Heath Lane, left, and Beau Hintz, right, spent years in the minor leagues but never made it to the majors. Lane was drafted by Milwaukee in 1988, while Hintz was selected by Seattle in 2001. Guy Dossi/Calaveras Enterprise

Baseball is a romantic game.

From tiny farm towns to large cities and everywhere in between, there are little kids pretending to be the star player on their favorite team – coming to bat with the bases loaded and two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 7 of the World Series.

Every day, a dad or mom, a sister or brother, an aunt or uncle, or a grandparent is teaching a future ballplayer how to throw, catch, and love the game. Those kids then begin to grow and make the move from T-ball to Little League, to youth travel ball, and finally to playing on their high school team.

For some, just being around the game at a young age is all they could hope for. Yet for others, there is the dream of playing in college – either at a junior college or a four-year university. And for those who dare to dream big, they set their sights on playing in the pros.

The road to becoming a Major League Baseball player is a long one, with a gratifying result at the end. However, what about those players whose dreams of making it to the show come up short? Year after year, thousands of players are spread out across the country in the minor leagues, just dreaming about a call-up that never comes.

For most players, getting the chance to play for a Major League team is a goal that never gets completed. They live the minor league baseball life for as long as possible, and for whatever reason – injuries, age, skill, or bad luck – it just doesn’t pan out.

Heath Lane and Beau Hintz have a number of things in common. They both fell in love with baseball at a young age. They both had the option of being drafted out of high school but chose to go the college route. They both got drafted after college and spent years in the minor leagues. And they both said goodbye to baseball before getting to wear a Major League uniform.

Lane, a longtime Bret Harte High School teacher and former Bret Harte baseball head coach, and Hintz, Bret Harte’s current baseball head coach, had the remarkable opportunity to play minor league baseball and experience the good, the bad, and the heartbreaking that comes with being baseball players. And even though they didn’t reach their ultimate goals, they both enjoyed the journey for as long as they could.

Diamond dreamers

Lane grew up a fan of the San Francisco Giants, and his love for baseball started at a young age. As soon as he was able to pick up a baseball and throw it more than a couple of feet, he was in his backyard pretending to be his Giant.

“I was five years old in the backyard pretending I was Willie McCovey,” Lane said. “I was a big Giants’ guy, so I followed him. I loved baseball from the time I could pick it up; three, four, five years old it was the sport. I did other things, but me and my brother would play for hours until dark in our backyard. We just loved every bit of it.”

Hintz also developed an early love for baseball, but being the son of a coach, he was introduced to many sports. While he played as many sports as he could, it was his skill on the baseball diamond that began to catch the attention of those with connections. As a freshman in high school, Hintz’s abilities began to be noticed.

“I was pretty good at multiple sports,” Hintz said. “I just liked to compete more than anything. I always knew I was good at baseball, and I was lucky to grow up with a lot of good players that I played with in Little League and in high school. I think maybe around my freshman season when I started being recruited, kind of opened my eyes a little bit. But still, more than anything, I just liked to compete in whatever sport I was playing that season.”

Lane didn’t start to get recruited until his senior year at Linden High School. Even though he was being recruited, the idea of playing professional baseball seemed like a fairytale and not reality.

“I didn’t even consider the thought of professional baseball, which is kind of strange because I guess that wasn’t really something that we thought about a lot then,” Lane said. “I was just playing and loving it.”

Heath Lane spent years coaching at Bret Harte High School. Guy Dossi/Calaveras Enterprise

Even with scouts watching him pitch, Lane opted to go the junior college route and played at nearby San Joaquin Delta College.

Like Lane, Hintz didn’t truly imagine himself as a big-league baseball player.

“You always have that dream as a kid and I always looked up to certain players,” Hintz said. “Yeah, you dream, for sure, but it wasn’t like, I’m going to play in the major leagues. Yeah, you want to play, but it’s very hard to get there.”

As Hintz progressed in his high school career, the buzz surrounding him began to grow. Yet he felt that his lack of size would hurt him if he entered the draft straight out of high school. He believed that playing in college would not only give him time to grow physically, but also make him a better player, increasing his draft stock later on.

