The Short and Happy Career of Ron Wright, By: Lee Jenkins
Ron Wright, who lives in Pocatello, Idaho, attends the Idaho State College of Pharmacy and is married with four children.
April 15, 2007
POCATELLO, Idaho, April 11 — Five years ago, in an otherwise forgettable baseball game between the Seattle Mariners and the Texas Rangers, a 26-year-old rookie named Ron Wright struck out, hit into a double play and hit into a triple play.
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“Best day of my professional life,” Wright said.
He was the designated hitter for the Mariners, batting seventh, making his major league debut. Kenny Rogers pitched and Alex Rodriguez played shortstop for the Rangers. The afternoon sun beat down on the Ballpark in Arlington.
Wright batted three times. He accounted for six outs. And he never played in the major leagues again.
Today, he lives in Pocatello, attends the Idaho State University College of Pharmacy and is married with four children. He has a goatee and a pickup truck. He gives hitting lessons and hunts coyotes. Some of his friends do not know he was a big-leaguer.
“There are times even I forget,” Wright said.
Baseball has had many one-game wonders, among them Walter Alston, who made the Hall of Fame as a manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and Moonlight Graham, who was memorialized in the movie “Field of Dreams.”
The one-and-done club also includes novelty acts like the 3-foot-7 Eddie Gaedel, who batted once for the St. Louis Browns, and Bert Shepard, who pitched for the Washington Senators after losing a leg in World War II.
But Wright was for real — a seventh-round draft choice by the Atlanta Braves in 1994, a three-time minor league all-star, a legitimate prospect. He remembers hitting a 505-foot home run in Charlotte and a 515-foot blast in Macon.
“He hit the ball so high,” Wright’s wife, Annica, said. “It looked like it would go into the lights.”
The Pittsburg Pirates were so smitten that they traded one of their best pitchers, Denny Neagle, to Atlanta for Wright and Jason Schmidt. The Pirates planned to use Schmidt as a starting pitcher and Wright as a first baseman for about a decade.
In September 1997, the Pirates called Wright to the big leagues. They wanted him to get a taste of his future. But because Wright had a sore wrist, the Pirates did not want him to actually play. They had to protect their investment.
“I wanted to get in a game, but it was no big deal,” Wright said. “I was 21. I had tons of years ahead of me.”
The next spring, the Pirates considered putting Wright on their opening-day roster, but they had another infielder who was out of minor league options. So they sent Wright to Class AAA Nashville, promising him that he would be back in Pittsburgh soon.
In his first week in the minors, while stretching on the outfield grass in Tucson, Wright felt a pain in his back. For a moment, he froze. Then he collapsed.
“It was like I’d been shot,” he said.
An ambulance took him from the field to a hospital behind the left-field wall. Then he flew to Los Angeles to have a disk removed from his back. He missed the 1998 season, and by the beginning of 1999 he still had not fully recovered.
Wright returned to Los Angeles for another examination. Doctors told him that his back was fine. But during the operation, his sciatic nerve had been clipped. For the rest of his life, his right leg would feel numb.
“Everything changed then,” Wright said. “I went from hoping to be a star in the big leagues to just hoping to play a game in the big leagues.”
The quest took Wright and his wife to all sorts of outposts — Durham, Akron, Greenville, Altoona, Buffalo, Toledo and Calgary. One of their daughters, Sydney, was born in Chattanooga in 2000. Two days later, the family had to move to Louisville.
Wright was still 6 feet 1 inch, 235 pounds, with a broad chest and thick arms. But he could not generate any power from his right leg. While other players were getting stronger, some undoubtedly with steroids, Wright’s game was weakening.
“It was a real disadvantage not to do steroids because so many other people were,” Wright said. “But I didn’t believe in it, and I knew it wouldn’t help my nerve.”
His right leg was always freshest early in the season, and in April 2002, Wright went on a hitting streak. He was playing in the Mariners’ farm system, for Class AAA Tacoma, on a trip through the Midwest.
