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I started a business called Chiles Creative LLC this summer. I write and take photos under that umbrella. I'm official!
- I still use Mary Ellen Chiles Photography as a DBA (doing business as)
This spring and summer I helped several campaigns with portraits and event photos! These included:
I also continued writing for PrimeWays, 417 Biz, the Chamber of Commerce, and others.
I slowed down on Ol' Abner, my baseball site. I still took photos at occasional Cards games, but sometimes I like baseball to be a nice escape instead of a job. You can, however, find my interview with Jack Flaherty on OA, and more recent pix on my baseball Instagram.
However, I did start covering more Missouri State soccer. I also got a press pass to cover a Sporting KC match in October (I will add photos to this site pronto, but you can find some on my Instagram.
Due to the uncertainty of campaign work and the high rate of inflation, I decided to add a "day job" of sorts late this summer:
- I became a school photographer for Shutterfly. As an unschooled kid I had only one experience with picture day (Glendale High, 2002!), but it's been pretty fun. I think I am more patient because of it.
- Now, I am adding work as a family studio photographer under the Shutterfly umbrella for the winter. Will I manage? Time will tell! School photos stop until February and I like having a more consistent income stream.
Wait! There's more!
- I have also started writing feature articles for the Springfield Daily Citizen! Huzzah!
- Here's an article on opera superstar and self-proclaimed hillbilly knight Michael Spyres!
- Here's a piece on former Missouri State hockey player Louis Chaix, who rollerbladed 2900 miles across the US to raise money for a disease that nearly burned him from the inside out ...
- I've also done freelance photography for them! Check it out!
I started doing family photos!
Because I wanted to add another income stream and had never done many family photos, I decided to give it a shot. So fun! You can book here on my website by clicking on "Book Me."
Best Northern Lights? Again? Yes!
- I updated my site and switched to a different host for an easier user experience. Check it out!
I have been shooting images for campaigns, including:
Lucas Kunce for Senate
Citizens for Crystal Quade
Fogle for Missouri
Blansit for Missouri
To wit, I have written freelance pieces for the following:
Biz 417
PrimeWays
Springfield (MO) Convention and Visitors Bureau
Springfield, MO Chamber of Commerce (in process)
I am also retooling my stores at both maryellenchiles.com and bestnorthernlights.com. Stay tuned!
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Years ago I dealt with an earthquake while backpacking solo across New Zealand. I wrote a version of the story that won a creative nonfiction scholarship for the River Pretty Writers Retreat. Then, based on recommendations from the editor at Intrepid Times, I revised the piece again to reduce the number of I-statements in order to bring the reader into the scene. I like how it turned out. Take a look and let me know what you think.
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I am working on a series of interviews with minor league baseball players to find out how they have been affected by COVID-19. I'm curious how they are handling the de facto work stoppage professionally and personally. Some have home gyms. Others are working for Postmates to make ends meet. You can find these interviews 1-2x a week on my baseball site, Ol' Abner.
** The site name comes from the scenario in which a team is down in the ninth inning but has their best hitters coming up to bat. When this happens, national treasure and St. Louis broadcaster Mike Shannon will boom: "Ol' Abner has done it again!" This is a reference to Abner Doubleday, who was traditionally considered the inventor of baseball. Alas, it ain't so, but the saying sticks.
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I forgot him as I walked to the back of the neighborhood Walmart, scanning aisles filled to the ceiling with shampoo and diapers. Then I stopped at the final aisle.
Oh.
I left empty-handed but stopped at the Girl Scouts selling cookies outside the store. The homeless man was there, with his new aloe vera bottle and his old backpack.
"Well, I can't buy anything but ... here's a dollar," he said, and dropped a crumpled bill into a woman's hands. Stunned, the kids and adults stared at him as he walked away.
"Wait, excuse me," I said, running toward him. "Can I buy you a box? What's your favorite?"
"Ah, that's ok," he said.
"No, really, what's your favorite?" I asked, "Or, are there any you don't like?"
"I'll eat any of 'em," he relented, "Whatever you pick."
"These are my favorite, I said, shoving a box of peanut butter patties in his hands.
The scouts and their parents thanked me as a woman swiped my card.
