Big-time baseball dream deferred, not dead, in mind of determined Schaumburg Flyers star: Injury could keep him out for the rest of the season

Ten minutes before game time, Nelson Gord is signing autographs.This is what you do when you've fractured a bone in your glove handand can't play. You suit up all the same and sign autographs forlittle kids who think anybody in a uniform is Babe Ruth, for teenagegirls who think you're cute, for grown men and women who think, whoknows, you might still be the next Barry Bonds.

If you play for the Schaumburg Flyers, as Gord does, chances areyou're not the next Bonds. The Flyers play in an independent minorleague and that puts them at the very bottom of the professionalbaseball ladder. Any lower and you're playing just for fun.

But until he injured his hand, Gord was …