So just how does a teenager playing recreational ball in Anola, Man., become a major-leaguer with a $16.5-million US contract? Corey Koskie hesitated for a minute. It was clearly a leap of reality that had crossed his mind before, many times.
"To this day, I don't know how I got here," he said yesterday, minutes after he slipped into a Blue Jays shirt for the first time.
That's not exactly true. He knows how he got here and can lay it all out, chronologically. That's the one-dimensional answer. But the odds? How do you wrap your mind around that one?
"Obviously there was a plan for me," he said, thinking back 13 years, to a time when he was 19. "I played junior hockey for the (Selkirk) Steelers and I was set to play volleyball at the University of Manitoba."
Before that, however, Koskie noticed an ad in the local newspaper for an all-comers baseball tryout camp sponsored by the Major League Baseball scouting bureau. He went, and caught the eye of a Cincinnati Reds scout.
That scout passed his name on to a junior college coach named John Smith in Boone, Iowa.
"(Smith) called me every day, all summer. You have to understand that the main reason I played sports was to get a college scholarship so I'd have my education paid for and I already had that. I was going to play volleyball at U of M.
"Finally, I decided out of the blue to go play baseball. Volleyball and hockey were sports I played every day. And now, in my second year of university, I was going off to Iowa to play baseball."
Over the protestations of the U of M volleyball coach, who thought his recruit had lost his marbles, Koskie headed for Iowa to pursue a sport he had played only at the most rudimentary grassroots level.
"I got down there and there were about 70 people trying out and I was scared. I always had that notion that baseball is an American pastime and I thought, 'Where do I fit in?' "
Koskie made the team, played well and that next summer, made the Manitoba provincial team and another crucial piece of his baseball foundation fell into place.
Years before, with the Blue Jays playing a key role, the National Baseball Institute had been established to nurture Canadian talent. John Harr was in charge and that summer, he went looking for talent at the Western Canada Games in Kamloops, B.C. He found Koskie, a diamond in the rough.
In the one year he was in the NBI program, Koskie was a sponge, soaking up all that baseball knowledge and experience that most American players learn in their teens. He learned proper throwing mechanics and experienced for the first time, live outdoor batting practice.
At the end of that year, Koskie was drafted by the Minnesota Twins. He signed, turned pro, spent five years in the minors and, in 1999, graduated to the Twins to stay.
The Twins at the time were a struggling franchise with a dynamite farm system. Koskie and a half-dozen others formed a close-knit nucleus and it's not too strong a statement to say that they saved major-league baseball in the Twin Cities.
With owner Carl Pohlad's blessing, Bud Selig targeted the Twins for contraction, but the young players wouldn't go without a fight. They played inspired baseball during the past three years, making the playoffs each time. Nobody is talking contraction anymore.
Koskie senses some of the same elements in place in Toronto in terms of talent and desire.
"I like the way some of these guys play the game," he said.
"What I've come to realize in six years in the big leagues is that a baseball team is a puzzle made up of little pieces. It's never one individual who wins a championship.
"I'm just a little piece of this."
Koskie had been a lifelong Blue Jays fan until he became a Twin. He rattled off many of the names from the past who helped the Jays win pennants and World Series.
Anola, population 300, is Blue Jay country. Whenever the Jays came to Minneapolis during Koskie's time there, the whole town made the 500-kilometre drive.
"The joke with that was 'Who's watching the town?' " Koskie said. "If I was a burglar in Manitoba, I'd have hit that town every time the Blue Jays came to Minnesota.
"They all said they cheered for the Blue Jays except when I came up to hit."
There will no longer be any of those conflicted feelings in the tiny Manitoba town where this most improbable big-leaguer got his start.
