My Rookie Year, and the First Ring: Windy City, 2007

On 3 March 2007 I went to an open tryout in Tucson, intending to hang it up if nothing came of it. I had more or less stopped throwing. Less than two years earlier I'd had a total hip replacement.

I topped out at 87 and threw the best bullpen I can remember: fastball to both sides, curveball where I wanted it, changeup down and in the zone. That night Andy Haines called from the Windy City ThunderBolts.

The season

I showed up to spring training two weeks late because I was finishing my degree. I was 21. I did not understand that I could be cut.

I gave up two earned runs in my first twenty professional innings and was 8–1 by the All-Star break. I finished 10–2 with a 3.28 ERA over 32 appearances. The team went 68–28.

A lefty reliever named Danny Borne looked after me that year, the way a veteran does when he doesn't have to. I wrote about him here.

The series

On 17 September 2007 we beat the Washington Wild Things three games to two for the Frontier League championship.

I pitched in four of the five games and didn't give up a run in any of them. They named me MVP of the series.

What it meant

Two years earlier a doctor had told me I was finished. My mother never saw me pitch professionally. She died two years before my first game, and she's the reason I kept going.

The hip didn't come up once in that clubhouse. A baseball decision is a baseball decision. The "no" always came from somewhere else.

If you're facing a replacement and someone has given you a list of things you won't do again, I'd like to hear what you actually want back. That's what the coaching is for.