CATCHING UP WITH CARSON

Here’s an insightful peek into the life of a local minor leaguer

Here’s an insightful peek into the life of a local minor leaguer
Photo courtesy of Carson Maxwell.

Ten years ago, I created a youth travel baseball team of top Little Leaguers, mostly from West University Place plus a few players from other leagues (I hate the word "ringers"). I named the team the Van Buren Boys, after the street gang that terrorized Kramer in the pizza parlor on Seinfeld. This group of 13-year-old All-Stars played the whole summer and racked up a lot of trophies. Note: one of the Van Buren Boys' lefty pitchers slept down the hall from me, so I still have those trophies. I pretend that I actually had something to do with winning them.

The Van Buren Boys' slugging shortstop was a kid named Carson Maxwell. Man, he could hit the ball a ton, well beyond his years. He went on to play ball for Lamar High School, Galveston Junior College and McNeese State. He was drafted by the Arizona Diamondbacks and sent to the Missoula (Montana) Osprey in the Rookie Advanced Pioneer League.

This summer, with Major League Baseball and coronavirus decimating the minor league system, Maxwell will be part of the 4-team professional league hosted by the Sugar Land Skeeters at Constellation Field. Fans will be allowed to attend games, up to 25 percent of Constellation Field's usual 7,500-seat capacity. Each team, consisting of former big leaguers and free agent minor leaguers, will play 28 games, starting July 10. Single games will be played Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, with doubleheaders Saturdays and Sundays. Maxwell is waiting to learn which team he'll be placed on. In the meantime, I decided to play pepper with Maxwell … 10 hard-hitting questions plus a couple of soft-toss meatballs.

1. SportsMap: How did you enjoy living and playing baseball in Montana?

Carson Maxwell: It was so much different than what I expected, but I absolutely loved it. Playing ball every day and learning from former Major Leaguers was so much fun. Not to mention, it was my first visit to the mountains out west, which was surreal.

2. SM: What was the Skeeters tryout like?

CM: It was pretty much like any other tryout. Position players ran the 60-yard dash. We had three backhand throws from shortstop to show off our arms. Then we moved to our positions to take some ground balls. We threw one to first, turned a double play, and finished with a slow roller. After that, position players got one round of batting practice to show off some pop in our bats.

3. SM: What are your baseball goals now?

CM: My immediate goal is to have a good season and get picked up by a big-league team. My long-term goals haven't changed, meaning to make it to the Major Leagues and have an outstanding career. I'm taking it brick-by-brick and focusing on what's in front of me at the moment.

4. SM: Minor league players are notoriously underpaid. How much mac 'n' cheese did you eat last season in Montana?

CM: True! Lower-level minor leaguers are extremely underpaid. I did make enough to purchase essentials I needed to survive, like bats, gloves, cleats and other equipment. The Diamondbacks took decent care of the team and would feed us before and after games. My roommates and I were fortunate to have an amazing host family. They often bought us groceries. Late nights after home games, my roommates and I would get back to the house and absolutely destroy frozen pizzas.

5. SM: What's the best part of moving back to Houston and playing ball for the Skeeters league?

CM: I'm excited to be home and playing in a stadium where I'm very comfortable. I played four years of college playoffs in Constellation Field and won the Southland Conference championship my senior year at McNeese State.

6. SM: How much different was playing minor league ball from college ball, and what are you expecting from the Skeeters league?

CM: The main differences from college to the minors were pitching and mindset. In the minors you are facing the best pitchers from college, whereas in college I didn't always face the best guy on the other team. I also say mindset because if I had a bad midweek game in college, I would have a couple of days to shake it off and work on things. In the minors games are played every day, so if you've had a bad game you better have short-term memory because you can't let that distract you the next game or everything will just snowball.

