Brett Lewis' in Professional Baseball (Part 4) – an Epilogue

(Picture: George Brett, the origin of this scribe's first name, and likely that of two of the three Brett Lewis' who played professional baseball)

This is the fourth and final installment of Brett Lewis' in Professional Baseball. (Part 1); (Part 2); (Part 3). 

Ecce panis angelorum! In other words, behold the bread of angels! It was not uncommon for boys born in the late 1970s and 1980s to be named after George Brett, a mythical ball player who was a third and first baseman for a major league team in middle America, the Kansas City Royals.

He was a handsome guy. He had grit. He had passion. He had wit.1 And for those with contemporary interests, he inspired an award-winning song by the recording artist Lorde.

But most of all, he was really good at baseball. And that's what matters to American men when they name their sons.

The author of the Brett Lewis' in Professional Baseball series was named after George Brett in 1987.

Brett is the only baseball player to win batting titles in three different decades (the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s). He accumulated over 3,000 hits in his major league baseball career. His team won the World Series in 1985. He was a first-ballot hall of fame baseball player, receiving an unprecedented percentage of the vote.

Essentially, he was the man.

In a twist of fate, this Brett A. Lewis would guess that both Brett A. Lewis' who played professional baseball were likely named after George Brett. Brett A. Lewis of Douglasville, Georgia, was born in April 1979. By then, Brett had won one batting title, had led the league in doubles and was named to the American League All Star team three times. Brett A. Lewis of Dallas, Texas, was born on March 16, 1985, the same year George Brett's Royals would win the World Series. By 1985, Brett had won another batting title in 1980, a year he went deeper into a season than anyone since Ted Williams while maintaining a .400 batting average.2

George Brett was the angel, and the Bretts who followed were merely the crumbs that fell to earth. Loathsome is the pressure of being named after the infallible!

However, us Brett Lewis' solider on the best we can because it's what George Brett would do.

1. Brett had to leave game-2 of the 1980 World Series because of hemorrhoid pain. He had surgery the next day and hit a home run in Game-3. After the game, he said, "my problems are all behind me."

2. Brett H. Lewis was almost certainly not named after George Brett as he was too old, having likely been born in the late 1960s before George Brett captured America's imagination. He was probably named after a drunken Scottish grandfather. 

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. 

Brett Lewis' in Professional Baseball (Part 2)

(Picture: Despite playing in this pitcher-friendly ball field, Brett A. Lewis still gave up 60 earned runs against 101 innings pitched in his one season of professional baseball.)


To read a full explanation of why a scribe of my kind would waste his time writing pieces on the Brett Lewis' who have played professional baseball, and to view the first installment of my series of baseball appreciative pieces, click HERE. 

Brett A. Lewis was a special ballplayer to me. Of all the baseball players who have ever played America's pastime and earned some compensation for laboring at the game, he's only one of two who share my first name, last name, and middle initial.1 The Legend of Brett A. Lewis is unassailable.

Brett A. Lewis was birthed into this world on April 11, 1979. It was the same day that Eddie Wilson died – this is of little note to the casual baseball fan as Mr. Wilson played in only parts of two seasons for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1930s, accumulating 72 hits, 39 runs, 12 doubles, 2 triples and 4 home runs, but I'm sure his death was a big deal to his family.

However, the death and birth of these two men are relevant to baseball fans and pocket-book philosophers as it illustrates that the cycle of baseball life is never ending. As Wilson was exiting the world, another kind-of-good baseball player was entering it.

Brett A. Lewis was born in Douglasville, Georgia – the same city where just-good-enough-to-smell-success Major League Baseball players Terry Harper and Camp Skinner were born.

It's easy to imagine Brett A. Lewis, who may have been raised in a modest home 20 miles west of Atlanta, dreaming of growing up to be a professional baseball player. He probably picked peaches in the hot Georgia summers of the mid-to-late 1980s to earn some walking-around money while conjuring up imagines Ty Cobb, perhaps Georgia's greatest and most notorious baseball player. With Cobb in mind, he very likely sharpened his spikes and slid aggressively feet first into opposing defenders during his little league and high school baseball careers.

