Every second of Sam Dexter’s baseball life was leading to that moment on Saturday afternoon, when he saw his name flash across his computer screen, as the draft choice of the Chicago White Sox in the 23rd round of the Major League Baseball draft.
You’re 10, 11, 12 years old, playing for the Rangers in the Messalonskee Cal Ripken League. You’re winning state championships every summer with the Messalonskee Cal Ripken All-Stars.
You take batting practice with the guys on the Colby College baseball team coached by your father. You see how good ballplayers, guys who are serious about the game but make sure they have fun, conduct themselves, and you pay very close attention.
You’re a freshman starting at second base for the Messalonskee High School varsity baseball team, and the team goes to the regional championship. A few years later, you’re a senior, now playing shortstop, and the team is 5-5 and underachieving. As a group, you decide enough is enough, and you do not lose again. In the state championship game, you make a defensive play high school players aren’t supposed to make, diving to your left to stab a hard ground ball that everyone but you already thinks is a base hit to left field. From your knees, you flip the ball to your brother covering second base, who pivots and makes the throw to first to complete the double play. The play helps Messalonskee win its first baseball championship in a generation, and after the game, you sign a baseball for a kid, the first autograph of your career.
You’re a freshman at the University of Southern Maine, and you hit a two-run home run in the top of the ninth inning of a regional playoff win over Endicott. The homer snaps a 2-2 tie like a piece of flimsy kindling, and the win keeps USM alive in the tournament, and the team advances to the Division III World Series with a second win over Endicott the next day. At the World Series, your team loses on the second day, but fights back out of the loser’s bracket to win three consecutive elimination games before falling in the national championship game.
You’re a sophomore at USM now, and you help the team go back to the Division III World Series. You’re a junior now, and accolades are starting to pile up. Conference player of the year, national player of the year. You’re polite when asked about the awards, but they’re not why you play.
You get a brief stint in the prestigious Cape Cod Baseball League with some of the best college players in the country. You play two seasons for the Sanford Mainers in the New England Collegiate Baseball League, another league chock full of Division I talent, and you do more than hold your own.
You go back to USM for your senior year, again playing with your younger brother, and you go about breaking records. More individual honors come in, another conference player of the year, another all-American nod. Again, you’re polite, but the season ended in the Little East Conference playoffs, a little sooner than you’d hoped, and that doesn’t sit well with you.
You circled the weekend of June 9-11 on your mental calendar a long time ago, and it can’t get here soon enough. You run on nervous energy.
A scout from the Chicago White Sox calls on Friday. That’s nice, but it doesn’t mean anything. Yet.
Finally, on Saturday afternoon, you see your name come up on the computer screen, next to the White Sox logo.
Your name.
All the swings, all the ground balls, all the time in a batting cage or weight room, all the succes, all the failure, it all hits you as you stare at your name on that screen. All that work, it was worth every second.
Because now you know the work really begins.
Travis Lazarczyk — 861-9242
tlazarczyk@centralmaine.com
Twitter: @TLazarczykMTM
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