Culture

As NBA eyes expansion, it sees potential in Mexico City. But is that a realistic option?

Published

1 month ago

December 15, 2024

As NBA eyes expansion, it sees potential in Mexico City. But is that a realistic option?

MEXICO CITY — Diego, an Uber driver, picked up his client at 10:37 on a Saturday night, behind a crowded basketball arena where an NBA game had just ended.

He traversed dark, tiny alleys on the outskirts of one of the largest, most congested cities in the world. He drove over curbs, slowed to a crawl to avoid damage from crater-sized potholes and, at one point, stopped his car, threw it in reverse and turned a corner backward.

The zigging and zagging ended on a main thoroughfare two miles ahead of the massive traffic jam in front of Arena Ciudad de México. The six-mile ride to the hotel — in the posh Mexico City neighborhood of Polanco, where both the Miami Heat and Washington Wizards were staying for their game — took 46 minutes.

Nick Lagios wasn’t so lucky. Lagios, an American who once worked for the Los Angeles Lakers, is the general manager for one of the two major professional basketball teams based in Mexico City. He hopped in a taxi in the stalled parade of cars after the game. He was also headed to Polanco, where he lives, but it took him three hours to get home.

“Coming and going at this arena, especially if it’s crowded, is an absolute traffic disaster,” Lagios said.

If the NBA eventually puts a team in Mexico City, which commissioner Adam Silver has said is possible, it would be because of the massive potential of the market — including the ability to draw a crowd. And while postgame traffic is far from unusual after an NBA game, 41 home dates of gridlock like this are only one reason to question whether a league expansion to Mexico is viable.

There are plenty of other factors for the league to consider as it weighs potentially expanding to Mexico City. Traffic is definitely a factor, but overcrowding, a complicated geography that could make building a new arena difficult and the socioeconomics of the world’s fifth largest city are other challenges the league will have to consider.

On the same night the Heat and Wizards played in Mexico City, one of the first people Silver bumped into at the arena was Ted Leonsis, owner of the Wizards.

“The first thing he said to me was, we should have a team in Mexico City,” Silver said.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Athletic in Mexico City, some of which was published previously, Silver acknowledged that American cities like Las Vegas and Seattle would likely get a team before Mexico City, and potential expansion south of the U.S. border was probably “many years off.” But he also said expanding to Mexico City would be “more additive because we would be flipping a switch” in a massive, receptive market.

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The NBA held its first exhibition game in Mexico City in 1992, and since, there have been 32 more regular-season or exhibition games in the city. In 2022, the Mexico City Capitanes began playing G League home games in Mexico (the team was started in 2021 and played the first season in the U.S.).

The arena where the Heat and Wizards played, and where the Capitanes have home games, was built for $300 million and opened in 2012. Around that time, the Maloof family was looking to move the Sacramento Kings, and Robert Hernreich, who held a minority stake in the Kings, pushed the family and then-NBA commissioner David Stern to consider Mexico City. Herneich says he even accompanied league officials on a tour of the arena.

“I didn’t fight for it strong enough, and I should have,” Hernreich said. “It has been a great opportunity for 15 years, and for some reason, the NBA (has) not (been) willing to exploit that. I pursued it independently, and Stern would say, ‘Bobby, look elsewhere. We’re not gonna do Mexico City.’”

Under Silver, clearly, that tune has changed.

Vendors sell merchandise ahead of the 2023 NBA Mexico City Game between the Hawks and Magic. (Kirby Lee / USA Today)

Mexico City is the largest city in North America, with a population of 22 million. Mexico has a population of 130 million and, according to the league’s own research, 32 million NBA fans, including 13 million fans ages 14 to 30.

The NBA has major offices in Mexico City and San Paolo, Brazil. It counts more than 121 million fans across Latin America and the Caribbean and considers Mexico one of its top-five markets in the world for League Pass subscriptions.

Arena Ciudad de México is, by any accounting, an NBA-caliber arena. The concourses are spacious, the scoreboards jumbo, the sound system excellent, and the locker rooms large enough. It’s also a major concert venue for the city.