"Well, he gave you guys a dollar, and he couldn't buy anything!" I said.
And I added - to be impish, but it's true:
"I'm not a scout, but we all have to be Girl Scouts right now."
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I am extremely bummed as I looked forward to seeing old pals there and pushing myself creatively.
But given the long incubation period and that Seattle is a hotbed for the virus, it just doesn't seem wise to travel there and potentially expose myself and others to such an illness.
As I have been thinking lately: I don't have living grandparents, but other people do.
So instead, I'm in the Ozarks freelancing (photo and text) until May and covering baseball.
Update: not watching baseball because of postponement. But still writing about it at OlAbner.com.
Mid-May I'm heading to Brooks Lodge at Katmai National Park for a four-month-long hospitality job.
Feel free to look around my site for those northern light prints for the traveler in your life ...
Of course, I've been listening to news about the Mueller Report all day like it's a holiday.
I kept listening for the sake of Fresh Air if you will:
a report on pitches from the Tyler Kepner, author of K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches.
This is how pitchers used to scuff the ball or let it be scuffed without throwing the ball away.
I was reminded of playing ball with Ben. He was maybe 19 or 20, and he was visiting a lodge in Alaska with some relatives. They planned to float down the river for 6 days but first spent the night at the fishing lodge where I worked.
I sat at the bar with his family.
"He's a professional, you know," his aunt said.
"I bet I can take him," I said.
Silence.
For Ben was known on YouTube for what he did with a wiffle ball. Cut it and throw it and watch it dance.
My first summer in Alaska I bought a wiffle bat and ball in Anchorage during the mid-season break, and the fishing guides and I played: a power line near the fish cleaning table served as the center field fence.
The guides were impressed by my bat speed.
They didn't know I had spent hundreds of hours playing ball with my brothers and cousin at a field named after a professional player and third cousin, Jerry Lumpe.
My twin and I played catch in our 80-foot driveway every single afternoon. He built a backstop out of netting and PVC pipe. Any hits meant sprinting up and down the driveway while the pitcher searched for the ball in the drainage ditch. If the ball got caught in the wet leaves across the street, the hitter kept running.
Back to Alaska. Ben brought his own bat and balls, in case he wanted to add content to his YouTube channel while playing on a wild river in the far north.
He showed me how he scraped plastic away with a kitchen knife.
This time, our field was the lawn in front of the wooden lodge building, with bases punctuated by stinging nettles.
Helpfully, he announced each pitch before he threw it.
He stood 45 feet away. It wasn't the speed, but the movement.
The ball hung up then swooped down. The next one darted from side to side.
I stood as the rain began to fall, swinging away.
Once, I fouled the ball off.
But I could not get the ball in play.
Neither of us wanted to stop playing.
I was mad I couldn't connect.
But after we went to dinner, which I served to Ben and his family, I stepped away for a second.
I looked in the mirror and counted eight bruises the size of wiffle balls.
But Ben said he would still want me on his team.
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Earlier this year ago I sat down in the Missouri State University baseball players lounge with a shortstop from Warsaw, MO. He’s the best player from the area since – I suppose – his brother, who was drafted by Tampa Bay in the third round in 2011. (Jonny Eierman is now coaching.) My cousin, Jerry Lumpe, a former major leaguer, was from Warsaw, and we used to play on their high school baseball field during family reunions.
Jeremy, 21, played for the USA Baseball National Collegiate Team, and in the famed Cape Cod League, last summer.
He’s rated among Baseball America’s top 20 prospects.
“Do you have a pro team in mind?” I ask.
“Not really, I mean, whatever happens, happens.”
It helps that his former teammate, Jake Burger, went through draft scrutiny last year.
“I was his roommate on the road and pretty good friends and so I kinda saw how it goes and how it works last year,” Eierman said.
He doesn’t have time to worry, and he relaxes with two of the most meditative exercises I can think of.
“My hobbies are pretty much hunting and fishing … like mainly in summer I’ll do some fishing whenever I have a little bit of free time. I don’t really get that much of a chance in the summer because I’m usually playing baseball somewhere.”
