Second Glance – Episode 3: Dusty Harvard

If you enjoyed this conversation, consider subscribing so you don’t miss a future episode.

On this episode of Second Glance

Former professional baseball player Dusty Harvard joins the show to share his journey from the wide-open plains of Wyoming to the diamonds of pro ball. Growing up in a state where the path to the big leagues is rarely paved, Dusty faced a unique set of hurdles—from a lack of specialized resources to navigating the recruiting trail without a clear roadmap.

His story is a testament to grit and self-reliance, defined by a "by any means necessary" mentality. Dusty recounts the nights he spent sleeping at the baseball fields, ensuring he was the first one there for practice the next morning and proving that his commitment outweighed his circumstances. We dive deep into his path, the mental toughness required to make it to the professional level, and what it takes to succeed when you have to build your own bridge to the pros.

Host: Collin Adams @CollinBAdams

Producer: Grant Tomlinson @GrantTomlinsonMusic

Inquiries: SecondGlancePod@gmail.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

But I'm halfway to Stillwater. He goes, Well, we don't need to discuss anything further. Enjoy Stillwater. I'll see you around. Yeah, we ate a lot of bread, and to make bread taste better, we put ketchup on it. And so we had ketchup sandwiches because we didn't have lunch meat. Greatest people in the world, but it's hard to live there. It's hard to make a living there.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Today's guest grew up in Casper, Wyoming, raised mostly by his grandparents. There wasn't much money, and there was very few resources, and at times it didn't seem like much opportunity. Luckily, instead of trouble, sports became his outlet. And the resources were so few that sometimes he had to sleep outside his high school baseball field just to be sure he wouldn't miss practice the next morning. That drive eventually carried him all the way to a career in professional baseball. But this isn't what the story is about. It is a story about what it looks like to keep moving forward when there's no roadmap, even if you don't know what the right direction is. This is Dusty Harvard at a second glance.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Yeah, man, so I grew up in a small town called Casper, Wyoming. If you've been to Wyoming, you've probably heard of it. If you haven't been to Wyoming, you're gonna have zero clue where it's at, but dead central Wyoming, um, big oil and coal towns, um, cold, windy, a lot of grumpy northern folks, you know, um, which you don't realize until you move south. So I grew up there, lived there through high school, um born there. My my mom essentially raised me until I was about 12. Um we moved in with my grandparents after a pretty hard divorce. Um I have two blood brothers, Josh and Sean. One's older, one's younger. And we uh, you know, we didn't grow up with much, but what we had was each other and and uh we got through it. Um man, it all starts with kind of a crazy at-home deal, you know, father type wasn't really there my entire life. We'd go see him on weekends and whatnot until I was about five, and uh that just was always a mess. Um ended up moving in with my grandparents around the age of eight, I would say. My timelines are always a little off just because a little bit of a defense mechanism, I suppose, with my brain that I don't I don't actually remember a ton. Um and so we move in with them, and you know, they're in their 60s, blue-collar folks, ready to retire on their pension and their stuff, um, worked hard their entire lives. They deserve a good life, and all of a sudden, an entire family's thrown on them, including three boys who are all very different and all very different in a wild way. So, you know, they were already tight on money, already tight on cars, ready to kind of just live in their one-bedroom house that they had, and and uh, you know, live the live the rest of their lives just there in Casper. So we end up moving out of town a little bit into a bigger house. Um you know, if you know anything about Wyoming, there there tends to be alcohol and drugs involved in quite a few instances. Um, and that was that was the case with us. We my mom always struggled with those things, and uh she's a hardworking lady, but you know, those things tend to pull her down when every opportunity they had. So we are living life. I'm going through elementary school, um, life seems pretty normal. We're doing you know, kids' stuff, playing in the snow, walking to school. Um, and we get we get ready to move on to middle school. And so my youngest brother is five years younger than me, and so I'm about 11 or 12, and he's just six years old. Um, and uh mom started dating someone new, which is totally fine, you know. Us as boys, I don't think we cared, I don't think we had any choice. Um and it got pretty serious, and um, you know, right about eighth grade, she ends up deciding that that life was gonna be for her. Um, she ends up kind of packing up, and um, what seems like, again, memory um doesn't serve me well on these instances, especially timelines. Um, she ends up packing up and moving. Kind of midday, midnight, I suppose, um, leaves my three brothers and myself with my grandparents. My older brother had already kind of been showing signs of going down the wrong path. Um, you know, I'd been picked up a couple times for you know stealing gum at the grocery store or doing something like that, but it started to escalate pretty quickly after that. Um, once again, no father figure. So, grandfather's working for Sinclair uh petroleum, driving trucks, and so he's he's on the road a ton. Grandma is doing her best to keep us not only alive but out of jail. So um that's really where the basis of this whole thing starts. And um, so older brother, man, he just got in the wrong crowd. Um, he moved into high school while I was still in middle school, and that was kind of the thing. We were we weren't always the closest, but we were always had each other's backs. And once he got away from being able to turn around and see me there, and vice versa, he he desperately needed somebody to connect with, and that somebody just happened to be three or four, you know, kind of troubled kids, and um he went down that path. He ended up going to prison um well, juvenile for a long time and then ended up in prison. Again, timelines are terrible, but multiple years. Um, and so it's me, the younger one, younger one, Sean is just he's my little right-hand man, loved him to death. Um, but we were so different. Okay, so he he's into trucks and mechanics and doing all these things, and I I found my solace in sports. It didn't matter what sport it was, if it had a ball or a competition, that was the place I went to to get away from everything. Um along the way, just so many good families that helped me out with either rides to tournaments or rides to practice, or hey, here's a pair of old cleats, you know, I didn't own my own baseball glove until I went to high school, um, which that again was another hand-me-down object. Um just kind of the lower income family. I I don't know if poverty is the right word, but early days when my mom left, we definitely were struggling. And um, ball in hand, football was my first love. Um I got all my aggression out there. It gave me the competition I needed, it gave me the team I needed, it gave me the coaching I needed, um, and that led into basketball and then eventually baseball. So, where I come from, there actually isn't even high school baseball. We we only played summers, um, two colds, not enough kids, not enough teams around the state. So Wyoming doesn't have a sanctioned baseball program. Um, so we would play American Legion ball in the summers, and uh yeah, man, that's really just kind of the beginning of it. But um a lot of long nights, a lot of loudness at our house with the brothers and who's doing what and who gets to take the car this time, which when you're 14 you probably shouldn't be taking the car. But um, yeah, just kind of all part of the story.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

