Baseball’s ‘Peculiar’ Pull Draws in a Former Star
CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. — Daniel Murphy looked out over the grass at Fairfield Properties Ballpark, where the Long Island Ducks were practicing under cloudy skies. “Baseball is a beautiful game,” he said, “and it makes people do peculiar things.”
Murphy would know. A three-time All-Star who played his last Major League Baseball game in 2020, he is attempting a comeback with the Ducks, whose 126-game season is scheduled to begin on Friday with a road game in North Carolina. Murphy, along with some other long shots, intends to grind it out in the Atlantic League despite being 38 and having earned nearly $80 million in a 12-season major league career.
The goal, for Murphy and the other familiar names on the Ducks’ roster, is simple: Get back to the majors.
The Atlantic League, which has been active since 1998, is a place of optimism and experimentation. The teams are independently owned, but the league is a partner of M.L.B. and has often served as a testing ground for new methods and ideas, like bigger bases, a pitching rubber that was pushed back a foot and so-called robot umps — a version of M.L.B.’s proposed system of automating the calls of balls and strikes.
Source: The New York Times
