The Second Ring: Windy City, 2008

The second ring is the one people forget, and it's the one I'm proudest of. Anyone can have a good rookie year. Doing it again is a different thing.

The season

On 5 August 2008 I threw the first no-hitter in ThunderBolts history. It was also the first complete game of my professional career.

I finished 7–6 with a 3.91 ERA and 110 strikeouts in 89.2 innings, and was named the number six prospect in independent baseball.

We went 60–36 and tied Kalamazoo for first place. They got the top seed on a tiebreaker. On the first day of the playoffs I recorded a voice memo and said we were the best team going in. I meant it.

The series

We swept the Kalamazoo Kings three games to none.

Heavy rain had flooded Kalamazoo's Homer Stryker Field, so the whole series was played at our park. We repeated as champions, only the second team in Frontier League history to do it, after the Richmond Roosters in 2001 and 2002.

The drive home

That September I was driving back to Arizona and talking into that recorder, mostly to my mother:

Two championship rings. Got to keep it going. Just started. 23 years old.

I was 23. I thought it was the beginning. In a way it was: the third one came the next summer.

If you want to talk through what's still possible on the other side of your own surgery, that's the conversation I have with people.