Your Next Jimmy Scott's High & Tight Monday Morning Interview: Alisa & Nelson Figueroa

Yesterday I posted a portion of a great article from Got MiLB? and Lisa Winston about Nelson Figueroa, who's pitched in more countries than your average Brooklyn boy.  Before posting and linking to Part II of Lisa's expose (pretend there was an accent over the second E in "expose"), I wanted to remind you that Nelson & his lovely and kind and humorous and energetic wife, Alisa, will be here on Monday morning as the next Jimmy Scott's High & Tight interview.  I got them both on the phone and got them both talking, about baseball, about life on the road, about getting sick on the road, about the separation. 

About money.

Once you hear this interview, you will know how the other half of MLB players lives.  I'm talking about the guys who don't have multi-year contracts; the guys who wander from team to team, from minor league deal to spring training invite, just so they can get the chance to play in the Majors and earn that minimum salary.  In 2008, that minimum salary was $390,000.  If you've never made a million a year, $390,000 is a pretty good goal to reach for.  You can't retire on it, but, if you conserve your pennies, you can squeeze a couple or three years of living out of it.

Nelson & Alisa will talk in depth about how little Nelson made coming up in the minor leagues.  For a few years, Alisa earned more as a pharmaceutical sales representative than Nelson made playing baseball, hence his term of endearment for her, "Sugar Mama."

But it's the money, or the lack thereof, that send Nelson to various countries each off season, or sometimes during the season.  When our government talks about American jobs being sent to other countries, we don't think about baseball jobs.  Taiwan.  Mexico.  Nicaragua.  The Dominican Republic.  When a buck needed to be made, when a job needed to be filled, when budgets couldn't be stretched any further, Nelson would pack his bags, leave his wife and daughter behind, and play baseball somewhere else.  Somewhere very far away.

Why?

The money.  When fans and media say it's all about the money but a ballplayer says it isn't, then it's about the money.  When a ballplayer floats all over the country, or the world, and you barely know his name, he's floating for the money.  Because while some of you are trained as sales people and some are trained as computer technicians and some of you earn your keep in marketing, most ballplayers can only do one thing as well: Play baseball. 

There's definitely a passion for the game.  That's why there are millions of fans all around the world.  It's fun to play.  It's fun to watch and talk and read about.  If you're lucky enough to have the skill to get paid to play the game, and if you have the passion, you're going to milk that for as long as you can.  Wherever you can.

That's what Nelson Figueroa is doing.

He looks young, but he'll be 35 this spring.  He's gone through the whole "out for the season" injury thing and done the whole "came back too early" thing.  He's had fights with his wife about his personality; about whether he's trotting the globe to chase a dream, to support his family, or for the ego boost.  He never says it, but it's clear that time is beginning to run out for Nelson Figueroa and the Major Leagues.  He was on the Mets big league roster twice in 2008, as a starting pitcher in the spring and out of the bullpen in September.  He went from the minors to the majors to being designated for assignment to the minors and back to the big club, only to be released after the season and re-signing in December.  His 2008 season was the epitome of the player on the bubble; the player he's been his whole career.

That's where he finds himself in 2009.  Is he destined to be a part of the Mets' inaugural Buffalo AAA team?  Or does he have a legitimate shot at their 5th starter job?  Does he have a chance to pitch out of the bullpen?

You talk to him and you hear him speak and you can't help but like him.  He's smart.  He's got that intangible personality trait that makes him listenable.  But he's also screwed.  Ask anybody in the Mets organization, or any media member following the team, or MLB official for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, they'll tell you this: Nelson Figueroa is a spare part for the 2009 Mets.  He was signed for - and this is a curse word to guys like Nelson - "depth."  If Tim Redding hurts his arm...  If Freddie Garcia is a stiff...  If Livan Hernandez can't throw a strike...  If Jon Niese gets too scared... 

When you hear people talk about the Mets pitching staff, you never hear that Nelson Figueroa is in the mix.  It's true that teams need "depth" and it's true that, before the season ends, Nelson very well get another well-deserved chance.  But for now, all of the dues he's paid and all of the traveling he's done, all of the stress his family has survived and all of the time spent away from his young daughter will lead to another part-season in the minor leagues.  He'll be earning minor league money and hoping for a portion of that $390,000 jackpot.

Sure, in this economy, a portion of a jackpot is better than many Americans will earn in the next 5 years.  But when this is your life, when time is running out, when you've worked as hard as or harder than anyone else you know, the full jackpot is what you want.  It's what you need.  Nelson and Alisa Figueroa love baseball.  They love The Life.  But right now, at this time in their marriage, it's all about the money.

THE FULL NELSON, PART II

When last we met (that would be yesterday), it was the off-season of 2007-2008 and right-hander Nelson Figueroa, Jr. has been to as many countries as most of the teams in "The Amazing Race," pitching in Chihuahua, Mexico, in Taiwan and in the Dominican Republic in hopes of reviving his inexplicably dormant career and getting one of the 30 organizations to give him a shot, sign him to a minor league contract and let him pitch stateside in 2008.

  His hometown team, the New York Mets - the team that had drafted Figueroa in the 30th round of 1995 out of Brandeis University -- had already told him there was no room for him in the organization when he spoke to them.

  But that stance softened considerably one January night in 2008 in a Dominican Winter League post-season matchup.

  A playoff start for Aguilas Cibaenas was pushed back due to a rainout so Figueroa found himself on the mound on Monday, Jan. 7, facing Estrellas.

  In the stands that night was Ramon Pena, a special assistant to Mets GM Omar Minaya.

  "I struck out 13 that night and broke the Dominican record for strikeouts in a playoff game," recalled Figueroa. "In Mexico I had had 11 complete games in 18 starts to try to show them my arm was healthy and still nothing. Because no one was interested in a 33-year-old guy trying to continue chasing his dream."

  Well, Pena handed his card to Figueroa's older teammate, Luis Polonia, who passed along the info to Figueroa.

 "He asked me if I had a job in the states and said that he had a guy with the Mets who said he could get me a big league invite," Figueroa recalled. "Now I'd had my agent calling people left and right and I had talked to the Mets myself and they had told me they didn't have any room."

  After another good start on Jan. 13, Pena came to the clubhouse and told Figueroa face-to-face that he'd get him as good an offer as he could on the minor league side.

  "I still looked at him like he had three heads," laughed Figueroa, who ended up going 4-0 with a 1.45 ERA n the post-season there, but a few days later he had that contract in hand and within weeks was in camp in St. Lucie with his old team.

  "You know, I was so glad to be back with the Mets again," said Figueroa, who grew up in Coney Island rooting for the Mets teams of the 1980s. "To be with the team that I loved as a kid, the team that drafted me, the team I always wanted to play for. To be able to walk into the clubhouse where Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden and Howard Johnson were. "
 

For the rest of Lisa Winston's Part II, click on Part II or go HERE.