“There were a lot of teams that were interested,” Hintz said. “My dilemma was that even though my stats were good as a pitcher, I was a much better position player and hitter than I was a pitcher. When I graduated high school, I was pretty skinny, like 6-foot-4, 175 pounds, just a little bean pole. I knew that I wanted the college experience, and I wanted to go to college to figure out what I was going to do, and I wanted to be able to get stronger and learn myself as a person and as a player. So, more than anything, I wasn’t going to be ready to play professional baseball as an 18-year-old.”

After strong high school careers that caught the attention of scouts, both Lane and Hintz decided to try their luck in college.

“I would get some scouts in the stands, but I still wasn’t strong enough and didn’t have high enough velocity at that point in time, but I knew I wanted to play in college,” Lane said.

College men

In 1984, Lane attended San Joaquin Delta College as a pitcher. He performed well enough that the Texas Rangers selected him in the second round of the 1986 draft as the No. 29 overall pick. Future three-time World Series champion Curt Schilling was drafted just 10 picks later.

At 20 years old, Lane was offered $50,000 by the Rangers. He declined.

“The director of scouting came to my house, met with my parents, and I didn’t even have an agent,” Lane recalled. “I’m sitting in my living room with my parents and went through the whole spiel of, ‘Hey, you can be starting up your car tomorrow morning,’ and ‘You know, we want you, blah, blah, blah,’ and I thought and thought and thought about it. Looking back at the time, I was maybe a little cocky and arrogant, thinking that I was worth more than that. And $50,000 was a lot of money then. It was a high signing bonus.”

As much as Lane wanted to play professionally, he also wanted the full college experience – and he dreamed of playing in the College World Series. After two years at Delta, he accepted a scholarship offer to the University of Arizona. Lane hoped that while at Arizona, he’d not only get to play in the College World Series but also improve his draft stock and become a first-round pick.

“I think I thought to myself that I would sign as a junior, and I had more leverage after a year at Arizona,” Lane said. “I thought I would still be a high-round draft pick, and I thought maybe I could increase that.”

Lane’s hopes of being a high-round pick following his junior year were derailed by injury. He was selected in the 20th round by the Oakland Athletics and again declined to sign. He was eventually drafted following his senior season by the Milwaukee Brewers – for $2,500.

“I got hurt the last half of my (first) season at the University of Arizona and didn’t finish it,” Lane said. “So, I ended up not getting drafted until the 20th round, and that was by Oakland. Oakland offered me $25,000, and I said, ‘No, I’m not signing for $25,000.’ I turned down $50,000 last year, and they said, ‘Well, we don’t know whether you’re healthy, blah, blah, blah,’ and I said, ‘I’ll wait.’ So, then I waited until my senior year, and got drafted in the 16th round by Milwaukee and signed for $2,500.”

While Lane went the junior college route after high school, Hintz hopped on Highway 99 and went south from his home in Stockton to California State University, Fresno, where he played for three years. Hintz made a splash right away and found success, which led him to believe he’d eventually be a high-round draft pick.

“I had had some really good summers,” Hintz said. “My freshman year, I was one of 37 players invited to the USA National team and one of seven freshmen in the country. And then I played in the Alaska Baseball League the last half of the summer, and then I played in the Cape Cod League after my sophomore year. I had gotten better as a pitcher, gotten stronger physically, put on 25, 30 pounds, and I was projected to be a higher draft pick than I was. But stuff happened in my junior year, which is a long story, where a handful of us ended up quitting halfway through our junior year, and that dropped me to the 10th round.”

Hintz was the 309th overall pick in the 2001 draft. At 21 years old, he signed for $45,000 and had the rest of his schooling paid for.

“It was a lot more money than I had ever seen,” Hintz said. “Luckily, you get it in two payments. It wasn’t a lot of money, and I didn’t do anything crazy with it. I was just trying to get my feet wet in minor league baseball.”

Business over pleasure

The difference between playing college baseball and being in the minors was noticeable to Lane right away. Shortly after being drafted, he was sent to Helena, Montana, to take part in short-season rookie league. It was there he discovered firsthand that he was no longer in college.

“It’s a totally different world because you’re dealing with a totally different clientele,” Lane said. “You know, you were playing with Dominican and Puerto Rican players, and you had guys smoking cigarettes in the locker room.”

Lane also felt a difference in the way teammates supported one another.