After a game in Des Moines, Wright got back late to the team hotel. His roommate, Ryan Minor, was waiting with a message. The Tacoma manager, Dan Rohn, wanted to see Wright.
It turned out that Edgar Martinez, the Seattle slugger, had ruptured a hamstring tendon. The Mariners needed a right-handed hitter off the bench. Rohn told Wright to be on the first plane to Dallas the next morning. He was going to play in the big leagues.Skip to next paragraph
Wright instructed his parents not to fly there from Utah. They could see him the next week in Seattle, or the next month at Yankee Stadium. There was no rush.
For the next two days, Wright sat on the bench in Texas. On the third day, April 14, 2002, he checked the lineup card, and again he did not see his name.
But during batting practice, Seattle’s Mike Cameron hit a line drive that ricocheted off the pitcher’s screen and smacked Jeff Cirillo on the left side of the head. The ball opened a gash that required three stitches.
Wright recalled Gerald Perry, the Mariners’ hitting coach, yelling out to him: “Cirillo can’t go. You’re in there.”
Wright did not have time to be nervous. But when he stood in the batter’s box against Rogers, he told himself to take the first pitch, just to get acclimated.
“That’s my only regret,” Wright said. “I should have swung at that first pitch.”
It was an 84-mile-an-hour fastball, over the heart of the plate. Wright let it go. He did not see another hittable pitch in that at-bat, striking out meekly.
In his second at-bat, with no outs and runners on first and third, Wright just wanted to make contact. He hit a chopper up the middle, but Rogers is one of the best-fielding pitchers in baseball, and he threw to Rodriguez at second for the force.
Rubén Sierra, the runner on third, broke late for home plate. Sensing Sierra’s indecision, Rodriguez threw home. The Rangers had Sierra in a pickle.
During the rundown, Wright was waved from first base to second. Not only did the Rangers nab Sierra, but they also threw out Wright to complete the triple play.
“I could see it developing,” Mariners Manager Lou Piniella told reporters. “Like a thunderstorm on the gulf.”
Wright’s best at-bat was his third one. He got another fastball from Rogers, and this time he did not let it go. He swung hard. He made solid contact. But the ball went right to Rodriguez, who started a 6-4-3 double play.
In the Mariners’ clubhouse after the game, Wright was a source of both comedy and sympathy. Seattle’s Bret Boone presented him a lineup card. Even Rodriguez had autographed it.
The Mariners played one more game in Texas, but Wright did not start. When Seattle put runners on first and second base, Piniella walked over to Wright in the dugout. “I’d put you in,” Wright remembers Piniella saying. “But I’m afraid you’d hit into a triple play.” They both laughed.
The next day, when the Mariners arrived in Oakland, Piniella called Wright into his office before the game. Seattle had burned its bullpen in Texas. Piniella needed an extra reliever from the minors. Someone had to be sent down.
“I wish I could give you another chance up here,” Piniella said.
Wright spent one more year looking for that second chance, and looking for that first hit. But after he collided with a catcher at home plate in Richmond, his right leg gave out again. He knew it was time to retire.
“I really would have liked to get a hit in the big leagues,” Wright said. “But for me, the dream was just being there.”
Wright does not own a tape of the game in Texas. He does not have any pictures. He keeps only the lineup card, tucked away in his briefcase. The briefcase usually stays in the closet.
Wright plans to graduate from pharmacy school in two years, but he still acts like a ballplayer. In the morning, he shaves his forearms, part of a minor league superstition. In class, he plays clubhouse pranks with Kenny Jones, another athlete turned student. Even Wright’s e-mail address includes the No. 7, which he used to wear on his jersey.
He is not allowed to mope, at least not here. The former mayor of Pocatello passed an ordinance in 1948 making it illegal not to smile within the city limits.
As Wright sat in the middle of town Wednesday, surrounded by the snow-peaked Rocky Mountains, he considered the merits of such a law.
“Maybe I should be bitter because of that one game,” he said. “But I feel lucky.”
