A Hit And A Miss

Recently I bought one of those Fairfield repacks. The repacks provide a chance at an autographed card, and up to now I've never gotten a hit. This time I did:

2011 Bowman - Prospect Autographs #BPA-JS Josh Sale

Obviously not a high demand autograph, but it's always cool to get one. I was completely unfamiliar with the player, although I was certain he never became a Major League regular. I decided to do some research on him, and what I found was a sad and disappointing tale.

This guy was talented. You'd have to be in order to go 17th overall in the 2010 draft. Tampa Bay gave him multiple opportunities to succeed. Instead, he threw it away by making bad choices.  In 2012, he got caught using PEDs and suspended 50 games. Not even a year later, the Tampa organization suspended him again, basically for boasting on Facebook about how lousy he treated a girl at a strip club. Another year, another suspension - this time for recreational drug use. In 2015, the Rays released him. In five years with the team, he was suspended 3 times and never advanced past A-ball.

Seeing stuff like this just makes me want to shake my head. A lot of people would love to have the natural ability he had, and he took it for granted. Obviously, no one but him knows why he made the decisions he made, what or who influenced those decisions, and  where he's going to go from here. He's young enough to still turn it around, if not on a ball-field then with life in general. I hope he does...