Dan Blewett - Clean Your Cleats: Advice on Baseball and Life for Ballplayers

Copyright 2022 by Dan Blewett

Dedication

Table Of Contents

Youspend a good deal of your life gripping a baseball, and it turnsout it was the other way around all the time.

- Jim Bouton, Ball Four

Introduction | Broken Down

No no no, Ipleaded. Please dont do this now. I dont want to get stuckhere.

The dial on the water temperature gauge ofmy dark green 2002 Honda Civic was soaring back into the red zone.Id been driving for six hours, with still another nine to go, andmy car kept overheating. I had already pulled over three or fourtimes to let it cool off, but this time it just would notcooperate. I was driving back to the Midwest, where I had built alife around the baseball academy I owned there.

In 2010 I had rolled into Normal, Illinois(yes, thats really what its called) with a contract in hand for anew team in the independent Frontier League of ProfessionalBaseball. Leagues like this one are called Independentbecause theyre not affiliated with a major leagueorganizationthey exist because baseball teams can, sometimes, beprofitable businesses that support small town economies.

I made that team out of spring training, andbegan my career as a pro. I grinded out a tough first season,pitching through arm trouble and earning every penny of my $600 permonth salary. I think Clayton Kershaw makes at least $600 everytime he breathes in, and another $600 as he breathes out, but letsjust move past that, can we? Might as well establish now that Iwasnt doing it for the money. Six years after that 2010 rookiecampaign in Normal, I found myself on Long Island, trying to keepup the pace.

I was an All-Star in 2015 with the CamdenRiversharks, a New Jersey-based team, and MLB scouts had beenexpressing interest in signing me into their farm system. As anoften-injured, late-blooming, not tall right-hander, I wasstill waiting for my big break, and things had been looking up.

Despite undergoing Tommy John surgery notonce, but twicefour years apart, in 2008 and 2012I was stillhanging around, still improving and still having fun. It was allvery exciting, thinking some of my furthest boyhood dreams mightyet be achieved in that 2016 summer in Long Island.

Then, it all came crashing down. My shoulderwas trashed, and hurt on every throw beginning on the first day ofspring training. I pitched terribly for the Ducks. I wasscrambling, desperate to heal up and pitch better, but things justgot worse.

Any car owner will agree: theres no goodtime to have radiator problems. Yet the timing of my carsbreakdown felt especially bad. Long Island released me, and aftersticking around town for a few more days to get an MRI on myshoulder, I hit the road. It didnt feel fair. I had scratched andclawed to stay in the game. I had done things the right way, workedhard and been a good teammate.

Yet there I was, just six hours into mydrive home, sitting on the side of the road as a tow truck loadedmy Honda onto the back. I watched him haul up my broken-down car asI tried not to think about my broken-down arm, and whether I couldsalvage my broken-down career. Finally, when the driver finished, Ihopped in the cab and off we went, to a small repair shop I hadfound on Google maps.

Since I know that many of you reading thishavent broken down on the highway before, let me explain in moredetail. I was driving back on Friday, and my car began sputteringaround 3:00 in the afternoon. Friday is when everyoneincludingyour friendly, neighborhood auto mechaniccalls it a week and headshome. A breakdown in a strange town on Friday afternoon representsthe longest possible repair time for what would otherwise be aone-day fix.

Sure enough, after a quick assessment, justbefore closing time, the mechanic spilled the news: Well have toorder a new radiator; we dont have one in stock. Honda should beable to get us one by Monday or Tuesday, and well get you back onthe road. Its the weekend so I cant get the part any sooner thanthat. He made that sorry man, youre out of luck kindaface. Do you need a ride into town? There are a few nicer hotels Ican recommend if youd like. Oof. I told him I still needed tofind a hotel, but not to worry about me; Id sit outside, book ahotel on my phone, then call an Uber. He nodded, closed up theshop, and left.

I wouldnt, despite my intentions, gethealthy. I couldnt, despite my effort, fix what was wrong with mymechanics. And I didntfor the first time ever in 22 years wearingmy baseball costumewant to keep going. Just like my car on thatcross-country trip, for most of the past decade, I had driven hard,gotten hurt, pulled over to rest, got going again for a while, thenneeded more time at a rest stop. It was a tough cycle to maintain.In my green Honda, I called the tow truck when I realized I justwasnt going to make it nine more hours stopping, pulling over andstarting again; I could not sustain it.

In the dugout, I had lost nearly five yearscombined due to elbow and now shoulder injuries. I didnt want tobe in pain anymore. Though my intent was to go home, rehab and gethealthy for the umpteenth time, the part needed to fix me justmight never be in stock. I didnt know it then, but I was right. Mycareer had just ended.

I was a naturally good ballplayer as a kid,just like you probably are, or were. Then, when I got to highschool, it became more like work, requiring a significant bump infocus, intensity and effort than that silly, backyard baseball Iplayed each afternoon when I got out of school. As the gamechanged, I changed with it, and had a lot of help along theway.

Getting hurt over and over taught me moreabout being healthy than a healthy player ever would have known. Ididnt have the luxury of taking it for granted. Being alate-bloomer forced me to dig deeper to find new ways to keep up.And teaching kids in my baseball academy, which I founded in 2010after my rookie season, helped me apply what I had learned,coaching and mentoring young players. I taught hundreds of kidsover the years how to lift, pitch, and play the game the rightway.

This experience helped me filter whatsimportant and whats not, what works and what doesnt and how toexplain things so that they make sense and sink in. My academy gaveme a venue to take what I learned in the cutthroat, intense progame and smooth it out to share with an 8, 12, or 17-year-old sothey could use it, and hopefully become better than I was. Does anoak tree secretly hope its outgrown by each acorn that falls fromits branches? My guess is that it does.

I was a walk-on at a small Division-Ischool, playing five years at the University of Maryland-BaltimoreCounty. I graduated with a double-major in Philosophy andPsychology, taking a fifth year to recover from my first of twoTommy John surgeries. After graduating, I needed another whole yearbefore I got my chance in Normal, which began my six seasons of probaseball spread across seven years, with a gap in 2013 as Irecovered from my second TJ.

If things had turned out differentlyif Ihad been able to avoid surgery and pitch healthythere might havebeen some real magic in the way my story ended. Perhaps, thenarrative could have made it to the big screen, though theyd havehad to change my last name to make it believable. Dan Blevinssounds real. Maybe Don Baltimore? Too much like a mafia boss.Blewett? Come on.