Major League Baseball’s final four is set, after the Cleveland Guardians dispatched the Chicago White Sox to end their American League Division Series on Saturday night. Cleveland will play the Tampa Bay Rays in the ALCS beginning Monday while Dodgers and Milwaukee Brewers start their National League Championship Series on Sunday night.
Only one player has played for all four of these franchises — pitcher Jamey Wright, who pitched for 19 major league seasons, first as a starter before moving to relief.
Wright, who pitched for 10 different teams, famously made eight straight teams as a non-roster invitee, including in 2012 with the Dodgers.
His second go-around with the Dodgers was on a guaranteed contract in 2014, snapping his string of minor league deals.
Wright for several years worked out in a gray Oklahoma Sooners T-shirt, which he used every day until the stitching simply gave out.
“It’s kind of a proud thing. For so many years, I put it on right when I got to the ballpark every day. That was my workout shirt, and there was a lot of pregame workouts,” Wright recalled in 2021. “It’s been washed thousands of times. It’s not too much to look at, but it’s got some serious sentimental value to me.”
After not pitching in 2015, Wright attempted a comeback with the Dodgers in 2016, back to his familiar non-roster invitee role. Wright, then 41 years old, did not make the team and chose to retire on the final day of spring camp in Arizona. That was Dave Roberts’ first spring training as Dodgers manager, and Wright on the day he retired proved quite prescient.
“I’ll be sad that I don’t get to play for him this year, because he is a class act,” Wright said of Roberts in March 2016. “I’ve known since the first day he addressed this team they’ve got something to look forward to this summer in LA because he’s as good as they get.”
Roberts is in his 11th season as Dodgers manager, having already won five pennants and three World Series, and is second all-time in MLB history with 72 postseason wins.
Five years later, when Wright was pitching coach for Triple-A Oklahoma City, he shared that when Roberts told him he didn’t make the team in 2016, he offered to fly Wright and his family out to the Freeway Series for one last hurrah in a major league ballpark, but he declined.
I reminded Roberts in 2021 of Wright’s comments from 2016:
“That means a lot. That’s as good a compliment as you can get from somebody I really respect,” Roberts said this week when reminded of Wright’s words from five years ago. “I felt a little slighted because I didn’t get a chance to spend more time with him. I wish we had a chance to play together. We competed against each other many times.
“I remember a front-door cutter that he threw, and it hit me right in the knee one time. I haven’t forgotten that one. I guess with the compliment, we’re even.”