“I think culturally, just watching the changes that we’ve seen, even over the 30 years that we’ve been playing games here … we went from sort of a novelty to a mainstream sport here,” Silver said. “If we were to bring an NBA franchise here, there’s no question it would ignite and accelerate the growth of the game.”

Jahlil Okafor played in the NBA for six seasons, where he earned more than $22 million in salary, and spent one season with the Capitanes in the G League in 2022-23.

“They told us it was the Beverly Hills of Mexico, and living there, it was,” Okafor said.

Okafor said he and his teammates were put up in a nice apartment complex in Polanco, with glass doors and marble floors, not far from the row of swanky hotels, boutiques and open-air restaurants where the NBA congregates each year during its Global Games series in Mexico City. He was enamored with the food and the culture.

But would Mexico City be a good place for the NBA to put a team? “I’m not sure,” Okafor said. “It was difficult for us to commute around Mexico City just because the traffic is really bad.”

Yes, Mexico City has a traffic problem. According to anthropologist Lachlan Summers, who has studied the city’s traffic, residents of the city lose on average about 6.5 days per year stuck on the clogged highways and main streets. A separate study of Los Angeles traffic said commuters there lose about 3.5 days per year in traffic jams.

But the traffic issue, as it relates to the NBA setting up permanent residence in Mexico City, is more complex than too many cars on the road. It starts with the security of the multi-millionaire players who would live in Mexico City for at least six months of the year.

According to Numbeo, a website that tracks crime rates internationally, Mexico City’s crime rate in mid-2024 of 67.7 crimes per 100,000 residents is the 32nd highest in the world. There were two NBA cities — Detroit and Memphis — with higher crime rates, and Milwaukee and New Orleans are 33rd and 34th on this list.

Mexico City is also, by and large, poorer than major American cities. According to a 2022 study by the Mexican government, the average salary for a Mexico City resident fluctuates between $660 and $720 a month.

“When a lot of people think of Mexico, the first thing they think about is safety and things along the border,” said Lagios, who was general manager of the Capitanes for three years before taking a similar job with Diablos Rojos of Mexico’s top pro basketball league. “But I think, as time goes on, I’d hear other teams were scared about coming here, and then they get here and they love it.”

That’s in part because those visiting teams from the G League stay in Polanco, or as Okafor described, the “Beverly Hills of Mexico City.” It’s also where NBA teams always stay when they play in Mexico, and, if an NBA team were to play in Arena Ciudad de México full time, Polanco would be the most likely option for players to live.

Polanco is geographically close to the arena (again, just six miles), but on game nights, it can feel like you’re driving from Dallas to Houston. The arena is surrounded on three sides by a wall, and there aren’t many parking options other than the attached garage, which has, at most, two exits that both empty onto the same street.

Also, the neighborhood in which the arena is located is dilapidated, likely uncomfortable for wealthy basketball players who would be unlikely to solve the logistics problem of travel time by moving closer to the arena — an issue that could extend to the paying customers.

“The people who can (afford to) pay the cost of NBA tickets, they live far from the arena,” said Othon Diaz, chief executive officer for all of Diablos Rojos’ sports teams. “The area (around the arena) is not the best place — like security, the streets are not so nice.

“You can go to a concert every three or four months, but four to six games a month? That’s a problem.”

If proximity and traffic were barriers for the more affluent residents of Mexico City to attend more than a handful of 41 home games, then NBA pricing could serve as a barrier to those who live closer to the arena, Diaz said.

The average price of an NBA ticket is $94, excluding the price of parking, food and merchandise. A two-hour Uber ride in Mexico City could cost a day’s wage for the average Mexico City resident.

“In the United States, they charge, what, $13 a beer? If I charged $13 for beer, they’d shoot me,” Diaz said.

It’s a risky exercise to compare Diablos Rojos or the Capitanes to a potential NBA team in Mexico City, because both of the existing clubs are playing minor-league basketball. Both teams have enjoyed success but, for what it’s worth, neither is profitable yet.

A look at Arena Ciudad de México, home of the NBA G League’s Capitanes. (Kirby Lee / USA Today)

Diablos Rojos, for example, just completed their first season and won the Liga Nacional de Baloncesto Profesional championship, capping off an outrageously fortuitous 2024 for the Harp family’s sports company.

