At age 9, Ty Wigginton was playing Little League baseball under his father's tutelage when a manager from an advanced level asked whether the boy could be moved up.
About halfway through the season, after seeing his son handle his age group with ease, Don Wigginton relented, and young Ty joined the 11- and 12-year-olds. The following season, Don Wigginton decided to manage one of the older teams, but Ty was already on a roster, so he had to trade two 12-year-old All-Stars to get his son onto his team.
Such begins the strange and entertaining tale of Ty Wigginton -- Orioles infielder and nomadic ballplayer -- who by age 10 had already been traded once and been released once by his own dad.
"Yeah, I guess it started there," Don Wigginton said, chuckling.
Ty Wigginton, now 32, has taken a circuitous route to Tuesday's major league All-Star Game in Anaheim, Calif., where he'll be the Orioles' lone representative.
He has been with five organizations and could join his sixth this summer if the Orioles deal him away for prospects at the July 31 nonwaiver trade deadline.
He has been traded twice and cut twice as a big leaguer. This month, he became just the fifth player in the past 17 years to be named to an All-Star Game after being released by one club and not offered a contract to stay with another.
"It's funny how the game works," said Wigginton, who is making his first All-Star appearance in his ninth big league season. "I have always believed if I go out and play the game right and play the game hard, good things will happen to you."
Wigginton has always tried harder than others, playing with abandon and forcing people to take notice. Coming out of Chula Vista High near San Diego, he received one baseball scholarship, a $1,000 offer from a tiny Division I school clear across the country, the University of North Carolina at Asheville.
Before his senior year of high school, Wigginton attended a baseball camp at Duke, where he made an immediate impression on then-Blue Devils assistant coach and recruiting coordinator Bill Hillier.
"We were interested. We would have offered him [scholarship] money," Hillier said. "But at the time, he wasn't a fit academically."
Wigginton's board scores weren't high enough to get into prestigious Duke, but several months later, Hillier took the head coaching job at UNC Asheville, and one of his first phone calls was to Wigginton. The partial scholarship was accepted within hours.
Getting serious
Wigginton played his freshman year, but Hillier wasn't happy with the kid's overall attitude and maturity. Wigginton tended to shout profanities when things didn't go his way on the field, and he didn't take things seriously off the field -- particularly his academics.
So after the season, Hillier called Wigginton into his office and told him he no longer had a guaranteed spot on Asheville's roster. If Wigginton wanted to come back as a sophomore, he would have to earn a spot on the team.
Hillier was bluffing. He had no intention of pulling the scholarship.
"If he had said he wasn't coming back," Hillier said, "then I would have talked him into coming back."
Wigginton responded to the challenge, partially out of necessity.
"I think my grades were bad enough, I don't think I could have transferred anyway," Wigginton joked.
As a sophomore, he played so well that opposing coaches at large Division I schools asked Hillier where he found the shortstop with the unstoppable motor. Wigginton won National Player of the Week honors in his junior year, putting him on the college baseball map. Even then, he was viewed by most scouts as someone who wouldn't have to be signed until after his senior year.
New York Mets scout Marlin McPhail thought otherwise; he loved Wigginton's work ethic, intensity and versatility.
"He would get dirty from taking ground balls before the game," McPhail said. "He was one of those guys who always had a dirty uniform."
Based on McPhail's recommendation, the Mets selected Wigginton in the 17th round of the 1998 amateur draft. By the next day, he had signed a contract. His bonus was so inconsequential that, to this day, there is debate as to how much it was.
Wigginton said he got $16,500. McPhail said it was $17,500. Don Wigginton thought it was $17,000. Regardless, they all remember an agreement being reached almost immediately.
"The negotiations took all of, probably, 45 seconds," Ty Wigginton said. "Once I got that opportunity, there was no way I was going to let it pass."
Making his mark
By 2002, Wigginton had made his big league debut with the Mets -- the first and only UNC Asheville player in the majors. In 2003, he entered spring training camp in a position battle for the starting third baseman's job with respected veteran Jay Bell.
"I grabbed him right away on the first day of camp and said, 'Come with me,'" said Bell, who played in the big leagues for 18 seasons. "We worked together from the first day on. We were throwing partners and did a lot together. One thing I got a kick out of was how enthusiastic he was in playing the game."
Enthusiastic is one word for it. Wigginton's intensity soars at game time. He has been known to injure a water cooler or clubhouse trash can if things go sour. While with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 2007, Wigginton was ejected while arguing a call at third base at Camden Yards. As he walked off the field, he threw his baseball cap into the stands.
