Even after the minor-league season ends, the work to get better doesn’t. Just days after celebrating a championship with Pensacola, Shed Long was on his way to Goodyear, Ariz., to start getting ready for the 2018 season.

It's as great as advertised.

Not all big-league dreams end in the big leagues. What happens when you fall short of your goal? Two former Reds minor-leaguers, Bo Lanier and Bryson Smith, tell their stories, one a decade removed from the game and the other in his first season outside of baseball.

In the minors, it’s not the years, it’s the mileage.

The trade deadline and the working-man athlete. Some stuff you just can’t control. A lot of stuff, in fact. When a blockbuster trade is made at Major League Baseball's trade deadline, a slugger or ace is heralded as the final piece for a World Series title. The other side is usually several minor leaguers who have to move from Sacramento to Louisville or Fayetteville, Ark, to Pensacola, Fla. Every big-league move has minor-league ripples. This is the story of the players at the end of the story, not those in the headline.

Shed Long was recently moved up to Double-A Pensacola, a new start with a new team in a new city. Upward movement is always the goal, but the road goes both ways. As the Reds struggle in 2017, several players have had the highs of being called up to the big leagues combined with the lows of returning to minor-league life after a taste of the big leagues.