Boy, Interrupted
We’re interrupted by catcher Drew Millas who is carrying a bag from McAlister’s Deli and about 80 ounces of sweet tea. He’s wearing a gray shirt and not quite matching pants. He asks if it’s okay to eat in the room while I chat with Eierman. Sure, if he’ll explain his fashion.
“I wear whatever I want,” he insists.
“Confidence is key,” I say.
“And it can be a problem sometimes, obviously. Now this guy, on the other hand,” Millas says.
“I look good,” Eierman says. He’s on brand. Maroon.
“He’s pretty reserved,” Drew says.
“Very,” Jeremy agrees.
“He seems reserved,” I say.
“Oh, I wear whatever,” he says.
“He wears whatever,” Millas parrots.
“I usually come in with a camo jacket,” Jeremy admits.
“No one can find you then,” I suggest.
“Exactly. That’s the goal,” Eierman says.
“So you’re not necessarily interested in getting a lot of extra attention,” I ask.
“No, no, no. I’d rather have none.”
37 Pieces of Flair
But he’ll likely get drafted in the first round of the MLB draft. It helps that he doesn’t mind heckling from opposing fans.
“When you guys were playing TCU (in the Super Regional) you seemed play up the villain character, kind of smirking a lot,” I said.
“That’s just a bad umpire there. That’s all that was,” Eierman says,
Millas defends him. “People go after J-Bone, he – ”
“I go to a different level of competition,” Jeremy says.
Millas explains.
“He did that at Illinois State when they were – he hit a ball to the wall and he thought it was out and started trotting a little bit and they caught it. They were chirpin’. Then he came back with a little flair,” he said.
The flair. Not just in those curly locks.
“He’s got it, it’s in there,” Millas says.
“If I gotta bring it out – the team’s gotta bring it out of me,” Jeremy explains.
So why not have teammates bring it out so it’s always there?
“I don’t know – it’d be tough if we were needling him all the time,” Millas says. “That would be hard just because of how well respected he is.”
Let him count the ways.
“Just everything. He’s a good player, good leader, good role model.”
Awwww.
“Appreciate that, Drew,” Jeremy says with a shy smile.
“Does (Millas) tell you these things?” I ask Eierman.
“Of course I don’t tell him that,” Drew says.
That Guy in the Other Dugout
I switch topics to a different villain. A very likable villain who got poached by the Bears’ rival.
“You looking forward to playing Arkansas and your ol’ nemesis coach, Thompson?” I ask.
“Yeah. I think we’re all excited to go down there,” Eierman says.
Millas asks when the game will be. I say April 17 because I have a night class I may or may not attend that Tuesday.
“How does (new coach Matt) Lawson compare to Thompson as far as the movement of arms? They seem like very different personalities,” I ask.
One is very animated. The other less so.
They are both, however, as my mother would describe me, “Fairly intense.”
“I mean they’re both pretty good hitting coaches,” Eierman says.
“At this point, you kinda have your routine,” I mention.
“Yeah, I mean, Lawson hasn’t come in and tried to change anything drastically so that’s good,” Eierman says.
“That’s good because you’d have a bat in your hands,” I say.
Hair today; thank God it’s gone
Naturally, at one point I ask them to tell me who has the worst hair on this team.
Millas compares Eierman’s curls favorably to pitcher Dylan Coleman’s, eh, nest.
“Coleman’s is way worse,” Drew says.
“Way worse – Dylan’s is bad,” Eierman says.
Millas plays the mediator when I defend Coleman.
“I can see where you’re coming from, they’re both kinda bushy, but that’s controlled, Dylan’s is –
“I can control mine. Dylan’s? He doesn’t trim the sides,” Eierman says.
Besides, the shortstop resembles a television star.
“Jeremy looks like a character from “Stranger Things,” Millas insists.
You judge.
Since he's running for a president - I recall the time I met Howard Schultz:
He was wearing a navy blue hat with a yellow M for Michigan, standing in line at a coffee shop.
He was about 6 foot and wore a running shirt. Most people ran or bicycled to the local Starbucks on Saturday mornings. I lived at 31st Street and walked down the steps and roads for my 5 a.m. shift every day. It was only 15 minutes to the store on Lakeside.
I’d seen this man a couple of times before.
