The highs and lows, they come and they go in baseball. Indianapolis Indians outfielder Jeff Salazar experienced how quickly the game can change from one week to the next.

Asked his best baseball moment, he fondly recalls being with Arizona for a four-game playoff sweep of the Chicago Cubs in the 2007 National League Division Series.

His worst? The next series. His former team, Colorado, swept the Diamondbacks in the NL Championship Series.

That’s baseball. One day, in the best moment, a player can be unstoppable. The next, at his worst, he seems utterly useless. That explains how former Cardinals pitcher Jose Jimenez can throw a no-hitter as a rookie but be forced out of the game five years later with a career 24-44 record.

The men who call the Indians’ Victory Field clubhouse home recently relived the best and worst moments of their careers in what can be a perplexing pastime.

Salazar said his most enjoyable individual accomplishment came from that same 2007 season with Arizona. The right fielder had three hits and robbed San Diego’s Brian Giles of a home run. What was better? He doesn’t hesitate.

“Robbing the guy of the homer,” said the eighth-year pro. “It was my first home game ever for Arizona, so it kind of helped make a decent impression, and we were battling the Padres for first place in the division.”

His most humbling experience came in high school in Oklahoma City. He went 0-for-6 with six strikeouts in a doubleheader.

“It got funny,” he said. “I started laughing at myself, like, ‘I can’t hit nothing right now.’ The next day, I had three hits.”

Pitcher Jeremy Powell also didn’t pause when posed with the best-worst question. The best moments run together, he said, but his worst was brutal because the other guys put eight runs together.

While with Montreal and pitching at San Diego in 1999, the right-hander thought he was off to a decent start after a one, two, three opening inning.

“Then the wheels fell off,” he said of getting shelled for eight runs in the next 11/3 innings. "They were killing me. They probably had like 11 or 12 guys come to the plate. I think Phil Nevin hit two home runs in the same inning off me. It was bad. It was embarrassing.

“But, hey, that’s how you learn.”

His manager, Felipe Alou, stuck with him longer than many managers would in that situation.

“You never want to come out of a game, no matter how bad you do,” Powell said. “I keep thinking, ‘I can get the next guy. I can get the next guy.’ Then it just doesn’t happen.”

On the opposite end of the pitching spectrum, right-hander Chris Bootcheck mentions a college game for Auburn when he struck out 16 batters. It was on the same field in Montgomery, Ala., where his father once pitched in the Southern League. His dad was there to see it.

“You hear pitchers say, ‘I had no idea how many I had,’ like Kerry Wood or Roger Clemens, but you really don’t,” Bootcheck said of the school record. "You just keep throwing and keep throwing and attacking hitters.

“My father didn’t know how many, either. He knew there was quite a few.”

Infielder Shelby Ford hit for the first cycle in Texas Christian history. The game was at Cincinnati on Mother’s Day. Paula Ford texted him, “Happy Mother’s Day to me.”

Ford needed a home run in the top of the 10th after going 3-for-3 with a walk and an intentional walk.

“One of my roommates, he ran out there and got the ball, had to give a kid a couple dollars for it,” Ford said. “I still got it. The parents have it at home in a little case.”

Outfielder Larry Broadway said he had a chance to do something unheard of while at Duke — earn a pitching victory and a save in the same game. Broadway thought he did, but Duke sports information confirmed he didn’t.

He pitched in different parts of the game, playing first base in between.

“I played first for the first five innings,” he said.

“There was like one out in the sixth, I was called over from first base and finished the inning. Top of the seventh, I go back to first base. I played the seventh and eighth at first base. Then I closed in the ninth.”

Broadway didn’t allow a run, but doesn’t remember any of the other details. Except that it was fun.

“It was cool to do,” he said.