Driving Through the Baseball World By John Kocsis Jr.
San Diego, California is a long way away from Columbia, South Carolina. More than a hop, skip and a jump, the journey is 2,354 miles—or roughly a 34-hour drive. Okay. It’s not quite fair to track it as one drive or journey. There were steps to get there. First, it was an eight-hour journey to the Bay Area as a 19-year-old. Two years later, baseball would bring our protagonist back closer to home, in
Pomona—six hours south of the Bay and two hours northeast of San Diego. Then, later that Summer, the pitcher would receive his first taste of the Midwest, packing up his things and heading to Duluth, Minnesota. A journey from one hour North of Tijuana, Mexico to three hours South of Thunder Bay, Canada. After graduating college, our player would once again journey across the country to Evansville, Indiana to play in the Frontier League, his final stop before coming to Columbia. Baseball is a journey. Yes, physically, mentally and socially while playing the sport, players grow up an learn a lot more about the culture of the world outside of their hometown. Locker rooms are packed to the gills with people from every walk of life. But that doesn’t mean that for many players, it isn’t a lengthy journey in real life to get from point a-to-point b. That’s the case for Tim Holdgrafer, a 25-year-old who has experienced it all through the game. He’s played from coast-to-coast, playing a lot of games on the West Coast and while in the Carolina League, making an appearance in Charleston, South Carolina along the Atlantic Ocean. The righty’s grey Jeep Grand Cherokee has pushed through a lot of miles along the way. Sometimes, he has had the time to make a trip out of the journey between stops, but other times, like when the Royals signed him out of Evansville, he’s had to persevere.
“I was supposed to start that Friday night game. My Mom had flown out the
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