So what was it obviously I know a little bit of your story, but what talk me through the high school years, right? Because you obviously were a very, very good baseball player. And I remember stories of you talking about sleeping at the fields. Is that am I remembering this right?

SPEAKER_01 8:53

So that was the thing, is um, like I said earlier, um, had so many supportive families, um, best friends. But once we got to high school, my grandmother really started to struggle with driving. This was probably eighth, ninth grade. Um, and so in white uh in Casper as well, so freshmen didn't go to high school. So freshmen were still at the middle school, and that was that was probably the hardest year. Um we we had friends, but I mean, on the west side of Casper, money's not affluent to everybody, and so you know, they're having to spend gas to get me, to drop me off, to do these things. Um, and so there was a point where I started to either be late to our practiceslash games or couldn't make it just strictly because we didn't have enough gas, or someone else needed to be somewhere more important, or something like that. And so the story you're referencing is yes, there was a time where I missed practice due to not being able to get there. Um, and I was determined to never let that happen again. And so we would get um rides to, I used to run track as well, so we get rides to um the early morning runs, and so one well, probably multiple instances, but I would leave my backpack on the trail, which we'd go run our miles on. Um with a change of clothes, which if we go deeper in the story, I didn't have many changes of clothes, so really just a change of clothes. Um and I wasn't gonna miss the practice. So, morning run, get a ride back to the school, go through the day at school, ride the bus back over for what would be track practice. Track was close enough to the baseball fields to get to, um changed into baseball, practice that night. Essentially had myself a little camp out, and uh we had a Saturday morning practice for baseball again before we went to a tournament, and um I made sure I wasn't gonna miss it, so we like I said, we had a little camp out on the trail, and I was the first one to practice that morning. Same clothes I left practicing the night before. So um things like that, tough. I remember being being pretty frustrated. You know, these are my passions, these are the things I see other kids get to do. Um, but it never came out in a social setting, it would only come out on a ball field, if that makes sense. So that was my release point. All right, let's get out there. As long as I'm there, it's now my time. You know, we lived pretty far out of town as far as Casper standards go. So walking was good, except for the six to nine months that it's snowing and very windy. Um, but you know, there's tiny little stories like that. Um, but it was just a drive to get there, and and if I miss those things, I really felt that was the time where I felt like something was wrong. Um whether that's right or wrong, I don't know, but missing those opportunities was definitely something I wasn't interested in. And um it was it was my place.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

So I feel like it's a common thing for when someone's in a position like yours where just life is just not dealt the easiest hand. There's a lot of emotions that come with that. Uh were would you say you were angry? Did you feel frustrated? Did you know you were disadvantaged? I mean, can you can you kind of talk me through all that?

