{"id":4652,"date":"2010-09-07T07:35:32","date_gmt":"2010-09-07T14:35:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/?p=4652"},"modified":"2010-09-07T07:38:08","modified_gmt":"2010-09-07T14:38:08","slug":"after-15-years-lindsey-makes-it-to-bigs-in-la","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/?p=4652","title":{"rendered":"After 15 years, Lindsey makes it to bigs in LA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Minor League veteran gets call after winning PCL batting title<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img src=\"http:\/\/a.espncdn.com\/photo\/2010\/0829\/la_lindsey_john_b2_200.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\n<em>John Lindsey has spent 16 seasons in the minor leagues, amassing a .311 batting average at the Triple-A level<\/em><\/p>\n<p>SAN DIEGO &#8212; There hasn&#8217;t been much feel-good to the Dodgers&#8217; story lately, which probably explains the interest in the promotion of 33-year-old John Lindsey, who spent his first day as a Major Leaguer on Monday after 15 years in the Minors.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is a great moment for me and it hasn&#8217;t sunk in,&#8221; said Lindsey. &#8220;I&#8217;m here, but my brain hasn&#8217;t caught up yet.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Lindsey&#8217;s circuitous route to the Major Leagues includes stops with three other organizations (Colorado, Seattle and Florida), a couple years in independent ball and a near retirement.<\/p>\n<p>He finally got the call after winning the Pacific Coast League batting title with a .353 average for Triple-A Albuquerque, slugging 25 homers with 97 RBIs in 107 games. He was called into manager Tim Wallach&#8217;s office for a conference call with Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti for the good news.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My knees kind of buckled,&#8221; Lindsey said. &#8220;I couldn&#8217;t believe it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Lindsey did a SportsCenter interview Monday after receiving &#8220;a million texts&#8221; Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My wife put it on Facebook and a lot of people are rooting for me,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Lindsey said every time he didn&#8217;t get called up, &#8220;It was like they were telling me I couldn&#8217;t do it, but I&#8217;m hard-headed,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I was stubborn and kept going.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Manager Joe Torre said he will use Lindsey mostly as a pinch-hitter, because his defense at first base is limited.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The lesson is, never give up,&#8221; Torre said. &#8220;It&#8217;s a great story. We&#8217;ve been around a lot of players that things come easy to and don&#8217;t really understand the other side of it.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Minor League veteran gets call after winning PCL batting title John Lindsey has spent 16 seasons in the minor leagues, amassing a .311 batting average at the Triple-A level SAN DIEGO &#8212; There hasn&#8217;t been much feel-good to the Dodgers&#8217; story lately, which probably explains the interest in the promotion of 33-year-old John Lindsey, who [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4652"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4652\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}