Earlier this year, the Diablos Rojos baseball club not only hosted the New York Yankees for exhibition games in March but went on to win the Mexican League championship.

Diablos Rojos plays their basketball games in a 5,000-seat venue where the 1968 Olympic tournament was held in Mexico City, Gimnasio Olímpico Juan de la Barrera. Alfredo Harp Helú, who owns Diablos Rojos and is also part owner of the San Diego Padres, and his son, Santiago, who is 24 and vice president of the Diablos Rojos board of directors, want to build a new arena. Not only for Diablos Rojos, but perhaps for an NBA or WNBA team they ultimately lure to Mexico City.

The Capitanes practice at the Mexican Olympic Committee’s old facility, which is well below NBA standards — the rims may not be quite 10 feet in the air, and until recently, there were no locker rooms, former members of the organization said. An NBA or WNBA team would need a new practice facility too.

“Mexico City needs a new arena,” Santiago Harp said. “Even with (Arena Ciudad de México), we need another one. I’m really excited to just have a nice arena. We’re trying to look (at) how big it should be. We might be in some other leagues — now we’re in (LNBP), but we will see the future.”

Mexico City is not only crowded, it is also 7,300 feet above sea level. The population size and geography pose serious challenges when trying to build a massive structure like a new arena. When the Harps built their baseball stadium, which opened in 2019 near Mexico City’s international airport, for $167 million, they had to build it on a concrete slab supported by 155-feet tall pillars, because the land is on top of an ancient lake.

“Other parts of the city are built on top of old volcanic ash,” Diaz said. “The money isn’t the big problem — the place is so hard (to build an arena) because in Mexico City, there isn’t enough space. … But you can’t be sure what it would cost because you won’t know (right away) what the ground is like.”

Nuño Pérez Pla is in his first season as team president for the Capitanes, the third man in four years to hold that job. Pérez has fulfilled more roles for the Capitanes than he can remember, having done everything from serving as chief revenue officer to taking pictures during games along the baseline.

Pérez said the franchise is probably two years away from profitability, as corporate sponsorships continue to rise. The Capitanes received two different business awards from the G League last season, in which the club saw attendance rise by 93 percent from its first year in Mexico City.

“It is, 100 percent, everyone’s job at the Capitanes to showcase the potential of Mexico City, to show the Capitanes deserve to have a permanent place in the G League, and that we have the potential to have an NBA team in this country,” Pérez said.

Capitanes games are on ESPN Deportes, as part of the NBA’s contract with Disney. The Capitanes do not have to pay player salaries — the league does that, as it does for all G League players. Nor does the team make money off concessions; that all goes to the Monterrey-based company that owns Arena Ciudad de México. The Capitanes get the revenues from ticket and merchandise sales inside the arena during their games; undiscounted tickets cost between $15 and $50. The Capitanes average 4,300 fans per game this season.

Pérez said the viability of American cities Seattle and Las Vegas as NBA markets is well known but argued the Capitanes have “demonstrated the potential that Mexico City has.” Silver, the NBA commissioner, said the league would also have to engage the National Basketball Players Association on expansion to Mexico City, to ensure players would accept moving there for half the year.

“The NBA is testing Mexico right now, logistics testing, security testing and business testing to see what is the real potential of Mexico,” Pérez said.

The Athletic’s Mike Vorkunov contributed.

(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; top photos: Pedro Pardo, Emmanuel Dunand / AFP via Getty Images; Adam Hagy, David Dow, Issac Baldizon, Pablo Lomelin / NBAE via Getty Images)

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Culture

Why deep runs are “probably the most important thing in football”

Published

6 hours ago

January 14, 2025

Press Room

Why deep runs are “probably the most important thing in football”

When watching a game of football, we only truly consume a snippet of the action.

We are naturally drawn to the fun stuff occurring on the ball, but zoom out a little and there is beauty laid out in the carefully choreographed off-ball movements across the pitch.

You might not notice a lot of runs. Some of them will not even get picked up by the television coverage, but when a player receives the ball in space, you can be confident that it was their team-mates’ movements elsewhere that dragged the opposition out of shape.

