Hanging up the spikes

Ty Buttrey is a "former Red Sox prospect" - their fourth round draft pick in 2012 - but I don't recall ever hearing the name. He's been with the Angels for the last two years, and "was expected to be a key part of the [bullpen] again in 2021." Instead, at 28, he decided to hang up his spikes.

“I want to finally be known as just Ty, not Ty, the baseball player,” Buttrey wrote. “I completely lost the drive to continue doing something that I didn’t love because in my mind, I already accomplished it. It was never my dream to make it to the Hall of Fame, win a World Series, or become an All-Star. In my head, I accomplished what I wanted, to prove people wrong and accomplish something extremely hard.” (Source: MassLive)

He certainly did "accomplish something extremely hard." Making it to the big leagues in any sport happens to a very small percentage of those who start out with that dream. And occasionally someone, like Ty Buttrey, makes it without having the dream to begin with. At least not much of one. 

His motivations were proving that anyone who told him who couldn't make it was wrong. That an having what he perceived as a "cool job" where he could make a lot of money.

Which he did: a signing bonus of $1.3M, an annual "newbie" salary of over $500K for the last few years, a contract for $650K this year. And the promise of a lot more to come. Starting out, baseball players in the pros don't make a ton of money by baseball standards. But once you've got five or six years in the bigs, the average salary is over $5 million. Then there's the promise of free agency. No, every player doesn't get to sign a 10 year contract for $350 million dollars. But there are a lot of guys knocking around baseball making $10 million year for a performance that is absolutely mediocre. 

Ty Buttrey has no interest in becoming one of them.

 ...I couldn’t help but notice my love and passion for this game started to diminish...Unfortunately, the older I got, the more I realized this dream to play professional baseball wasn’t what I actually wanted...Unfortunately, money and proving people wrong are short term motivators, especially when you never actually loved the game you dedicated the last 24 years of your life to. I dreaded every aspect of the process to become the best but, who the hell throws away 24 years of work?...I am beyond excited to finally be a normal, hard-working dude, that loves his family and friends. Life is short so just do what you love and don’t ever look back!

Good for him!

I'm not a big believer that you have to be passionate about what you do for a living. Really, if you have interesting work with good colleagues that pays enough to live your life, your passion can be whatever you do when you're not at work. But there are certain professions that don't work quite so well if you don't have some passion for it, and one of them is playing professional sports. 

You're on the road half the time. You're every move is scrutinized. Sports writers, game analysts, and fans constantly pulling you apart. If you're a marketing professional, not a lot of people know about it if a typo slips into a brochure. Your mistakes, blessedly, aren't televised. But if you're in the fishbowl that is professional sports, an awful lot of people see the fumble, the missed shot, the wild pitch. Hiss, boo. 

Anyway, I hope Ty enjoys his life as a "normal, hard-working dude."

Whatever he decides to do, he'll bring to it the discipline, focus and work ethic it took to make it to the show. 

Reading about Ty Buttrey reminded me of another ballplayer, someone I ran into years ago at North Station.

I was waiting for a train and noticed that the young man sitting next to me had a couple of Portland Sea Dogs duffle bags with him. The Sea Dogs are the Red Sox AA team. 

I asked whether he was with the Sea Dogs and he told me that he had been, but had spent the final months of the season with the Pawtucket Red Sox. AAA ball. 

A promotion I asked?

Yes, he proudly told me. Big grin on his face. AAA is a heartbeat away from the big leagues.  

The season had ended - it was September - and he was heading up to Portland to collect the stuff he'd left behind when he was brought up to Pawtucket. 

Beau Vaughan also told me that he was getting old for the minor leagues - he was 27 when I met him, about the same age as Ty Buttrey - but that he had nothing better to do. So he was going to stick with it and see how it played out.

I wrote about Beau Vaughan way back in 2008. 

It didn't play out for him. He never made it to the show. After kicking around AA and AAA for a few years, he spent some time in the Mexican Winter League, and then played independent league ball (which is where those at the tail end of a less-than-stellar career end up, not generally those on a trajectory to the big leagues). In AA or AAA, a player isn't getting rich. They might make $600 or $700 a week. If you're playing independent ball, you could make that little in a month. Plus a meal allowance. Players often room with local families, because what can you afford if you don't even make $1,000 a month? 

Beau Vaughan hung in there until he was 35. Here's a picture of him when he was with the York (PA) Revolution. 

I'm guessing - I'm hoping - he never lost what he loved about baseball. I hope he had fun. I couldn't find him on LinkedIn. I hope he's okay. 

I haven't watched Bull Durham in a long while. Tonight might be the night to give it a look.