Undrafted out of Northwestern, Chris Hayes paid his own way to Arizona for the possibility of some open tryouts with a few MLB teams and living his dream of playing in the big leagues. Someone mentioned to him that the Royals were also having a try-out.
“Where?” Hayes asked.
“Surprise,” the guy said.
“What’s the surprise?” Hayes asked.
“The town,” the guy said.
“The tryout is going to be in a surprise town?” Hayes asked.
“Exactly,” the guy said.
Amazingly, he went to the try-out and the Royals offered him a minor-league contract. Hayes, nicknamed “Disco” because his sidearm-flung fastballs all are in the 70s, doesn’t light up the radar gun, obviously, and had never in his life ever made an all-star team, at any level of baseball.
After his first year in Single A, Hayes finished the season with three times as many strikeouts as walks, and a 2.66 ERA. The Royals were unimpressed and sent him back to A ball the next year. His numbers were again impressive, again he struck out 3 times as many as he walked. They offered him a job in the front office but he wanted to keep trying for his dream. Finally, they promoted him. He pitched with a 1.64 ERA and again 3 times as many strikeouts as walks. They didn’t believe in the numbers and so held him at AA for another year. He repeated his stellar numbers AGAIN.
“You never gave us a chance to release you,” a Royals official told Hayes with admiration.
Now in AAA, Hayes is patiently waiting for his next opportunity. Whether he’s a September call-up, plays winter ball, whatever, he’s already proved the doubters wrong and the proof is in the numbers. Sure, he throws about as hard as I do, but he’s doing something right to rack up all those strikeouts. Side-armers are a strange breed, but Disco Hayes isn’t concerned, he just wants to maximize his opportunities to get to the bigs, and he’s on his way.
Besides, with an awesome nickname like that, he HAS to make the bigs. He also writes a pretty hilarious and interesting blog for MLB that you can read here.
Also, ancillary to all this, but GODDAMN can Joe Posnanski write. He’s the fucking TITS.
The Slanch Report 
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