Rick Short
He was a 33rd round draft pick who spent the majority of his minor league career in the Baltimore Orioles organization. The Washington Nationals were his fourth organization after leaving the O’s. Rick Short played eleven years in the minors, accumulated more than one thousand games and forty-five hundred plate appearances before finally getting a chance at the big leagues.
For a guy who could have given up hope of every playing in the majors, Short stuck with it. Good for the Nationals for promoting Short to the major league roster after he flirted with hitting .400 most of the season at AAA New Orleans, finally settling on .383. He had made three pinch hit appearances earlier in the season, thankfully his story did not end there.
As the over achieving Nationals of 2005 began to slide down the ladder in the National League East, they rewarded the hot hitting, thirty two year-old with a September call up. Short made the most of his limited time at the game’s top level.
In just 17 plate appearances, Short hit two home runs and had an OPS of 1.404. His at-bats may have been meaningless in the outcome of the season for the Nationals, but they were valuable for a first time major leaguer. At the end of the year, Short left for Japan and hit .315 over four seasons playing with Rakuten of the Japan Pacific League.
For all the players who dream about playing in the major leagues, Rick Short was a long shot. He achieved his goal though, and it was neat to follow him those last three weeks of the inaugural season.