The Honors Keep Rolling In For Vogelsong

This from MLB.com writer Chris Haft:

Ryan Vogelsong's saga transcended baseball, which made him the obvious choice for this year's Willie Mac Award.

Vogelsong was honored in a ceremony before Friday night's series opener against the Los Angeles Dodgers. The right-hander earned the distinction by winning a vote conducted primarily by players, coaches and the athletic training staff, who annually bestow the award upon the Giant best embodying the competitive and inspirational spirit of Hall of Fame first baseman Willie McCovey, who also gets a vote.

"It's named after one of the greatest Giants ever, one of the best players in Major League Baseball history," Vogelsong said, articulating the thrill he received with the award. "Just to have my name involved with his and some of the other guys who won the award is really neat for me. Because I enjoy being a Giant so much."

Watch a 10 minute video of Friday night's award ceremony here (the award portion starts at the 5 minute mark) or the entire article from MLB.com here.

Local Newspapers Notice Vogelsong

LancasterOnline takes notice of Octorara's Ryan Vogelsong who is enjoying a stellar season with the San Francisco Giants. 

"Octorara's Vogelsong revives career as key member of Giants' pitching staff"

So reads the headline on LancasterOnline's sport page this morning.

The money quote:

"Beat the bushes for the past five years as Octorara grad Ryan Vogelsong has done, spend more than a few of the 1,760 days you're out of the big leagues questioning yourself and your future, and you learn what's important."

Read the entire article here.

And in the Daily Local News this morning a wonderful article by sports writer Andy Edwards detailing Vogelsong's long and winding road from playing infield for Sonny Skiles' Octorara High School squad, becoming a full time pitcher at Kutztown, being drafted by the Giants, then traded to the Pirates, then to Japan, then being cut by the Phillies last Summer and finally signing with the Giants this year.

The Daily Local News article is full of great money quotes.  Here are a few:

Expressing the pain he felt when he was cut by the Phillies in 2010:

"Obviously, being a Philly guy and growing up in the area, they were always my team.  It hurt when I got released, but more so because a dream of mine to be a Phillie died that day. It happens to a lot of people but when it's a team that you really want to play for, and you've always dreamed of playing for them, it hurts, man. At the same time, it took that kind of incident to reevaluate my career and what I was doing to get me to that point."

On playing in Japan:

"It's tough, but it is what you make it.  You can go over there and shelter yourself and not experience Japanese culture, you can go over there and lock yourself in your apartment and do nothing but go to the field, which I saw people do, and those guys didn't really play too well. It's important to try, at least for me and my wife, to live as close to a normal life as we were living in the states. I think trying to live a normal life helped me play better on the field."

About his wife Nicole whom he met while playing in Pittsburgh:

"We balance each other out well.  She's an optimist, I'm a realist, and when I think things are going down the drain she always tells me they're going to be all right. She's been great. I definitely wouldn't be where I'm at without her. Everything I've been through, she's been through with me."

Read the entire Daily Local News article here.

Cut By Phils, Vogelsong Now An All-Star

Good article in this morning's Philadelphia Inquirer about Major League All Star Ryan Vogelsong.  Octorara is mentioned in the second paragraph.

The article details Ryan's demotion and then outright release by the Phillies' farm system in 2010 and then his meteoric raise to the World Champion San Francisco Giant's pitching rotation at the start of the 2011 baseball season and then to the All Star game happening in Phoenix this evening.

Phoenix is the perfect city to showcase Vogelsong's out-of-the-dust return to baseball's pinnacle event.

You can read the entire article here.  These paragraphs are worth capturing:

"I don't think I have to say anything," Vogelsong said, before saying something. "All you have to do is just listen to the stories. It's as simple as, 'Don't ever give up.' I came into this game and people told me, 'You don't stop playing until they kick you out and take the uniform from you.' And here I am."

And Cole Hamel's praise of Vogelsong's unlikely journey:

Cole Hamels remembers Vogelsong from last spring because they were in the same throwing group and each had newborn sons. And Hamels remembers something else.

"Seeing him in spring training, it was like, 'This guy is good. Why hasn't he been in the big leagues?' " Hamels said. "Now he's actually proving to everybody [that] sometimes it just takes a little bit longer for everything to click. Things are clicking and now we have to play against him."

Vogelsong, An All-Star and Inspiration

By this point you all know Octorara alum Ryan Vogelsong made this year's National League All-Star team.

Over the next several weeks leading up to the game on July 12th, Parkesburg Today will post snippets of his inspirational story with links to the longer article.

I've been nudging The Daily Local News in West Chester for the last several weeks to write about Ryan's story.

Here's their first article from this morning's paper.

Money quote:

"There's never been a time in my career when this seemed like even a realistic possibility," Vogelsong said. "A year ago, almost to the day, I got released and didn't know if I would ever pitch again."

"I did tell my wife, obviously, and my parents," Vogelsong said. "I told them not to tell anyone because things spread so fast on Twitter and Facebook. My parents don't know what Facebook is, though. Or Twitter."