Play Until You Drop

Sitting in the window of Ryan Chastain’s South Fort Myers apartment, right next to the Christmas tree, is a sparkling, lit-up baseball. Just down the street from the Fort Myers Miracle stadium, Chastain’s home is a shrine to his love of all things baseball. A picture of Babe Ruth hangs on the wall, and DVD copies of practically every baseball movie ever made sit by the television. The Natural, Field of Dreams, Major League, they are all here.

Chastain, 27, has immersed himself in the game ever since his father took him to Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium to see the Braves play the Cardinals when he was five years old.

“I fell in love with it, the players seemed like Gods to me, how they were revered,” Chastain said.

There is no doubting his passion for the sport. Beneath his weathered Yankees cap his eyes light up when he talks about the time in high school when he gave up a grand slam in the first inning of the North Carolina playoffs, only to shut down the opposing team for the next eight innings with 18 strikeouts.

“My dream growing up was to pitch in game 7 of the World Series in Yankee Stadium with my dad and grandfather watching in the stands,” Chastain said as he chewed tobacco at his dining room table. “I would look at my dad and say ‘I did it.’ It didn’t even matter how I pitched in the game.”

Back in high school, there was nothing Chastain liked more than the control and rush he felt while mowing down batters from opposing schools.

“There’s nothing better in the world than when you strike someone out, and they look at you and you look back knowing you got the best of them,” Chastain said.

Now, he can’t stand going to games. Not while sciatica – a nerve condition that causes intense pain in the legs and lower back – has relegated him to the bench for the season.

In 2001 Chastain was out of baseball, he left Greensboro College in North Carolina and moved down to Fort Myers to be near his family. His talent made him a star at Hendersonville High School but couldn’t make up for his partying lifestyle in college. The game he loved had become a chore.

Photo by Tovin Lapan

After moving to Florida, and taking a short break from the diamond, he started to get the itch to play again. One day he dialed the number from a classified ad in the paper looking for people interested in playing recreational league baseball. The founder of the Fort Myers Baseball League and team manager of the Fort Myers Hitmen, Greyson Huber answered the phone.

Huber and Chastain became quick friends. Like Chastain, and most of the players in the league, Huber possesses the love of baseball and passion for sport and competition that calls him to the field. Chastain went undefeated in his first season with the Hitmen and the bitter taste from his last season in college subsided.

“When we step on that field we are the best team in baseball, we can beat anybody,” Chastain said about playing with the Hitmen.

******

It’s morning and Huber is tired. Over the thick strips of black on his cheeks his weary eyes squint toward the field. He and some of the other Hitmen attended a bachelor party at a strip club the night before and got little sleep before their game.

“I thought about just sleeping in my uniform when I got home last night,” Huber said. “But I ended up just crashing on the couch for an hour and then coming here.”

Unless they are out of town or deathly ill, these guys won’t miss game day. After working their regular jobs all week, they can’t wait for Sunday.

Of course Chastain isn’t in attendance. He tried coming out to support the Hitmen for a few games but couldn’t bear to not be on the field.

“I got the love back for baseball with the Hitmen. I couldn’t sleep on Saturday nights because I was so excited for the game on Sunday,” said Chastain, who is hoping that therapy will relieve his sciatica and he can return to the field in March.

Huber, 28, has played baseball his whole life and wasn’t willing to give it up after he failed to make it through try outs with several major league teams, including the Houston Astros. That’s why he is so passionate about the league he started, which has grown from four to nine teams in just one year. He loves the competition, constantly chatting up his teammates, diving for grounders, and looking to steal that extra base. The shortstop throws his solid but slight 180-pound body around with complete abandon, a teammate’s dream who hustles on every second and sacrifices his own safety to make the play.

Photo by Tovin Lapan

“David Eckstein pisses me off,” Huber said of the diminutive St. Louis Cardinals shortstop and 2006 World Series MVP. “Because I know I’m better than him.”

The Hitmen are playing the other top team in the league, the San Carlos All-Stars, on the Estero High School baseball field. A handful of supporters cheer from the stands, mostly family and friends of the players.

Hank Woodman, who was signed by the Minnesota Twins after starring as a pitcher at Estero High School, is dominating. By the fourth inning, Woodman, who retired last year after making it as high as AAA, is protecting a 1 – 0 lead in the fourth inning and has already fanned seven batters throwing every kind of pitch imaginable from cut fastballs to knuckleballs. He is pitching on a torn labrum, which forces him to throw sidearm instead of his typical overhand motion.

With the Hitmen at bat, Huber is working the umpire from the dugout, while other guys smoke cigarettes, down Gatorade, trade tips on hitting and talk of their Saturday night exploits.

“What!? How the f*** was that a strike,” Huber shouts at the umpire.

Despite the residual affects of last night’s partying, the Hitmen cruise to a 7 – 2 win behind Woodman’s 16 strikeout complete game.

“I think we could beat the FGCU team,” Hitman Kris Landry said as the game wound down.

Although no one pays for tickets and there are no bright lights, the competitive spirit and sometimes the quality of play, are on par with any minor league or high school game.

“The main difference with these guys is the movement on their pitches,” said league umpire Diane Klucka. “They get a lot more movement than the high school kids.”

The Love of the Game

The son of a high school All-American in football and a cheerleader, Chastain grew up in Hendersonville, North Carolina with a love for sports. He was short, chubby, and nothing special as a young athlete. But when he was 13 he sprouted six inches upward and slimmed down.