The first time he visited he thanked me several times for his double-short latte, 2/3 full. After he said goodbye and the door clanged behind him, I turned to a barista.
"Can you believe how polite that guy was?" I asked.
"That’s Howard Schultz!" she cried.
A month or so later, on that Saturday, he ordered his usual latte and an egg sandwich. Bleary-eyed, I set pastries and coffee cake in the oven, then slid the food into paper bags. I called out the items as I walked to the end of the counter, then returned to my station. The faces changed but the line extended to the door on weekends.
Shortly after he ordered, I took out a sandwich and placed it in the bag.
"That’s mine," he said and started walking toward the end of the counter to meet me.
"No, it’s Ken’s sandwich!" I said and met eyes with a gay doctor in his 50s who visited the shop daily. I dropped off the food. Ken smiled.
"Oh," Howard said.
He returned to pastry counter and waited, standing just a bit back and out of line.
I turned to him.
"This is like when the Tigers’ pitchers made 5 errors in the 2006 World Series. Things don’t always go as we would like."
He looked at me and laughed.
"You know, I was at that last World Series the Cardinals won," he said.
"I was, too!" I shrieked. "But I was in standing room."
I scribbled initials on croissants and spinach feta wraps and tossed them in the oven as we chatted. His sandwich. I heated his breakfast in the order in which it was received.
The oven dinged.
He didn’t ask for it.
"Hold on," he said instead.
He took out his iPhone and began scrolling through photos. He waved at me to leave the oven and come over. He showed me some pictures:
There he was, standing with his wife on the baseball field. Busch Stadium.
There he was, standing with Tony LaRussa.
Standing with an old man in a red jacket.
"Do you know who that is?" he asked.
"That’s Stan Musial," I stammered.
He smiled.
"I can’t believe you were on the field!" I said.
I told him how time had slowed down when Fernando Salas threw wildly to second base, and when Matt Holliday got picked off third, and when the ball fell to the field beyond the reach of Nelson Cruz. It was like when McGwire played.
"We were both at the game!" we said.
Howard smiled at me.
"Now we have that in common!" he said.
And then, he picked up his breakfast.
"I can't believe you made him wait!" a barista said later.
"You made him wait?" my supervisor said. "You should've just heated his food first."
I never even considered it.
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I took notes.
In other news, I am working on turning my thesis into an ebook. My thesis was a collection of short essays about working in Alaska fishing lodges.
Stay tuned …
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I sat down with Jack Duffy last spring. Soon after, my computer crashed.
After rewriting my term papers, I finished my Master’s and moved to Alaska to work for four months. This year I also dealt with a few episodes of depression that made writing - or publishing - pretty difficult. I'm doing better, though, and I returned to the Arctic this winter for the adventure.
You can find some glimpses of life here on my Instagram. I'll be back in the Midwest - and Hammons Field - in April. Still, I always meant to publish my conversation with Duffy - if I could find it.
This month, I dug out an extra hard drive. Eureka.
At the time of our chat in April, Duffy was planning to play in the Coastal Plain League in Wilson, NC, during the summer. He did. For a while.
Hopes
Duffy plans to keep playing baseball as long as he can, keeping an eye on professional ball after graduation. Still, his parents run an HVAC marketing company in Kansas City. If baseball doesn’t work out, he will join them and his brother in the family business.
His mom is "The face of the company, and my dad helps her out," Duffy said.
Jack has worked for them during the summer, sorting files like photos for advertising campaigns, among other things.
I wondered if having entrepreneurial parents helped him think about marketing himself as a high school player.
"There were definitely some people that helped me," he said, mentioning Prep Baseball Report and Perfect Game, USA.
"You’d go to camps and they’d push your numbers and talk about what kind of skills you had. But for Missouri State I reached out to Coach Guttin, and he told me to sign up for one of their winter camps and come in here and so they could get a look at me."
He committed as a junior.
"I felt like it was a really good situation with what they had to offer me and the facilities and the coaches that they had here. I’d say I made a pretty good choice based on how our year went last year. I just feel like the coaches here do a great job."
So, though, they may not have written his ad campaign, I assumed his business-savvy parents helped him learn resilience.
He agreed. But there was more to it.