7. SM: What will the Skeeters league look like during the coronavirus pandemic?

CM: It's going to be very interesting to say the least. One of the rules that I read in my packet is that the balls will be disinfected after they've been used. As of now, the rules say we aren't supposed to give out autographs to fans or hand out foul balls. No seeds, no gum chewing, avoid spitting. Pitchers will be allowed a wet rag in their back pocket so they don't lick their fingers, and no high fives, hugs or fist bumps after a home run or run scored. We are supposed to do our best at staying distant at all times, and we will be tested weekly for COVID-19.

8. SM: When you were a kid, you were typically the best player on the team. How did you deal with pro ball, where everybody was the best player when they were young.

CM: I've definitely tapped into a new level of work ethic. It's a tough situation because you want to help the team win, but you're also fighting for a job and to get called up to the next level of the minors. I loved learning from other players who had been playing in the minors for a while and players from other countries who were taught a different way to play the game.

Photo courtesy of Carson Maxwell.


9. SM: Tell me everything about your first professional home run.

CM: It was my first at-bat of the day in Billings, Montana. It was against a righthander who was throwing pretty hard. First pitch he hangs a slider up around my letters and I took it like a fool. I'm thinking he's coming with a fast ball second pitch, but he hangs another slider. I recognized it early because it was the same exact pitch and this time I took it deep to left field. I don't even remember feeling the ball hit the bat, I just knew I got it all.

10. SM: Is it true that minor league teams have groupies? Pretend your mother Alice isn't reading this. And for the record, I'm more afraid of her than you are.

CM: That's hilarious! I'm pretty sure a few of the guys had a couple of fans in each town we went to.

11. SM: Players in the Skeeters league will be offered hotel rooms, while players from Houston will be allowed to live at home. Which will you do?

CM: I'm staying home for the free meals and comfort of my own bed.

12. SM: Final question: how did you rate me as owner of the Van Buren Boys? Were my $100 Cuban cigars and gaudy jewelry a distraction? How about my constant yelling at the umpires and threatening to cut 13-year-old children from the team if they made an error? Remember, I still have the Van Buren Boys jerseys in my closet, including your X-Large number 11.

CM: I rate you as a top-notch owner and, to this day, the Van Buren Boys was the most fun team I ever played on! Hopefully one day we'll be able to frame that number 11 jersey and hang it somewhere.

Most Popular

SportsMap Emails
Are Awesome

Listen Live

ESPN Houston 97.5 FM
A new era begins. Composite image by Jack Brame.

It’s go time! While the Astros are not the juggernaut they were over the more than half-decade stretch from 2017 through 2022 that yielded regular seasons with 101, 103, 106, and 107 wins, four American League pennants, and two World Series Champions, as the saying goes, they ain’t dead yet. There is no superpower in the American League West the Astros need to overcome. In fact, the American League as a whole is grossly inferior to the National League. As a result, a fifth Astros’ AL title in this era is not some absurd fantasy, though it is certainly unlikely. But winning the pennant is unlikely for every AL team, so if you’re a fan of the Astros there is nothing wrong with a “Why not us?” mentality. On the other hand, the floor for the 2025 Astros is lower going into a season than it has been in almost a decade. The lineup has numerous question marks, and if the terrific trio atop the Astros’ starting rotation (Framber Valdez, Hunter Brown, and Ronel Bronco) runs into injury or performance issues the Astros would have serious problems. That the Texas Rangers and Seattle Mariners both finish ahead of the Astros is clearly plausible. Play ball!

Astros history lives in these moments

It is simple fact that time marches on, but it is still amazing that the Astros are beginning their second quarter-century of play at what for its first two seasons was called Enron Field, then for the past 23 seasons Minute Maid Park, and now Daikin Park. That’s 25 seasons in the books, at least 26 more to come, with the Astros a few years ago having extended their lease through 2050. In non-specific order, I have twenty easily come-to-mind most spine-tingling moments at the ballpark. If you want 25 for 25 years, I leave five more to you.

