Nice to see that they’re bunking Coste and Clay Condrey together down in Spring Training. Maybe one of them will learn something from the other about how to handle a setback:

Clay Condrey can appreciate Chris Coste’s story more than anybody.
He knows the struggle. The righthander did not spend 11 years in the minor leagues before he made the majors like Coste, but his baseball travails are similarly impressive.

Condrey made his big-league debut with the San Diego Padres in 2002 after four-plus seasons in the minors. He pitched well enough to earn a spot on San Diego’s opening-day roster in 2003. But Condrey struggled, got sent back to the minors, and did not see the majors again until 2006 with the Phillies. He made the opening-day roster last year but spent so much time going back and forth between the Phillies and triple-A Ottawa that he joked he had enough frequent flier points to go to the moon.

I had dubbed Clay “Air Miles” last season given the number of round trips he was making between and Ottawa and Philly - I suspect only Ryan Cameron (and maybe Joey Hammond) spent more time at an airport terminal last season.  Rather than being surly with the press, and posting ill advised criticism of the big league club on his web page, Clay’s masking his disappointment with humor:

“I call it the sexy ballplayer,” Coste said. “There’s nothing that stands out. He doesn’t have that 96 m.p.h. fastball. He doesn’t have a knuckleball. He’s like me. You have to see him over the course of a month to appreciate what he does. He pitched well in ‘06 [with the Phillies], but he had to fight to make the team. But that’s the life of the non-sexy ballplayer.”

“I agree with him,” Condrey said, “but I think I’m a good-looking ballplayer in my mind. In fact, I think I’d look real good in a hunting magazine. A little camo, a little paint on the face, I think I could make it work.”

Condrey, who hails from Texas, is an avid outdoorsman.

He also has a good sense of humor. He said he would love to be a pro fisherman in the future, though that would mean finding fishing sponsors.

He joked that he’s going to start naming his pitches. Fastball: Nitro 929, after the boat. Slider: Abu Garcia, after the reels.

“That’s really it,” he said. “I can go buy my own hooks.”

Warm wishes to Clay from Ottawa on a cold Easter weekend.