Last night I got the text no baseball wife wants to receive

Written by Cassidy Dover, Ghostwriter for The Life of the Baseball Wife

I had seen the writing on the wall. Ray’s last few games were erradic. One great one, one horrible, one solid, then last night.
The first inning was horrible. The next two were good. He even got a hit!
The saying goes if you can’t help your team in the field, have your bat do the talking. It was his first hit in a year and a half (pitchers don’t bat in one league). I was excited! He even ran the bases and scored a run!
Ray said when he went into the dugout the guys were all ragging on him.
“Wow, you run like an elephant!”
 “You love that left leg, huh? Thought you’d be running in circles out there”
“A gazelle has nothing on you old man”
Now to be fair, he doesn’t run the bases all that often. He is older, and he may not be as swift as your average outfielder on the bases.
But he knew something felt wrong.
Still, he tried to shake it off, took the ball, and headed back to the mound.
Then the next inning. The wheels fell off. The ball was hit and hit hard. If Ray threw a strike, it was hit and it was a fair ball. If it wasn’t in the outfield, it was over the wall.
Ray went in after the inning and immediately texted the minor league coordinator - “I need an MRI on my hip. Something happened sprinting from 2nd to third. I can’t generate any power from my legs”. Then he texted me.
I would be lying if I didn’t say I wasn’t scared. I was and I am.
See, Ray has been playing baseball since he was what, 3 years old? And he’s always been good. If not, he wouldn’t be playing at this level for almost 2 decades. His life and identity are wrapped up in being a baseball player.
Don’t get me wrong. Ray is the kindest man. He’s a good husband, a fantastic father, friend, teammate and son. I also know in his mind, he’s a ballplayer. And not one who gives up 6 runs after 2 outs in an inning.
The next text came about 20 minutes later: “I’ve been released”.
I didn’t respond right away. It sank in. I took a deep breathe and wrote back, “I’m so sorry baby”.
What do you say? How do you comfort someone who’s heart is there but his body is rebelling? How do you tell him that everything will be OK when my idea of OK and his are very different at that moment?
An athlete’s soul and heart are so strong but the body has a point where it has limitations. As you get older, those limitations seem to rear their ugly head.
So began the waiting for the call. I was dreading hearing the sound of his voice. I didn’t know if I could keep the tears out of my voice. No facetime tonight. I’m not that strong.
Finally he did call.
“The team is having me looked at and will allow me to rehab with them. They’ve been honest there won’t be room for me when I’m ready to come off the DL so they are going to go ahead and release me but support my rehab. It’s fair”.
Fair. Who says it’s fair? Yes, it’s incredibly kind as the team, since Ray is on a minor league contract, could cut him loose and offer no support. But fair?
How is it fair that Ray’s dream, just hours before clear and on track could be derailed so easily? Ray said he needed to finish packing his stuff up and he’d be home today. Could I pick him up at the airport?
Sheridan, our daughter, has school and then practice. Any other day I’d have said grab a cab and I’ll meet you at home. Not this time.
I told him I’d be there.
He will need me. He’ll need me to be strong. He’ll need my arms around him to hold him and my voice to tell him we love him and believe in him. He’ll want to hear me say, “It’s going to be OK”. So as I try to be a mom, a wife, and true to my own fears and concerns, I move today in a trance. We won’t know anything until the MRI on Monday. Then we can start to plan after we know the results. It’s so hard.
I know Ray had been planning for when he’d retire. That doesn’t mean he’s ready to leave on these terms.
He doesn’t see it as I do - this last game was an example of the leader he is. He went out there, not 100% and tried. He knew he was hurting after running the bases but he went out, took the ball, and tried to play for his team and for the fans. He wouldn’t give up on himself because the team was giving him the ball and believed he was the guy for the night.
He only sees the crooked number on the scoreboard and the “L” after his name. Ray will always be a hero to us. I just pray he can have Grace with himself and patience and believe that this, too, is in God’s plan.
We just don’t understand it.
My phone is alerting me I’ve got another text.
Why am I so afraid to read it?

Enjoy every moment. You are never sure when you will be called on to face the battle that you always prayed wouldn’t be yours to fight.

Thanks for reading, Cassidy

A Player to be Named: My Experience

Written by Nicole Johnson, Wife to Elliot Johnson

As I'm writing this, I'm sitting at our spring training rental just about halfway through spring.  About a month ago, I didn't think I'd be here in Arizona.  We actually had everything all set up for our spring training with the Rays that was to take place in Port Charlotte, FL.