Everyday life in Douglasville was no breeze. When his family ran low on firewood – the family did not have central heating as Douglasville has never fully recovered from Sherman's March to the Sea – Brett A. Lewis would chop away at a ponderosa pine behind the family homestead, taking cuts like he was Atlanta Braves great David Justice until it fell. The offerings from the mighty ponderosas kept the Lewis family warm through the winters. The storms that would ravish and rage through Dixie Alley did little to stunt Brett A. Lewis' growth as a ballplayer. He only grew stronger as he erected 10-foot-high sandbag walls around the family homestead and dug a 10-foot deep basement to protect his kin folk from hurricane flooding and tornados, respectively.2

When Brett A. Lewis arrived at Georgia Southern University for his freshman year, he probably did not know whether he would fit in so far from home. Brett A. Lewis had neither been further east than Atlanta, nor further west than Talladega, Alabama.3  He simply did not know whether he would mix well with the sophisticated folks from Statesboro, Georgia – many of whom traced their linage to old estates in Savannah, Georgia.

Brett A. Lewis would blossom into a pitching prospect. By his senior year, Brett A. Lewis had a WHIP of 1.29 and a 4.07 ERA while accumulating 11 wins to 6 losses as he led the Eagles to a Southern Conference Championship and into the College Baseball World Series. Two of Brett A. Lewis' teammates would become major league pitchers – Dennis Dove (3 total innings pitched for St. Louis in 2007); and Brian Rogers (who gave up a symmetrical 11 earned runs for 11 innings pitched in two strange years with the Pittsburg Pirates).

The Big Leagues were not in the cards for Brett A. Lewis. He was drafted in the 2002 amateur draft by the Chicago Cubs in the 29th round as the 873rd overall pick. He did not see action at even the rookie-league level, but instead played two seasons for the Evansville Otters in the Frontier League.

The Evansville Otters play their games in the third-oldest professional baseball field. Bosse Field, located in Evansville, Indiana, was constructed in 1915. The field boasts the fact that it's the first municipally-owned athletic facility in the United States as the stadium was originally built as a School Board Project. Eugene V. Debs, the legendary American socialist who ran for president, may have been proud of such socialism projects in his home state in the early 20th Century.4 The mayor of Evansville at the time, and the namesake of the field, Benjamin Bosse, gave something of a socialist quote to commemorate the building of the stadium, "When everybody boosts, everybody wins."5

However, just as Evansville became more conservative over the years,6 so too did its reception of hard-working, country-strong, classic ballplayers. Brett A. Lewis struggled. He started 13 games his first season, going 4-5 with a 5.10 ERA and a 1.69 WHIP. In his second season, Brett A. Lewis played in only six games, going 1-2 with a 5.90 ERA and a 1.59 WHIP, before calling it quits.7

While Brett A. Lewis probably could have stuck around in the independent leagues longer, it was probably time for him return to Douglasville, Georgia, where the peaches grew large, the Spring air tasted like gin and tonic, and the women called their men honey.

1. Stay tuned for the other Brett A. Lewis to play professional baseball in another installment of this intrepid blog. 

2. As if it need be said, this entire paragraph is purely speculative to the highest degree.

3. Again, this entire paragraph was probably made up: When young Brett A. Lewis was 17 years old, he may have been lucky enough to win tickets at the Douglas County Fair to the Talladega-500 NASCAR race where he saw Jeff Gordon win a race that Dale Earnhardt really should have won.

4. Indeed, the city of Evansville, Indiana, may have been full of progressives in the early 20th century. By popular accounts, the first famous jewish baseball player and baseball hall of famer Hank Greenberg played for the Evansville Hubs in 1931 before moving on to the Detroit Tigers of the major leagues. It was a time when anti-semitism was not uncommon in America. 

5. However, perhaps this concept of economics works projects has become bastardized by the NFL extortionists who put pressure on American cities to build new stadiums today. 

6. Evansville, Indiana's house of representative delegate is Larry Bucshon, who is, inter alia, for lowering corporate taxes – very unlike Mr. Debs.  

7. The Otters are good enough to list an all-time roster, which, like this blog, forever commemorating Brett A. Lewis' professional baseball career. 

