When it comes to professional baseball, J.J. Furmaniak has experienced the whimsical and magical side of the sport and the cold-hard reality of it as well.
The Bolingbrook native and Plainfield resident was drafted out of Lewis University in 2000. He’s played 1,032 minor league games and just 29 games in the majors.
But before a late September 2005 game when he was with Pittsburgh, he enjoyed one of his best moments in a major league uniform before playing the Cubs in Wrigley Field.
“My grandfather (Ted) was a huge Cubs fan,” he said. “When he passed away a few years before that, he wanted his ashes to be somehow sprinkled over Wrigley Field. I went to center field and sprinkled some of his ashes on the ivy. To then start at short and get a hit in that game was great.”
After sprinkling the ashes in the ivy, Fumaniak soaked it all in.
“I looked back at the press box [high above home plate] and I thought I was dreaming,” he said. “I thought this was kind of a dream. I was always kind of an underdog type of guy. I was undersized. People always said ‘you can’t do this’ or ‘you can’t do that.’ To be on the field and to be looking back at the main grandstand is something that to this day, I’ll never forget.
“This was like a Field of Dreams moment for me,” he continued. “It was heaven, you know? No matter how old I get, that image will be in my head the rest of my life.”
Now the cold-hard reality of the sport.
By Christmas, the well-traveled Furmaniak knew where he would be the following season – even when he had a stint in Japan in 2008.
Christmas came and went in 2009 and he is still looking for work.
But the 30-year-old is working on his game at the Bulls/Sox Academy in Lisle and keeping an optimistic attitude.
“This is the first year,” he said. “That’s why this is so stressful. But if I wasn’t accustomed to the stress throughout my whole career, I would be freaking out more. But I’m hoping and praying that I have a chance to sign with a major league organization. And I keep that mentality with my work.”
Camp opens for major league teams in mid-February and if he doesn’t get a last-minute call, he still has a shot at making a team’s minor league camp in March.
“As you get older – it’s a stressful occupation,” he said. “You have to go from year to year. At this point, I don’t have a job. But major league free agents are starting to sign and that has a trickle-down effect. It affects the Triple-A guys a little bit. The major league team doesn’t know what their roster is doing to be. Sometimes it’s a last-minute thing and it happens to a lot of guys. I’ll just keep working out and hope for the best.”
And if he doesn’t make it…
“I haven’t thought about a Plan B year,” he admitted.
Whether he gets another chance to make it into pro baseball remains to be seen. But after playing everywhere from Wrigley Field to Idaho Falls to Yakohama, Japan, he’s had some great memories. Playing in Japan was especially interesting.
“It was a great experience,” he said. “When I first got there, I was definitely overwhelmed by the amount of people. I lived 30 minutes outside of Tokyo. There’s like 75 million people in the Tokyo area. The trains were overwhelming at first. Then after a month or so, I started to understand the system.
“But there were some very nice people. The service out there is top-notch. It’s very clean. And the fans absolutely love foreign players. It was a great opportunity to see things you wouldn’t ordinarily see like shrines and temples that date back to 1200. Historically, it was awesome.”
By Jeff Vorva
TribLocal.com reporter