SPEAKER_01 12:50

Yeah, and so you know, when you're going through it, my personal story here, um, you know, I didn't feel disadvantaged. I obviously knew that it wasn't easy. You know, there would be times waiting to get picked up from the school to be driven somewhere, and that ride never showed up, right? And so those, I guess, would be the only times I felt disadvantaged or um frustrated or angry. As far as home life, man, my grandparents were just they they were the sweetest, they had their issues themselves, but overall going home was was for me. I would go home or I would go to practice. I would go home or I would go to a game. I really wasn't out doing anything else. One, lack of ability to do it, two, I had I had really calloused my mind to if I'm gonna do anything, I've got to find a way to get out of here. And so it wasn't anger, it wasn't, at least at the time, you know, it wasn't I'm gonna beat you, I or I'm jealous of what you're doing, da-da-da. It was I know what I have to do, and I'm gonna do it. And if you want to get in the way, good luck to you. Um it's just not gonna happen. And so that's just the way I went about it every single day. We didn't own cell phones, we didn't own alarm clocks. My grandmother would get up at five o'clock, she'd wake me up at six every day. Every single day. So it was just the way we did it, and you know, looking back on it, it's like, man, you know, people will ask me, Well, how'd you do it? Well, it was it didn't seem that difficult at the time. Um, you know, with all the brother stuff, um, it was just keep your head down. You've got five to six years right here to do your best and get out of here. And that's what I did.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

What was what was your plan at that time? Was the plan to pursue sports? Was the plan to get out of Wyoming? I mean, what was what was your eyes set on during all of this?

SPEAKER_01 14:58

I've yeah, I've always loved Wyoming. You know, sometimes people, especially from home, will hear me talk about it and and they'll they'll hear what they want to hear and how you know I never came back, and you know, kind of a small town thing, but also just like, yeah, you don't care about this place, which is complete opposite. I love that place. Um, I would love to eventually have a second home there. Um, but yes, a part of it was you start to realize that there's just a lot of hardships and a lot of just, you know, I think the word grind has been overused in every aspect of life, but living there is a grind for everybody. Um greatest people in the world, but it's hard to live there. It's hard to make a living there, it's hard to really flourish in Casper. Um, and so part of it was I am gonna get out of here. The craziest part about it is, looking back now, is there was not a doubt in my mind that I could play in the NFL or play Major League Baseball. The other problem with that is I didn't have any mentorship to tell me exactly how to get that done. So every single thing I did, obviously there were coaches at practice and stuff, but every single thing I did was self-taught. I remember in the summertime uh stealing a football out of my next door neighbor's yard, and we had some trees that kind of lined up in the back, and I went out there and started running like running back routes. Like, how do I learn where to go, how to move, use the football, um, learn to catch punts by throwing the ball up on my roof, waiting for it to come down somewhere, and trying to catch it, or punting it to myself, I guess. But everything was self-taught. Um, but there wasn't ever a time, you know. I work with kids now. It's like, hey, you know, Teddy, what do you want to be when you grow up? Well, I'm gonna be a baseball player. Okay, I hear you. That's great. You're eight, keep that dream alive. Let's see if it you know is serious 10 years from now. But for me, it really was. It was I I don't have a doubt that I can go do this. And then the next step was how can I get some help? And what can I do throughout high school to somehow get an opportunity to go do that?

SPEAKER_00 17:22

So what ended up happening? How did you find the ways with baseball?

