Jimmy Scott's High & Tight: The Chase Lambin Interview

Japan.  It's really far away for us.  Imagine you're a baseball player, born and raised in America, born and raised on American baseball.  Imagine you're a baseball player good enough to have a job every year, but not good enough, apparently - even though you don't believe the decision-makers, the ones who hold your destiny in their hands - to play Major League Baseball.  Does there come a time when the whole thing gets tired?  You're in a big league organization, you almost make it - you should have made it - but you don't.  And just when you think you're going to make it again, you start trying too hard.  You can taste it too well.  And you blow it.  And then you're gone, released, goodbye, see ya, adios.  Get out.  And after throwing the ball around in a parking lot for a couple of weeks and working out in a Gold's Gym, your agents get you a gig.  Yeah, it's the minors still, but it's better than working behind the counter at McDonald's.  You play hard.  You play well.  The next year, they re-sign you.  You're promoted.  You play hard.  Harder, actually.  You play better.  The results are very, very good.  And you don't get that call up.  Again.  That's when it starts to maybe, just possibly, get a little tiring.

Imagine that happening to you.

So if you're Chase Lambin, formerly from both the Mets and Marlins organizations, what do you do?  Do you keep trying?  Do you give up?  Do you tell your fiance, "Hey, just one more year," knowing that you'll be saying the same thing for the next ten until she gives you some sort of ultimatum.  What do you do?

There's always Japan.

In Jimmy Scott's High & Tight: The Chase Lambin Interview, you're going to learn all about how a ballplayer ends up playing baseball in Japan.  From the call out of nowhere to finding out you have to pay for yourself to fly out there for a fancy audition, Chase tells it all.  He explains his first meeting with the manager of the Chiba Lotte Marines, Bobby Valentine.  The Great Lambino (that's what some people call our good friend Chase) explains some of the differences between the Major Leagues and the Japanese League.  And he tells us how a contract with a Japanese team is structured.

So if you want to hear how a guy on the very bottom almost makes it to the top and then finds his way in the Land of the Rising Sun, you're going to want to hear from Chase Lambin.  It will be worth every minute.  (And for more, read his BLOG about the Japanese tryout at Clubhouse Gas.)

THE MUSIC

 Alice In Chains - No Excuses

U2 - A Sort of Homecoming (Live)

 The Beatles - You Never Give Me Your Money

Joe Jackson - You Can't Get What You Want ('Til You Know What You Want)

Yes - Leave It

Field of Dreams Soundtrack - The Place Where Dreams Come True

Selections From Mad About Movies