Chuck Williams: Minor league catcher Matt Spring still chasing the dream

When you are chasing a dream, it helps to have a little talent and a positive attitude.

Meet Matt Spring, a 30-year-old professional baseball player who still has hopes -- and dreams -- of making a big league roster despite 11 years and 19 stops in the minor leagues.

"I tell people all the time, if I did not think I could make it to the big leagues, I would not be wasting my time and I would not be wasting my family's time," Matt said by phone over the weekend from the Boston Red Sox Major League spring training camp in Fort Myers, Fla.

When you are in full dream-chasing mode, it also helps to have a partner who shares the dream. Meet Meredith Welch Spring, Matt's wife of five years and fellow dreamer. They live in Columbus, where Meredith was raised.

"It is not only his biggest dream, it is the biggest dream that I have for him," Meredith said.

"I couldn't do this without her," Matt said.

So, together they dream -- and do whatever it takes to keep that dream alive. While Matt is in Florida hoping to head north with the Red Sox, but more realistically knowing he is likely ticketed for Pawtucket, Meredith is in Columbus working full time at Aflac and caring for their 2-year-old son, Bo.

Last week was one of those weeks that keeps the dream alive. A reserve catcher in his first big league camp with Boston, Spring hit a mammoth home run and had a couple of doubles in a come-from-behind win over the New York Mets. He had a critical single later in the week in another seemingly meaningless spring training win. He has played in seven games and is hitting .500.

Spring knows people in Boston and other big league front offices might be looking at those numbers.

"Right now, I am playing for the Red Sox, but I am also playing for the name on my back," he said.

When you have spent the last three seasons on a shuttle between Double-A Portland, Maine and Triple-A Pawtucket, R.I., you play for whatever keeps you going.

Nobody said this was going to be easy. The week before reporting to big-league camp last month, Spring was working for his brother-in-law painting the inside of a child day care facility in Bradley Park. He was getting ready for spring training in a big-league camp by working out with the Northside High School baseball team,

Talk about two different worlds. One week you are painting and taking BP with a bunch of high school kids; the next you are in a clubhouse with bunch of millionaire ballplayers in the ultimate fantasy league.

Spring was raised in Arizona, attended junior college in Utah and has played professional baseball up and down the East Coast.

In 2007, he made a monthlong stop in Columbus, wearing the uniform of the Catfish, then a Tampa Bay farm club. He got 91 at-bats and four homes runs while he was here, but it was his most important minor league assignment.

It's where he met Meredith.

They continued to date when he moved to Double-A in Montgomery. They have been married five years, and Spring has made Columbus his offseason home.

"Columbus is my home for the rest of my life," Spring said. "It is where my wife wants to be, and I want to be right there next to her."

Spring has also found a family in his in-laws Mike and Beth Welch, who were his adoptive Columbus family during his brief stay with the Catfish.

Mike Welch loves the fact that his son-in-law and daughter are chasing a dream, but there is something more important to him.

He's the kind of guy you want your daughter to marry, Welch said.

Just as Matt was thinking long term and the big leagues, Meredith was thinking long term, as well, when she insisted they live here.

"I told him I wasn't going to Arizona," she said.

Not long after they married, she went to work For Aflac.

"I am working with a great company; and I wanted to have a career when his career is over," Meredith said. "Also, I knew I needed a support system for the six or seven months he's gone."

Two years ago, with Bo just a few months old, Meredith remembers thinking, "What have I done?" when Matt departed for Fort Myers.

Now, she is pleased that the dream is still alive.

"Everybody is pulling for him," Meredith said. "Last week, our phones blew up with people wanting to congratulate Matt. He's got everybody's attention right now."

And they are paying attention for the right reasons.

"He hates it when everybody thinks he's an underdog," Meredith said. "I understand that. But I try to keep telling him that his story is so good, and that's why people are rooting for him. People love his story."

Here's hoping this story only gets better.

Chuck Williams, senior reporter, chwilliams@ledger-enquirer.com

This story was originally published March 23, 2015 at 3:14 PM.