Mom
Jack was in 5th grade when his mom was diagnosed with breast cancer.
"It definitely gives you a different perspective on a lot of different things whenever you go through something like that, and see your mom go through something like that. You’re pretty up close and personal with everything that she’s going through."
10 years old.
"It was pretty serious but at the time they kind of kept that from me because they didn’t want a kid that young really knowing that much stuff about it," Duffy said.
He’s close with his parents and has adopted their food habits, even in college.
"One of the things that she started doing was turning her diet around and taking stuff out of her diet, so we ate pretty healthy a lot of the time," Jack said.
He still tries to eat well.
"I kind of adopted that kind of diet and eating throughout high school. I stopped eating a lot of fried foods and didn’t really drink much soda and candy and all that – it was just a lot of grilled stuff and healthy food."
She’s been cancer-free for a while now, Duffy said.
Still, he was able to concentrate on being a child. His parents made sure of it.
"They definitely did a good job of trying to keep my life pretty much the same as what it always was before they found out about it, just so I wasn’t stressed out and worrying and knowing everything that was going on," Jack said.
Life now
Even now, he tries to stay upbeat during the highs and lows.
"I definitely try to be more optimistic and positive about a lot of different situations and sometimes it can be difficult to think that way but I just try to stay in that mindset," he said.
He still appreciates playing baseball.
"You have to think about, like, you get to do this. Not a large group of people get to continue playing baseball after high school so you have to think about the fact – not along the lines of 'Oh, I have to go to practice today' – but it’s a privilege to be here and getting to play this game still."
That sounds like Aaron Meyer. I told him I’d heard the same philosophy from his former teammate, who missed the end of his senior year with a serious knee injury. Meyer is now a graduate assistant with the team.
"Meyer’s the person that comes to mind when he says that, like before the game," Duffy said: 'You get to be here you get a play game against people.' They talk about how fast four years goes by and I’m thinking, 'it’s four years.'"
Now he’s a junior.
A Bad Turn
Duffy had to take Meyer’s advice to heart after suffering a torn ACL while running out a ground ball during summer ball.
He’s now five months post-operation and intends to be ready when the Bears start play in February.
He calls the rehab "intense."
"You have to push yourself if you want to actually get anything out of the rehab and get back to sports in a timely manner.”
Still, he admits to envying his teammates who got to play scrimmages this October.
"While sitting out for the fall, there were numerous times where I’d be angry or jealous at the fact that I wasn’t able to be out there with everyone else. But there’s a positive in that, too. It really helps you to have an appreciation for the game and helps you realize some of the things you may have taken for granted before."
He said he's focused on healing his knee by the time the Bears start play on February 15 in Texas.
"Right now I’m definitely working to get my knee back to 100% so that I can even play," he said.
A healthy Duffy in right field will help Missouri State with the junior's other objectives.
"My main goal for this year is to win a lot of games and multiple championships," Duffy said.
As always, his mom’s cancer battle continues to inspire him, and his own comeback.
"With my mom, it always helps me. I may not always directly see it, but the perspective gained from her battles is always there," Jack said.
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Next up - Alaska!
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You remember Aaron Meyer. As a senior second baseman for Missouri State, he tore his patellar tendon running to first base last April. We'd never spoken, but I watched from behind home plate. Late that night I wrote one of my favorite essays ever, and with his encouragement, I shared it widely.
"I walk everywhere now"
I visited him at Hammons Field a few weeks ago. He needs a semester-long internship to complete his sports administration degree, but he's spending this year working as a student assistant. He helps out at men's soccer and football games, and he works with the baseball Bears.
We sat down in a conference room. A couple of pitchers lifted weights down the hall, strengthened by heavy metal blaring over the speakers.
Meyer does physical therapy three times a week and hopes to regain full mobility within three months.
I asked him about that injury.
“I can’t compare it to anything. It was the absolute worst pain of my entire life for about a minute. And then I kinda went into shock, and I didn’t feel anything except when they tried to bend it,” he said and laughed.
Then came surgeries. April 27. May 15. June 11. July 13. Complications, and visits with infectious disease doctors. Antibiotics every eight hours for two months. He described a hematoma removal as “one of the gnarliest things you’ll ever see,” but he smiles. He has a video, but I feel faint at the very idea.
