Every night of his 11-year minor league career, Wynton Bernard would say a prayer that one day he’d be able to call himself a Major League baseball player.
That his toiling in the minor leagues would be worth it, and that his detours, in Australia, Mexico and Venezuela, would eventually be rewarded.
On Thursday, as Bernard went through his typical pregame preparations at Triple-A Albuquerque, Isotopes manager Warren Schaeffer called a team meeting. Bernard, who was trying to sneak in his pre-game nap, was accustomed to hundreds of these types of meetings in his career. Oftentimes the news was a sobering injury to a teammate.