Runs beyond the defensive line are crucial to a team’s attacking potency, particularly in a Premier League that is increasingly physically demanding.

“Deep runs are probably the most important thing in football,” said Liverpool manager Arne Slot on Amazon Prime after their 3-1 victory over Leicester City.

“You don’t even always have to play to a player who makes the deep run — but then you can maybe create a bigger one-v-one situation for your winger, so the more deep runs you make, the more chance you have of winning a game.”

The Athletic identified a similar trend in Slot’s side earlier this season, with the underlapping runs made beyond the opposition defensive line allowing Liverpool’s wingers to come inside to cross — as shown by Mohamed Salah’s assist for Curtis Jones against Chelsea.

Runs beyond the ball remain a key theme of Liverpool’s campaign under Slot.

As well as the obvious candidates of forwards Salah, Cody Gakpo and Luis Diaz, Slot’s midfielders have shown a notable propensity to break beyond the opposition last line with those runs from deep.

For example, in their recent Premier League game against Manchester United, Jones is desperately trying to catch the attention of Ibrahima Konate as he identifies a gap in the defensive line.

While the ball does not reach Jones, Harry Maguire’s attention is drawn to the 23-year-old as the ball continues to be circulated.

Five seconds later, that space is exploited with another deep run from fellow midfielder Alexis Mac Allister, with Salah’s clipped ball struck first time by the Argentina international.

Using SkillCorner’s Game Intelligence model — which extracts contextual metrics from broadcast tracking data — we can measure the number of off-ball runs made by each team when they are in possession, focusing on runs made in behind.

For those unsure, this type of run simply logs when a player is attacking space behind the last defensive line — like the example below. Crucially, the player does not have to receive the ball for the run to be logged.

When looking across all Premier League teams, Liverpool’s 4.1 runs in behind per 30 minutes in possession — adjusted to control for each side’s share of the ball — is the third-most this season, with Crystal Palace topping the charts, edging ahead of Aston Villa.

There is no right or wrong method here, but the graphic above highlights the stylistic approach taken by each team in attack.

For example, Arsenal and Manchester City are comparably low by this measure, which reflects their desire for a more patient, possession-based build-up that looks to squeeze the opposition back — gaining territorial dominance, which often leaves less space behind the opposition defensive line.

As for Southampton, well, let’s not compound their misery.

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Measuring off-ball runs by Premier League wingers

For league-leading Palace, the runs of Jean-Philippe Mateta are crucial to Oliver Glasner’s attacking approach and they can have a dual benefit for the team.

The first is the typical threat of a striker receiving the ball beyond the opposition last line, but the second is the space that such a run can provide for others to exploit between the lines — namely Eberechi Eze.

For example, in their most recent Premier League game against Chelsea, Ismaila Sarr finds right wing-back Daniel Munoz in space on the right flank, with Mateta occupying Chelsea’s centre-backs with a run in behind, towards the front post (see frame 2).

That run makes space for Eze to drift into, with Munoz’s cutback allowing Eze to shoot first time — albeit missing the target.

There was a near-identical pattern 20 minutes later. Sarr’s ball finds an onrushing Munoz, with Mateta’s run in behind to the near post allowing Eze to hold back and receive the cutback — which is blocked on this occasion.

Conversely, Mateta’s improved link-up play has allowed Sarr to thrive as a No 10 by making runs from deeper.

This is shown in his Premier League goal against Aston Villa in November, with Mateta dropping to receive the ball in his own half before releasing Sarr, who has made the run in behind.

It is a part of his game that Sarr has been actively working on in training since his summer arrival.

“We showed him the space where he can show his strength,” Glasner said in his press conference last month.

“We wanted to have pace, a player who can make runs in behind. (To find) the perfect profile we are looking for, we can’t spend (a lot of) money, so we have to find players with most of the profile, then it’s our job to teach them where they can show their skills and talent.”

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If Eze has his confidence back, Palace have a true triple threat up front

At Aston Villa, the midfield runs of John McGinn and Morgan Rogers — alongside the wide runs from left full-back Lucas Digne — are key to Unai Emery’s system. However, Ollie Watkins is one of the leading candidates across the Premier League for runs made in behind.