So, how is he, anyway?
Thrilled.
“People take the tiniest things for granted, and I don’t think I ever will again in my life. It’s being able to do something as easy as bending your leg – and I tell myself every day there could be 100 things worse. So, I’m very blessed to be where I’m at now.”
Home for summer
He planned to spend the summer coaching with Bears graduate assistant coach Geoff Jimenez in the Show-Me Collegiate League in Ozark, Missouri, but had to return to Belleville, Illinois, to recover instead.
“I don’t think I could ever thank my parents enough for the support and everything they did for me. They had to put up with me. I don’t think it was a scheduled summer at home, but the more I see them, the better.”
He also had strangers reaching out to him on Twitter and Instagram, and old friends bringing meals.
All that time gave him room to think about theology, and sit and wonder about what used to be, and what happens next.
“My original dream was always to play Division I college baseball. And after I checked it off the list, my next goal was to play professional ball.”
Meyer was talking to “more than half of the MLB teams,” but got injured about six weeks before the draft. His best buddy, Jake Burger, was drafted in the first round. They text nearly every day.
But Meyer also loves coaching. He works with Missouri State hitters and infielders, and he helps local high school players prepare for college ball.
“Some people feel like they have to go to their job every day. Now I get to come here every day, and that’s how all the players are. I mean, you get to do this. You’re getting some - if not all - of your college paid for and you get to play college baseball.”
He’s still working to get into playing shape. He’d love to play independent ball, but he doesn’t worry about the past.
“In the last four years of playing ball here, I didn’t take anything for granted. I laid my heart out there every single game and … I wouldn’t have gone back and done anything different. Injuries happen, and it just happened to be a long-term one,” he said.
I say he must be tougher now, then stumble to recant it.
"You can say that," he said and smiled.
He's looking at master's programs for fall 2018, but his next goal is no less inspiring:
“When I can run, I’ll run everywhere.”
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If you missed it, check out part one. Ryan Casteel plays first base for the Double-A Arkansas Travelers, and a month ago we chatted.
So, I asked. How do you deal with failure, anyway?
"You can hit a ball on the screws and it gets caught at the wall or a line drive out, like – you gonna be mad? You did all you could do and once it leaves the bat there’s nine versus one," Ryan Casteel said.
I'd never thought of it that way.
"I think you just have to be able to realize that when you did something good and you’re not rewarded – that you did something good and you go on."
I told him it seemed like he had it figured out. He laughed.
"I haven’t figured it out! I still get mad, believe me, but it makes it easier," he said.
I mentioned I’d spent some time in a college dugout this spring, and that the coaches were always telling players to "Stay up."
I wish I had someone encouraging me at my job all the time, I told him, and I laughed.
But it’s different in the minors, I’ve noticed. Sure, I might hear someone yell "Boy!" on a foul ball, but not during every at-bat, like they do in college.
"The coaches are always encouraging us but the pro level is different in a sense – there’s less, like, cheerleading going on in the dugout," Casteel. "This team is a little older so we know we have to stay up, whereas with the college guys you’re dealing with 18-21-year-olds, and in all reality, they haven’t dealt with the same adversity these older guys have dealt with."
And when he doesn’t hit the way he wants?
"I tell myself 'you just gotta compete better next at-bat,'" he said.
And there are more at-bats, after all. For now.
"We get close to 500 plate appearances a year; you’re obviously not going to compete well on every one of them. I think if you have a 'you versus the pitcher' mentality, and you’re really competitive you can get away with not having your best swing that night and still having success," he said.
After I took the photo I looked up Casteel on social media, and I noticed he’s a religious guy. Sure, I read Sports Spectrum as a kid, even though every issue featured Reggie White or David Robinson, and players talked about the emptiness winning brings. So, what does faith really mean to a professional athlete?
"It makes it easier if I go 0-4; it keeps that perspective that God’s got a plan and if it’s meant to be it’ll be," Casteel said.
I took a breath and wished I had the same ideas I used to have.
"But at the same time, that doesn’t keep me from working to achieve what I want to achieve – does that make sense? I don’t just sit back and hope things happen - I try to make things happen," Casteel said.
