It’s a wonderful day for old guys everywhere…er, well, old guys relatively speaking. The Atlanta Braves’ J. C. Boscan and the Detroit Tigers’ Max St. Pierre—both catchers and both 30 years old—were called up after spending nearly 15 years in minor league baseball.
Earlier in the season I wrote an article entitled Hey Old Guy! Minor Leaguers Who Just Won’t Quit, which discussed the small collection of career minor leaguers 30 years of age and older who have yet to reach the big leagues. J. C. Boscan and Max St. Pierre were two of those players.
Boscan debuted in 1997. From the beginning, he did not perform well offensively—in his first professional season, he hit only .202 in 36 games. He boosted his average in 1998 and again in 1999, though still his career-high at that point was only .226. Yet, he played on.
From 2000 to 2005, his batting averaged eclipsed the .250 threshold only once. In 2006—now in the Milwaukee Brewers organization—he hit below .200 in a season for the second time in his career. He moved to the Cincinnati Reds organization in 2006 and hit only .215. And yet, he played on.
Boscan donned the tools of ignorance game in and game out, performing for over a decade on the minor league stage. He refused to give up, and by 2009 his average was up to .259. In 2010, he met the .250 mark for the second year in a row.
St. Pierre shares a story similar to Boscan’s. He began his professional career in 1997 and hit only .244 in his first season. Though the next year he hit .385, he would struggle to keep his average above .250 over the course of his career.
Though not an average hitter, St. Pierre showed that he had some pop—in 2003, he hit 11 home runs in 115 games and the next season, he hit eight dingers in 84 games. In addition, St. Pierre eclipsed the 50 RBI mark twice and the 50 runs scored mark once.
2010 was a career year for Max St. Pierre. In only 59 games, he had hit .274—his highest average since 1998—with 10 home runs and 36 RBI. He posted a slugging percentage of .479, a career high, and in 39 games with Triple-A Toledo he hit .300.
Both catchers’ careers are very similar. They both made their professional debuts in 1997 and they have both spent most of their careers with one organization. Heck, they both spent time in the Milwaukee Brewers organization. Neither will hit for power or average (more so in regards to Boscan), though both are stalwarts at that position behind home plate.
And perhaps most important of all, they both kept playing. Through it all, they did not quit. And finally, after years of toil and hard work, they persevered.
