Seth's 50 Centers

Empathizing with someone like Ken Griffey, Jr. is kind of tough for a 28-year old sports writer.

I can’t fathom what it’s like to have hit nearly 600 home runs, and I certainly don’t know anything about what it’s been like to make the kind of money he has throughout his career.

But a guy like Tom Shearn – a career minor league pitcher from nearby Briggs High School – now that’s normally someone I can relate to.

Shearn, two days from his 30th birthday, finally got the call every guy who put on a pair of stirrups and doffed a cap as a kid dreams about Sunday. He got the chance to start a Major League game for the Cincinnati Reds.

Shearn threw 101 pitches over seven innings for the Reds at home Sunday, en route to a 9-3 win.

While I didn’t have the talent to compete even at the AAA level like Shearn has the past several years, the every day Joe can relate to how it would feel to be him that first time he toed the rubber.

Griffey has taken the field thousands of times as a big leaguer, but Shearn was doing it for the first time.

Butterflies had to be fluttering, humming or whatever it is they do in the pit of your stomach at the most nerve-racking times of your life.

I met Shearn in Louisville last summer, his third in the Reds’ system after being drafted by the Houston Astros in 1996.

He was a sometime starter, sometime reliever, not on the Reds’ 40-man roster, doing whatever it took to stick with the organization.

He’s been the type of pitcher who’s invaluable to a minor league manager.

If the Reds needed to fill a spot on the big league roster, it’d be Shearn filling that guy’s place, sometimes at a moment’s notice.

If the Bats needed him to eat up some innings, he was always willing to do so, regardless of how his win-loss record, or his ERA, was affected.

Now, over 10 years after graduating high school, he was getting his big break.

Here’s where my ability to comprehend what Shearn was going through ends. I have no idea how gratifying it can be to put in over 10 years of blood, sweat and tears just hoping to get one shot at the big stage.

Just think about all those bus trips, all that time spent dreaming of the lavish setting of a big league clubhouse while sitting in a glorified cinder block basement or even just the longing and hoping for your big break.

Shearn earned another start – he’ll make it in St. Louis Friday – and I hope he can continue to do well, representing Central Ohio and the Cincinnati Reds well.