SPEAKER_01 17:29

So I was getting recruited a lot more for football. Um I was, again, a hard-nosed kid who may have come across real hard-headed and didn't listen well. But I think if you went back and were able to interview my high school coaches, they would say he was he was everything you'd want. Um, quiet as could be, still am in many aspects. But I started getting recruited in football, getting letters and magazines and all this stuff from, I mean, honestly, from all over the country, which was kind of weird. Um, and I'd go to my high school coach and say, you know, how why is this happening? And what can I do to respond back? And unfortunately, there wasn't a ton of uh help there, which I wish there would have been. Um, I think again, that comes back to the whole mindset of the place. Um, and since then, I feel like that last my senior year, there have been some very successful, uh, especially football players come out of Casper, um, one being Logan Wilson, who's now with the Cowboys here. But um, I think the mind shift finally happened once I kind of left. But, you know, I'd get a magazine from let's say Columbia, right? I mean Ivy League School. Once you come play football, and I would be, hey, how do I get back in contact with these folks? Uh well, you know, just fill out the card and send it back. I'm like, well, okay, I want to do more than that. I want to go somewhere such as this. Wasn't getting a ton of help there. Um, I actually started dating a girl from the school across town, and um her mom took a huge role in those years of my life where she was on me just making sure. Hey, one, are you doing your schoolwork? Yeah, I'm getting B's. Don't worry about it, Miss Bromley. I got this. Um, are you good? Do you need some shoes? You know, I would love to have a nice pair of basketball shoes. I wore the same Kevin Garnett's that a buddy gave me from sixth grade to almost almost tenth grade, right? Toes all gangled up in there, small as can be, trying to play basketball. Yeah, it'd be great. So that family helped me immensely, helped my family immensely. Um, and that's where things started to turn. Getting a little guidance. They don't know anything about sports. Neither did I. So I'm seeing Nebraska, Colorado, Colorado State, Wyoming, letters come in. These are all cool things that I've always watched on TV. These are all things I want to go do. I do not know how to get this done. I need help. So they were extremely helpful. The baseball, I played baseball because it was fun. I played baseball because one of my best friends played baseball, and we grew up playing baseball together, and he played summer ball, so I played summer ball. Well, as we go, we go out to a tournament in Las Vegas. Weirdly enough, our coach of our summer team, he had made some money uh on a sale of a business, and he said, you know what, boys, I think we're gonna go, we're gonna get outside the walls of Wyoming and go see, you know, what's out there. We go to Vegas. Um, there's actual pro scouts, apparently there's you know, some college scouts. Um, I played what I thought was just a normal deal, kind of the same deal I've always done. Um they apparently thought it was a really good tournament, and I started getting pro letters after that. And then my first baseball letter was from Gonzaga, which is funny enough, um, such a faraway place and big basketball school. But first baseball was Gonzaga, and then all of a sudden it started pouring in just like the football deal. And that coach really sat me down at the end of the season and said, I don't, you know, I'm not gonna force you, I'm not going to even, you know, try to point you any direction, but you need to consider baseball. Would you rather go play football at the University of Wyoming or would you rather go play baseball at the University of Tennessee? Like, well, I love both. That'd be pretty sweet. Maybe I'll just keep two years eligibility at both places. Um, but that was a conversation you had with me, and it really put in the thought of okay, well, I will actually start considering baseball. And this was this was actually this was tenth grade. So So we're going into sophomore year after the summer. Um big football season for me as well. And then they just kept on me. That that coach, he, and I still speak to him to this day, he he would text me or he would get a hold of me through my grandparents' phone and say, Hey, think about baseball, you know, this and that. And those guys really started to set me up. The assistant on that team was the guy that gave me the glove. Um man, they bought me cleats, they bought me new pants, and so that was really the first time I felt included in baseball. You know, baseball is an expensive sport. Um, growing up, it was like I'll just borrow someone's bat, someone's glove, usually hell, someone's hat, and we'll just go play. Um that was everything about football was everything was free. It's all through the school. Show up, get your uniform, and you're good to go. Um so baseball didn't really kick off for a long time. I uh I I look back on it now, and there are days where, which is funny speaking to you, because you know, we've done baseball together, and I've coached baseball for the last, if you count college, uh 10 to 12 years, and but I look back and I I don't know if baseball is my passion. I think it's something that I've been able to be very good at because of the way I grew up and because of the way I see the world. Um, but to be honest, it's it's not like it's ever just been this absolutely burning have to do thing. And um that's where it has led me to other ventures, which is great. Um but but baseball has also been the biggest blessing. I would not be living where I live with the wife I have, with my two children, if it wasn't for baseball. Yeah, my life would be completely different, and uh it's obviously a God thing that I am sitting where I'm sitting talking to you, and you know, I guess in some weird way, painfully say, it's because of baseball.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

So what happens after high school? You're getting the football letters, you're getting the baseball letters. Where was your mind at? Were you thinking, okay, cool, I can go to college, okay, cool, I have a chance to go pro. You know, what what was the next thing that happened and what were your what was your mindset during all of that?

