Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 323: Adrian Cardenas on Leaving Major League Baseball Behind

Episode Date: November 6, 2013

Ben and Sam talk to former big leaguer Adrian Cardenas about why he decided to walk away from baseball shortly after making his MLB debut.

Good morning and welcome to episode 323 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives. I am Ben Lindberg, joined as always by Sam Miller, and we have a guest today. Our guest is Adrian Cardenas, who is a former professional baseball player, former big league baseball player, and wrote an article for The New Yorker last week that got a lot of attention and a lot of deserved attention. It's a really interesting piece. And so we're going to talk to him about some of the things that he brings up here. And we'll, of course, link to it on the Facebook group and the podcast post at BP so that you can go check it out yourself.

So this piece is about how Adrian left baseball. And all of us come to the point where we leave the game. Usually we are forced out of the game because we're not very good at it. For me, this was freshman year of high school. For Adrian, that moment never really came. And he left by choice, which is sort of an unusual story. So we'll ask him about what went into that. So to, I guess, to start out, before you got to that point, you were, you know, for people who don't follow prospects or the minor leagues that closely, you were a prospect very, very much. So you were a first round pick, you got a first round bonus, you made top 100 lists and, you know, various rankings of the best, you know, infield prospects in the minor leagues and everything.

So you were, you know, a legitimate prospect who had probably, you know, a long career ahead of him or at least the potential for one. To go back even further, you chose not to go to school. You were drafted out of high school and at that, you were fully committed to playing, right? Was it a consideration to go to school first? I think it was definitely a consideration, primarily because my senior year, it wasn't until the senior year that I had in high school that I even entertained playing professionally and not going to college. I was fortunate enough to have success, but I wasn't your typical 6'4 through 95 across the diamond and hit light tower home runs, our home runs where teams generally are more liable to, you know,

they're more inclined to give that sort of money to someone like that where there's more upside. You know, I barely was six feet tall. And, you know, in relation to major league criteria, you know, I was average speed, you know, had an average arm, maybe slightly above average, you know, my thing was hitting. I was a very good contact hitter, and I felt like I was smart, and I knew what I was doing, and I felt like I was able to maximize my potential, but to answer your question, yeah, no, I hadn't even thought about playing baseball professionally until maybe halfway into my senior year when I had a crazy senior year. I was fortunate to have great players like Chris Marrero, who's been up and down the major leagues.

A few years prior, Gio Gonzalez, who's one of the aces for the Nationals. who's one of the aces for the Nationals. So I was able to, through them, get a lot of looks from scouts and scouting directors. And fortunately, my status elevated, and I became a serious contender to get drafted as high as I did. And before that crazy senior year, did you have a plan for yourself at all? Did you have something in mind for what you wanted to do down the road? Yeah, I mean, I think I wanted to, I don't want to say that I wanted to study because I wanted to play baseball at that time. All I wanted to do was play baseball.

All I wanted to do was play baseball. I knew I wanted to go to school, but I wanted to go to school more because I was going to be fortunate enough to play baseball. I wanted to go to the best baseball school, not the best academic school. That was my main concern. That's what I wanted to do. I wanted to continue playing this game that I absolutely loved and fell in love with as a child. So once you started playing professionally, it doesn't sound like in your piece that you really had any trouble adjusting to that lifestyle. You know, like a lot of people, maybe they haven't been away from home before. They're riding the bus.

They're homesick. It sounds like you, you know, at least you look back fondly on it. I don't know whether at the time it was at all jarring, but was it a pretty smooth transition into playing professionally? I think it was a relatively smooth transition. I mean, like you said, this piece was written after I, when I was no longer playing baseball at any level. So I was able to reflect and look at these snippets of my baseball career individually and see how I felt about it.

I feel like it's one of those things where I tell myself I'd never do again, but gosh, I love the fact that it happened, and I love the fact that I was able to experience it. But those long bus rides can get kind of grueling and annoying at times. A couple times you had to switch teams once you were traded and once you were claimed off waivers. And teams will, I gather, tell you at that stage in your life, if a team lets you go, that can be sort of hurtful maybe to you,

but at the same time it's another team that has expressed interest in you. I'm just wondering, does that play in your brain at the time, interest in you. I'm just wondering, does that play in your brain at the time, or is it really hard to be sort of 22 and really anonymous and kind of broke and have another team just kind of give you away? You know, I think the the point that i'm trying to make is that after a few years you start understanding more and more how the game works and how the business side of things work and and forget the business side of things just how how how competitive it is and the things that players have to do and owners have to do to make their team successful.

