May 07, 2023

'Welcome to the Circus of Baseball' author pitches the minor leagues as America's true pastime

25 minutes

1994 was a notable year in American sports. The New York Rangers took home the Stanley Cup, Olympic skater Nancy Kerrigan was violently attacked on the ice (the culprit later identified as an associate of competing skater Tonya Harding), and Major League Baseball’s World Series was canceled.

But over with the minor league team, the Asheville Tourists in North Carolina, a young Ryan McGee was living his best life.

“My dream then was to be a radio play-by-play guy," McGee said. "In the Carolinas, I'm the guy that would go as a teenager and sit in my father's car and twist the AM radio dial, just looking for teams…Unfortunately, my accent is what it is. And in 1994, everyone was supposed to sound like Tom Brokaw. And that's not what I sounded like. But I did land an internship with the Tourists, with the hope of perhaps maybe becoming the voice of the Asheville Tourists.”

McGee jumped at the chance to work for $100 a week as an intern for the team. A budding sports journalist, McGee was already an ardent baseball fan, with a special passion for baseball’s minor leagues.

Today, he's a well-known writer for ESPN, but his new book recounts his harrowing and hilarious experiences that summer — including some that almost cut his career short. Pulling out the tarp to cover the field on rainy days was especially perilous, he says:

“When you go to a game at Wrigley Field or Yankee Stadium and they pull the tarp, they have dozens of people pulling this giant, heavy, rain-proof cover for the entire ballpark infield. And when you have dozens of people, it's beautiful, right? Well, at a minor league ball park, sometimes we had four people to do this while we were in a downpour. And as a result, sometimes the tarp pull turned into more of a tarp drag," McGee said. "There was one time, as I held on to this nylon handle loop of this tarp, the wind got up underneath the tarp. And in my mind, I went about 150 feet up in the air. The reality is that that puff of air probably put me about six or seven feet up in the air, but my feet left the ground… But the good news is I was young and made out of rubber, so when I landed on the ground, I was not hurt very badly. Now I’d go to the hospital.”

McGee's new book “Welcome to the Circus of Baseball: A Story of the Perfect Summer at the Perfect Ballpark at the Perfect Time” is our May selection for “Bookmarked: The Under the Radar Book Club.”

GUEST

Ryan McGee, senior writer for ESPN the Magazine, co-host of the Marty and McGee show for ESPN Radio and the SEC sports network.

...more