“The difference between Arizona and professional baseball was at U of A you were pulling for everybody,” Lane said. “Even if you were struggling, you wanted to win because your goal was to win the College World Series. You get into professional baseball and you’re sitting in the stands charting your best friend, and in the back of your mind, you’re almost hoping he fails because it’s so competitive and there’s only so many spots. If they do well, you don’t.”

In 1988, Lane’s first season, he went 8-4 with a 3.30 ERA. Feeling confident about his performance, he was eager to move up the ranks – but the Milwaukee organization felt otherwise.

“The biggest challenge was the mental aspect of it, the day in and day out of it,” Lane said. “There’s nothing like it. I think the hardest thing for me was I wanted to move up faster than they were willing to move me up. I started off great. I had a great rookie season and kept wondering the whole year, ‘Why am I not going to Stockton?’ or ‘Why am I not going to Beloit?’”

Lane family/Courtesy photo

When Lane finally got his long-awaited promotion, he thought his upward momentum would continue. But after ending the 1988 season on a high note, he didn’t make the jump he expected.

“The last two weeks of the year, they moved me up to Stockton,” Lane said. “I had great outings. I threw a complete game in the North championship against San Jose. They sent me to Instruction League, and then the next year, after instructional, I got sent to Beloit, which is the low A, and Stockton is a high A, and they gave you the same thing: ‘There’s only so many starting spots in our organization and you’re a starting pitcher.’”

In 1989, Lane got off to a hot start, but his luck didn’t hold. With every bad outing, he had to wrestle with the mental side of the game just as much as the physical.

“I was in Beloit, and I started off on fire; I think I won my first four or five games, and I was the opening day starter, and I was there, and I wasn’t moving,” Lane said. “I still wasn’t moving. And then you get 142 games now, instead of 70, and you have a bad game, and then you’re like, ‘Oh, am I that good?’ And then you have another bad game.”

Hintz’s first experience after being drafted was short-season ball in Everett, Washington. Unlike Lane, Hintz felt comfortable with his new teammates – as if it were just an extension of college baseball.

“Short season A-ball for me was actually a lot of guys that had just come out of college, whether they made it to regionals or the World Series, so my first year, it was actually a good group of guys,” Hintz said. “Even though we were competing for spots, it still didn’t feel like super cutthroat that first year. Now, once you go to spring training, that’s a different story.”

Hintz family/Courtesy photo

In 2001, Hintz went 3-4 with a 6.39 ERA. His career was soon put on hold when he needed Tommy John surgery, and he didn’t return to the mound until 2003. Between the round he was drafted in and then having to work through a significant injury, Hintz saw firsthand how much baseball is a business – and how that factors into decisions.

“It’s definitely eye-opening,” Hintz said. “You realize that it’s a business more than anything, and you’ve got to be in the right place at the right time, and you have to be in the right organization. You see it all the time: guys get stuck behind guys that are above them in higher levels at the same position. Maybe they have more money invested in those guys, and they can get stuck for two, three, four years until they become a free agent or get traded or released and then sign with another team. It’s a lot of luck involved. Obviously, you have to perform, but at the same time, the decision to go up or down isn’t necessarily made on the field 100%.”

After recovering from his injury, Hintz went to Appleton, Wisconsin, to play Single-A ball. He only lasted through the 2003 season with Seattle before being released.

“A lot of my minor league career was derailed by my surgeries and the way it was handled,” Hintz said. “A lot of unfortunate things happened in my college and minor league career. I definitely would have done things a little bit differently.”

The grind never stops

Life as a minor league baseball player is not easy. Between meager pay, difficult living conditions, grueling travel and a future filled with uncertainty, Lane and Hintz experienced the full gauntlet of what minor leaguers endure.

“You’re staying in Motel 6’s on the road,” Lane said. “You’re at the field at 10 a.m. for a 7 o’clock start. You’re riding buses, even in the California League, sometimes for eight and nine hours, where you went from chartered flights to staying in four- or five-star hotels in college. It’s tough, and I think it was probably meant to be that way in those days to make you go through that mental aspect to see what it’s like.”

Finding a place to live was also difficult. Early in his career, Lane roomed with several teammates, and they did all they could just to survive.

