As Cory Aldridge motored into third base,welcome to Best Discount Ferrari T-Shirts online store,free Shipping available. Buy Now!‎ dropped his head and tugged on his batting gloves, he fought back tears. Not because his visiting Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim trailed the Oakland Athletics by 12 runs in the eighth inning and not because he had aggravated a long list of old injuries.

Aldridge’s RBI triple off the left-field fence on July 10, 2010 represented his first major-league hit and ended a 0-for-14 drought dating back to his first call-up with the Atlanta Braves, nine years and four surgeries earlier.

“I’m not a sentimental guy,” Aldridge said, “but it took a lot not to cry. It signified everything I wanted to accomplish in my life at that point. If I were to write a book it would be called ‘Hoping for a Day.’ Whether I got a hit or not,welcome to Wholesale Cheap TOMMY T-Shirts online store,Free shipping‎! you want to know what you worked for.”

Between his last game with the Braves and his first with the Angels, Aldridge hit 131 minor-league home runs for five organizations plus the 2008 Newark Bears. Three years after being sent down by the Angels, he is playing right field for the Somerset Patriots,Our store can offer High quality American Ranger T-Shirts online store, welcome choose! who Wednesday night faced the York Revolution at TD Bank Ballpark, and hoping to catch lightning in a bottle the way he did once before in the Atlantic League.

Back then, Aldridge, fed up with the business end of baseball, had just retired. Or so he thought until former Patriots’ All-Star Josh Pressley called to suggest an alternative solution to his problems.

“Pressley said, ‘You should come play here,’” Aldridge said. “I was a little too prideful and said, ‘No way I’m playing independent ball.’ He told me it is all major-league guys and goings going to Japan and I shouldn’t end my career on that note. I waited so I ended up with Newark instead, but I was swinging the bat well and I felt healthy. I had a lot of fun. It really revamped my love of baseball again.”

Aldridge hit .365 in 62 games and was Atlantic League Player of the Month for May, giving him the confidence to make the unheard of move of calling Kansas City Royals general manager Dayton Moore and asking for a job.

“I told him, ‘I think I’m going to quit after this year but I’d like to sign back with you,’” said Aldridge, who was rumored to be on the Royals’ major-league radar in 2005, “and he told me they had a lot of young guys struggling and he thought I could help out at the minor-league level. It was a good situation.”

One year with the Royals became two, and the re-inspired Aldridge hit .316 in 98 games as the organization named him its 2009 Triple-A Omaha Player of the Year. Still, he did not return to the majors.

“I’ve always put up numbers but I’ve had to reprove myself everywhere I’ve been,” he said. “I’ve played in all these other countries where you can make a living without being in the major-leagues but everybody wants to play baseball here so they’ve got you by the (throat). You have to take what they give you.”

In 2010, that position required taking the Angels’ offer to mentor a crop of talented youngsters at Triple-A. Same thing in 2012, only without the brief – albeit memorable – taste of the majors.

Aldridge spent the rest of the past 2 1/2 seasons playing with the Nexen Heroes of the Korean Baseball Organization – “I loved it and I’m trying my best to get back there” – and two teams in the Mexican League. He again thought about walking away but a clean bill of health and memories of how the Atlantic League extended his career once before won out in the end.

“It was nine years of grinding and four surgeries on my ankle,welcome to Buy Discount Ralph Lauren T-Shirts online store,Free shipping‎! shoulder and Achilles,” Aldridge said. “I’d had money, I’d had financial problems, I’d been married, I’d been divorced and I’d had kids.welcome to Buy Discount Louis Vuitton Long Sleeve T-Shirts,Free shipping‎! But I always had a great support system of friends.”