While he is capable of dropping deep to receive, Watkins has developed his game in recent seasons, staying on the last line between the width of the six-yard box and conserving his energy — having pulled into wider areas in seasons gone by.

He picks his moments carefully, but the muscle memory of his channel runs in behind when Tyrone Mings has the ball continues to be effective — as it was against Leicester last weekend.

It was a similar run made for his Premier League goal against Crystal Palace in the aforementioned fixture in November. Before McGinn received the ball between the lines, Watkins was already looking for the space he could exploit in behind (see frame 1).

A perfectly weighted pass and a calm finish duly followed.

When breaking down Watkins’ run types by category, more than two-thirds of his total tally are runs in behind or ahead of the ball — with a notably small share coming short or pulling into the half-space to receive.

When a team-mate gets the ball in space, you can be sure Watkins will be on his bike heading towards goal.

Crucially, this aligns with Emery’s method of attack to pierce through the opposition’s back line when they can. No Premier League team has logged more than Villa’s 53 through balls this season, which shows that they often take the opportunity to play the pass when those runs are made.

Breaking down our SkillCorner dataset by player, Watkins is out in front alongside Leicester’s Jamie Vardy in the highest volume of runs in behind as a share of their total tally, in a list made up largely of No 9s who spearhead their team’s respective attack.

Below Watkins on the list? The previously discussed Mateta, of course.

Like Mateta, the runs made by Watkins and Jhon Duran don’t always need to be met with a pass from a team-mate. However, these movements are still vital for pushing the defence back and creating space for Villa’s No 10s to exploit.

This was particularly notable in Villa’s recent victory over Manchester City — as The Athletic has previously analysed — with Rogers and Youri Tielemans benefiting from Duran’s relentless forward running.

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How Tielemans and Rogers’ ability between the lines helped Villa beat City

While our post-match debrief will largely focus on the events that occurred on the ball, the key to unlocking a defence might often occur elsewhere on the pitch.

Whether you’re Nottingham Forest or Forrest Gump, running matters — and now we can measure its impact in context.

Culture

Book Review: ‘The Secret History of the Rape Kit,’ by Pagan Kennedy

Published

14 hours ago

January 14, 2025

Press Room

Book Review: ‘The Secret History of the Rape Kit,’ by Pagan Kennedy

THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE RAPE KIT: A True Crime Story, by Pagan Kennedy

In 2021, the Smithsonian acquired something called the Vitullo Evidence Collection Kit for Sexual Assault Examination. It was a 10-by-6-inch cardboard container filled mostly with items you could buy at any pharmacy, but for millions of American women, the “rape kit,” as this 1970s invention is now known, was a revolution in a box.

Oh, and one important detail: The Chicago police sergeant Louis Vitullo didn’t invent the kit that initially bore his name. That credit goes to Martha “Marty” Goddard, a determined, soft-spoken woman who came up with the idea of a consistent set of tools to collect evidence after an assault — but then disappeared before it became the national standard it is today.

How Goddard dreamed up her creation is the central question of “The Secret History of the Rape Kit,” by Pagan Kennedy, a journalist with a “feverish obsession” with the subject. “How,” she asks, “does a tool that empowers women ever get built in a man’s world?”

Out of necessity, in this case. As a volunteer at a Chicago crisis center, Goddard began to see “a dark and terrible underworld” of young rape survivors. She set about understanding their experiences, wheedling her way into local police departments and interviewing hospital and crime-lab personnel to learn what it would take to solve cases.

Solving cases at all was a novel idea, apparently. Kennedy argues convincingly that not much had changed in the 400 years between when an English judge dismissed rape as “an accusation easily to be made and hard to be proved,” and 1970s Chicago, where a police training manual taught that “it is unfortunate that many women will claim they have been raped in order to get revenge” against “a boyfriend with a roving eye.” When officers did do forensic exams, she writes, they were “Kabuki theater” usually designed to expose a mendacious woman, or to conveniently convict a nearby Black male. Physical evidence was lost; victims were left humiliated; justice was rare.