Not all spine-tinglers on the home field are generated by the home team. Here are three produced by visiting players. In 2001, Barry Bonds smashed his 70th home run of the season to tie Mark McGwire’s single season Major League record. We know what went into the home run numbers of that era, but it was still jaw-dropping stuff. Bonds would finish the season with 73 homers. Game five of the 2005 National League Championship Series, with the Astros one out from winning their first ever pennant, Albert Pujols launched a Brad Lidge hanging slider that might still be airborne if not for the glass wall above the train tracks. It may be the most instantaneous crowd delirium to utter silence moment ever. It turned a 4-2 Astros’ lead into a crushing 5-4 loss. But, the next game Roy Oswalt pitched the Astros to that pennant in St. Louis. Lastly, the second game of the 2013 season, Rangers’ pitcher Yu Darvish retired the first 26 Astro batters before Marwin Gonzalez smacked a ball through Darvish’s legs up the middle for a base hit. Soooooo close to a perfect game. Only 22 perfect games have been thrown in MLB’s modern era (1900-today).

Now to Astro achievements. Fudging a bit by including Roger Clemens since it’s not for one specific moment. But the Rocket’s starts with the Astros were events. Speaking of Hall of Famers, Craig Biggio’s 3000th hit is an obvious list-maker. Jeff Kent is not a Hall of Famer but he was better in the batter’s box than any second baseman elected after Joe Morgan. Kent won game five of the 2004 NLCS with a bottom of the ninth three-run bomb to end what had been a scoreless game. Alas, the Astros would lose the next two games and the series in St. Louis. The crowd went much wilder over Kent’s homer than over Chris Burke’s series-winning homer over the Atlanta Braves in a 2005 NL Division Series. Burke’s homer came in the 18th inning, so sheer exhaustion held down the decibel level a little. A sleeper for the list occurred earlier in that same game, when Brad Ausmus of all people hit a two-out game-tying homer to get the game into extra innings.

Four no-hitters have been thrown by Union Station. Working backwards: Ronel Blanco last season, Framber Valdez in 2023, a combined job started by Aaron Sanchez in 2019, and the first in 2015 by Mike....yes, Fiers.

And now to the grandest home park moments of this Platinum Era in Astros’ history. Carlos Correa authored two of them, each in a game two of the American League Championship Series. In 2017 he doubled home Jose Altuve with the winning run in the bottom of the ninth. That came off of Aroldis Chapman who shall appear once more in this column. In 2019 Correa tied the series at one win apiece with a walk-off homer. Yordan Alvarez also gets a pair of entries. You know, Yordan hit just .192 in the 2022 postseason. But talk about making your hits count. In game one of those playoffs, ALDS vs. Seattle, it was a two-out three-run walk-off blast off of Robbie Ray to give the Astros an 8-7 win. Then in the final game of those playoffs, it was a sixth inning gargantuan three-run launch to dead center turning a 1-0 deficit into a 3-1 lead.

That leaves four moments that are 100 percent non-negotiable entries. While not dramatic (4-0 final score), the payoff warrants inclusion of the Astros winning Game seven of the 2017 ALCS over the Yankees. Similarly, while the moment of victory lacked drama (4-1 final), how could one exclude the Astros winning the World Series on home turf in 2022. Finally, for my money the two most pulsating, goosebump-inducing, viscerally exciting moments at 501 Crawford Street. In one of the most scintillating games ever played in any sport, Alex Bregman’s bottom of the 10th inning single gave the Astros’ their epic 13-12 win over the Dodgers in game five of the 2017 World Series. Then in 2019, Jose Altuve’s game six homer ended the ALCS (I warned you Aroldis).

Here’s to the new season! Join Brandon Strange, Josh Jordan, and me for the Stone Cold ‘Stros podcast which drops each Monday afternoon, with an additional episode now on Thursday. Click here to catch!


*Looking to get the word out about your business, products, or services? Consider advertising on SportsMap! It's a great way to get in front of Houston sports fans. Click the link below for more information!

https://houston.sportsmap.com/advertise

SportsMap Emails
Are Awesome