It was that fire, combined with the respect he had for the established veterans, that immediately endeared him to his teammates in New York.
"Probably the best compliment I can give him is he is a player that would be able to compete in the 1970s and earn respect from those types of players," Bell said. "He hasn't fallen into the trap of saying: 'Look at me. Look at what I have accomplished,' ÃÂÃÂ and I am just thrilled for him that he's in the All-Star Game."
Within hours of the All-Star announcement, Wigginton received about 60 text messages from players, managers and media members.
"To finally see him get a chance to be an All-Star, guys appreciate that, and that's why he is getting all the texts," Orioles interim manager Juan Samuel said. "I've never heard anything bad about Wiggy anywhere."
Last week in Detroit, veteran outfielder Johnny Damon called Wigginton over to offer congratulations. Texas Rangers third baseman Michael Young expressed the same sentiment to Wigginton when they met at first base Thursday in the Orioles-Rangers game.
"I have played against him since we were in the minor leagues, and I couldn't be happier for the guy," Young said. "For me personally, I am a big shut-up-and-play guy. Get out here, get ready to go and go hard once the game starts. I tend to gravitate toward those guys, and he is definitely one of them."
In his career, Wigginton has seemingly played with or against everyone. He won the third base job over Bell in 2003, but in July 2004, the contending Mets dealt him to the Pittsburgh Pirates for pitcher Kris Benson.
Things never clicked in Pittsburgh, and Wigginton was released at season's end. He was picked up by Tampa Bay and had a good season and a half before being dealt at the trade deadline, this time to the Houston Astros. Houston decided not to offer Wigginton a contract after he hit .285 with 23 homers in 2008, because he was likely facing a significant raise in arbitration.
So Wigginton signed a two-year, $6 million deal with the Orioles. And it didn't work out as well as either side would have liked last year. He batted .273 with 11 homers, but with inconsistent playing time he never found his rhythm.
Heading into this spring, it looked like Wigginton was buried again on the Orioles' depth chart. In one spring training game, he was used as a late-inning defensive replacement, a spot usually reserved for minor leaguers.
But when Brian Roberts aggravated a back injury in the fourth game of the season, Wigginton became the Orioles' starter at second base. And when free-agent acquisition Garrett Atkins failed to hit, Wigginton moved to first full time. He has played in 83 of the Orioles' 88 games, batting .252 with 14 homers and a team-high 45 RBIs.
"My goal when I came into spring training was to either win a starting job here or win one somewhere else," Wigginton said. "Everybody knows in spring training there are a lot of scouts around, and I believe if you play the game the right way, somebody will have a spot for you."
He never expected American League All-Star manager Joe Girardi to have a spot for him.
"I don't think it's really set in yet," Wigginton said this week. "I think probably it is one of those things, when you are done playing, you can look back and say that was pretty cool."
His dad, who will be in Anaheim with Wigginton's mother, sister, brother-in-law, wife and three kids, had no problem summing up the All-Star experience for his son.
"It's a dream come true, that's all I can say," Don Wigginton said.
Family man
This week, Wigginton said he was most excited about watching the Home Run Derby on the field with his two sons, Chase, 5, and Cannon, 3.
Cannon Wigginton is already a legend of sorts in the baseball fraternity. He and his ballplayer father made news in December 2006 when Wigginton delivered Cannon in a walk-in closet at the family's home in North Carolina.
Angela Wigginton went into premature labor, and the couple didn't have time to get to the hospital, so Wigginton had his wife lie down on the floor of the closet while he grabbed the phone, called 911 and locked Chase, then 2, out of the room so he wouldn't see what was happening.
"I had time to give [911] the address, set the phone down and catch the baby and get back on the phone with the 911 operator," Wigginton said. "He's like, 'With every contraction, the baby will come out further.' I am like, 'The baby is in my arms. Get somebody here.'"
Wigginton tied the umbilical cord with a shoestring and cleaned Cannon's mouth with a towel.
"I couldn't do all this at once, so I had to give the phone to my wife and she had to give me instructions while Chase is screaming at the door, 'Mommy, are you OK?' And about 10 minutes later, the EMTs got there," Wigginton recalled. "It was insane. It was the only time in my life I think I felt every single emotion that you could feel in a single day."
Those who know Wigginton weren't surprised to hear the way Cannon came into the world. Weird and unexpected things often happen to Wigginton. Life has been anything but normal for the intense and likable overachiever.
"It's just fun stuff, nothing really too bad," he said. "Yeah, it's all fun."
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