike to Spirit Lake. “Wasn’t worth the risk,” he says, but the fact is that a girl by the name of Cindy Farmer wanted to crest Saddle Mountain after hearing about the coastal view from a friend. “You can see the end of the world from up there,” she would say.

Cornelius High School has a nice ring to it, but it doesn’t exist, so when college recruiters started visiting the area to take a look at a bulky senior by the name of Jed Brown, they actually made their way to Forest Grove. Jed was the eldest of Big Al’s three sons, could hit the ball a mile, and was simply huge. The only problem with his baseball skills was that they were nowhere near as impressive as what he could do from the line of scrimmage. Opposing Oregon high school football coaches would put two linemen on him and still send running backs the other way. Carnage would ensue, a quarterback might go down, and they’d all line up to do it again.

When USC sent scout Mitch Joyce to watch Jed play right field against Hillsboro, his baseball scouting report was left almost entirely blank except for the words, “NFL lineman, hits big.” According to Big Al, that was a pretty decent assessment. “It was pointless to scout him for baseball,” he recalls now. “Jed played baseball because there wasn’t enough football to go around, but everyone here knew he had no interest in pursuing it as a career.”

Joyce agrees. “Everybody sent a scout to see Jed Brown. We had to. Anyone who hit the ball as far as Jed did was gonna attract some attention. You’d see articles on various high school baseball sites about how Jed had hit another ball 500 feet against some poor sophomore from the next town over. When I got to Forest Grove that day, it was pretty clear that a bunch of scouts had passed through already. I remember sitting about three rows back in the stands, where a bunch of kids – maybe friends of Jed, I don’t know – were chatting behind me the whole game long. They were telling stories about Jed hitting a foul ball in Newberg that was such a rope that it went through both windows of a car. They spoke of the Nike-hosted All-Star Game in which Jed broke Phil Knight’s office window on a home run. Crazy stuff. One would mention some amazing feat and then the next kid would top him. You knew it wasn’t true, but the fact was that everyone had a story about some stupendous Jed feat, and they wanted us scouts to know. He was a legend on the gridiron but just as big of one on the diamond. Still, when I approached him after the game, all he wanted was to meet Pete Carroll. As for Ernie – he didn’t have any of that.”

The first time up Saddle Mountain, Big Al thought he would die. “Oh Lord, I couldn’t believe it,” he says now. “It was so embarrassing. Cindy’s practically skipping up the mountain beside me and I’m huffing and puffing. She spoke the whole way and all I could do was smile and nod.” Big Al was going to take Cindy fishing at Spirit Lake, but with Mount St. Helens threatening to blow its top at any time, the lake was off limits to tourists. Fishing, Big Al could handle. It was passive. You could just sit there and chat while the fish swimming around your worm did the same. Hiking – well, that was a different story.

Big Al had once been a tremendous athlete. No, not in the same vein as his son Jed, wowing professional scouts, but he was one of the best local athletes growing up. Some of the larger schools in the country suggested he come out as a walk-on to their football programs, but the only school that offered any financial assistance was Division III Linfield College, and that sealed the deal. He started as the team’s first-string fullback his freshman year.  It regularly took two to three tacklers to bring him down. Then, during a holiday break when an unusual cold spell hit the West Hills, Big Al lost control of his car on the way home from a party in downtown Portland. With the air always moist in December, black ice can form quickly in shadowed curves of the road. Add a little alcohol to the mix and you’ve got a promising young athlete with his headlights wrapped around a tree.

It’s one thing to rehab a broken leg and aim to be ready for the next football season. It’s an entirely different thing to have to do that for both legs at the same time. Big Al didn’t feel so big in a wheelchair, and he wasn’t anywhere near ready for spring drills. His bones took twice as long to heal as would’ve been expected because of some complicated issue that the doctors would only say in Latin, and Big Al was too proud to request they translate. Depression set in, and he dropped out.

When Mike Joyce saw Ernie Brown after scouting his older brother for USC, the first words out of his mouth were, “Who the hell is that?” Joyce was speaking to Villanova assistant coach Terry Lassen as players walked into the weight room and one face looked familiar. Lassen was, in his usual way, terse: “Brown. Forest Grove, Oregon.” Joyce, who had just been hired to coach the baseball team a day earlier, nearly lost it. How on earth could the all-world hitting Jed Brown, who wanted nothing to do with baseball, be walking into his field house four-and-a-half years after his senior season? Wasn’t he drafted by the Saints a year ago? When Lassen quickly corrected Joyce’s thinking, he was stunned. The 5’10” scrawny freshman brother of Jed Brown was now an imposing 6’4”, 200+ lbs.

