My Payoff Pitch…

For most professional baseball players, the end of their career comes too abruptly – a short conversation with the manager about how the organization is going in a different direction or maybe a call in the off season explaining how there’s no room for you in Spring Training. It’s a brutal business and one that churns out thousands of players season after season. Move up or move out is what they say. Very rarely do players in professional baseball end on their own terms and when you do hear about it, it’s the guy on his farewell tour after an illustrious Major League career. For every single one of us Minor Leaguers, baseball is all we know – all we have ever known – and the thought of not playing baseball is a thought that we have never been able to afford. But for me that time has come…I’ve decided to hang up the spikes and call it a career.

I’ve come to this decision mainly for two reasons. First off, that vision I’ve always had of jogging out to the mound for my debut in front of my family and friends becoming the first Indian player to ever play in the Major Leagues has never felt so far away. I’m so lucky to have played four seasons after college, honestly four more seasons than I could have ever imagined. But I initially picked Yale to maximize my education knowing how unlikely getting drafted was – and then four out of the eight in my graduating class went ahead and got drafted. Out of Yale! Crazy, I know. Since 2019, when the A’s selected me in the 34th round, I have put everything into becoming a better pitcher. That required tremendous sacrifices, things I was willing to forego to give myself the best chance at success, but I no longer feel like those sacrifices make a difference in my career. At points over the last two seasons in High-A with the Lansing Lugnuts, I was hopeful to get promoted to Double-A. I wanted to move up and prove that I was capable of contributing at the Major League level, but after watching so many of my teammates move up instead of me, I am no longer hopeful. Regardless of what the A’s organization thinks – to start me in Double-A, to send me back to High-A, or to cut me in 2024 – if I don’t have that fire within me to continue improving as a pitcher this off season, I can’t justify going back for another season. It would be unfair to myself to not give 100% effort and dedication in my training and preparation for Spring Training.

Second, I now have – for the first time in my career – purpose somewhere other than the pitcher’s mound. For 25 years, I’ve referred to myself as a baseball player and a pitcher, but this year I’ve become so much more than that. My work with the Major League Baseball Players Association has brought me so much to look forward to off the field. I represented the Minor League players during the negotiations of our first ever Collective Bargaining Agreement, I was voted by my teammates to be the Minor League Player Representative for the A’s organization, and I had the honor of sharing a room with the President to discuss nationwide Union efforts, all in the last year and change. These events have altered the trajectory of my career and it is now hard for me to ignore this new path.

Looking back on my career, I was never the most physical pitcher and rarely the hardest throwing one. I remember getting to Mystic, Connecticut for college summer ball in 2018 and after our first day, I had texted my dad about how physically imposing all of the other pitchers were. He responded with encouragement about how I had never been the fastest or biggest pitcher but managed to outlast all of them, which stuck with me because it was so true. From then on, I focused on competing against myself wherever I was and that summer in Mystic was arguably the best stretch of pitching I had in my life and was probably a huge reason I got drafted.

I know I will always be disappointed for not making it to the Big Leagues because that moment at my debut with my family would have been the accumulation of something so much bigger than me. A moment I really wanted to give to them because my family has given up so much for me to do what I’ve done and I could have never ever accomplished this much without them and their endless support.

From New York to Connecticut to Arizona to California to Michigan, baseball has taken me to some extraordinary places and along the way I’ve been blessed to be surrounded by incredible teammates and extremely generous and thoughtful people. My coaches and mentors on the field, off the field, in the weight room, and everywhere in between have preached winning and greatness but more importantly made sure that when my peers and I moved on, we were better people than when we started. I will forever be grateful for all those people along the way (who guided me, provided me support, or just followed my journey), the Oakland Athletics for allowing me to live out my dream, and the extraordinary game that baseball is, which has shaped the person I am today. My career truly has been a dream come true and I could not be more thrilled of where it has brought me.

P.S. : A huge shout out to the loyal Payoff Pitch subscribers over the last three plus years. I’m hoping to continue writing in some capacity so stay tuned.

P.P.S. : If you have any memories or thoughts or anything at all, I’d love to hear from you…kumar.b.nambiar@gmail.com