The news that Elliot had been traded kind of blind-sided us.... well, the news that he had been designated did at least.  A couple weeks before spring training, Elliot was designated for assignment by the Rays.  He got the call one afternoon while we were hanging out, and we then knew we weren't going to be with the Rays for the 2013 season.

It was kind of surreal, really.  I know that trades are imminent in baseball, that it happens all the time, and that staying with the same team for 11 seasons (yep, 11) is unrealistic.  We didn't know anything different, really.

Luckily, my mom was already planning a trip to come down that following weekend.  I was running in a half marathon in St. Pete in just a few days.  It really couldn't have worked out better.  So my mom flies in, and we get to packing while our son, Blake, is playing with Grammy.  We were still in our rental in St. Pete and since we knew we wouldn't be staying there, we had to start packing, pronto.

We soon found out that we would be joining the Royals, and were pretty excited, actually.  Elliot actually ended up being the "player to be named later" in a trade with James Shields and Wade Davis.  How lucky am I that I got traded to a team where I already had two friends, that had already joined the team about a month earlier?  It really doesn't get much better than that!  Add to that the fact that I went to college at Arizona State and half of Elliot's family lives in Arizona.  We were pumped to get to see our friends and family for spring training!

Within a week, we were all out in Arizona at our new rental.  The travel secretary for the Royals took great care of us and found us a rental with short notice.  Elliot drove over with a lot of our stuff and our dog, and I flew in a few days later with our son.  Whew!  Honestly, I still can't believe how much our lives have changed in a month!!

When I got into town, Katelyn invited me to join some of the girls she already knew at a luncheon.  They were so nice and inviting.  They have been so welcoming, offering to help me know where to rent in Kansas City, inviting my son and I to come on playmates, and inviting me to classes with them at the gym.  They are so great at making me feel comfortable even though I'm the new girl.

There are times where I feel a little sad.  It's like moving, really.  I miss my friends and I miss the comfort of knowing everyone and everything about where I'm supposed to go.  But our new team and  new friends have been great so far, and I'm looking forward to building long-lasting friendships with the Royals girls like the ones I have with my Rays friends.

Trades And All The Grief That Comes Along With Them

Written by Cat Miller, ghostwriter for The Life of the Baseball Wife.

B and I have been together for almost ten years, since we were seventeen. A lot can happen in that time and I’ve learned that when in crisis, B is the man for the job. Calm and level headed, he handles each situation without panic. That’s what makes him a strong guy out of the pen. In all these years, we’ve also learned that I am not that type of person. The type of person I am isn’t really built to go through the highs and lows of a baseball life, but I’ve tried my best to always act somewhat calm during every situation that had faced us. That was until B was traded.

We’ve been fortunate so far in my husband’s career. He hasn’t played in the majors very long, but was drafted high, invited to the fall league, and called up all at a relatively decent pace. In the past two seasons he spent in the majors, we finally started to feel something that is so rare in baseball life, stablity. He was pitching well, working hard, and still getting paid league minimum, which always seems to make a team happy. We felt content in our life and routine to the extent that we would actually look at the schedule for the next season to plan. Another word rarely used in baseball; plan. A plan usually goes awry in baseball life, so B and I have left most of our planning up in the air till the day before something needed to be figured out. In this case however, we had started to plan, settle down, and were in the process of buying a small house closer to the field.

We were on a day trip to the mountains in December when B got the call from the GM. A missed call on the phone because he had no signal. I asked who it was and he said the GM with a laugh. “That’s never a good sign”, he said. This isn’t something you should tell a wife that handles change so poorly, but the wheels were already in motion whether I panicked or not. It was official, he had been traded a day after we had signed the monumental stack of papers and dropped off the check on our dream house to be. I was in shock. I guess we felt the ‘it’ll never happen to us’ kind of feeling. At least not now. We had seen a few friends get traded and had met friends through trades. They were mostly guys with lots of experience in the majors or highly touted prospects. B was never mentioned in trade talks, always flown relatively under the radar. We were completely blindsided. My first reaction (which is probably not the best option) was to burst into tears. Our life had changed within a phone call. I was upset and confused, but tried to collect myself to make an effort to be a supportive wife and see how B was feeling. He said he was fine, was told that he was the only one with options in the pen and would probably get sent back to the minors no matter how he performed in spring. He was being given a good chance with his new team. Then we drove home for what felt like hours with me slightly containing my grief and erupting in tears every now and then. B bribed me with a big Starbucks in an attempt to quell my emotions with caffeine. It worked for the rest of the drive.

