Kruse: He woke up on Labor Day in Room 228 of a thin-carpet Comfort Inn in Rhode Island. The hot water didn't work. He went out to the parking lot and got on a white bus that took him past an orange sign that said ROAD WORK AHEAD and to a small, concrete ballpark in Pawtucket.
At McCoy Stadium, inside the visitors' clubhouse, his name was written in the lineup on a dry-erase board, playing third, batting sixth. He ate a bagel and two creatine pills, then put on the road-gray uniform of the Rochester Red Wings, the Minnesota Twins' Triple-A team.
"Every year," Chase Lambin said, "I think, 'This is the year. This is the year it's going to happen.'"
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