So, yeah, sure, it's a shot, and it hurts, and it's a blow when you get the call and you said, hey, we're going to designate you and we'll see what happens. If nobody picks you up, if nobody claims you off waivers, we're still going to offer you a chance. We're still going to bring you back. It sucks. It's one of those things where you just kind of got to fight through

and you can't let it affect you. Because if not i mean it's just one big spiral downward and that as a baseball player i think that's what you aim not to do or not to arrive at you know you you kind of take your punches and your blows and you kind of got to have thick skin and forget about it and move on and move on and move on and and try to be as successful as he can. Yeah, the idea of baseball as a business is something that you explicitly talk about sort of struggling with. And I'll quote you, say, I quit baseball.

I quit because baseball was sacred to me until I started getting paid for it. The more that baseball became synonymous with business, the less it meant to me. And I saw less of myself in the game every time I got a check from the Philadelphia Phillies organization, the Oakland Athletic Company, or the Chicago Cubs LLC. I kind of imagine at the really lower levels, it seems like it would feel almost like a starving artist sort of scenario, where you're getting paid so little that you wouldn't necessarily feel like it was a business. You're really sacrificing, in in a way for your craft. Was that how it was when it started or was the first paycheck really that jarring to you? When

did you start to look at it more as a business, as a job in a way that bothered you? Well, that's in part true, but even at the onset of the minor leagues, you see it. And I'll explain. Because I was fortunate enough to get the money that I did, they're obviously going to give me every opportunity to succeed, sometimes more than, say, another player who's more deserving of that. And that can be, if you're aware of these things, regardless of what side you're on, it can be a little alarming. It can be alarming

that the first rounder makes a mistake or someone who got peanuts to sign or, you know, they gave him $1,000 to sign, makes a mistake, and the first rounder is aware of it, and, you know, they do the play over again in practice, and he makes the same mistake, and he's not treated, he's not scoffed at as much as, you know, the manager may reprimand the one who's not, you's not given as much money. You see that over and over and over again. When a first-rounder might be struggling and batting 220 or 215, many times they keep him and send down someone who may be doing a lot better.

He may be hitting 300, 305, 310, 315. doing a lot better. He may be hitting 300, 305, 310, 315. And the reason being, many times is because, you know, they invested a certain amount of money on this particular player, and they're going to give him every opportunity to progress and try to make it as far as he can. So, I mean, you definitely see it from the very beginning, and it's something, like I said in that story, that I was very aware of. And unfortunately, I wasn't good at separating the two. You know, I should have just, in my opinion, looking back, taken it with a grain of salt and just moved forward

and just have been happy maybe with the position that I was in because I was fortunate to be one of the guys who was given a large signing bonus. So I knew I was going to get a large opportunity. So you hang in there through the minors. You get the call last year. Blake DeWitt, I guess, goes down with a back injury in May. You get called up. And it sounds like, you know, when you were initially called up, you had the

same sort of feelings that we typically associate with someone who makes his major league debut. I looked up a story from that day. And, you know, you went out and touched the ivy in Wrigley Field and you write about it in your story. You were happy that I had arrived at a place so hard to reach, astounded that I was now playing with the players I had idolized and determined to keep getting better so that I could take their jobs. could take their jobs. And you were up and down a couple times during the season. You broke up in A.J. Burnett, no hitter in the eighth inning. At what point during this process do you start to have any sort of misgivings, or at what point does the euphoria wear off and you start to consider whether this is what you want to keep doing? I think for me, much prior to that, it happened a lot earlier.

And I think you have to have some context. And that's that my parents, I grew up, my parents don't know anything about baseball. And so I grew up being exposed to music and language and writing things. You know, these things weren't new to me as far as writing and reading goes. These things that I was incredibly passionate about and grew an immense passion for. And when I decided to play professionally, that I had to sacrifice because I had to, when you get to that level and when, when baseball becomes a business, your job is to be as good a baseball player as you can. And that comes,

you know, there's a lot of demand that comes with that. And that includes practicing a lot and staying up really late and getting up really early to the point where you, you a lot of times don't have the energy to do some of the other things that you want to do. And that for me over time started having a bigger effect on me. I started going to school three years in 2010 prior to getting that call up to the major leagues. So this wasn't on a whim. You know, since 2010, I was going to school.

