Confessions of a (Former) Baseball Wife: The End

I can't think about it too much.  I can't let myself GO THERE.  It's still hard to watch or read about or keep up with.  Because when I do...when I allow myself to remember, accept, or admit that it's over...it's really over, the realization still has the ability to knock the wind right out of me.

Even as I type this, tears fill my eyes, threatening to brim over.  

It's silly, right?  Matt officially retired from professional baseball in June of 2014 (2 years ago), and the last time he played in the big leagues was 2012 (4 years ago).  How can it possibly still sting?  How can it still hurt to the core, even after so much time has passed? 

And it's not like we aren't happy.  We are. (I will take the liberty of speaking for Matt.)  Matt has found a new career as a residential lender that he really loves.  It's competitive and ever-changing, he has flexible hours, and the sky is the limit.  We are getting ready to build our dream house next year on our dream property.  We live right around the corner from both of our parents.  We have an incredible church family.  We are immensely fulfilled. 

And let's be honest, we have four kids ages 4 and under.  Baseball life would have been C.R.A.Z.Y. with all of these kids.  The traveling, the lack of family, and the insecurity that comes with baseball would have been extremely difficult to endure.  

Yet still...it hurts.  I know the death of a dream or a career is incomparable to the death of a loved one.  I know that.  But it still requires mourning and grieving.  It still takes its toll.  We will never stop missing it.  We will always wonder, "What if..."  I'm not sure the sting, the emptiness will ever fully go away. 

I know some of you will say, "At least he made it...his dream did come true!"  But if you think that, then you don't know my husband very well.  To be honest, "making it" was never his dream.  Matt never doubted he would make it to the Big Leagues.  "Making it" was never a fantasy for Matt...it was his reality, the reality he lived (and worked for) day in and day out since he was five years old (literally...I think he was a strange kid).  

I don't mean to sound ungrateful.  Please understand that we are grateful that he "made it".  We 100% know that the things we experienced in Major League baseball were once in a lifetime, and we are so blessed.  But in order to fully express how this feels, you have to know that Matt dreams much bigger than the average person.

Matt's dream was to be an All-Star, MVP, and Hall of Famer.  Simply put, he wanted to be the best.  Big dreams.  Huge dreams.  Outrageous dreams that I fully embraced, hoped for, prayed for, and believed in.  I believed he could do it.  I still do (if only that pesky hip would cooperate).

So yes, Matt made it, but with only 3 (very average) years in the big leagues, you can see how his dream was left quite unfulfilled, how he feels like he had so much left to give, so much more potential to offer.  That's painful.  That will always hurt.  That will always make you wonder, "What if..."

Things started to unravel in 2012, after his 2nd hip surgery (on the same hip).  We spent 2013, in Triple A, but Matt hardly played due to his injuries, he attended spring training with the Baltimore Orioles in 2014, but was released, and then he spent the last six weeks of his professional career playing with the Campeche Piratas in Campeche, Mexico.  

Through all of that, the writing was on the wall, his career was obviously coming to an end, yet that glimmer of hope would not be extinguished.  We had such faith that God would give us a comeback story.  We believed He would heal Matt's hip and restore his dream.  


So even though we should have seen it coming, even though in some ways his career was dying a slow death and we should have been more prepared; when the end did come, it still felt terribly sudden and morbidly final.  It felt like a huge blow then and still does today.  

Rest assured that 99% of the time I am fine.  We are fine.  We are at peace.  God is still good.  He is still faithful and He has planted new, exciting dreams in our hearts.  We have four beautiful children who keep us way too busy to think about baseball, always keep us grounded, and remind us that we have abundantly more blessings than we do losses. 

But every so often, when a baseball game is on TV, and we see guys we know, who Matt played with, who are still living the dream...our dream, it comes flooding back and hurts all over again.