“My first year in Helena, we had an old house in an old area of town,” Lane said. “It was like a three-bedroom house with seven of us living in that house, splitting the rent, and we had mattresses on the floor. We would go find a used couch, and we went and bought like a $300 station wagon that we would drive ourselves back and forth to the park in.”

Hintz had a slightly different living situation, as he was fortunate enough to live with host families. However, there were still times he had to share a room with multiple teammates.

“A lot of organizations had host families, and I was fortunate to have some great host families that put us up for the summer,” Hintz said. “And then there were some situations where it would be four of us in a two-bedroom apartment, sharing rooms because you just didn’t make a lot of money. There were long bus rides all the way across the country. You have to grow up fast. You’ve got to deal with a lot of different situations – people from different states, different teammates from different countries, different coaches – and things like time management. There’s so much that you learn.”

Hintz family/Courtesy photo

Both Lane and Hintz also learned that life as a minor league baseball player is far from lucrative.

“You don’t make a lot of money,” Hintz said. “I think my first paycheck was $850 a month before taxes were taken out. And we used to get like $16 a day per diem to eat three meals.”

Paychecks only come during the season. During the offseason, players had to both stay in shape and find other ways to pay the bills.

“My first year was $700, the second year was $850, the third year, I think I was $1,000 a month,” Lane said. “And that’s only during the season and spring training. And then if you go to instructionals, you get extra. But as soon as the season was over, my wife and I were living in Clovis, and I was working for a contractor as a framer. I would work framing all day to pay the bills, and then when I got off, I would go work out in the gym. Then there was a group of four or five of us who were minor league players that would work out either at Fresno State or at Fresno City, and we would get our workouts in during that time.”

Lane family/Courtesy photo

As if the money, travel and housing challenges weren’t enough, there was also the mental side of life in the minors. Life away from home, paired with the pressures of performance, took its toll. Several times, Hintz had to lean on his work ethic – instilled in him by his father – to get through it.

“There are always some moments during the season where either the team’s not playing well, the chemistry’s not great, and you kind of think guys are just out for themselves or they’re going through the motions,” Hintz said. “You’re like, ‘Is this really the baseball that I want to be a part of?’ But you’ve got to remind yourself, ‘I’m a competitor and I just want to do my job.’ As a starting pitcher, you have your routine. Between your starts you just try to stick to those and do them to the best of your ability, and then when your name’s called to go on the mound, you just compete your butt off. And that’s what I was taught by my dad and my whole family. Whatever you do, put 100% in and then you can live with yourself at the end of the day.”

Stepping away

As much as Lane and Hintz dreamed of donning a major league uniform and having at least one moment in the show, both eventually realized their journeys wouldn’t lead them to the promised land.

“I loved it until I didn’t love it,” Lane said. “I loved it and battled through it because I liked the relationships I had, I liked the challenges I had, and I liked the game. But after my last year with the Padres, I had the opportunity to keep going and play, and in fact, I could get picked up by the Oakland Athletics, but I was going to go to Modesto again. Now I was married, and now I was a little bit older, and I was looking at it like, ‘I don’t know if it’s time for me to move,’ but I knew at the time. In my case, uniquely, it’s like a switch went off, and I knew I was done. I knew I was done mentally. I don’t really know what changed.”

Although Lane’s professional career ended in 1991, many of his friends continued their journeys – and several reached the big leagues. While he was happy to see them succeed, it also left him reflecting on what might have been.

Lane family/Courtesy photo

“The hardest part for me was to watch my friends make it,” Lane said. “Guys that I was good friends with, like Mark Kiefer, a guy who was at my wedding, he was no better than me, but he was a sinkerballer, and he made it to the big leagues. Michael Ignasiak, another one of my good friends and roommates, made it to the big leagues. Eric Karros, one of my good friends, was with the Dodgers, and he made it to the big leagues. So, all those guys, like J.T. Snow, Trevor Hoffman, and Alan Zinter and Chip Hale – those were just all guys that I was friends with from Arizona that made it to the big leagues. Not to mention the guys I played with in the minor leagues, and it was fun to watch them, but it was also sad, I guess.”

For Hintz, the decision was made for him when Seattle released him in 2003. As expected, the release stung, and he was left bitter toward the game.