I mean, I was having my season during spring and spring training and all that stuff. And then in the off seasons, I'd fly to New York and, you know, and do a semester there. At one point, I was even taking a class in the spring during the season. So over time, I just, I started enjoying this other side of me and the side that I felt like I repressed a little bit when I got into professional baseball. And I wanted to do more and more and more of that. And it got to the point, I felt like, when I got to the major leagues that I wanted to

choose one over the other maybe a little bit before that but I like seeing things through to the to the end or at least to at least I wanted for me to attain the goal that I always wanted which was to make it to the major leagues I mean that's something that I arbitrarily decided when I was five that I wanted to do so to stop cold turkey before making it when I felt like I had the chance to make it and I felt like I was good enough to make it would have been much more crazy than leaving it when I did. And so when you get there and you're playing in front of the big crowds and with all these players that you grew up watching, did you then start to

have any second thoughts about that that you know okay i got here but now i i kind of like it here or did once the paychecks then started getting bigger once you're in the major leagues uh i guess that that's the point where you you start lose your sort of passion for playing a little bit more. Yeah, I mean, look, of course, and this is something that I felt was very important to put in this story. This decision comes with a lot of regrets. Of course, there's a lot of things. I think what I talk about in the story is being held accountable. The business

forces you to be held accountable where without it, you wouldn't be held accountable if you were just playing for fun. That's obviously good, but there's also the obvious ones. Playing in front of

Wrigley Field, going out to left field and having people holler your name for the first time, and you're a nobody, and they know you by first name, and they ask you to raise your hand up and tell them how many outs there are. The private planes, the large sums of money that you're getting, the ridiculous sums of money that you're getting, the ridiculous amounts of money that you're getting, the perks that come with playing. All that is wonderful. All that is great.

For me personally, and this is, like I said, just strictly personal opinion, it was incredibly superficial, and it got to the point where I wanted more I wanted more and at this point I was already so far in in school and these other things that I was passionate about that these things were relevant by comparison and that that that's where the problem sort of boiled a little more. And I could imagine someone thinking, because you talk in your piece a lot about how much failure is involved in baseball. And someone could say, oh, well, he got to the majors and suddenly he realized all these eyes were on him and the failure was suddenly on SportsCenter. And he didn't want that kind of pressure in his life.

But it sounds like that's not at all the case. You say in your piece, now that I've quit, I will never again find myself in a position where the stakes are so high and I'm held accountable. I miss that the most. So it wasn't that, you know, like often if a player, you know, retires early or sort of even doesn't make it to the majors, it's like, you know, scouts will say it's a makeup issue. He didn't have the mental strength or the fortitude to deal with the failure and the expectations and the pressure. But for you, that wasn't really a factor, it sounds like. Yeah, I mean, again, these issues are incredibly complex, and that's sort of, you know, that's another thing I wanted to write about. You know, the cynic will say just that, that I quit because I couldn't hack it or, you know, whatever, and I'm not, you know, I will never, first off, I will never deny that opinion.

And I would never deny the fact that, you know, had I gotten there and I had hit 400, you know, in my brief pinch hits or in like the small stint that I was in the major leagues and, you know, say I was offered a five-year deal, I probably would have stayed. Maybe, maybe not. I'm not sure what I would have done. That doesn't necessarily mean that I would have been more happy, even if they were paying me more. Obviously, the fact that I didn't have immediate success,

I mean, it had to play a part in my decision and maybe have me look at things in a different way. You know, there's also the possibility that I wasn't going to be a starter. And I remember a manager telling me, you know, we were working on things and he's like, you know what, who cares if you're not a starter? Wouldn't you want to be a utility player for 10 years? You know, you get full pension and you get a boatload of money.

And the way I looked at it was, no, are you kidding me? I wouldn't want to be a utility player for 10 years. I want to be an everyday player. Why do you think I play baseball? You know, to play baseball, not to come in in the eighth or ninth and pinch hit every now and then. And that, I feel like, that was my makeup. So to say, oh, you know, he couldn't hack it, it just seems, for me, it seems hard to believe.