SPEAKER_01 24:31

The number one thing was a scout from the San Francisco Giants started showing up to my games in Casper. Um he was out of Denver, but his region was the Midwest. He started showing up. Jim Walton was his name, wore a cowboy hat, just an awesome dude. But he started showing up, and that started to put the belief in me of you can do it. Um I was verbally, of course, none of these things mean anything these days, but verbally committed to go to Nebraska. I wanted to play football at Nebraska my entire life. Um, you know, whether it be because they were so good back then or my grandmother grew up in Ainsworth, Nebraska. Good luck finding that on a map. Um, I wanted to play football at Nebraska. I had actually verbally committed to doing it. Um, and then the baseball stuff started creeping in, which is a good thing. So Jim Walton starts showing up. I have a new summer coach who knew the old summer coach. This summer coach played community college in Washington, I think it's Green River Community College, and he played for a guy named Billy Jones. And Billy Jones was now the assistant coach at Oklahoma State University. And he said, I'm gonna call this guy. I don't know what he's gonna say. I'm gonna give him everything on you and see what happens. I said, Scott, that would be fantastic. I don't know anything about Oklahoma or Oklahoma State, but let me check it out. Funny enough, funny story. James Hahn Curry is playing basketball at Oklahoma State, and they're in the final four. I want to say 2004. Might have been 2005, but I'm gonna graduate in 06, and so all of a sudden I start seeing Oklahoma State just kind of popping up everywhere. Um, Eddie Sutton was the coach. I'm like, man, I like this. This is pretty cool. What a weird sign. Um the said high school girlfriend was a year older. She ended up going to school in Oklahoma City. I was like, hmm, another sign. So, long story short, Billy agrees to come watch me. He flies into Denver, drives up to Cheyenne, Wyoming. I'm taking batting practice. All of a sudden, coach starts kind of freaking out. In walks, this assistant coach from Oklahoma State says, I want to see you take batting practice by yourself. Um, let's see if the opposing coach will let you get on the field and let's see what you got. Okay, great. Um, absolutely the worst, worst batting practice I've ever taken in my entire life. I mean, I'm getting sawed off. I'm hitting balls off the end of the back. Coach is nervous, he's throwing the ball 80 miles an hour from 14 feet. It's awful. And I'm like, well, there goes that. Good, good riddance to that idea. Probably won't be a cowboy anytime soon. Um get into the game, play extremely well. I I don't hit a lot of home runs, but I actually hit a home run that day. Um, and I look over my shoulder at the end of the game and Billy's still standing there. And I thought to myself, hmm, I can't believe he's still here. Figured he'd at least pack up and maybe give me a call or something. He's still there. And so we sit down after the game, we talk for, I mean, we hold the whole team up, we talk for 40, 50 minutes, and he just asked me questions. You know, his first question to me was, Why don't you wear batting gloves? I used to tape my hand uh because I would I would slide with my hand down and I would tear my hand up so badly that it would just bleed and bleed and bleed and bleed. And I'd tape it up so it looked like I almost had a cast on. And he said, What's going on with that? Why don't you wear batting gloves? I said, Well, can't afford them. Can't afford them. Um, I've had one pair of bangos my entire life, they got holes in them, and I never wore them again. He said, Okay, well, that's interesting. And then he told me to take the tape off, took my tape off, and I mean, once again, it's just not gushing blood, I mean, but it's it's bleeding and it doesn't look good. And he goes, Okay, so you're telling me you do this every game. I said, Yes, sir, every single game. Uh tape it up and just go. And he goes, I don't know. I don't know. I've got to talk to our head coach, but I'm gonna get back with you. I was like, okay, well, that's about as you know bright a light as I could have at that moment. Um I don't think he saw anything that made him think I could go and play Division I baseball and be in the Big 12 and you know face a guy from Texas on Fridays at that moment. I think it was just everything that we've talked about up to this point with this podcast, all of that wrapped into one scenario with one moment, with one person who said, this kid needs at least a chance. And so going forward, uh, hadn't offered me a scholarship. I still have the Nebraska thing. I go actually visit Nebraska. I'm like, I want to do football and baseball now. Let me sit down with the coaches at Nebraska and see what happens. Um they they essentially said, absolutely not. You're gonna you gotta focus on one, which you know, the football side makes total sense, right? They're still in the top 10 every year. This is Nebraska football, early 2000s. Like, let's focus on that. You're telling me you're gonna miss the spring game to go play baseball? Probably not gonna happen. But most of it was the actual baseball side of it. They were like, no, we're trying to build a program here. We're actually really good right now. They went to two back-to-back college world series. If you think you're gonna walk in here and just half it, it's not happening. That's a no-go. We're not gonna offer you anything. I said, okay, well, that kind of ruined my experience. All the time I'm sitting there thinking that Billy had said what he said. Billy's gonna give me a shot. I think this is starting to turn into a baseball situation. I'm just gonna let it ride out and see what happens. So we go through a full year. Billy's texting, uh, not text me. I keep saying text because that's what I do now. Billy's getting in contact with my people, aka the coaches and families that are able to relay to me the messages. Very interested. Um, again, timelines are awful with me. Um, I believe it's going into the end of my junior summer, so heading into senior year, one more football season, one more track season, one more baseball season, one more basketball season. He offers me at the end of that season um with the Daniel Swin Scholarship, which was essentially a full ride, he offers me um a pretty large baseball scholarship. Again, all the signs pointing to where it needs to happen. I I immediately accept. Um, and I told him with all honesty that I'm I'm coming to Stillwater. You were this shining light that just from the moment I met you, you're the reason I'm coming there.

SPEAKER_00 31:20

Do I remember correctly that the day Oklahoma State found you, you were eating a ketchup sandwich?

