DENVER —The wait lasted seven years, three weeks and, in the end, one final half-inning.
On Friday night,Ryan Wardwas on-deck at the start of Triple-A Oklahoma City’s game in Albuquerque when he was called back to the dugout at the last second.
There was news for him, he was told. But he’d have to wait until the team’s manager, Scott Hennessey, got back from coaching third base at the end of the inning.
“I was getting smirks from people on the bench,”Ward saidwith a smile. “People had a feeling.”
Indeed, when Hennessey returned, he delivered the news Ward had been waiting on his entire career.
After seven seasons in the minors,the Dodgerswere calling him up for his long-awaited MLB debut.
After a journey that often seemed to be at a dead end, he had finally reached the pinnacle of his profession.
“Sitting here right now thinking about it, it feels like it went by fast,” Ward said Sunday afternoon, hours before his debut at Coors Field against the Rockies. “But, man, when I was down there, it felt like a long time.”
Ward, 28, was never a big-name prospect in the Dodgers’ farm system, nor really at any point in his baseball career.
He didn’t grow up in a baseball hotbed, going to the local high school in his hometown of Millbury, Mass. He wasn’t heavily recruited in college, playing mid-major Division I baseball at Bryant University.
Source: California Post – Breaking California News, Photos & Videos