Brett Lewis' in Professional Baseball (Part 1)

(Pictured: Brett Lewis' teammate on the 1987 Pocatello Giants, Jimmy Myers)

In anticipation of the upcoming baseball season, I'll provide a brief report this week on each Brett Lewis who ever played professional baseball (at least those listed at baseball-reference.com). You may ask, "Why, sir, would you waste your time on such a passion?" And I tell you, "to celebrate baseball, dear citizen, and to aspire to the greatness of the men who share my name who have achieved enough success to receive compensation for playing a child's game." Enjoy! 

Brett H. Lewis was a 6 foot 3, 185 pound, right-hand pitcher who was 23 years old when he played his one season of professional baseball for the Pocatello Giants of the Pioneer League in 1987. Pocatello is the fifth-largest city in Idaho. The Giants, it's hardly worth saying, were an affiliate of the San Francisco Giants, playing at the Rookie-class level, the lowest on organized professional baseball's hierarchy.

The Giants were not good. The boys from Pocatello went 26-44, allowing 115 more runs than they scored. Lewis was a bullpen hand, never recording a start. He threw 47.1 innings and gave up 40 runs. However, only 28 of those runs were earned as the Pocatello Giants were awful on defense. He completed his only season in professional baseball with a 5.32 ERA.

Some guys on the team did worse, like Jimmy Myers, who, at the tender age of 18, threw only 19.2 innings, giving up 19 earned runs.

Perhaps because of his age, the young Myers continued to play many more years of professional baseball, 13 in toto. He was even called up for a cup of coffee with the Baltimore Orioles in 1996. In his MLB stint, the right hander from Oklahoma City threw in 11 games for 14 innings, allowing 18 hits, 4 home runs and 3 walks for 11 earned runs. His WAR came in at -0.3, and indeed he was replaced as the Orioles went into their post-season campaign without the not-so-young Myers (who was by then 26 years old, likely not showing the same sterling youthful promise that he did in that 1987 season when he played on the same team as Brett H. Lewis). Without Myers, the Orioles won their divisional series (3-1) over the Cleveland Indians, but fell to the eventual World Series-champion New York Yankees (4-1) in the American League Championship Series.

Brett H. Lewis must have had major league dreams when he embarked on his professional baseball career; even if only for a cup of coffee with Cal Ripkin, as Myers got to enjoy:

"Can I get you a cup of coffee, Mr. Ripkin?" said imaginary Myers.

"No, son, we're about to play an important game against our divisional rival the Toronto Blue Jays," replied an imaginary Ripkin.

"Oh, yeah! Gosh it's great to be here."

"Have you thought about maybe developing skills outside of baseball, son? . . . I'm sorry, I forget what your name was."

"Jimmy Myers, sir! I'm sorry, did you say you wanted coffee, Mr. Ripkin?"

"No."

Silence filled the space between Myers, who appeared awestruck, and Ripkin, who was stoic, granite faced.

"Now, hustle out to the bullpen, boy!" said Ripkin in an enthusiastic tone he conjured up roughly 10 times a year to show his appreciation for the minor-league call ups while also getting them out of his hair. To become the Iron Man, you'd better develop some tricks.

"Yes, sir!" said Myers, exhibiting an excited hop in his step as he sprinted out of the dugout and toward the Cameron Yards bullpen.1

Myers' career lasted three more minor-league-filled seasons, finally ending with the Scranton/Wilkes Barre Red Barons in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1999. He began work for Dunder Mifflin following the Red Barrons' 73-71 campaign.2

Now, this scrivener pokes fun at Myers, but a 13-year minor league career is nothing of which to be ashamed. He even had his big-league moment, while poor Brett H.'s career ended with just a few dozen innings in the lowest tier of professional baseball.

But if you read between the lines you can imagine a happy story for Brett H. He entered Rookie ball as a 23-year-old which likely means he obtained some sort of college education, or otherwise marketable skill before entering the hallowed grounds of Halliwell Park. Although there is no information listed for Brett H.'s hometown or college-level experience, we can only guess that the now 50-year-old veteran of the Pioneer League is a physical education teacher at a high school somewhere in middle America where he also is the school's pitching coach.


1. Not a real conversation. 

2. Not a real fact.

* Post inspired by a Notgraphs posting.