ST. PETERSBURG – Every now and again, Jim Gasser pinches himself and wonders if this is really unfolding before him.
“What a small baseball world,” Jim said on the eve of watching his son, Robert Gasser, start for the Brewers in Game 3 of the World Series on Monday night at Tropicana Field, “that the team that drafted me doesn’t draft my son but picks him up in a trade, and here he is, pitching in the World Series for Milwaukee. You can’t make that stuff up.”
This scenario was never particularly close for Jim Gasser. When the Brewers drafted him in the 27th round out of Newbury Park High School in Thousand Oaks, Calif., in 1984, he had dreams of making it as a hitter. He was a shortstop and third baseman who had won high school batting championships, and he thought he could be the next Robin Yount or Paul Molitor.
But Jim Gasser also pitched, and the Brewers saw him as a pitcher. So he went to Moorpark College and was drafted again by the Giants in the eighth round in 1986, only to go down with an elbow injury before he could get to the pro ranks.
Forty years later, his son is living his dream. He’s about to pitch in the World Series.
“I wasn’t sure I was going to survive the LCS,”...