Wynton Bernard played in 1,109 games for 17 professional teams before he ever reached the major leagues: two in Venezuela, two in Mexico, two more in Australia and the Dominican Republic, and just about every stateside stop between Erie, Pa., and Lake Elsinore, Calif.
After nearly every one of those games, he made a phone call.
“Sometimes it’s an hour conversation, sometimes it’s 10 minutes,” Bernard said. “But we’re always talking.”
His improbable, delayed debut with the Rockies as a 31-year-old rookie moved a clubhouse full of coarse baseball lifers to tears. Those who play the game know the nerve necessary to survive more than a decade in the wilderness of the minor leagues. Bernard’s call-up stirred a viral hope among them all.
Bernard leaned on something else they didn’t know. More than a decade ago, on a blind whim, he drove to a high school field north of San…