Okay. That I can understand.
As I mentioned, Casteel's wife – who earned a degree in human development, with minors in business and theology – works as a personal assistant during the off-season.
(I’ve done the same thing in Springfield and Seattle.)
So, Ryan focuses on training year-round, coaching a bit during the winter, too.
I have to ask.colleg
Do you ever get tired of playing baseball?
He laughs.
"No, I don’t. I’ve been like that forever."
He mentioned he played basketball, too, as a kid. Lately, I’ve been reading about kids specializing in sports at a young age, so I asked him what he thought.
"I recommend that kids play every sport they can play. My only regret is not playing football in high school. In all reality, I probably wouldn’t have been very good at it,” he said, and he laughed again.
"I regret not trying," he said.
It’s funny, though. I wanted to write about Casteel because I wondered how players still go on chasing dreams when it doesn't come easily.
The thing is - he tries.
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Originally published on my website Ol' Abner on July 24, 2017
I took a photo of this ballplayer in June and I wondered how he got here. So I wrote this:
"Can he hit a curveball? How many times has he taken cuts at batting cages attached to mini-golf courses? Maybe he doesn’t like to carry change, those quarters clinking in his pockets. I wonder if he had to miss the family reunion for a tournament when he was 15.
Does he read The Atlantic? Does he ever think about playing in Japan instead of a Double-A team in Arkansas? I wonder if he ever gets tired of playing long toss and whether he chews on ginger candy so he doesn’t get motion sickness during 12-hour bus rides."
(Excerpt, "The Ballad of an Unknown Ballplayer." OlAbner.com. 29 June 2017.)
I guessed, but I was curious about the truth. So, I added the photo to Instagram and asked for an interview. A couple of days later we chatted on the phone for about 20 minutes. His team, the Arkansas Travelers, had just finished batting practice prior to a game against the Northwest Arkansas Naturals in Little Rock.
Ryan Casteel, 26, is a first baseman playing in his eighth professional season, his second in the Seattle Mariners’ organization. He's advanced as far as Triple-A with the Colorado Rockies.
“I’ve had good years and I’ve had some unfortunate injuries, but when you work so hard from such a young age, the dream never really dies,” he said.
Buses are easier with busses; his wife travels with him to games within the division. She works as a personal assistant during the off-season, and he trains year-round.
“We don’t have any kids, and we really have no responsibilities, so it’s easy,” Ryan said.
I brought up a recent Missouri State player, Jake Burger, who was drafted 11th overall by the Chicago White Sox this June. I mentioned that we, the fans, expect him to reach the majors right away. Maybe it's the $3.7 million signing bonus, or maybe it was watching him hit a ball over the scoreboard.
“I think the misconception is you get drafted, then you’re in the minor leagues for three or four years, then you’re in the big leagues,” Casteel said. “I think the average age to actually break into the big leagues is 25-26. People see Bryce Harper, Mike Trout, and they think that’s everybody, but I’ve played with guys who didn’t get called up until they were 30.”
I wondered if he gets discouraged. He doesn’t.
“If you get discouraged you’re just doing yourself a disservice. You gotta enjoy it. I know a lot of people would give a lot to be able to do what we do – whether it’s Double-A, Rookie ball. They’d give anything to play professional baseball.”
And he’s been close to the majors.
“I thought I was on the fast track. I was in Double-A when I was 22 years old in Tulsa, had a good year, and the next year I went to Triple-A. I was hitting .380 in June and I’m thinking ‘Man, I’m gonna be in the big leagues soon’ – and then I got hurt and then you realize how the game really works.”
And if you get called up to the majors after all this time, and you only have 20 at-bats to prove yourself?
Casteel says he channels the pressure, and with good reason:
"If you can’t handle the pressure you can’t play in the big leagues,” he said. "You got 30,000 people watching you play every night and you’re trying to win – if you don’t perform you’re not gonna be there too long."
Next up, in part 2 of our conversation: handling failure, how faith affects him, regrets, and the age-old question - do you ever get tired of baseball?
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I can look him up. He’s already given me his number.
It’s on his jersey.
I didn’t notice his expression until after I clicked through my camera to get rid of shots filled with clouds and foul poles, jersey buttons and blurred faces.
