"Josh Willingham had dreams about his baseball career growing up, big ones. The kind of can-you-imagine fantasies that boys in Little League uniforms like to make-believe about but coaches who know how long the odds actually are try not to encourage too much. Sure, you'll get there someday, they say half-heartedly, just keep working hard.

Willingham, a precocious and accomplished athlete from the time he first picked up a bat, had such a dream. But he never achieved it.

"Growing up, I wanted to go to Alabama. That's where I always wanted to play," the 32-year-old Southerner said. "When I graduated from high school, they offered me a scholarship, but it was very small. I realized if I went there, I might be pushed to the side my freshman year, and I'd have to pay my own way. So I just decided to stay home."

Staying home, after all, is what Willingham likes best. And it's worked out better for him than even his 8-year-old Little League self could imagine.

The quiet, humble Alabamian, always one of the most popular players in his clubhouse, last month signed a $21 million contract to spend the next three seasons patrolling right field in Target Field, a financial jackpot and a baseball opportunity -- born of a career-best 29-homer, 98-RBI season with the Oakland A's in 2011 -- that Willingham says won't change him. He still lives in Florence, the northwest Alabama town where he was born and raised, the river hamlet where he went to college at North Alabama and became a local celebrity, the neighborhood where he met Ginger, married her and fathered two young sons, Rhett and Ryder."