…than Chad Jennings.

The latest notes from spring training: here, here, and here.

[Drawings by Robert Weaver]

Drawings by Robert Weaver, spring training, 1962.

This morning, Jack Curry tweeted that he arrived at his 20th spring training and the first thing he heard was the thud of a ball hitting a mitt. Color me green with envy.

When you have a few extra minutes, do yourself a favor and check out this excellent piece by Mike Ashmore, beat writer for the Trenton Thunder. It’s about the less-than-glamorous life of a minor league ball player:

The minimum annual salary in Major League Baseball currently sits at $400,000. Meanwhile, most players at the minor league level who haven’t reached minor league free agency are lucky to make $10,000 over the course of a season; a survey of players revealed that those in rookie ball make $1,250-1,300 a month while players in Triple-A, the highest level of the minors, can make roughly $1,000 more per month while under the contracted amount.

“I think the way things are today, most people look at professional athletes and assume they’re rolling in money,” said New York Yankees Senior Vice President of Baseball Operations, Mark Newman.

“And these guys are not.”

Most players in the minor leagues — some estimates have the number as high as 90 percent — will not play in the big leagues. For most, dreams of a career at the highest level are nothing more than that, just dreams.

[Drawing by Robert Weaver, 1962]