As a college freshman in 2007, Villanova coach Jorge Morales had used Ernie Brown almost exclusively as a designated hitter. He played just five innings in left field and hit .203 with power, suggesting his lack of punch as a young high school player had been replaced with a reckless swing for the fences mentality that left gaping holes in his swing. Joyce, however, knew what Ernie’s brother had been capable of and personally took Ernie under his wing for hitting lessons all that winter. The two spent so much time together that teammates started calling Ernie “Baby Mike,” a nickname Ernie hated. When the youngest Brown brother, Lucas, came to visit in February, Coach Joyce redubbed Ernie “Baby Bear.” Jed had been too big, and Lucas was too small, but Ernie was just right. He hated that one even more.

When the 2008 season got underway, though, the “Baby Mike” name didn’t come up so much anymore and the “Baby Bear” name started to fit. All that work in the hitting cage was starting to pay off. Ernie was hitting with authority. It was as if he was indeed “just right.” Despite some minor injuries that kept him out of the lineup for a couple of weeks, he hit .375 with a team-leading nine home runs. His .620 OPS in 2007 transformed into a 1.126 OPS in 2008. The following two seasons, he played full time and posted nearly identical OPSes while leading the team in all sorts of statistics: hits, home runs, RBI, and more. He’d found himself as a hitter, transformed from a non-prospect in the shadow of an older brother who was off playing football to a bona fide major league talent. The Aurora Borealis took him with the 24^th overall pick in the 2010 amateur draft.

The worst thing about hitting rock bottom is that sometimes, instead of hitting a rocky outcrop from which you can push yourself back up, you get stuck in the mud. The transition from highly respected athlete, even at a small school like Linfield, to daily rehab while living with the parents didn’t go so well for Big Al. When he did get back on his feet, school had started again and football was in full swing. He attended a game but it was difficult to watch. His legs didn’t yet have the drive they once did, and if he was honest with himself, he’d put on a lot of weight. School wasn’t of much interest if it wasn’t for sports, so a job at a family-run hardware store seemed like the most promising way to get enough cash together for an apartment. Big Al worked at the store, learned a few things about construction projects and home maintenance along the way, but otherwise spent the next several years stuck in the mud.

The best thing about hitting rock bottom is that sometimes you get pulled back up again in a most remarkable way. Lost in the drudgery of helping little old ladies understand the concept of fluorescent light bulbs, Big Al failed to notice the recurring patronization of a particular customer. Finally, an exasperated Cindy Farmer tried a different tactic. “Apparently, ‘Excuse me, but do you have any wrenches?’ isn’t the greatest pick-up line,” she explains. “I tried wrenches, hammers, and fertilizer. I even thought light bulbs might flip the switch for him. A girl wants to be pursued a little, but I guess with Al, he just wasn’t going to come around on his own. Finally, I gave in and one day. Over some trowels, I blurted out to him, ‘Weren’t you that great fullback for the Wildcats?’ He just stared at me as if I was the Devil.”

Big Al’s mind began racing and he could feel his heart pumping in his chest. He’d been a fullback for the Wildcats, but how on earth did this person remember that about him when he was busy trying to forget? “I remember thinking, ‘Why on earth would this woman be asking about that? It was only one season, after all, and that was ages ago. Things were all different since then. Maybe she’s got me confused with someone or something else. Why did I let them put the “Big” on my nametag, and where can I go hide, and my goodness, she is beautiful.’ I’m pretty sure the next words out of my mouth were complete gibberish.” The one thing that became clear pretty quickly was that Cindy wasn’t mistaken and was quite serious.

Getting drafted by the Borealis can be both a blessing and a curse, and Ernie Brown experienced quite a bit of both. The blessings come in knowing that you’re going to be surrounded by some of the best talent in the PEBA, while the curse is that you’re going to be competing for a job against some of that best talent. His first two seasons in the minors looked a lot like his first two seasons at Villanova. He struggled immediately after being drafted but was superb in 2011, earning a promotion to San Luis Río Colorado. Once again he struggled, but he hit well enough the next year to earn another promotion to Gatineau. But his combination of good power and a high walk rate no longer translated to immediate success over his peers. Aurora top brass began to sour on his ability to develop into the player that scouts talked about, and they began searching for a trade partner.

