Sometimes, the World Plays Fair

As it has just done for one Maxim Joseph St. Pierre, a career minor-league catcher who's spent most of his time in the Detroit Tiger organization. Tuesday, St. Pierre was pulled from the AAA Toledo Mud Hens game in the third inning. The reason? The parent team had just purchased his contract and he was going to Detroit.

No big deal, happens all the time at this point of the baseball season, right? Major league clubs expand their rosters to give some of the raw talent a taste of the big time and some experience competing at the highest level of the game. But it's a big deal for Max St. Pierre. Max, you see, started playing professional baseball in 1997, and has played 978 games at different minor league levels without a single day on a major league roster. When St. Pierre started with the Gulf Coast Tigers of the Rookie League, Barry Bonds had only 334 homers and mostly normal blood chemistry.

With the exception of 10 games played for the Huntsville Stars of the Milwaukee Brewers organization in 2007, Max has been a loyal part of the Detroit Tiger system (And his .156 batting average for the Stars kind of shows his heart wasn't in the change). That's right -- for the first eight years of his career, Max's goal was to get to be a member of a team that couldn't post a winning season and in 2003 lost an American-League record 119 games. When you find out at the beginning of the season that you're not good enough to be a Tiger, you gotta really want to play to keep going.

He's being promoted to fill in for the ailing Gerald Laird, the Tigers' regular catcher who injured his back in batting practice and was unavailable to play. Laird's a year older and has spent two seasons on the Detroit roster after a career with the Texas Rangers that featured several stints right down the road at the Bricktown Ballpark.

So Max's time in the bigs may be limited. He may only get to play out the rest of this season before he's back shuttling between Toledo and the Tigers' AA club at Erie, PA. But I bet he won't care too much. Because for the rest of his life, baseball player Max St. Pierre will know he has spent time among those at the very top of his profession. He will face the best pitchers, and try to help his own pitcher fool the best hitters. His throw to second will be tested by the best baserunners. The daydream of almost every kid who ever picked up a bat and glove will solidify into reality for him. What most people have to watch on a TV screen or a from behind a wall will be Max St. Pierre's place of business. And even though sometimes we find out that working hard and persevering is not the automatic path to our dreams we have been promised, it will be for him.

Max St. Pierre's going to The Show.