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Baseball's Great Expectations
The following is an excerpt from Baseball’s Great Expectations: Candid Stories of Ballplayers Who Didn’t Live Up to the Hype
Author's Note:
This book is a timely and poignant tale of loss and redemption of celebrated, disdained, or forgotten blasts from baseball’s past. What were once names on old baseball cards or in dusty books can now be seen in a whole new light. The viewpoints expressed in this book are from the ballplayers themselves as well as others who know or knew them personally. The players featured in each chapter are more than their role in baseball, so baseball cannot define who they are, or what their lives became without or beyond baseball.
The story of Dan Pasqua
As a youngster, Dan Pasqua was a Yankees fan and loved to go to the games as often as he could with family and friends. “I was a good high school player in New Jersey, I even made All-County, but teams were not interested in me,” Pasqua explained. As a high school senior, he topped out at 5’10” and 175 pounds. Disappointed, but not deterred, Pasqua went off to William Patterson University for an education and to play baseball. “New Jersey had a lot of overlooked high school baseball talent at the time, most of us ended up going to Montclair State or William Patterson.”
The Beginning
Pasqua put his 1981 and 1982 college baseball seasons to good use as he physically matured to a 6-foot, 200-pound baseball machine. Both years, he was a Baseball All-American and capped off 1982 as the New Jersey Athletic Conference Player of the Year.
The player who couldn’t attract attention a of couple years before was now turning heads across baseball. The team closest to his heart and home was the Yankees, and they selected him in the third round of the 1982 Major League Baseball draft. (Before taking Pasqua, the Yankees took a chance on a player who many consider to be the best all-around athlete since Jim Thorpe. Vincent “Bo” Jackson was taken as their second-round pick as a shortstop. But Jackson did the unthinkable. He turned down the New York Yankees and went on to become the talk of college football.)
By 1985, Pasqua had the Yankees thinking that they had lightning in a bottle. The thoughts were of a lefty slugger ready to be the next link in the long line of Yankee legends leading a ticker tape parade and a World Series trophy through the famous “Canyon of Heroes” in downtown New York City.
The Pressure Mounts
How did it go wrong? How did Pasqua go from a “can’t miss” player to a Yankees organizational footnote? Pressure, expectations, and impatience from Pasqua himself, the fans, and the New York Yankees organization.
Dan Pasqua was no Mickey Mantle, but unfortunately for Pasqua, he LOOKED like Mantle with a similar body type, size, and weight. Both players had huge expectations unfairly placed upon them. When Mantle was trying to cut his big-league teeth in 1951, he was given the number 6 by the Yankees. This matters because it was the next number after the great Yankee center fielder Joe DiMaggio. “Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio” was given the number 5 as a direct link to Lou Gehrig, whose number 4 linked to Babe Ruth with number 3. The pressure of trying to be as good as DiMaggio was perhaps what caused Mantle to slump badly during the beginning of his rookie year; it took a trip back to the minor leagues before being promoted again to the big club later in the year with a new number of 7 to give Mantle some relief from the pressure.
Playing center field for the New York Yankees is one of the elite positions in sports, and Pasqua was positioned as a minor league center fielder envisioned to become the next Yankees legend.
“I was definitely being groomed by the Yankees, each step of the way, but I was not thinking about being the center fielder of the Yankees, I just wanted to play in their outfield. It wasn’t until after I made the Yankees did the media and fans start with the expectations of being the next great center fielder like DiMaggio, Mantle, or Bobby Murcer,” explained Pasqua. “I was just excited about the opportunity to one day play in the Yankees outfield.”
In defense of Yankees fans and the hyper-driven New York sports media, Pasqua showed greatness playing up the Yankees minor league ladder by hitting tape-measure home runs, driving in runs, making minor league All-Star teams, and showing the grace of a future Yankee. Then on May 30, 1985, Dan Pasqua became the 15,034th player in MLB history. Wearing number 21 on the back of his pinstriped home jersey, Pasqua made a long-awaited loud grand entrance to the New York Yankees and their highly anticipating fans.
The Debut
What else could happen to make fans and media lose their collective minds? A home run deep into the right field short porch by Pasqua in the bottom of the fifth for his first major league hit helped to secure a tight 3-1 win over the Reggie Jackson-led California Angels. The New York Yankees threw Pasqua under the bright New York lights, batting sixth in a packed lineup, and starting in the outfield with two of baseball’s greatest players, Rickey Henderson and Dave Winfield, who both became Hall of Famers. For Pasqua, being on the field that night was a dream come true.
About the Author:
In addition to Baseball’s Great Expectations, Patrick Montgomery is the author of The Baseball Miracle of the Splendid 6 and Towny Townsend
He can be found online in the following places:
https://www.amazon.com/author/patrickmontgomery imdb.me/patricktmontgomery
Twitter: @tdmonty
Twitter: @MontgomeryBook
TikTok: @patrickmontgomerybooks
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