In 2013, Brown was promoted again, this time to AAA Thornton, just one stop below the PEBA. Brown was contributing as the team’s primary left fielder and the FasTrax were playing well early in the season. Brown was adjusting gradually to AAA pitching, feeling more and more confident as April turned to May. Despite the likes of Cory Pierce, En-guo Guao, and John Knight up in Aurora, he was confident that he could at least earn a bench role if he played well. Then on May 31^st, he rolled his ankle while rounding first base on a base hit. He stumbled back to the bag but had to be helped off the field. His ankle was a mess.

“I called Dad and he flew out right away,” Ernie says. “I mean, who better to understand me in that situation than him?” When the doctors diagnosed him with torn ankle ligaments that would take the rest of the season to heal, Big Al and Ernie flew back to Oregon together. Ernie was struggling. There he was, 24 years old, one stop away from his dream, and he’s about to live his father’s life. Big Al, on the other hand, wasn’t going to let that happen.

“I knew I had to get him home,” he says. “Damned if I cared what the Tophams thought of it. I don’t think they were too pleased with the idea that Ernie was going to be rehabbing on his own back in Oregon when most players are required to stay in Colorado for rehab.” Father and son flew back to Oregon, where Big Al and Cindy helped Ernie through the first several weeks of required rest. After a few more weeks of strength-building through light walking and motion drills, Big Al and Ernie did the most predictable thing in the world: they got in the car, and headed toward the beach.

“We never went to the beach without first hiking up Saddle Mountain on the way there,” Ernie explains. “Not once. So it was a little weird when Dad drove right by the turnout. I mean, it was really weird. I had to ask him what was going on and if he was alright.” Big Al didn’t want Ernie to overdo it too soon, so he drove out to Manzanita, where the beach is a little less popular and the cold water and sand would be good for his recovering ankle. It wasn’t long before the two started hiking again, though, and by the time the winter rains came, Ernie felt fully recovered, ready to return to Colorado. Only he never did.

As the 2013 PEBA Winter Meetings came to a close, the Aurora Borealis traded him to the Connecticut Nutmeggers for Roger Jordan and 1^st and 5^th round draft picks. The Connecticut press was quick to chastise the team for trading such high picks for an older minor leaguer who didn’t look like he was going to play up to his billing, but for Brown, it was an opportunity to play for a team who didn’t have an MVP candidate already holding down any of his potential positions.

After a brief demotion to AAA Providence, and despite hitting just .217 in spring training, the Nutmeggers called him up at the start of May. Starting left fielder Daniel Williams had to be placed on the DL, so the team gave Brown the chance to start for a spell. He was terrible. While Williams had been an on-base machine, Brown barely managed to hit .200, displayed no power, and looked lost at the plate. He was back in AAA the moment Williams was activated, but he couldn’t hit there, either. A benching in July was the last straw. With the team’s permission, he took a leave of absence and flew home.

Today, if you make the trek up Saddle Mountain with Big Al, he now floats up the mountain as if exerting no effort at all. Despite the 30 years that have passed, he can still show you where they stood the first time Cindy showed him where the world ends. He can recall with great clarity exactly what the billows of ash from Mount St. Helens looked like in the opposite direction just a week later, but he’s most fond of pointing out the spot where he hid Cindy’s engagement ring. He can remember many different experiences he’s had at the top of Saddle Mountain, but this past July, he experienced something new. Just as he was turning to head back home to meet Cindy for lunch, his son Ernie was unexpectedly arriving at the top.

Ernie hadn’t told anyone he was coming home, but knew he needed to get away from the distractions of team, return to a place of perspective and peace in Oregon that he only knew how to find. Despite now coaching the Mauna Loa Vulcans, Mike Joyce took his phone call and reminded him of some of the things he taught him back in college. When Ernie flew back to Rhode Island to rejoin the Spooners, his head was in the right place.

He tore up AAA pitching in August, and when the Nutmeggers brought him back up at roster expansion in September, Ernie was ready. The team once again handed him the starting left field job, not because of an injury but simply because they were out of the running and wanted to see what he could do. In his second game back, he went 5-for-5 with a walk and 3 RBI. Monday, he was named the IL Player of the Week. Success for a week is a great honor, but he still has a lot left to prove. “It’s never been easy for him the way it was for Jed,” Big Al says, “but I know he’ll keep climbing.”

Samuel Platt covers the Nutmeggers for the Connecticut Post