One of my very first memories in life is walking down our street with my mom to the tee-ball field near our house to play a game for the Braves, and her telling me to put my hand over my heart during the national anthem and the Little League pledge. My sister was a volleyball player and is now an athletic trainer. My older brother, Nigel, played in the Orioles organization, and he has been my role model my entire life - always someone I’ve wanted to be better than. (She’s actually nasty, I can’t lie.) And she’s been a diehard baseball fan since she was little. My mom talks like she’s the greatest athlete Japan’s ever seen. You gotta understand: I was born into a baseball family, a family of athletes. I’d set my alarm for four in the morning, clock in around 4:45, and spend all day screwing ducts together, or sanding machine parts. If baseball really is your dream, you need to go out and make it come true….
But me? It was like: I’ll take baseball any day.ĭriving over to the plant in the pitch black, tired as shit, I remember saying to myself: Here’s the rest of your life if you don’t invest your all into this baseball thing and make it happen. I have the utmost respect for anyone who can make it work. (Shoutout to OG, “Original Greg,” for getting me that job.) But what they do every day … it is not easy. I love all the guys I worked with - they’re truly great people. But it definitely taught me a lot about myself. I’d clock in around 4:45 and spend all day screwing ducts together, or sanding machine parts.
#Laptop screen shifted to the right pro
(My buddy Angelo, another pro ballplayer, took a job bagging groceries at a supermarket.) Six days a week, I’d set my alarm for four in the morning.
#Laptop screen shifted to the right manual
So I started working as a contractor doing manual labor at an aerospace engineering place called Northrop Grumman. But you can’t just hit all day and then do nothing. Fun stuff.īut then one night, I got home from a hitting session and my parents sat me down: “Son, we love you. We’d wait until the security guard wasn’t looking and then it’d be like … Go Go Go! Jumping fences, sliding between gaps in walls. We’d park near campus and then sneak into SC’s batting cages. I’d wake up, throw on some sweats, and head over to USC with my buddies, Angelo and Chips (real name John). I had moved back home from spring training in Jupiter, Florida, to my parents’ place in El Segundo. This was in 2020, after the minor league season was canceled. Five in the morning to three in the afternoon. This time three years ago, I was literally working a 9-to-5 job.Īctually, it was more like a 5-to-3.
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