Did he get drafted in round 36 after graduation but decide to play on the dusty fields of a junior college in Texas instead? I wonder if his high school girlfriend found someone else.
Can he hit a curveball? How many times has he taken cuts at batting cages attached to mini-golf courses? Maybe he doesn’t like to carry change, those quarters clinking in his pockets. I wonder if he had to miss the family reunion for a tournament when he was 15.
Does he read The Atlantic? Does he ever think about playing in Japan instead of a Double-A team in Arkansas? I wonder if he ever gets tired of playing long toss and whether he chews on ginger candy so he doesn’t get motion sickness during 12-hour bus rides.
I suppose I could ask.
I didn’t. But I looked him up after writing this and realized he’d been drafted seven years ago.
Round 17. Cleveland State CC. Cleveland, TN. He was picked by Colorado but now he’s in the Seattle Mariners’ organization. He’s played in AAA. Injured, traded, and released at different times.
Does he wonder if he will make it?
Years ago someone told me the fun is in the fight. But I don't know how you stay content in the work without losing sight of the end goal.
"At least you tried," I could tell Ryan Casteel. Okay. I could tell myself.
But what about -
so keep trying.
]]>This spring and early summer I covered the Missouri State Bears on their journey to the NCAA Super Regionals in Ft. Worth, Texas. I earned my first-ever media credentials for independent photography during the postseason.
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He cracks the ball and races down the basepath, lunging to avoid the Missouri pitcher’s tag. And he falls to the ground.
I don’t know him, Aaron Meyer, but I can imagine that as a child he wrapped rubber bands around his glove and tucked it under his mattress.
Perhaps he flung a tennis ball against the garage door, fielding the ball barehanded and throwing it across his body. Then he did it again.
I assume he played Little League, donning his favorite player's jersey and wearing stirrups pulled up to his knees. Maybe he asked his parents to hit him grounders over and over again. Catch and throw; catch and throw.
Then, as a teen, he led his Illinois team. He led them. He did it with ground balls and long toss; sliding practice and BP. They took bus rides and talked music and girls. He sifted through offers from colleges and took his ACTs. Cap and gown, and a chance to play at Missouri State for a legendary coach.
He was the school's Rookie of the Year. The next year his Bears made the College World Series. As a junior, he started at second base and hit in 20 straight games. Maybe he wondered if he could play after graduation.
This year I saw him play, a guy with blonde curls and a dimple, socks pulled to his knees and a penchant for turning ground balls into double plays: Eierman to Meyer to Paulsen.
Then tonight.
He walks up to his song. Ayokay: Kings of Summer.
Run with the feeling
of being alive while we’re still young
He stands, digs his cleats into the dirt, and watches the ball fly from the pitcher’s hand. He swings, and he runs, and he collides with that pitcher on the tag.
And he falls. He stays face-down in the grass with clenched fists. The PA system pounds 80s rock into his ears.
His teammates – roommates, best friends, brothers – stay close and say he's gonna be okay. Maybe they say they're sorry. Maybe they don't say anything. A trainer gently rubs Aaron's back.
He has games to play: three more at home; a couple more road trips, and a conference tournament. Maybe they'll keep playing after that, even as his third baseman gets drafted and puts off rookie ball for a visit to Omaha.
But right now, he can’t move. The trainers summon a stretcher, and aides lift him onto it. They leave on a gurney.
And then this:
Even as his quad screams with pain. Even as he sobs. Even as he breathes. Even as he leaves his beloved diamond on a stretcher. Even as he wonders.
He lies on the stretcher face-up, and he hugs his trainer, his teammates, his coach. The aides slowly move the gurney through the red dirt behind home plate. He raises his fist to the crowd as they clap and roar. The aides gently push the gurney by his home dugout:
This place - full of gum wrappers, and sesame seeds, and paper cups, and friends. Roommates. Brothers. His place. Theirs.
His teammates pat him on the arm and the chest. The aides carefully guide Aaron out of the stadium.
And perhaps this night he cries, and he curses, and so does everyone who loves him. Soon, rest, and rehab, and worries, and resolve.
But he does not weep alone.
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"I just started throwing money on people ..."
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