No Regrets--Just Second Thoughts on a Big League Dream

For a while, Raul Fernandez saw how it could all fall into place.

He didn’t necessarily consider himself major league caliber, but he was no chump, either. He could play the game, he was only 28 and, well, why not?

He learned to play baseball in the streets of Santa Ana, after his family moved here from Mexico when he was 5. His mother started him in school early, so he graduated before turning 16 and developing physically into the athlete he became in his late teens and early 20s.

Now, he’s 6-1 and 215 pounds with several seasons in city league baseball behind him. It doesn’t sound at all boastful when he says, “I was somewhat the talk of the team, at times. Back then, I was the quickest on the team, I got on base no matter what and I was always stealing, whatever. My nickname back then was Raul (Speedy) Fernandez. I took it seriously. I got into at least seven to eight fights, which weren’t my fault, because they didn’t understand a basic rule of the game that if you stand in the base line, the runner’s going to take you out.”

But that was recreation. Real life was having two kids and making a living, which he currently does as art director for Entrepreneur magazine’s Mexico edition. He even gave up baseball for softball.

Then, fate seemed to come calling.

The major league baseball strike stretched into this spring. People started talking about “replacement players.” Fernandez’s friends began whispering in his ear.

“To be honest, it didn’t come from me,” he’s saying Friday afternoon as we talk at Entrepreneur’s offices in Irvine. “I figured, I’m 28, I probably won’t get a shot, but a buddy of mine started pushing me. He said, ‘You’re good, I’ve seen you play, you ought to try, give it a shot. If you don’t try, you’ll always say you could have made it but didn’t try.’ ”

Fernandez figured most replacements would be guys like him without professional experience. Just maybe, he reasoned, he could hold his own.

So, on Jan. 30, he drove down to Grossmont College outside San Diego, where the Atlanta Braves conducted a tryout camp. He estimated turnout at just under 100.

He remembers what he was thinking as he surveyed the competition: “You know what, I think I got a damn good shot here, I’m going to make it.” He imagined a $10,000 signing bonus. “I figured, I can already see myself in some kind of stadium. I know it’s going to be mostly empty because I myself wouldn’t go see replacement players . . .”

He pictured himself in the Atlanta Braves outfield in an honest-to-goodness major league baseball game. He imagined fans booing him and other replacements but decided he’d block that out, if it happened. He pictured someone having to call Mexico to say the magazine wouldn’t be distributed because he had gotten signed by a major league ballclub.

“I pictured my family in the stands, my friends, people here at work. I honestly pictured calling in on Jan. 31, saying, ‘I’m not coming in, they still want me over here and I’m not sure when I’m coming back to work. Don’t fire me, because I don’t know how long this is going to last, but I’m not going to be there for maybe a month to three months.’ ”

Fernandez had heard the money would be good if he made the team, but that was only part of the motivation. “It was the fact that I would be wearing the uniform, be in a stadium and playing with whoever--ex-ballplayers, people I didn’t know or ever heard of, but I would be in the stadium, the dugout, the locker room, listening to the coach, taking batting practice before the game--all that stuff that a rookie feels.”

It would have been a great story.

Instead, the Braves cut anyone that day at Grossmont who couldn’t run the 60-yard dash in 7.1 seconds. Fernandez clocked in at 7.5. He never got a chance to hit or field or throw from the outfield. Just like that, in the wink of four-tenths of a second, he was through.

Unfair, he thought. He wondered if lumbering Cecil Fielder of the Detroit Tigers, a former home run champ, could run 60 yards in 7 seconds. Fernandez hung around and watched the outfielders throw and thought his skills compared favorably.

“I didn’t see one guy out there who made me say, ‘Wow. I’m old. What am I doing here?’ ” Fernandez says. “What I said to myself was, ‘Hey, Atlanta Braves, if anything, you lost out on something.’ ”

Any nagging thoughts about what might have been? “What comes to mind a lot is those four-tenths of a second. That’s what I have on my mind. If those seconds weren’t there, who knows where I’d be now?”

Where he is, is back at work, frustrated that he didn’t get a chance to at least go down swinging. Sometimes it’s worse to get a whiff of the dream than none at all.

Fernandez comes across as a guy with a handle on things. “I didn’t leave real life when I went to do it,” he says. “I put myself in the what-if category. I said I’m going to try it, give it all I’ve got, and I wanted to make it. Once I knew I didn’t, I didn’t hang my head or cry on someone’s shoulder. I went, I tried. I’m back to point A, and that’s fine with me.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.