Not a challenge, but certainly trivia. Just in case there's one person out there who ever wondered about this. (I mean, I wondered about it, and I'm not that weird.)


You know the song, "Please Come to Boston", by Dave Loggins? Covered by Kenny Chesney? Song's about a guy who moves around a lot; seems to be some kind of musician. Every place he goes he tries to get this girl from back home to join him, now that he's become so successful, but she disdains his hollow celebrity life and says that he should come back to her instead. The song has three stanzas, one for Boston, one for Denver, and one for L.A.

So I was wondering if maybe there was a ballplayer that song could be about. You know, if you ignore the musician thing. The perfect ballplayer to fit the description of the song would be a guy who played for, in order, the Red Sox, the Rockies, and the Dodgers (or the Angels), and who was from Tennessee (like the guy in the song).

I checked on bb-ref. There isn't really such a guy.

There are a few players who played for all three of those teams, but they're not really satisfactory.

Dennys Reyes started off with the Dodgers, then spent a few years with the Reds before a relatively brief stop in Colorado, after which he pitched for a whole lot of teams before winding up with the Red Sox this year. He's from Mexico.

Pedro Astacio also gets the teams backwards: Dodgers for a few years, Colorado for a few years, then a bunch of teams at the end of his career, including five pretty bad games with the Red Sox. Astacio is from the Dominican Republic.

Kent Mercker was mostly known for being a Brave, but after that he moved around quite a bit, and at one point had stints with, consecutively, the Red Sox, Angels, and Rockies. Of course, he also went back to Atlanta, and seems to have been a Red three or four different times, among other things, plus he's from Ohio.

Dante Bichette at least had lengthy terms of service with all three teams, even if he did get them in the wrong order: three seasons as an Angel, two as a Brewer, seven with Colorado, part of a season with Cincinnati, then a season and change with the Red Sox. Bichette is from Florida.

Darren Oliver is the only guy to get the teams in the right order. His CV has these franchises on it: Tex-StL-Tex-Bos-Col-Fla-Hou-NYM-LAA-Tex. A three-time Ranger; think of that. Oliver is from Missouri by way of California.

Now you know. I hope this article satisfies all of your Dave-Loggins-related baseball needs.