Hello and welcome to 30 for 30 podcasts from ESPN Films and ESPN Audio.

My name is Jody Avergan.

There are many levels of professional baseball.

There's the big leagues, major league baseball, then there's AAA, that's one step down,

then there's AA, A ball, rookie ball, winter league.

And you keep going down all the way towards the bottom.

There are the independent leagues.

Technically professional in that players get paid something to play baseball.

But those leagues exist several planets away from the show,

as they call the majors. And most of the players in those leagues will never come close to putting

on a big league uniform. They'll play in tiny parks in front of near-empty bleachers until

reality finally sets in and they hang it up. For one summer, though, there was someone very different among them, one of, without

question, the greatest baseball players and personalities of all time.

And that's what this week's episode produced by Pineapple Street Media is all about.

The undefeated's Clinton Yates tells the story.

A quick word of warning this episode contains mature language.

Okay, here we go with Ricky Won't Quit.

Looking back, I don't know if I would trade that for the world. I wouldn't rather have been

anywhere else when this whole year happened.

In the spring of 2005, a construction worker named Nick Gera went to an open tryout for a baseball team.

The San Diego Surf Dogs, that's DAWGS, in the brand new professional league known as the Golden League.

I told myself I was done with baseball. I told myself that this wasn't the life I want anymore.

...