Even when a trade is a good thing, you still go through some sort of grief. At least in my case I did. By morning, B was still fine looking up reports on his new team and apartments near the field. I woke up like in a movie, staring at the ceiling thinking that maybe it had all been a dream. It wasn’t, and in one quick moment a flood of panic hit me again. THE HOUSE. We had been told to drop off our check between Monday and Wednesday of that week to confirm the house. In most cases that check would have been there Wednesday afternoon. B and I are procrastinators who met at a party college, but in a vain attempt to pretend to be adults had dropped off the check and signed papers Monday morning. He was traded 2,000 miles away by Tuesday night. I was still in denial that everything was happening, but this switched me to the next stage of grief pretty quickly; anger. What were we thinking buying a house!? B had been fortunate enough to be drafted by a team that had spring training and season all in one place. It was beautiful, spring would end season would start and you’d just take a different freeway to the game. No packing up, no moving or shipping cars. We had been spoiled, which is why we thought buying a house in the area would be fine. Then it was not. We called our realtor, who said we could pull out of the house but lose the deposit. No, that wasn’t going to work. Then came the sobbing again.

I can’t stress enough that this was a rough period and that it might be harder on the wives than the guys. It’s a lot and any girl that goes through this shouldn’t feel bad for going a little crazy while trying to get through it. Fielding in laws during all of it might be a long process too. You’ll get a lot of calls saying “it’s just like a job transfer” and “it’ll all be for the best” and “well now what am I supposed to do with all my team gear? I’ll have to buy new stuff!” Those people are trying to help, but they really don’t understand that a job transfer is something you apply for and prepare for and a trade is much different. It’s a complete life change when you are unprepared. It’s sad and exciting at the same time and you don’t know what to feel but you know that crying is not helping you or the skin around your eyes anymore. Buy an expensive face cream if your husband gets traded. You’re going to need it to combat all the crying.

By the miracle of “extenuating circumstances” we were able to get our deposit back on the house, but it left me so depressed. We had finally tried to plan and feel stable. Buying that house gave us some kind of feeling that B had made it. Those five years of long distance and the future chiropractic bills from sleeping on an air mattress in the minors had been worth it. It was definitely harder for B to lose the house than me. It was the only time he cracked. He had felt accomplished. 25 and buying a second house (we were living in our tiny condo at the time). He was proud, and to lose the house made him feel like he was letting us down. He wasn’t, but the emotions of the trade had started to take over. He had been drafted by this team, played with them for five years. Everything he knew in baseball since college had been this team and it was gone. It was sad to leave the people we had known and terrifying to think of doing it all over again. I would attempt to give my rousing speeches (thank goodness I never led an army to battle) about how we were a team of two and that we would get through this somehow, but they all seemed to fizzle at the fact that we were just sad and we had to ride it out.

By the time Christmas came around we were feeling better and B was beyond thrilled to be on his new team. We had decided that in these past two years we had become a little stagnant. Two 25 year olds, living in the suburbs doing the same old thing every day. The past us would have never let that happen. We met on the first day of college and had spent the past years up until the draft traveling, and exploring. Who needs to go to a Sandals for a honeymoon when we can go to Egypt?! That was definitely one of our more poor fated adventures. We had lived in the city, and loved trying new things, but in the whirlwind of baseball we had become a little dull. Go to the field, come back, go to sleep. Repeat. Maybe stable wasn’t all it was cracked up to be and we needed something new. We decided to take it as an adventure. Move back to the city with his new team and actually be 25.

At the point when I’m writing this it’s spring training. B’s new complex is beautiful and he’s golfing with the new guys he’s met. He is the happy, weather the storm type of person he always has been. We still have our days of grief. Like when we found out the apartment will cost us more than the mortgage our house would have been, but those feelings tend to subside. The field is an hour away from our condo, so for now B lives in the team hotel and I commute back and forth to visit after work. It’s do-able and leaves us hopeful that this season will bring a lot of great things for us and a little more excitement than being comfortable ever brought. Comfortable is relative to your own situation. We were comfortable in our lives; we had been comfortable while B played in the minors (at least as comfortable as an air mattress can make you), but sometimes it’s the things that make you most uncomfortable that lead you to the best adventures.

(A note from Nicole:  When I asked around for a story on a trade, Cat came to me with this great piece.  I had never been through a trade before and wanted to hear from other girls that had been there.  I hope you enjoyed her honest depiction of how she felt and her emotions through the transition in their career and life as much as I did)