Brett Lewis' in Professional Baseball (Part 3)

(Picture: Brett A. Lewis, a Texan who played professional baseball for the Lowell Spinners)

This is the third installment of the Brett Lewis'-in-professional-baseball project. (Part 1) (Part 2)

Brett A. Lewis may not have been a bad person. He is one of only two professional baseball players who share my first name, last name, and middle initial. However, Brett A. Lewis was from the Lone Star State. Born in Dallas, Texas, on March 16, 1985, he played catcher at The University of Texas – Arlington for two years before transferring to the Big T, the University of Texas – Austin. Following college, Brett A. Lewis played one season for the Lowell Spinners of the New York-Pennsylvannia League.

Nothing against anyone from the Lone Star State. From all accounts heard by this scribe, Austin is a lovely, eclectic place of western-American culture, Houston is close enough to Louisiana to be cool, and the brother of this pontificator of baseball thought spent a summer working in Dallas – by his account a fine city.

The beef that a scrivener from California would have with Texas has entirely to do with the states' cultural and economic rivalry. As a Californian growing up in the shadow of USC football in the mid-2000s, it started with the 2006 Rose Bowl game when the Long Horns defeated the Trojans 41-38 to win the national championship.

As a youth grows up into a more worldly individual, he realizes that the two states, Texas and California, have outsized importance in how the world views America. It was only when this writer, as a young man, studied abroad in Germany his junior year of college that he realized the only places Europeans could identify on a map of America were California, Texas and New York – this man of letters vowed to always root against Texas and New York sports teams.

Texas, though, oh Texas! This is the land that yielded America two presidents, both of whom led this country into gorilla-style land wars. This is the land where the Governor maintains that the state retains the right to secede from the Union even though a war was definitely fought that decided that issue.

It's Californian social tolerance versus Texas that basically prosecuted homosexuals for being themselves until it was forced to yield by the Supreme Court of the United States in 2003 (2003!). Culturally, it's Hollywood versus Dallas. Economically, it's Medi-Cal versus uninsured Texans. Geographically, it's . . . well, nothing really compares with this, or this, or this, or this.

Ultimately, though, it's a western American duel. It's the California cowboy1 versus the Texas cowboy, and if you want to know who has the quickest draw, just remember that Clint Eastwood was mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea.

The paragraphs written above are a long way of saying that Brett A. Lewis of Texas may have played in 29 professional baseball games as a member of the Lowell Spinners of the New York-Pennslvania League, Class Single-A, but I may not have rooted for him like I did the other Brett Lewis' of professional baseball.

Brett A. Lewis was not a member of the University of Texas baseball teams that won the College Baseball World Series in 2005. He joined the team a year later. Neither of the teams he played on in his two years at the University of Texas even won the Big 12 Conference. However, the Long Horns did win the conference the year after he left campus.

It appears that Brett A. Lewis was a recreational young lad. According to one of those weird sports information department student journals, Brett A. Lewis enjoyed going to Dallas Mavericks basketball games and playing laser tag.

The biggest moment of Brett A. Lewis' college career may have been when he knocked in two runs with a double down the rightfield line to give the Long Horns a 5-3 lead in the sixth inning of their NCAA Regional championship game against UC Irvine. But the Californians ultimately got the best of the Texans, the Anteaters coming back to defeat the Long Horns 9-6, ending Brett A. Lewis' college career.

Brett A. Lewis went undrafted. He was signed by the Boston Red Sox, and sent to their lower-level Single-A team in Lowell, Massachusetts. In 75 at bats, Brett A. Lewis had 16 hits for .213 batting average. He also drew 14 walks and was hit by three pitches, so his on-base percentage was not horrible, .355. But clearly it was not enough to keep the young man around any longer.

There is no easily-accessable on line record to find out what Brett A. Lewis of Dallas, Texas, is doing now. My best guess: running for the Texas state legislature while working for his father's financing business – I mean, why not?

1. This song says it all.