Cinderella Man, The Sequel

My buddy George has been begging for my take on the Chris Coste story. He keeps telling me that Coste is the feel good story of the decade and makes Hank Baskett look like a bonus baby pampered athlete in comparison. I think most people know the basics of the Chris Coste story. He’s a 33 year old rookie catcher who has risen from obscurity to become a decent option behind the plate for the resurgent Phightin’ Phils. Well, before I could get around to posting a blog entry on Coste, I came across this article in the New York Times and my plans went up in smoke. Sorry George, but I can’t compete with this article and the Big Boys from the NYT. So here it is the article I promised you on Chris Coste:

Chris Coste’s second book was done. On a disc, edited, designed and ready to be published — if only he had the money to print it.
At 31, with a wife and a daughter back in Fargo, N.D., living for the eighth consecutive year on a minor-league salary, Coste did not have an extra $10,000 floating around. And besides, he was still holding out to write a different ending.
Really, only one would suffice.
In October, Coste (pronounced coast) will sit down at his laptop and leaf through eight months’ worth of notes written on a steno pad and collect his thoughts.
Then he will try to explain how someone who never earned a varsity letter in high school, who attended a Division III college, who went undrafted and who spent enough time toiling in the International League to discover the best Mexican restaurant in Durham, N.C., reached baseball nirvana at 33.
“I’m not worried,” the 6-foot-1, 200-pound Coste said. “It’s not like I have any shortage of material.”
On May 21 the Philadelphia Phillies promoted Coste, a catcher, from their Triple-A affiliate in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, Pa., because the reserve infielder Alex Gonzalez had retired without warning.
For someone who routinely dreamt that he was working out with Jim Thome in the Phillies’ weight room only to wake up in Charlotte, N.C., — or Buffalo, or Indianapolis — the circumstances hardly mattered.
After an inauspicious beginning — he went hitless in his first 13 at-bats — Coste has worked his way into regular playing time, batting .340 with four home runs and 20 runs batted in, and turning his hometown, Fargo, and its sister city, Moorhead, Minn., from Twins country into a stronghold of Phillies fans. Local newscasts include nightly updates of the native son — even if he does not play.
“He’s been all that everyone’s talking about around here,” Bucky Burgau, Coste’s coach at Concordia College in Moorhead, said in a telephone interview. “You can’t walk three feet without hearing Chris’ name.”
Last month in San Diego, a former junior college teammate who works for the Padres sought out Coste to tell him about the dozens of people who scan the box scores daily for his name.
Cleveland manager Eric Wedge, who managed Coste for three years in the Indians’ farm system, receives regular updates of his former pupil’s progress from a coach.
Yankees catcher Sal Fasano, who lost his backup job with the Phillies because of Coste’s emergence, cried when Coste was promoted. “If I was going to lose a job to someone, I’m glad that it was to Chris,” Fasano said. “He paid his dues, and he deserved it.”
Coste grew up an only child, the son of a single mother living in government housing. Many of his friends, he said, fell into trouble and went to prison.
But Coste never let himself stray from a life devoted to baseball. Every Tuesday and Thursday, his grandfather, Bob, took a 5-year-old Coste to his softball games, forging a passion for baseball.
The harsh winters in North Dakota made it difficult for high schools to play a full schedule, so Coste played American Legion baseball in the summer, and after a miserable season at an Illinois junior college, returned home to his high school sweetheart, Marcia, and attend Concordia.
“If you closed your eyes while you walked by the batting cages, you could tell when Chris Coste was hitting,” Burgau said.
But scouts were not attracted to a youngster with no position, and Coste put his professional hopes into the independent Northern League, which in 1996 fielded an expansion franchise in Fargo-Moorhead.
Coste, fresh out of Concordia, was attractive to the new franchise. The Redhawks were so desperate for a backup catcher and a second baseman, Coste said jokingly, that they signed someone who rarely played second and had never caught.
Coste borrowed a worn mitt, and after the regular catcher signed a minor-league deal with the Montreal Expos, was given $140 to buy a few new ones at a local sporting goods store.
“He’s the only guy I know if you told him to climb Mount Everest, he’d give it a go,” Redhawks manager Doug Simunic said in a telephone interview.
To augment his $900 monthly salary, Coste worked in the team’s sales and merchandise department, designing T-shirts, holding dizzy-bat races and selling advertising space on the stadium’s outfield fences.
For a few months he considered writing a behind-the-scenes account of life in the minor leagues, and while sitting in on a front-office meeting, he found his title. Manager Doug Simunic was probing Coste for the whereabouts of a teammate, and Coste told him, “Hey I’m just the catcher.”
He published 2,000 copies of the 228-page book (which also contains photographs of his wedding held at home plate of Fargo’s stadium) and vowed to write another book later.
Coste spent three more seasons tearing up the Northern League and then latched on to the Indians’ organization for three seasons. In 2002, at Triple-A Buffalo, he was hitting well above .300 in mid-August, shortly before the major-league rosters could expand on Sept. 1, but he was not called up.
“If I never made it, so what?” Coste said. “I’m not going to be on my deathbed regretting my whole baseball career. People ask me this, and I can honestly say that I never thought of a time when I’d quit. Never. Anyone who knows me well enough knows that they’d have to rip the uniform off my back to get me to stop playing.”
Which helps to explain why Coste has spent the last three Christmases in Obregon, Mexico, playing winter ball. While Marcia and their daughter, Casey, were back in Fargo, Coste and a few teammates usually splurged for dinner at Morton’s Steakhouse and then gathered around a tree purchased at the local Wal-Mart.
Coste signed with the Phillies as a minor-league free agent in October 2004, thrived last season at Scranton, and in spring training, got a chance to shine after Ryan Howard fell ill 10 minutes before an intrasquad game.
Coste went 4 for 5, then started playing nearly every day to fill the void created by the World Baseball Classic, batting .463. And then the Phillies acquired David Dellucci on the eve of opening day.
Coste promised not to feel sorry for himself, but he struggled miserably his first month at Scranton. In May, however, his daughter came bearing a gift: a green Care Bear with a four-leaf clover on its belly, and Coste’s luck turned.
He hit homers in consecutive games, and the next morning, he received the call from Scranton/Wilkes-Barre manager John Russell, ready to fill in the final chapter of his second book, “RollerCoster: A Ride Through the Minor Leagues.”
“I’ll never say that I appreciate this more than anyone else,” Coste said. “But I appreciate this as much as any baseball player ever could.”