Baltimore Orioles third base coach Juan Samuel, left, congratulates… (McClatchy-Tribune photo )
July 12, 2010|By Dan Connolly, The Baltimore Sun
At age 9, Ty Wigginton was playing Little League baseball under his father's tutelage when a manager from an advanced level asked whether the boy could be moved up.
About halfway through the season, after seeing his son handle his age group with ease, Don Wigginton relented, and young Ty joined the 11- and 12-year-olds. The following season, Don Wigginton decided to manage one of the older teams, but Ty was already on a roster, so he had to trade two 12-year-old All-Stars to get his son onto his team.
Such begins the strange and entertaining tale of Ty Wigginton -- Orioles infielder and nomadic ballplayer -- who by age 10 had already been traded once and been released once by his own dad.
"Yeah, I guess it started there," Don Wigginton said, chuckling.
Ty Wigginton, now 32, has taken a circuitous route to Tuesday's major league All-Star Game in Anaheim, Calif., where he'll be the Orioles' lone representative.
He has been with five organizations and could join his sixth this summer if the Orioles deal him away for prospects at the July 31 nonwaiver trade deadline.
He has been traded twice and cut twice as a big leaguer. This month, he became just the fifth player in the past 17 years to be named to an All-Star Game after being released by one club and not offered a contract to stay with another.
"It's funny how the game works," said Wigginton, who is making his first All-Star appearance in his ninth big league season. "I have always believed if I go out and play the game right and play the game hard, good things will happen to you."
Wigginton has always tried harder than others, playing with abandon and forcing people to take notice. Coming out of Chula Vista High near San Diego, he received one baseball scholarship, a $1,000 offer from a tiny Division I school clear across the country, the University of North Carolina at Asheville.
Before his senior year of high school, Wigginton attended a baseball camp at Duke, where he made an immediate impression on then-Blue Devils assistant coach and recruiting coordinator Bill Hillier.
"We were interested. We would have offered him [scholarship] money," Hillier said. "But at the time, he wasn't a fit academically."
Wigginton's board scores weren't high enough to get into prestigious Duke, but several months later, Hillier took the head coaching job at UNC Asheville, and one of his first phone calls was to Wigginton. The partial scholarship was accepted within hours.
Getting serious
Wigginton played his freshman year, but Hillier wasn't happy with the kid's overall attitude and maturity. Wigginton tended to shout profanities when things didn't go his way on the field, and he didn't take things seriously off the field -- particularly his academics.
So after the season, Hillier called Wigginton into his office and told him he no longer had a guaranteed spot on Asheville's roster. If Wigginton wanted to come back as a sophomore, he would have to earn a spot on the team.
Hillier was bluffing. He had no intention of pulling the scholarship.
"If he had said he wasn't coming back," Hillier said, "then I would have talked him into coming back."
Wigginton responded to the challenge, partially out of necessity.
"I think my grades were bad enough, I don't think I could have transferred anyway," Wigginton joked.
As a sophomore, he played so well that opposing coaches at large Division I schools asked Hillier where he found the shortstop with the unstoppable motor. Wigginton won National Player of the Week honors in his junior year, putting him on the college baseball map. Even then, he was viewed by most scouts as someone who wouldn't have to be signed until after his senior year.
New York Mets scout Marlin McPhail thought otherwise; he loved Wigginton's work ethic, intensity and versatility.
"He would get dirty from taking ground balls before the game," McPhail said. "He was one of those guys who always had a dirty uniform."
Based on McPhail's recommendation, the Mets selected Wigginton in the 17th round of the 1998 amateur draft. By the next day, he had signed a contract. His bonus was so inconsequential that, to this day, there is debate as to how much it was.
Wigginton said he got $16,500. McPhail said it was $17,500. Don Wigginton thought it was $17,000. Regardless, they all remember an agreement being reached almost immediately.
"The negotiations took all of, probably, 45 seconds," Ty Wigginton said. "Once I got that opportunity, there was no way I was going to let it pass."
Making his mark
By 2002, Wigginton had made his big league debut with the Mets -- the first and only UNC Asheville player in the majors. In 2003, he entered spring training camp in a position battle for the starting third baseman's job with respected veteran Jay Bell.
