B (42:33)
Yeah, I mean, I don't know where the, that flame of, like, just belief in self comes from. I Think it's, I think it's built up like, I think the one, the one thing that sticks out like so my very first high school or my very first baseball coach, a man named John Resta. He, I guess I was in like, yeah, I was going into high school and I was going to try out for football and I didn't, I end up, did not end up sticking with football. I went to like a couple practices and I was like, the freshman football thing, this is not for me. And, but I remember him saying, he's like, dan, I heard you're trying out for football. If you hurt your shoulder and can't play on the USA Baseball team, I will never forgive you. And. But just to hear like that this adult, like, obviously like John was a. He was one of my favorite favorite coaches at age 8. I don't really remember anything he taught me. I mean I was, I was really young, but I just remember like that, like, oh, wait, you think I could play on the USA Baseball team? And he was completely, like, completely genuine. Like I was, I was a really good young player. It's. I started to become a little less good when I started to have arm problems and I hit high school and like, you know, other kids just like take off too. But I was always a very good player. But really when I started to have those setbacks, I started to have to work a lot harder at it. And in college I was the, I didn't get a scholarship and I was basically the last pitcher on the depth chart as a small division one. So I was. When I really realized, like, oh, I've, I have not continued on this upward path that I was when I was from like 8 to 8 to 18. But I'll give you a story. So anyway, I don't know where that belief in self came from, but I think I always have that. But I think a lot of people instill it in you and just such a drive. Yeah. And like my parents and they never told me this until way after the fact, but like when I got my second elbow surgery, so my third year in pro ball, I was leading the league in ERA in strikeouts and like batting average against which are like three very good stats. So basically I was like the best starting pitcher in this low level independent minor league team or minor league. So I made the All Star team and I was supposed to be the All Star game starter. I was like, wow, my first All Star game, I'm going to be the starting pitcher. Like that's a really big honor. A couple of Weeks before the game, I started having elbow pain. And, you know, this is from my. My surgery was like, four years later and. Or a couple of years later, and I didn't think I could ever have to need that surgery again. So I had some elbow pain. I was still pitching, but, like, my velocity was dropping, and so I was just trying to pitch through it, and I got a cortisone shot because I was like, this. This surgery couldn't have failed. That couldn't. That couldn't be the possibility. So I figured it was bone spurs. I actually. The last day, it got so intense in, like, the second or third inning of my last start that I was choosing my pitches based on which ones hurt the less because it really felt like it releases. I could kind of feel the bones spread apart in my elbow. I could. It felt like a screwdriver getting shoved into my elbow. But I was, like, committed because there were scouts in the stands. I was committed to, like, not walking off with an injury because that's the. Literally the way my college career ended. I was pitching in front of 15 scouts in the conference tournament. I felt a big sensation in my arm on a certain pitch, and then, like, five pitches later, like, I had to point at my elbow and walk off. And that's how my college career ended. And it was. It was brutal. And it ended all my aspirations of getting drafted by an MLB team and just having to walk off with all those scouts, literally with a clipboard, just, like. Basically just like, scratching my name off. So, you know, fast forward, you know, three or four years. I'm about to pitch in my first All Star Game, and then I get the MRI results two weeks before that. And he says, doctor says, dan, you know, I haven't read an MRI of a player who's torn a previously repaired ulnar collateral ligament. He said, but I'm pretty sure yours is torn. And I'm pretty sure you need Tommy John again. He's like, I'm going to refer you to a different doctor, because I've never done a revision. He said, so you need to see one of the best baseball surgeons in the country, because they're the only guys who would have done revision surgeries. Because even now, it's probably only a couple hundred people in the world have had this surgery twice. So it's a sad little group I'm in. Oh, and so I sat through my first All Star game waiting for surgery, you know, and my parents, years later, they're like, we didn't think you were going to do that. We didn't