THE nine games nearly felt like all the previous nine years combined to Shane Spencer. Bus rides from city to city again. Second-rate hotels again. Toledo. For heaven’s sake, not Toledo again.
“The worst place in Triple-A,” Spencer said.
Wasn’t all of this supposed to be behind him? Don’t you earn the right to never see Toledo again if you have made yourself a Yankee folk hero? Doesn’t nine years of loyal minor-league service prevent the need to spend even nine more games down below?
“It didn’t feel like nine years, but it didn’t feel like nine games either,” Spencer said. “It felt a lot longer.”
And now Spencer’s latest Columbus foray is over. He is back to a place “where everything is handed to you.” Except the jobs, that is. Shane Spencer is going to have to earn that. Chad Curtis and Ricky Ledee could not. They held the position like a greasy mountaineer grasps a rock face. It cost Ledee his major-league job as he was sent to Columbus.
And now Spencer gets an opportunity. He was recalled to replace Ledee on the roster. He started last night and had a performance that will make it easy for Don Zimmer to keep sending him out.
Spencer homered in the eighth inning en route to going 2-for-3 with a walk. The Yanks had not gotten a homer from left field in two weeks and just two two-hit games all season. Spencer also pegged out what at the time would have been the go-ahead run in the sixth inning, his one-hop throw from left-center combined with an exquisite block by Jorge Posada nailed Andy Sheets. Spencer heard a cheer from last September, although he could not prevent a 9-7 Angel victory in a long, sloppy, dull game.
Regardless of the style, this was still the majors, which made it beautiful for Spencer. His demotion from the Yankees to Columbus on April 29 had meant he would be indulging in a 10th minor-league season. The nine Clipper games gave him 886 in the minors. This is motivation enough for Spencer. To make sure there is never a chance of seeing Toledo again.
“You always keep the bus rides in the back of your head,” Spencer said. “They make you work hard every day.”
Diligence is part of this story. Spencer was a 28th-round pick in 1990 who served as a backup outfielder to the “real’ prospects for much of his minor-league life. “I had to hit my way out of six years of Single-A ball,” he says by way of explaining both his past baseball life and what will be necessary now.
Last September, Spencer became an overnight hero after nine years. He hit 10 homers in the last seven weeks of the season, three were grand slams. He hit two more homers in the Division Series. Yet, he arrived to camp ensnared in the Yankees’ left-field conundrum. He made a major-league team out of spring for the first time, but Ledee and Curtis formed the platoon. Spencer got two starts, 11 at-bats, none of last season’s late magic and a trip back to Columbus.
GM Brian Cashman made no promises, just a prod to keep plugging and to remember these are the Yankees. “We’re going to keep trying until we get it right,” Cashman said. Spencer got over the sulks quickly. He used the nine games – three in Toledo – to hit .324 with a homer and four RBIs.
He finally reached the point where he had to decide about the Edgewater, N.J. apartment he was renting and his girlfriend, Heidi, was still living in. He called Cashman on Saturday. The GM told Spencer to hold on to the apartment. Sunday, Cashman got to tell him he could live in it again.
Fitting his odyssey to the majors, Spencer’s flight Sunday night from Columbus was delayed three hours. He did not get to his apartment until after 4 a.m. That led him to sleep in and blow off an appearance he agreed to do Monday in Staten Island to help inaugurate the Yankees’ new short-season, A-level team. It angered the club’s front office.
“But that has nothing to do with the field,” Cashman said. “I’ll talk to him about the other thing. But he will either earn or not earn his spot by what happens on the field.”
The Yanks continue to believe Spencer can provide a true righty power bat. He has important allies in the organization, notably influential executives Gene Michael and Mark Newman. He also recognizes the Yanks could have traded him in the winter when his value was high, but held on.
And now none of that matters. All that stands between Spencer and the possibility of seeing Toledo again is his game. That ultimately helped him climb from the back of the draft and six seasons of A-ball and more time in Columbus than John Cooper.
He has been around this organization long enough to know Ledee, struggling to stick since being taken in that same 1990 draft, will be rebuilding credentials. That Curtis is still here. That Greg Vaughn may pass a physical if traded for again.
“It’s happened here,” Spencer said, recalling the thrill of last September. “Given a good chance, I think it will continue to happen here. I don’t know what they believe. But that is what I believe.”