SPEAKER_01 31:25

Ketchup sandwich. Yeah, the ketchup sandwich thing's funny because you know, could I have grabbed peanut butter? Probably. Could I have grabbed just straight jelly? Probably. But the point of that story is there were many times at our house where we had enough money to buy a certain amount of groceries, and that's what it was. And so there were many nights where you would eat. I don't know if you'd eat enough, but you would go, I would wake up, I had a basement bedroom, so I'd walk up the stairs and I would, everyone's asleep, and I would open that refrigerator, and there was there was just enough. There was just enough for tomorrow's lunch, there was just enough for tomorrow's dinner. I'm not gonna take that, I'm just gonna eat what we have more of. And what we had more of is bread and ketchup. And so uh the bread and ketchup thing is more probably metaphoric than anything, but it's real. Um yeah, we ate a lot of bread, and to make bread taste better, we put ketchup on it, and so we had ketchup sandwiches because we didn't have lunch meat.

SPEAKER_00 32:27

What's so what happens? You get distill water, you're playing baseball. What happens there, and then where do you go after that?

SPEAKER_01 32:36

Well, so before that, get to the summer, and uh Jim Walton is still coming to my games, and you know, he he has a meeting with me again, and it's hey, we we're interested in drafting you. Um what do you need for uh from us to get you to say yes, to get you to go for go college and come start your professional career with us. And again, with zero mentorship, at least that I can that I recall at those moments, it was I will sign a professional contract tomorrow if you give it to me. Of course, I'm a 17, 18-year-old kid with no experience, no guidance. Um to say that Oklahoma State now just left my mind is absolutely 100% true. I'm thinking you're telling me when the draft happens in a month, I'm gonna see my name somewhere on there, and then you're gonna send me to play pro ball. I don't even know what that means. I didn't even realize there were so many minor league levels. I just wanted to wear a San Francisco Giants hat. And so I said, yes, you draft me from here out of this town, out of high school, I will I will sign. And unfortunately, after that, they did draft me. Um and they did offer a solid deal. I didn't have an agent. I had myself, I didn't know what to do. So then I go down with my high school girlfriend to Oklahoma City. We go watch an OSU baseball game in the summer. I sit in the dugout with Billy and another scout, and this guy's with the Padres, and he says, Hey, you're gonna get drafted. You don't need to go. You need to come play here. You're gonna face Texas, you're gonna face AM, you're going to face Missouri, who was really good at the time. You're gonna face a first-round draft pick Friday and Saturday night, almost every weekend in this conference. And if you're able to compete and play and show what you really got, one, it's going to develop you faster. Two, you need to get bigger and stronger and faster and get around men. Three, you'll get drafted way higher in the future. I would forgo whatever they do with you. Again, I'm a kid like a bouncy ball. One wall, I'm like, yes, giants, I'm coming. Then I sit down with the other side. Oh, SU, here I come. And it meshed and it came to a head when I end up getting drafted. Again, we have the conversation. They don't give me a number yet. They said they'll call me in two weeks. Well, report day for baseball was like in 12 days for OSU. And so I pack my bag and I drive with uh high school girlfriend's family down to Oklahoma City. She gets moved into her dorm. We head to that summer baseball game. Um, come back, then I again do the same thing. Two days before the Giants call me, we are stopped in somewhere in like southeastern Colorado, and I see Jim's number on Mrs. Bromley's cell phone pop up, and she said, You need to talk to him. He answers the phone all happy, says, Hey man, you know where you at? I said, Well, I'm halfway to Stillwater. And it was like a three-minute silence. You know, this is this guy's job. His job is to not only find good baseball players, but to get them signed. And I had essentially guaranteed him that I was gonna sign with them. And so I really put him in a really bad spot. At the time, you don't realize it. Um, when you have no guidance, you have no one telling you what's right and what's wrong. It's just melted my heart because I felt so bad. I just like, I didn't mean to do this to you. Um, but I'm halfway to Stillwater. He goes, Well, we don't need to discuss anything further. Enjoy Stillwater. I'll see you around. And then the college experience really started to hit me. Um, whether it was something that I had always been able to avoid or something I had never experienced or influenced by whatever was going on, I dove into college.

SPEAKER_00 36:54

Can you tell us some of the mistakes you made in that college experience life?

