| 307 Notes 1. Crash Davis Territory 1. Between the beginning of the 2005 season and the end of the 2009 season, five more players joined the five hundred home run club: Frank Thomas, Alex Rodriguez , Jim Thome, Manny Ramirez, and Gary Sheffield. 2. Can’t Miss 1. For most of the season major league rosters consist of twenty-five players, but the teams can protect an additional fifteen players in their minor league systems from other teams claiming them in the “Rule 5 draft.” These fifteen players are generally considered to be the team’s most treasured minor league assets. 2. In recent years, as signing bonuses have soared, teams have selected players not only for their playing ability but also for their affordability. Many teams have bypassed top players because of fears that they would cost too much. 3. This system ended in 2007, when the draft was televised for the first time (on ESPN2). 4. Boston’s other first-round pick in the 1999 draft was Rick Asadoorian, an out- fielder from Worcester, selected seventeenth. Asadoorian had not signed by this point. He ultimately signed for a bonus of $1.725 million. As of 2009 he had not made it to the major leagues. 5. That total included eighty-four “supplemental” picks. Since 1982, teams that had lost elite free agents had received pre–second round picks as compensation. These supplemental picks were still technically considered first-rounders. At number forty, Brad was a supplemental pick by the Red Sox as payment for the loss of free agent first baseman Mo Vaughn, who had signed a six-year, $80 million contract with the Angels, at the time the richest contract in the game. 3. Fluttering Away 1. In his one season at Sacramento City College, Charlie started just one of the team’s forty-seven games. He finished the year with a 6.75 ERA. 2. SCAD left Division III and joined the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) in 2003, a year after Charlie left. 4. Manny Being Manny 1. At year’s end, Woodfork was named assistant general manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks. 308 | notes to pages 72–85 5. A Dream Deferred 1. A. J. Sager, who had played in the big leagues from 1994 to 1998, played one game with the Gulf Coast Reds in 1999; he is not included in the five out of fiftyeight statistics, since he had already made it to the big leagues at this point. He would never make it back to the majors. 2. Randy and Jasmine have the same biological parents, Randy Sr. and Julia Franco. Jasmine was raised primarily by Randy Sr. and his wife, Denise, who currently live in a suburb of Cleveland. They have five other children. Julia Franco, who lives in New Jersey, has two other sons. 3. Minor league test results for this and other years come from the December 13, 2007, “Report to the Commissioner of Baseball of an Independent Investigation into the Illegal Use of Steroids and Other Performance Enhancing Substances by Players in Major League Baseball” (the Mitchell Report). The numbers can be found on p. 46. 4. Manfred’s testimony took place on July 24, 2003. 5. See the Mitchell Report, p. 46. 6. By season’s end, under immense public and legislative pressure, the penalties increased again to fifty games for a first positive test, one hundred for a second, and a lifetime ban for a third. 7. Just two years later Howard would crack fifty-eight home runs and become the National League’s Most Valuable Player. 6. “It’s the Life—the One Everyone Wants to Live” 1. In September 2008 Hernandez finally got back to the big leagues with the Tampa Bay Rays, a promotion desperately needed to help pay the medical bills for his five-year-old son, Michael, who had been diagnosed with Type I diabetes. 2. Hensley became an intriguing footnote to history two years later, surrendering Barry Bonds’s 755th career home run, which tied him with Hank Aaron for the major league record. 3. Bozied played sparingly in 2005, a little Double-A and a little Triple-A. Through the 2009 season he still had not cracked a big league roster. 4. Sparks asked for his release after three starts with the Beavers and then signed on with another Pacific Coast League team, the Sacramento River Cats, believing he had a better chance to get back to...