That year, he pitched his little league team to a championship before taking his scorching fastball and devastating curve to high school.

“When I was 15 I was throwing 91 mph and had a good curve. The kind of curve that makes guys fall over,” Chastain said.

As a three-sport star at Hendersonville High School, Chastain soaked up the attention and enjoyed the accolades. He loved being a big shot, maybe a little too much.

“I had problems with partying, women, alcohol. I was cocky, which was good on the field. But I needed to leave it on the field, and I didn’t,” Chastain said.

By his senior year he had grown to 6’2” and went 15 –1 with a 1.02 ERA and 164 strikeouts in 92 innings. Division I schools and major league scouts were interested, but not enough to overlook his partying lifestyle.

Chastain wasn’t offered a full ride to any of the big programs, and ended up taking a scholarship to Lenoir Rhyne College, a school in rural North Carolina. An overconfident city kid, he didn’t fit in well at the school and his drinking only picked up.

“I was all fake. I thought I was God’s gift to women,” he said.

After seeing little action his freshman year he agreed with the coach that Lenoir Rhyne was not a good fit for him and transferred to Greensboro College.

“[In college] baseball became a job, it was hard work,” Chastain said. “I started to hate the game. I hated the smells, everything to do with baseball.”

After another disappointing year at Greensboro, he quit baseball and moved to Southwest Florida to be near his father in 2001. After getting counseling for his alcohol abuse, the urge to be out on the mound returned and Chastain found Huber and the Hitmen.

“My first game with the Hitmen gave me that confidence back,” Chastain said. “I love being on the field again. All the partying seemed empty to me after being back on a team.”

The Fort Myers baseball league is a gathering of baseball junkies, most played in high school, some in college and the minor leagues.

Every year the champion of the Fort Myers league plays the top team from the South Florida Baseball League based out of Miami. Scouts will often attend these recreational league tournaments and all-star games looking for that rare find, the 23-year-old with good skills who somehow slipped through high school or college unnoticed.

But most of the players have missed their window, and they know it.

“For that age group, 99 percent of those guys have played themselves out of being prospects,” said Cleveland Indians scout Steve Abney.

There are always anomalies, like pitcher Jimmy Morris who made it to the majors when he was 30 years old, and was featured in the movie The Rookie. But stories like Morris’ are clearly the exception.

“This is about competing but still having fun,” said Woodman, who played in Mexico, Taiwan, and U.S. minor leagues before giving up professional baseball for a new career in real estate. Woodman says he threw in the high 90s before a shoulder injury affected his velocity while he was in the minor leagues.

Chastain, who was scouted by major league teams while in high school, knows his time has passed too. His fastball now tops out in the high 80s instead of the mid-90s, and he is an old man compared to the 17 year-old phenoms “the show” is looking for. After letting his partying get out of control in college, he acknowledges that perhaps it was best that he never made it.

“If I would have made it playing major league baseball, the off the field activities would’ve ruined me,” Chastain said.

Spreading the Love

Photo by Tovin Lapan

A couple weeks after their game with the San Carlos All-Stars, the Hitmen stand at 6 –1, and are looking like the favorite to win the league championship and the opportunity to play the South Florida League champ in February. Two new teams have joined the league for this season, and Huber couldn’t be happier.

“There are tons of guys out there who haven’t played in a long time, and think they can’t cut it anymore,” Huber said. “But once they get back out there and remember how much they love the game they can’t quit. Guys who started with the Hitmen have now gone off and started their own teams.”

Right now though Huber is more concerned with the current game than growing the league. The Hitmen are losing to the Fort Myers Cardinals.

To close out the third inning Huber sprints into shallow center field from his position at shortstop to make on off balance catch. Jogging briskly toward the dugout, Huber pumps the team up, shouting encouragement.

By the seventh inning, the Cardinals sit on top 6 – 2. The Hitmen have been leaving men on base all day, and a couple of throwing errors have helped put them in the hole. In the dugout Huber is kicking himself over missing a groundball that skipped under his glove as he dove to his right.

Hitman Victor Saavedra, with is father bellowing in Spanish from the stands in a bright orange shirt, steps to the plate with a man on base and crushes a meaty fastball 360 feet over the center left fence. The hit brings the Hitmen bench to life, and within two runs of the Cardinals.

“It was a beach ball,” Saavedra said of the pitch he got a hold of as he returned to the bench and high fives from his teammates.

The homerun starts a Hitmen rally, as they tally another six runs before the inning is over, and end up winning 13 – 6.

Now they have to wait another week before they can tap into that feeling again. However, Huber and Chastain have been looking into new ways to channel their love for America’s pastime, including possibly coaching a little league team. For them it is all about being around the game in any way possible, otherwise they would go stir crazy.

“I’ll play as long as I can, until I’m 60,” said Huber, who in February tore his meniscus doing what else but sliding head first into second on a steal.

Chastain, who currently works with his father at his Sellstate realty business, hopes to go into sports psychology and help young athletes avoid some of the mistakes he made during his amateur career.

“At 27 years old, in my heart I know I’ll never make the majors with my history,” Chastain said. “But if I can help one kid get in baseball, help him make a right turn where I took a left, then I would be pitching in Yankee stadium.”

If you are interested in playing in the Fort Myers Baseball League contact Greyson Huber at 305-663-2521 or go to the league Web site at http://www.fortmyersmsbl.com/.

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