SPEAKER_01 37:02

Yes, sir. Um, not to throw myself too far under the bus, but um, I believe that um drinking would be one, right? So I went from small Wyoming town to smaller Oklahoma Town, which was why I went there. I thought I'd be a great fit for the town. I never really partied in high school. I just was that loner who did the things he needed to do. But once I got into school and I had my own car, have a cell phone now. Um there's just access to all that stuff, you know, and it's it's I'm so young, I'm able to do it, right? I'm able to go to this baseball deal and stay up till 2 30 in the morning and I can make it to I can make it to that 6 a.m. lift. I'm not gonna be in the greatest of shape, probably, but I can make it to that. But you get nothing out of it. And as a again, a 18, 19-year-old kid, if you don't have the guidance to get away from it, then you're going to partake in it. And that's the thing. I didn't need a baseball coach. I needed, and this may go back to the very beginning. I needed someone to show me how to live life. My grandfather was the one of the greatest men I ever knew, um, worked as hard as anybody I've ever seen in my entire life, but he was obviously older and he was working, and he was an army vet, and so it was just he didn't have time or energy, and now as a dad, I understand this, to give me those skills. And I didn't have those skills. I didn't have the skills once I got on out on my own and had access to say no, I'm gonna go home at 10:30, I'm gonna drink a bottle of water versus you know, six to ten beers, and I'm gonna be so ready to go at practice tomorrow that you can't stop me. But that was the other thing. If you were to talk to my head coach at the time, I think he would he would gladly tell you that he's never seen anyone work harder than me. So you've got this life over on one hand where you're out to all you know hours of the night just being a buffoon, but you show up the next day and it doesn't seem to affect you, so you get through it and you get through it pretty well. Like you show out, but you can only do that for so long, right? You can only run that candle until it's gone.

SPEAKER_00 39:32

What ended up happening towards the end of college with trying to go pro in baseball?

SPEAKER_01 39:39

So my junior year, I'm uh I'm at Summer Ball. I had an injury that year at Oklahoma State. I dove again early in the season, I believe it was against Cal State Fullerton. I felt a weird kind of stinging pop in my shoulder, but I was so amped up and so just adrenaline all the time. Um that man, I got through the game. I got through the weekend. I was having the best start of the season I'd had since being in Stillwater. Um, and then all of a sudden the next week I just I like it just hurt. I could not move my arm. I went to throw, it felt like my entire arm was coming off. So I actually tore my labrum. Um, not bad enough to get surgery. So we do rehab for the next however long the season is. I play a little bit at the end. Um but junior year for baseball players is huge. That's the next opportunity once you go division one to get drafted. Um, I got a little bit of pressure to go play summer ball, so I went and played summer ball, and it just wasn't the same. I was able to get through a day if I took eight ibuprofen, like a game, um, which is awful. Um so I did it, and I did it every day for three months. Um but I ended up not playing well enough to get drafted, talked to a bunch of people and all that stuff. But that was also the same summer that my grandmother passed away. And so I never, I never once again wrapped up in all the things we already talked about, the going out, the college scene. I don't think I ever once sat down and really said to anybody, hey, this this really messed with me. She was the one person who'd always been there, the one person who would take me where I needed to go. She, I mean, she would tell yourself she would die for myself and my two brothers. So she passes away in the middle of that summer. I leave Summerball once again abruptly. Um, I told him, you know, said, Hey, I I had a death in the family, I'm gonna go to the funeral. Um, looking back on it again, I probably should have just gone home for the entire summer and just spent it with her. Um so that's a that's a huge regret. But then you're getting pressure to go back, and you got people calling you, where you at, this and that, and I end up just flying back to Stillwater, and I just said, I'm not going back. Um those same people who did take a chance on me, did do these certain things for me, you know, it it seemed like I had kind of disappointed them again. And so now I'm in this cycle of disappointment and end up going back for my senior year, still not fully healthy, um, but clear-headed, feeling good. Um, I'm on course to graduate. Um, and that was the biggest deal. So, grandfather's still alive. No one in my immediate family had ever gone to college, much less graduated college. Um, so that was that started to be something that I could work towards, all the while still wanting to play baseball. Senior year graduates, um, get to walk uh and get my diploma with one of my best friends. Her name's Callie. Um, we're like family to this day, um, with my grandfather in the stands. So he flies on a plane to Stillwater, Oklahoma. Well, Oklahoma City, drives into Stillwater. He that was the first plane he'd been on since the Korean War. Um, so just a full circle moment of this guy who gave his last 20 years for me to get to this spot is now sitting up there. And um, you know, it it was it was quite a moment for me, so I'm gonna never forget. I've got a picture of us outside the stadium, and uh, so that was college. I end up getting drafted very late my senior year um to an organization that probably didn't even want or need me. And um, so I'm happy with the opportunity to go play Pro Ball, but it takes so much, you know. It takes, you know, unfortunately, someone to get injured or someone to get traded or This or that. I mean, I had the that spring training was the best baseball I'd ever played in my entire life. And we're talking, I was with the double A team, um, and uh just I was just on fire. And so I started to fill my head with I might just go, I might just go to double A, which would be insane, especially back then because there was three levels below that. Um I might just go. And then at the end of that spring training, all the talk and all the meetings and all the stuff, I end up getting sent to I end up getting sent to the lowest level there is. And that just wrecked me. You're living in two-bedroom apartments with six guys, and you're taking 10-hour bus rides, you're eating Taco Bell, you're eating PB and J's because you don't have enough money to buy stuff. And it just became a point of frustration for me. And so I I ended up going back to spring training again the next year, playing really, really well again, but I ended up hurting my shoulder kind of the exact same way I did it the first time. And we get through spring training, and I've got so many good friends in the clubhouse and and so many good friends, and we go check where where we're you know assigned to, and and I'm headed back to Low A. And I'm not only headed back to Low, I'm headed back to Low A behind two first-round draft picks. I I wrote it out until they they finally released me. I get invited to um become the grad assistant out in Lubbock at Lubbock Christian University because a good friend of mine from OSU was their pitching coach. And I had just I just had it with baseballs, which is funny because I'm gonna end up going to Lubbock and coaching it. But um I was just done. And oddly enough, I start getting good at this coaching thing. Um it's it's I'm I'm definitely not the personality to be at Lubbock Christian University. Just not. Um that's a hundred percent on me, not them. And so I'm only there for a season and a half.

