As Jacoby Ellsbury waited his turn behind the Fenway Park batting cage late last summer, he could almost see the ghosts, wearing old flannel uniforms, in the New England twilight.
It was Sept. 17, and he was aching all over. He had played baseball continuously for more than a year, leading Oregon State to the Pacific-10 Conference championship and into the College World Series, and had done well in a 35-game stint for the Class A Lowell (Mass.) Spinners.
When Lowell's season ended, he had one more mission before he could go back home. The Red Sox flew his family all the way from Madras and summoned him to take batting practice with the big club.
He had dressed in the same locker room as the Red Sox, in the same first-class gear the major league club wears.
It hit him when he stepped onto the field, between the Green Monster in left field and Pesky's Pole in right. It wasn't just his family watching.
"There were 10,000 people in the stands -- it was before a game with the A's," Ellsbury said Thursday during a workout break in Hillsboro. "Everybody was saying, 'Who's that?' 'He's the first-round draft pick.' There were a lot of eyes on me, and cameras flashing right when I was hitting."
And he could sense the ghosts.
"I got in the cage and I thought, 'Ooh,' he said. "Babe Ruth played here. Ted Williams played here. I'm standing at the same home plate that they did."
Then he proceeded to have the best batting practice of his life.
"If I get nervous, I bear down and focus more," Ellsbury said. "I was spraying the ball everywhere. I hit some into the bullpen in right field. I hit a few deep to right-center; it's a long way out there, and they went out easily." As he lashed the ball around the fabled old yard, the 22-year-old ballplayer from Madras, Ore., could feel it right down to his cleats: He belonged there.
Every time Jacoby Ellsbury's teachers back in Madras asked him the question, he always would say the same thing.
"I'd say I wanted to be a big league baseball player. They said to think of something more realistic. The other kids would laugh and say, 'Oh, Jacoby.' "
If they could see him now, they'd see Ellsbury on a flight out of Portland Sunday morning, headed for Fort Myers, Fla., and the Red Sox spring training camp. It's a month earlier than most of Boston's minor league players; the Red Sox are eager to see up close the kid they drafted in the first round, 23rd selection.
This is the beginning of the last leg of the biggest race of his life, and he doesn't know a whole lot about what to expect.
"I'm just going to soak it all in and ask a lot of questions," he said, "so I'll have that experience behind me."
But Ellsbury has prepared more than a set of questions. In December, he moved into the Beaverton home of Matt James, a former Portland State football player and noted athletic trainer, and has worked out religiously at Velocity Sports Performance, the center James runs near Hillsboro Stadium.
Ellsbury has worked to improve his excellent natural speed, his quickness, balance and agility. He deliberately has avoided adding much weight to his 6-foot-1, 190-pound frame.
He has done it as he has done most things in his life -- thoroughly. If Ellsbury was preparing for a sprint, he'd train for a decathlon.
"I've worked harder than I ever have to be ready for this," he said. "I don't think I'll make the major league team this year, to be realistic, but you never know. "I'm the kind of person who wants to be ready. Maybe somebody will get hurt, or maybe they will think I'm ready earlier. I've always set high goals for myself -- a lot of the times I don't reach those goals, but that's all right.
"I can always say I'm giving 100 percent to be ready to play. I may start out in high Class A in Wilmington, N.C. My short-term goal is to make it to Double A (Portland, Maine) by the end of the season."
The Red Sox aren't saying what their plans are. All they really know about Ellsbury is the detailed scouting they did on him to select him in the draft, and the 35 games he played for the Spinners.
"We're excited to get to know him better," says Ben Cherington, the Red Sox's director of player development. "He'll get a chance to play every day in center field. We don't know what level -- we'll sort that out in the spring. But he showed us the reasons we drafted him in Lowell. He controlled the strike zone really well, he had good speed on the bases. He still needs to get better at jumps on the ball, but that's the normal part of development.
"We certainly feel he has a bright major league future as a center fielder."
Ellsbury said he's already learned a ton about professional baseball in his short time in Lowell. He hit .317 with three doubles, five triples and a home run, all with the black maple 331/2-inch bat he now swings.
He stole 23 bases and was caught stealing just three times. He did what leadoff hitters do.
"You have to prepare more now," he said. "You have to mentally prepare your body for 160 games, and you know that there are guys shooting for your spot every day. You have to be mentally tough."
"But we had the best guys. It was like an all-star team. And it wasn't just U.S. players -- we had guys from Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Cuba and Japan. So I had to get used to a language barrier."
Another thing he's had to get used to is having money.
He said his Oregon State teammates used to think of him as cheap, but the truth is he never had a whole lot of spending money in his first 21 years.
Now he does, but he disciplines his spending. He paid off his mother's house in Madras and bought her a new one, and one obvious sign that he now has a deep pocket is his teal-blue Cadillac Escalade EXT, with XM radio and all the trimmings.
But he still favors the same jeans he wore at OSU, along with simple black T-shirts and running shoes. The shoes, a pair of Nike Air Max 700s, are one of the benefits of signing with Nike.
Even though he's better off financially now, it's also true that beginning today, he's completely on his own. Success or failure is, essentially, in his hands.
He does not worry about how he will handle it, however, because he now has a clear picture of what he's chasing. He found it among the ghosts at Fenway Park last September.
"Being there," he said, "makes me that much hungrier to get back."
Link:
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