3: October, 2019

  I confess that I do not love baseball like some of the men I see who play the game. Maybe I’ve come to it too late in life. I certainly can’t imagine playing a game for a living. I like working alone in the office late on Sunday nights. I pretty much have the building to myself, and I feel like I can get things done without any unnecessary distractions. When it’s quiet, you can just make out the far off hum of what I suppose is the HVAC machinery; just a perfect level of white noise to block everything out and relax me. The Shisa had a miserable game earlier in the day. An extra-inning, 3-2 loss to Seoul featuring and hour long rain delay.

 That night I was working on a continuing a project of mine, putting together a reasonably predictive player development algorithm, when there was a soft knock on my door. It was Ronnie Ray. I had seen him in the halls a few times before. He likes coming into the building late at night, when he knows he will have the film room to himself (we still call it a film room, for some reason). I thought at first he might need me to let him into the film room, but then I remembered that the lock on the door was biometric (only Seigyoki would think to protect a video library so).

 Bakersfield chose Ray in the 38^th round of the PEBA inaugural draft. He was 23 at the time, and spent a couple years in the minors before appearing for the home club in 40 games in 2009, after the Bears’ regular first baseman, Juan Otero, suffered abdominal and Achilles injuries. Ray shone that year, hitting .315/.379/.587 with 11 home runs in just 143 at-bats.

 Bakersfield must have liked what they saw (and why not?), because they parted with Otero that off-season, making Ray their new starting first baseman. Unfortunately, Ray would never live up to the promise he showed in 2009. Platooning with left-handed hitting Josh Emery at first, Ray put up a pedestrian .253/.338/.372 line that year, and hit only 10 home runs in 403 at-bats. PEBA pitching had caught up with Ronnie Ray, who the scouts tell me has a beautiful, smooth, and long swing. Too long, as it happens, to reliably catch up with an unanticipated PEBA fastball on the inner half of the plate. Bakersfield eventually traded him to Crystal Lake, who signed him to a four-year contract only to trade him to the Codgers that off-season. Four undistinguished years later, Ray became a free agent. And nobody called. It wasn’t until April that a team, Tempe, signed him … to a minor league contract. He played well for the AAA club in limited action, only to be released that summer.

 It looked like his career was over for a second time. No team in America wanted Ronnie Ray for their club. He sat out the rest of 2017, and then most of 2018. That August, however, the Shisa called him and asked him if he’d like to relocate to Japan to fill a spot that just opened up on the Shizuoka roster. He did, and he played ably (.333/.455/.566) in just 28 games. For all of that, he was still a surplus part. New management decided to use him in Naha to occasionally start in place of Ito against left handed pitching, but puzzlingly, the right handed Ray turned out to be no more effective against lefties than the left handed batting Ito. Lyle Ward’s periodic injuries made the decision to add Ray as a bench bat for the big league team easy, allowing the Shisa to use both Ray and Arthur Thompson, the two players vying for the fourth gaijin spot.

 Ray started Sunday’s game, going 0-5. For the series, he went 0-9 with five strikeouts and a walk. There’s no sugarcoating 0-9. He’s by no means doing poorly this year (.250/.376/.464) and he is a very effective mistake hitter, but at 36 he has to work hard to make the most of a diminishing set of skills, and a bad run of at-bats in a three game series at the end of the year had him worried. He’s arbitration eligible after this season, and it appears likely that he’ll be non-tendered. That’s no real secret. The series against the Cliff Hangers could well be his last as a professional baseball player.

 Ray had just finished looking at video of Lupin pitchers, but wanted help, and he obviously hadn’t come to me for aid with his swing mechanics. We went over some of the things in my bailiwick: heat maps, pitch selection tendencies and suchlike. As it happened, I had some the needed information close at hand so going over a few things was no trouble. He was most concerned about Cracker, and with good reason. The Lupin closer had a phenomenal year. Above all, I reminded Ray that he does his best when he’s aggressive (he’s hitting .519 when swinging at the first pitch). Working the count does little good.

I had passed Ray in the halls a few times over the course of the season (he’s logged a lot of time in that film room), but he had scarcely spoken three words to me before Sunday night. Not that he’s a bad guy, or anything. Just doesn’t talk much. Smart as a whip, I’m told. I often wondered why someone with his intelligence who made millions in the States would come here and play baseball for LRS base salary. I don’t know why I did it, but I asked him if he had any plans “after baseball”.

 He said that he didn’t. He had made good money for a while in the PEBA, and had converted that money into some solid commercial real estate with the aid of his brother-in-law back in Washington State. Real estate that gave him a decent, steady income. Probably a good deal more than the $81,500 he was getting from the club. “I can pretty well do what I please,” he told me. “I guess I’ll take a year to think things over. But I’ll stay in shape. You never know. The phone might ring again.” He got up, shook my hand, and gave me a wan smile. “I better get to bed. Got a plane to catch in the morning. Thanks for the help, Kusonoki.”

 “Good luck,” I said, as he left.

 Why do I know so much about the career of Ronnie Ray? I spent the better part of the afternoon making the case for him to be left off the playoff roster in favor of Thompson. We needed a fifth outfielder, I reasoned, far more than we needed a replacement first baseman who appeared to be in a funk at just the wrong time. I lost that argument, but I hope Ray surprises me all the same. The quiet dignity with which he went through the twilight of his playing career is something I’ll remember for a long time.

I confess that I do not love baseball like some of the men I see who play the game, but seeing that passion, such as the steady passion of someone like Ronnie Ray, leads me to believe that there might be more to it than I previously imagined.