“At the time, I was maybe 25, and it’s just an age thing,” Hintz said. “You can have an 18-year-old versus a 25-year-old that’s had surgery. I can remember guys in spring training, having a locker next to them, and then all of a sudden you show up and there’s a black garbage bag with their stuff in it. It’s pretty eye-opening for sure.”

Hintz continued, “Coming back and having that rehab year, it was a grind. Then, getting released, I was just pissed off at baseball personally. So I actually went and played golf professionally for three years and then came back and played independent ball for another two and a half, three years. So, when everything happened in college and the first part of my minor league career, I was just kind of done with it. I had the opportunity to pursue professional golf and did that for a handful of years, and I just needed to get away from baseball.”

Hintz family/Courtesy photo

Hintz returned to the mound in 2007 in an independent league, where he played until 2008. Before a game in Canada, he realized it was time to walk away for good.

“My last game pitching was in Edmonton, Canada, and the manager played high school football for my dad,” Hintz said. “He had played for the A’s, played college baseball, just a really good guy. It was just getting harder for me. At the time, I was almost 30 years old, and I was like, ‘What am I doing?’ So we had a conversation, the coach and I, and just decided that that would be my last start of my career, and then I would retire after that and move on. And it was actually a good way to do it because I was able to leave on my own terms.”

Still a love for the game

Lane and Hintz didn’t stay mad at baseball forever. In fact, both transitioned from playing to coaching – and rediscovered their love for the game along the way. For Lane, his time in the minor leagues prepared him not just for coaching, but for a successful career in education as well.

“I think the best thing about baseball that I always looked at and why I never had any regrets was that the life skills that I learned from not only college baseball, but from minor league baseball – on dealing with everyday grinds and dealing with going from one team to the next in the middle of the season and having to learn social skills and to read personalities really quickly – helped me in my career and everything else,” Lane said.

After many years coaching at Bret Harte High School, Lane returned to the Delta College dugout as an assistant coach in 2025, bringing his career full circle. He was just as excited to be there now as he was as a player in the early 1980s.

“It’s just weird the way life works, right?” Lane said. “I thought I was done with baseball when I became an administrator (at Bret Harte). I thought, I’m happy, I’ve watched my kids grow up, I don’t have any desire, and then I got into coaching with those kids, and I loved it. I got the fire for it, and then things worked out with this, and I’ve never enjoyed the game and coaching more than I have this year, being around the kids I have. It makes me feel young, it makes me feel like I’m back in the game that way, so it’s really neat.”

Hintz, too, has found his rhythm in coaching. This past spring, he led Bret Harte to an 18-win season – the program’s best finish since Lane’s 19-win campaign more than a decade earlier. While Hintz is proud to still have baseball in his life, he occasionally reflects on the choices he made as a younger player.

Beau Hintz just finished his first season as Bret Harte High School’s head baseball coach. Guy Dossi/Calaveras Enterprise

“I think the biggest thing that I would do is I probably would have continued to be a position player over a pitcher,” Hintz said. “Because I had improved so much as a pitcher in college, and I was left-handed, I was kind of forced into it, and everyone said left-handed pitching is the fastest way to the big leagues. Well, I let other people determine that, and I wish I would have either transferred or done something different and continued to be a position player more than anything.”

Neither Lane nor Hintz had the professional baseball career they envisioned when they were drafted. But both former pitchers recognize how fortunate they were to have lived out the dream – even if it didn’t end in the major leagues. Through the grind, the travel, and the transitions, one thing never changed: their love and respect for the game.

“Even though my actual professional baseball career didn’t end up the way that I envisioned it, I still enjoyed every moment of it because you’re getting paid to play a game,” Hintz said. “A lot of other people would trade spots with you. I think it’s great. It’s just guys getting to chase a dream that not many people get to chase. I enjoy going to minor league games more than big league games a lot of the time. It’s just a great atmosphere, in great little towns that support the teams. It’s really, truly, America’s pastime. Even if you don’t make it, it is what it is, right? You’re playing baseball and you’re still getting paid. So things could be a lot worse.”

Lane added, “It’s romantic, it’s a lifestyle, it’s something that only a limited few people get to experience. You know, every 5-year-old kid has had that dream, and only 3% or 4% of those guys ever get to do that. It’s just an unbelievable feeling.”