SPEAKER_00 46:05

Now you're a father of two. Having your own two kids in kind of full circle, how does that change your perspective on what your parental situation was growing up? And does it change how you look at that moment with your grandfather when you graduated from OSU?

SPEAKER_01 46:26

Not only that moment, it it makes me look back on my entire life and realize one, the way we grew up was not fair, right? If you're gonna become a father, right, anyone can become a father. Um unfortunately, anyone can have a child, but it takes just a real special person to be like an actual dad, right? So looking back on it now, what happened to me and my brothers and my family in general is just not fair. If you're gonna have a, you know, I don't mean to offend anybody, but if you're gonna have a child, you need to be there. And you need to be there every moment you can be. And so it changed my entire world. When I had my son, which I tell a lot of people this now, oddly enough, the only thing I knew I wanted to do my entire life was be a dad. I wanted to be a dad. Um, and that brought me through some trials and tribulations as well, just as far as personal stuff. But getting to that point where I held my son for the first time, that was the biggest thing that's ever happened in my life. My wedding day obviously is huge. But from my perspective, and you know, the the armor built up and the what's what's now probably considered the angriness and the frustration. I was so elated to have that little boy in my arms, and it's it's changed my entire life. My grandfather, that's the thing. You look back on him, he's he's in his 60s, he's worn down, he's an army vet doing all these blue-collar jobs. I would do exactly what he did for my grandchildren if that were the case. I would 100% take that, put it on my back, do my best, and um and make it work to the best of my ability. But um, you know, looking back on my own personal childhood, becoming a dad just opened opened the curtains to that window that I knew was always there. Um, leading up to getting married and leading up to having kids, I remember watching dads, I mean, shoot, the kids I worked with, you know, their dads would bring them in. And there it's a dad, it's a dad and son thing, and that's awesome. And it was something I always wanted. And so, yeah, becoming a dad really turned the light on, opened the windows, and let me see, hey, it might have not been fair what you went through. You know, you can actually you can actually talk to someone about that and um maybe get that off your chest now. Um it just wasn't fair, you know, and it is what it is, but I certainly will never in my life, I forgive, but I'll never understand. And I think if there's any message to come out of this whole thing is be a father, anyone can be a father, but it takes a real special person to be a dad, and it's hard work and it's but it's the most rewarding thing in the entire world. So my son and my daughter and my wife are the most important things in the world to me, and um I will never, if possible, say no to them to go do something else.

SPEAKER_00 49:44

Is there a was there a moment in your story in your upcoming where you you realized everything was gonna be okay?

SPEAKER_01 49:53

Yeah, the mo the the day I got married. So the thing with me my whole life, and this is something that's deeper, man, we might need a second episode. Um I was always had the ability to know everything was gonna be all right. Everything will work out the way it's supposed to be. Um I wasn't religious growing up, didn't attend church, uh, a church until high school. Um, but I always have a feeling in my heart that everything will work out, everything will be fine. And so to answer your question, that was always there. But man, like I said, I've lived such a roller coaster life that I didn't know if I'd ever get married. And then once that started to happen, I was like, okay, it's it's here. This is what I've this is what I've been waiting for. This is what God's had for me this entire time. It took a lot of, like I said, roller coaster rides and swimming through mud to get there, but we're here now, and you know, I'm not a perfect husband or a perfect dad, but that was the moment like now life begins. My life has now started.