And believe me, I go over that and I ask myself that question all the time. As far as SportsCenter goes, that's definitely not the case. The only time I was in SportsCenter was when I broke up the no-hitter. That was a positive. So one of the good things about being a young rookie in the game, but yeah. So by the time you get to the majors, you're making money for a lot of people. And there's also a lot of people who have kind of emotionally invested a lot in your success, in your development, and who also love you and want to see you thrive. So when you started telling people you were leaving or when you announced it,

how much did people in the game try to change your mind? I reached out... I'm trying to think about this before I can give you an answer the first person I reached out to and told when I knew for certain that I was quitting was of course Theo Epstein my general manager and me and Theo

go further back in that when I was in high school, he was obviously the general manager for the Boston Red Sox, and he scouted me at a very young age. And unfortunately, he wasn't able to pick me up in the draft that year. But, you know, I got picked 37th overall, and I think their pick was 41. They had 41 and 44, and they were going to pick pick me up him and Jason was his right hand man and I met them later and then they told me one day they're like we're going to get you one day we're going to get you one day and sure enough when I was uh put on waivers I got a call from from from Jason right I mean sorry from Theo who

told me you know I told you we're going to get, I told you we were going to get you. I told you we were going to get you. So it was this sort of, you know, it was wonderful in that sense. And this guy who said he was going to do something and did it, in my opinion, Theo Epstein, among all the general managers that I've met, is the best one. And I'll give you the specific reason why. I think he's able to balance the business and the game perfectly and he's able to be incredibly honest when he has to say very negative things

or make very hard decisions he's he's able to to balance it perfectly but anyways because of that I felt I felt obligated to tell him first and foremost, not to mention he was the general manager of the Cubs. And they had put an offer and I respectively declined the offer. I think Theo understood a little bit. I don't know if you know much about Theo's family, but his father is the head of the creative writing department at Boston University. His sister, I think, writes for Law and Order. You know, I think it's his uncle and his grandfather, you know, two of his close family members wrote the screenplay Casablanca, you know, so they're involved in the creative world,

and Theo knew all along that I was a very creative person and had these aspirations to do other things outside of baseball, you know, not right there and then, but since he got to know me at the age of 18. So, you know, I'm not going to speak for Theo, but I think, I think he, you know, I'm not going to say he knew it was coming cause he didn't. Uh, but he definitely understood it and he wished me the best. In fact, he, he wrote me a letter of recommendation. I'm in the process of applying to grad school for, for directing now. Uh, and he wrote me one of my letters of recommendation. So, um, yeah, I mean, aside from him, other people, you know, I guess they were on the fence. There's a lot of people who obviously

told me to stick around, uh, for a little longer, uh, mostly to get, to get some money or so that I don't have any regrets. was amazing but at that point i felt like i was ready to to take that leap does it does it worry you did it occur to you that um you know whatever you do next writing or anything creative that you do is also going to seem sacred until you start getting paid for it and then you're going to have to you know kind of deal with that for the next four years that's a great question uh yeah i gotta i gotta admit i mean it's not that i wasn't aware of that when i loved baseball but i was definitely a little naive to it i thought somehow i'd be able to you know bypass the whole business thing like oh i already dealt with the business side of things i'm not gonna

have to do that you know obviously you need to make a living at some point, and that entails you dealing with the business side of things. Fortunately, however, I've been very smart with my money, and I feel like I can, you know, for instance, the whole writing thing for me. Right now I'm pursuing this writing career, if that's what you'd want to call it. But I don't have that urgency to produce for a publishing company, let's say, because they gave me a book advance and I'm obligated to do this or obligated to do that. I mean, I'm sure if I sign a contract, something similar to that would happen. But

what I'm getting at is that because of my situation financially, I don't have to sacrifice a lot of my wants and my desires as a writer for the business side of things. And I think that's incredibly important. But at the end of the day, obviously it's inescapable. You have to deal with it at some point. If you become a podcast host, we promise you won't make any money. Think about that. Yeah.

People don't understand. I worked on this New Yorker piece for like six months. I paid $250 for it. I think we both, we both know that feeling, I think. Um, and, and the know that feeling, I think. And the people that you played with, is this something that you shared with people

either in the minors or in the majors, or did you kind of keep to yourself that you even had these thoughts on the way up? Because I imagine not many players do. They're focused on getting there, very single-minded obsession on on getting there and i i can imagine some of them might not even understand how you could get to that point and and have these doubts uh so is it something that people were were kind

of shocked when you told them or were they aware from from you sort of sharing it with them before no you know it's funny that yeah there's a lot of players that you know i think i'd bench out and say most players that won't understand or don't understand however i think there is and maybe surprisingly so there are players who who who definitely um see things the way that I saw things. I mean, they just didn't, you know, a lot of them haven't taken that leap. And then maybe because they don't have other things pulling them so strongly. Like I said, for me, I didn't grow up with the father that made me play baseball every day and, you know, made me go to the park.

