# 44  Jay "Donkey" Wright

Position:  OF

Bats/Throws:  R/R

Years with the Millers:  2003, 2005, 2007, 2008, Las Vegas 2006

Baseball Career:  In 3rd grade tee-ball I hit the ball better than most, it was then I new someday I would go pro?...still waiting?  In 4th grade I played 1st base and we won the South Minneapolis championship.   In grades 5-9 I became a dominant pitcher in the B league.  Coming from a broken family most coaches treated me like a redheaded stepchild.  Come to think of it, my hair was a darker red growing up! In 10th grade I gave back to the sport.  My friend Ross, who wouldn't stop hugging me at one of Noonan's parties, and I coached a 6th grade B team.  A group of Bad News Bears who had never won anything. We won our division because of our superior coaching, and ended up playing the winner of the A division.  It was not the 'A' team from our park (Kenny Park), however, but a team from a different park.  We played a perfect game until the 5th inning when superior talent gave way to a bunch of overachievers.  We lost 10-4 but we were proud of a fine season nonetheless.

In 11th and 12th grades I played High School ball at Washburn High in South Minneapolis.  I also played legion ball in ‘78 and ‘79.  In 1980 I started my own team in a pickup league in the south metro.  In 1981 Craig Morton and I combined our two teams from our pickup league to create Vino's Godfather and joined the Park National League.  Also in ’81, I tried out for the Twins at the old Met stadium and Tony Oliva was pitching when it was my turn to hit.  (Editors Note: Do you think he hit anything?)  In ‘83 we changed our Park National team name to Champions Bar and in ‘85 to Whisky Junction.  In ‘86 we finally made it to the state tournament at Midway Stadium, only to lose twice to Columbia Heights.  In ‘89 I joined a new team in Park National, called The Police.  These were real cops so we could finally drink beer in parking lot of Parade Stadium all night long without getting arrested!%#?*&  I retired from ball from ‘92-‘96 and got serious about my career.  That was a waste of time, so I came back to the Park National and joined a team called J. Botten in ’97 and '98.  In ‘99 most of the players broke off from Botts and created The Cobra's.  Teammate Dallas Helmbolt and I broke up, and so later that spring I joined up with Scott Gatzke and the Legends team, also in the Park National League.  Later in 1999 Gatzke asked me to play in this cartoonish 35 and over league.  So I played a few games with a team in the Classic League called Lexington Park.  We did well in the playoffs until we lost for the first time in our 4th game in an odd Federal League playoff format.   The team we beat three days earlier, beat us for our first loss yet our season ended right there.  Very strange.  No wonder the Federal and Classic Leagues split the next year. Do the Federal League brass wear see thru panties?  In 2000 I played for Lexington Park again and in 2001 I joined the Minnetonka Lakers, a good team that had never won it all.  They had soul in Jimmy Wheeler, but they had no heart.  We won the 2001 and 2002 Classic league State Championships ten-running Burnsville in 2001, and ten-running Woodbury in 2002.  In 2003 I joined the Minnetonka Saints.  I plan on getting a personal three-peat in the Classic League Championship, even if it's with a different team.  To be continued....