Jamie Romak hits the big time.

Driving to work tonight, I was listening to the end of the Pirates-Dodgers game from Los Angeles and heard a name that I haven't heard in a while.
Jamie Romak was getting ready to enter the game for the final inning of a 12-2 blowout, but hearing that name made me think.

Jamie Romak has been in the minors for years and I had thought that he was long back into the real world and yet, after all those years, was in the big leagues.
Romak was a name that came up often in the early year or two of this blog (Do a blog search using his name) when the Pirates farm system was pretty weak and when we covered the prospects even closer than we do now.
Romak was considered the Pirates' top power prospect at one time after being obtained from Atlanta in 2007 with Adam LaRoche for Mike Gonzalez and Brent Lillibridge in a system that screamed for power with the awful Dave Littlefield/Ed Creech drafts.

The Pirates never seemed to handle the Canadian correctly and despite posting decent power numbers, was repeating levels in each of his three years as a Pirate and was allowed to leave via minor league free agency.
Romak then moved to Kansas City where he played in Frederick as a member of Wilmington and appeared to be headed to hired gun status, where teams would sign an established High A/AA bat to fill in a spot that needs something on the level along with a veteran attitude to help younger and usually immature players.

I often talked hockey with Jamie in his stops in Hagerstown and Frederick and found him to be an engaging guy-the type of guy that you would wish would make it, but the odds were against him.
I lost track of Romak after that and figured he was on the independent circuit, but began to post solid power numbers in Triple-A with a 22 homer season in Memphis last season and was signed by the Dodgers before this season.
Romak ripped 13 homers in just under two months in AAA Albuquerque, so with his versatility (LF, RF,1b, and 3b) made him a good choice for a team that needed a callup due to injury issues.

My friends on the autograph circuit often talk about how we wish Sean Nicol would make it to the big time even if just for a while because he is just the type of person that you would love to see succeed and Jamie Romak was that type of person, albeit a little less outgoing.
I think of the guys that I hang around with only Bill Cover and Mike Oravec still graphing from when Romak was playing on the local circuit, so he isn't quite as known as a similar player would be currently.

Minor league baseball is a long road to the show and one not filled with glamour.
Unless you think playing in towns like Hagerstown, eating sandwiches, long bus rides, and sleeping multiple people to a room is glamorous, that is.
And for as much as guys like me like to say we'd play for free, we probably wouldn't-at least at this stage of our lives anyway with families to support for what is essentially peanuts compared to the big league game, so the trek that career minor leaguers like Romak make truly is more of a survival test than that of a romantic quest.

I'm not sure how long Jamie Romak will stay around the big leagues, but I'm happy for him that he got to the majors and I hope he manages to get a hit sometime (currently 0 for 2), but for all the Jamie Romak's that made it, think about all that paid a similar price and came up short.
Give them a thought once in a while for paying the same cost with zero rewards...