Today, Mark Baena is the director of quality assurance for Websense, a California software company. More than a decade ago, he scored goals like no one in U.S. second-division soccer has since.
Baena scored 24 goals for the original Seattle Sounders in 1998, playing in what was then known as the A League. Multiple leagues, dozens of defunct teams and 13 years later, that record still stands, and likely will after being threatened this season.
With one game left in the NASL regular season, Carolina RailHawks forward Etienne Barbara still has a small chance to break a record very few know about, set by a player very few remember.
Barbara has been stuck on 20 goals for a month going into Saturday's final game at home against the Minnesota Stars. He missed most of one game and all of another after picking up a red card earlier this month, costing him about 1.2 goals at his pace, and failed to score in last Saturday's 1-0 loss at Puerto Rico. That leaves him with only the slimmest chance of breaking Baena's mark, but a chance nonetheless.
At least one man is rooting for Barbara to break the record: Baena.
"I'm excited to hear someone else maybe can challenge it," Baena said. "I'm pulling for him."
Still scoring goals but tired of moving around, Baena retired in 2001 on his 33rd birthday. He settled down in San Diego with his family, pursued a career in computers and never looked back.
For all the goals Baena scored, he never got a chance to score one in MLS. He went to the MLS combine once and played in an exhibition game for the San Jose Clash (now Earthquakes), but found he could make more money in soccer's minor leagues than he could in MLS.
Other players who made that jump found tremendous success. Stern John, who scored 16 goals for New Orleans of the A League in 1997, led MLS in scoring a year later. Baena, though, has no regrets.
"I look at other players, and there have been quite a few who made the move to MLS and have been very successful there," Baena said. "Knowing that I outpaced all of them for those years, certainly with that record, it's a nice feeling."
Tracing the history of a record like this is no easy task. Minor-league soccer in the United States is an alphabet soup of defunct leagues, changed names and lost history.
Since the inaugural season of MLS in 1996, no fewer than five leagues have served as the American second division: The APSL, in 1996; the A League, from 1997-2004; the USL first division from 2004-09; the U.S. Soccer D2 Pro League, in 2010; and the NASL in 2011.
That illustrious history includes the Raleigh Flyers (1997-98) and Raleigh Capital Express (1999-2000) in addition to the RailHawks (2007-current).
There's no single record book, no official archives, no unified organization whatsoever. The closest it gets is an unofficial website - a-leaguearchive.tripod.com - that tracks and archives an assortment of minor-league statistics.
The website's comprehensiveness gives it a certain credibility, and lacking a more definitive source, it awards the all-time record to Baena in 1998. It's a record he'd just as soon turn over to Barbara.
"All things considered, I had a good career," Baena said. "I had a lot of fun playing, I met a lot of great people, and those relationships are what you remember. I have no regrets."
He still has the record, though - maybe for another week, maybe for much longer than that. Maybe for as long as anyone cares to remember.
