Following The Fastball

In December 2024, three days before Christmas, I flew down to Scottsdale, Arizona for a long weekend to meet Justin in what I can only describe as a very on-brand baseball life pit stop.

He had just wrapped up his Dominican Republic Winter Ball season and was passing through Arizona before heading to California for the rest of the offseason. But this wasn’t just a layover, his agent, who’s based in the Scottsdale area, had arranged a one-on-one tryout with a Japanese team. No cattle call. No gym full of 50 guys all fighting for the same five minutes of attention. Just Justin, a mound, and an opportunity.

For anyone who doesn’t know how baseball tryouts usually work, they’re not glamorous. You show up, you throw, and you hope someone notices you among the crowd. Justin had done plenty of those coming up. This felt different. More focused. More intentional. And the timing was good, he’d put up solid numbers in the Dominican, so he had something real to show for it.

The only problem? He was not feeling like himself.

Fresh off international travel and winter ball, Justin had arrived in Arizona sicker than a dog. The tryout was two days away. So we found an IV drip spot, got him hooked up, and watched him come back to life in real time. By that night he was functional. By the next morning he was ready to throw.

Which is how we ended up at a park the day before the tryout, playing catch.

This is a little side tangent but an important one: I am Justin’s catcher when it’s just the two of us on the road. Have been for years. During COVID, I was catching his full bullpen sessions. At this point I can handle up to about 80 miles an hour, which I feel like deserves some kind of recognition. We threw that day, loose and easy, just getting his arm ready for what was coming.

That night we ended up at P.F. Chang’s because somehow, wherever we go in this country, we always end up at a P.F. Chang’s. It’s become its own kind of tradition. And when the fortune cookie came, I cracked it open and read it out loud.

Great success is just around the corner

Three days before Christmas, two days before a Japanese baseball tryout, sitting in a P.F. Chang’s in Scottsdale. I mean, come on. We took that as a sign and ran with it.

He showed up the next day and pitched well. Not peak-season Justin, but a version of himself that had no business performing as well as he did given the circumstances. That’s the part people don’t always see, the showing up when the conditions aren’t perfect, when your body is running on fumes and sheer stubbornness.

With the tryout behind us, Scottsdale had our full attention.
It was almost Christmas, and the city was fully committed to the season lights everywhere, that warm desert holiday glow that somehow works even without a drop of snow. We were staying in an Airbnb, as per usual. At this point, living out of Airbnbs in random cities is just part of the lifestyle. You learn to make wherever you land feel like home, at least for a few days.

And whenever I land somewhere new, I make it my mission to actually do something while we’re there.

Scottsdale, Arizona had been on my radar for one reason: Camelback Mountain. I’d been wanting to hike it, and this felt like the perfect opportunity. A sunset hike, beautiful views, what’s not to love?

Justin’s perspective on this was slightly different.

The man had just thrown a bullpen, traveled from the Dominican Republic, gotten an IV drip to survive the week, and I was asking him to climb a mountain. To his credit, he said yes. Eventually. After some convincing. Okay, a lot of convincing.

We drove straight from the tryout to Camelback and started up.
It was steeper than I expected. Significantly steeper. And hotter. Nobody warned me that Arizona in December still has the audacity to be aggressively hot. What I had mentally categorized as a “pretty mediocre hike” turned out to be a steep, sweaty, full commitment, and somewhere around the halfway point I felt a small wave of guilt watching Justin’s post-bullpen legs carry him up the rocks while we were both dying of heat. But we kept going.
And then we reached the top.

The view was worth every step we’d argued about taking. The sunset over Scottsdale was amazing.

This is kind of our thing, honestly. Justin’s body is constantly being put through the wringer; travel, seasons, tryouts, workouts, repeat. And I’ve always been the one to pull us out of the baseball bubble and into something that has nothing to do with the game. Getting started is usually the hard part. There’s always a reason to stay in and rest, always a recovery to consider. But we almost never regret going.

We spent a couple more days soaking up Scottsdale, then flew up to Minnesota to spend Christmas with my family, and eventually made our way back to San Diego for the rest of the offseason.

A Japanese tryout, an IV drip save, a fortune cookie that knew something we didn’t, a mountain we probably shouldn’t have climbed, and a sunset that made all of it worth it.

Just another week in the baseball life.