In the beginning of the story, I talk about my ignorance for the game, for the history of the game, which I think is true of a lot of players, and something that I was able to appreciate after I left, gaining this historical perspective, which is really the whole point of the story for me. But there are players that deal with it because you just see it on a consistent basis, the traveling, the dealing with what you got to deal with. I mean, we're obviously human and just dealing with the ups and downs.

And like I was talking about, uh, in the story, a lot of times, you know, you have family members who die, close relatives who die. And then maybe you're, you're on the verge of getting called up and you got to make sacrifices. You can't go do these things.

And that takes a toll on you after a while. Um, and if you're not having success or if you're not one of the organization's guys, it becomes very, very, very, very difficult for you to excel and to get a chance, you know, to even get a chance. Well, you know, I think there's some truth to that, but I think for the most part, you know, there are many cases where even if you're in the major leagues, you do not have a shot to make it to the major leagues. And that might seem shocking or a little counterintuitive, but a lot of people do not have any chance whatsoever to make it to the major leagues, even when they're in the minor leagues. And, you know, I think a lot of those people, a lot of those people understand that and that becomes very difficult to swallow. So I've been kind of, I'm not sure exactly how to ask this because I'm not sure how I feel about it, but you're a guy who, like, we like guys like you in baseball.

You have, you know, an attitude and a worldview and a set of priorities that I wish a lot more professional baseball players had. I think it would be good for the league. And so it's, you know, to some degree, it's a little sad that you're not playing anymore and that we don't get to watch you for 10 years, even in a utility role, if that's what it was. you're not playing anymore and that we don't get to watch you for 10 years, even in a utility role if that's what it was. So my question was sort of, is there a solution to this, a way that baseball can serve a guy like you and keep you in the game? But then I'm kind of torn because I also think, well, baseball is ultimately not that important

and maybe I'd rather have you writing or creating or producing in this world. So I guess the question is, is there a solution? Or a sub-question is, should there be a solution? Oof. That's tough to answer, I guess. Is there a solution? I think if it's one thing that maybe people should consider uh more strongly is going to college uh before playing professional baseball i think about this all the time you know given the type of person

that i was i perhaps i should have gone to college um and i'll talk about all the pros and cons of going to college but you know perhaps I should have gone to college and get this whole, you know, this whole point of my life to be creative and do all the things that I want to do out of my system and realize that at the end of the day, baseball does matter and it's what I should be doing until they take the game away from me and tell me I can no longer play. Maybe, but at that age, it's just so difficult to say no.

I mean, your whole dream as a young kid is to play professional baseball and to do it for a living and to try and get to the point where you're playing with all your idols. So you kind of don't see it that way. I look back at it, and I wonder if I would have gone to college, how, you know, as far as academically, I would have not known what I wanted to study. I probably would have not cared, even though I had good offers. You know, I was either going to go to Florida or Stanford.

But I didn't know what I wanted to study. All I wanted to do was play baseball. And sometimes to be a good baseball player, especially in this time where things are so fine-tuned and you're just many people, like in order to succeed and get to that point, you basically got to renounce everything else about your life to try and perfect this one thing because there are just so many people and the competition is so great that in order to be successful, you many times have to kind of lose yourself in the game.

And I don't know. It's hard. It's hard. Unless you're a freak and a freak in the best sense of the word, I think it's incredibly hard to be able to, you know, balance it. I felt like I did it. And, you know, when I did it for those three years, the first two in the minor leagues and in the major leagues

is when I actually started struggling in the minor leagues. At that point, I wholeheartedly believe that it's because I started gaining some historical perspective. I stopped caring as much for the game as I did prior to that. All I wanted to do before was just play baseball. I didn't care to find out where the Dodgers played. I didn't care about any of these things. I mean, I had my baseball heroes, Derek Jeter,

and a few of those guys, Ken Griffey, whatever, and that's it, and that's all I cared about, and I just wanted to, well, when I got with the Phillies, it was Chase Utley, and that's it, and that's all I wanted to do, just play baseball and do what they did, but I don't know, it's tough. I'm sorry if I didn't answer your question at all. I just have no idea

well thank you very much for sharing your story with us and your experience with us and again everyone should go read Adrian's piece it's on the sporting scene blog at the New Yorker we will link to it on Facebook and at Baseball Perspectives

you can follow Adrian on Twitter at at underscore AC Cardenas, where you can keep up with anything else he writes or does, and we wish you the best with writing and directing and whatever else you do. Sam, Ben, thank you very much. Thank you.