The Red Sox Sent Me Home. Fenway Waited Thirteen Years.

I have been signed by four organizations in my career. I only actually signed a contract with one of them.

The Padres are the one with the paper trail — I signed, and then their medical staff looked at my hip and un-signed me. That story is already told. The White Sox and the Diamondbacks never got past people with real authority telling me it was happening, before it quietly didn't. The Red Sox are the third one, and until now I have never told it properly. It is also, weirdly, the one with the best ending — it just took thirteen years to get there.

Nine and oh

2009. I was pitching for the Calgary Vipers in the Golden League, and I started that season on fire. Nine and oh at the All-Star break, leading the league, and I opened the All-Star Game itself.

A man named Steve Peck, based out of St. George, Utah, reached out on behalf of the Red Sox. I did not have time for a maybe. I had already been through this once with the White Sox, and I was not going to spend energy chasing a door that was not really open. So I told him straight: I have a hip replacement, I don't want to waste my time here. Are you gonna sign me for real?

He said yes. Not a soft yes — he said they knew everything, that they were excited to have me, that they wanted to fly me out to Boston, and that they were planning to send me straight to their AA affiliate.

The desk

They flew me to Boston for a physical. I sat across from a doctor connected to their organization — a serious one, someone who had worked with real stars in that world — and he looked at my file and said something like, so you're twenty-four and you have a hip replacement? You're not supposed to be here, man. This is pretty crazy.

I had already done this dance twice. I did not have it in me to be charmed by the moment.

Doc, are you gonna clear me to play or not?

I said it plainly, not as an attitude. I just needed the answer.

I'm so sorry. I can't say yes yet.

My heart sank right there in the chair. Then I went back to my hotel room and sat in it for two days, waiting, because "not yet" is not the same as "no" and some part of me still needed it to turn into a yes. It didn't. The call came: they were sending me home.

What that did to the rest of the season

I flew back to Calgary carrying it, and it showed. I had gone into the All-Star break at 9-0, the best pitcher in the league by a wide margin. I finished the regular season 9-2, and the two losses were not the only sign something had shifted — I got rocked by Edmonton at one point, eight runs in about five innings, in a stretch where the coaches expected lights-out and got average instead. I knew why. I just could not will myself out of it the way I usually could.

Then the playoffs started, and something clicked back into place. Five innings, two runs, against Tucson. Six innings, one run, against Edmonton in my second playoff outing. We beat Tucson for the championship, my third title in three professional seasons, and I have always believed that run was partly the grace of God meeting me exactly where I needed it — not because I earned my way out of the fog on pure will, but because I got out of it at all.

Thirteen years later, the same ballpark

Here is the part I did not see coming, and it is the actual reason I wanted this story written down.

Years later I became the pitching coach for the Party Animals, a Banana Ball team. We played a game at Fenway Park.

I got to pitch off that actual mound, in a rehearsal game the day before our real one. I got to take batting practice there too, and I hit a home run. The same ballpark that sent me home in a hotel room in 2009, uncleared and unsigned, is the same ballpark where I stood on the mound years later and felt like I belonged there after all.

Nobody signed me. That is not the point anymore. I got to pitch at Fenway Park. I got to hit a home run at Fenway Park. The door I was waiting on in that hotel room opened eventually, just not in the shape I was expecting it to, and not for the reason I thought I needed it to.

If you want the rest of that story — who the Party Animals actually are and how I ended up coaching for them — it's here.