think you're going to. You're going to sign up for that again. And I was like, really? Do you not know me? Like, and they're like, it just was so hard the first. The first time, and it was so long for you to get back. And like, you. They're like, we just didn't think you'd want to do all that. All that pain again. And I was like. And I thought about it. I won't get into that story right now. But, like, I thought about it for about an hour, because when I got the news, I was in the dugout and the surgeon calls. Like, I just said, he, like, he's like, hey, I've watched your. I've seen your mri. Like, I'm pretty sure you need surgery again. I walked back into the outfield. My teammate's like, hey, what's the news? And I just, like, couldn't look at him. And I just walked off the field and just, like, found a tree and I cried. So, you know, like, those. Those moments, it goes back to the love. It's like, why am I doing this? I don't know. You know, it's like. And it's because this belief that I have this special story. And, like, as the injuries piled on, I think for me it was like, well, now they're going to make a movie about you if you make it, or whatever. You know, it's like, I can't quit now. But at some point, like, years later, my shoulder was so painful, more unlike the how hard sports are. So I wrote a novel. I'm actually shopping. I'm looking for a literary agent now. And it's a story about a minor league baseball player who's. Who's. His arm falls apart. The same time, his father is dying from cancer, and he meets a girl, and she kind of puts him on her. On his back. But, you know, in the story, it's obviously fiction. It's me pancaking two major life events together, but it's fiction. But there's a couple little scenes that are from my real life, one of which is the character. His name is Jeremy Oakton. He. His arm is in such pain that he has this little routine that he does. And this is. This is from my real life, my last season, my shoulder. I woke up on opening day. My arm was so in so much pain that as I reached over to, like, turn my phone off, like, I reached to the bedside table, I got this jolt of pain down my shoulder, and I was like, oh, God. I go in the shower and like, I can't. I can't like wash my hair. I had hair at the time with my right arm. I like literally wash my body with my left arm. And I was going to pitch that night, and that was the first game of 140 game season. I was like, okay, how am I going to do this? How am I going to get through 140 games? Somehow get healthy somehow, like, you know, in the, in the background, continue to pitch and not go on the disabled list and get healthy so that one of these teams is going to put me in their AAA system and hopefully I'll be in the major leagues by the end of the year next year. Like, that was the goal, right? And we had this stuff called hot stuff. It's this like big jar of like. It's basically like petroleum jelly with capsaicin, which is the ingredient from hot peppers that makes it hot. And it's tinted this really deep orange that's like. It's like a coral snake. It's like this stuff. It, like, it tells you that it's hot just by the color of it. Most players don't touch that stuff. Like there's a. There's a couple grades of it and no one, not many people use the really, really hot, the really hottest version. But my shoulder just hurt so much that I needed to a. Distract myself from the pain besides the dozen Advil I took every day. And so I. In like the second or third inning, I would go into the training room, I'd take my jersey off and I'd. I'd cover my arm in this hot stuff. I'd like smear it from like mid forearm all the way up to my shoulder and I rub it in. Then I'd let it sit and then I would rub more on so much that it wouldn't all. All soak into my skin. So I was like, okay, trial and error. I was like, how can I get more of this into my arm so it burns more? So I took a, an ice bag, like the same bag you get, like the grocery store, you know, for your produce. That thin bag. I cut out the bottom. I slid that basically just now plastic tube up my arm, and then I taped it at the forearm so it makes it made like a sauna suit. And so then. And within the next like 10 or 15 minutes, it would like force more of that stuff into my pores as my arm started to sweat in the bag. And I remember like being on the dugout rail, like, you know, leaning over, watching the Game and like, the fourth inning, because I would usually pitch, like, the seventh or eighth, and my arm just burned so bad that I, like, couldn't hold a conversation with a teammate. And, like, watching the game was, like, hard because I was just like, it's like if you're in the shower and the water's, like, way too hot, and you just, like, you could. You could tolerate it for a minute, be like, like, I need to turn this down. It was like that, like, for, like, just an hour or two.