What if, Goddard wondered, there were a consistent, court-approved way of collecting the evidence that would bolster a survivor’s word? Her assembly of tools — bags for semen or fingernail samples, swabs, a tiny comb for pubic hair — was nothing fancy, but she persuaded the Playboy Foundation to design the packaging. The result had an air of professionalism — and sincerity. It “promised to treat a victim with dignity, as an eyewitness whose body might reveal real evidence of a violent crime.”

Its namesake, Vitullo, screamed at Goddard when she presented him with her proposal, but subsequently embraced the idea — and Goddard, understanding that law enforcement would more readily accept the kit if it bore a man’s name, helped “collaborate in her own erasure.” The history of that erasure is a fascinating subplot of this book, as Kennedy traces the way generations of canny American women have been denied credit and profit and glory for their brainchildren.

And Goddard did more than just devise the kit — she proselytized for it across the country. She added cards that shared counseling resources, and forms for police officers to sign — meaning they could be held accountable for losing evidence. She spoke to Girl Scouts, church groups, and F.B.I. criminologists. By the mid-1980s, her invention was everywhere.

But if you’ve heard of the rape kit, you’ve probably also heard of the rape-kit backlog. During the 1990s, cities slashed funding for collecting rape evidence, and literal mold grew on Goddard’s invention, with hundreds of thousands of untested kits piling up. When investigators opened one storage unit in Detroit in 2009, they discovered more than 11,000 rape kits — three decades of evidence from victims ranging in age from one month to 90 years old.

Outrage erupted, and once kits began to be widely tested the results offered what Kennedy calls “spectacular proof” of their value. Old crimes were solved. Myths about serial rapists were debunked. And false convictions dropped; as DNA testing became more widespread, fewer Black men were wrongfully convicted of the rape of white women than in prior decades, per one report.

Marty Goddard had vanished from public life by the time all this happened, and Kennedy works to solve her “mysterious disappearance.” But the truth she eventually uncovers feels beside the point. There is another equally urgent narrative here, and it’s Kennedy’s own. She herself, she confides, was molested as a child — and the brutally economical descriptions of the violence she endured are the real “true crime story” of the book, a tiny handful of passages that rise off the page, incandescent.

For most of her life, Kennedy kept her memories and her anger to herself: “My rage had always seemed greasy and salty, like something I binged on when I was alone, in fits of self-hatred.” When she wrote an earlier version of Goddard’s story, she spent days inserting and then deleting a single mention of her own experience, wishing she could bury “molested” somehow “so that just a bit of the word poked up, like the tip of a bombshell. Did I deserve to make any kind of claim at all?”

Too many readers will recognize that doubt, and Kennedy’s love for her subject reverberates throughout the book. Kennedy’s own mother hadn’t understood what happened to her, but Goddard, she writes, “was the woman who had believed little girls.”

There’s a heartbreaking passage in which Kennedy explains her decision not to name her assailant. She opts not to do so, she writes, “because I have no physical evidence, nothing compelling to back up my account.”

Marty Goddard provided a way to preserve that evidence, for generations of victims. No wonder Kennedy wanted to tell this forgotten story. And along the way, her own.

THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE RAPE KIT: A True Crime Story | By Pagan Kennedy | Vintage | 256 pp. | Paperback, $19

Culture

Former Astros pitcher Tyler Ivey embarks on a comeback: ‘All roads led back to baseball’

Published

22 hours ago

January 14, 2025

Press Room

Former Astros pitcher Tyler Ivey embarks on a comeback: ‘All roads led back to baseball’

HOUSTON — Tyler Ivey is at peace, but sometimes ponders his past as a passionless pitcher who still reached the pinnacle. Adrenaline aided Ivey through his major-league debut in his hometown, the sort of storybook tale only this sport seems to write.

On the day it unfolded, Ivey weighed 180 pounds and could not feel his fingers. Burnout and a barking elbow badgered him before and throughout the game at Globe Life Field on May 21, 2021. Ivey could not spin the baseball but still managed to survive into the fifth inning. After manager Dusty Baker pulled him, Ivey exited the mound with a wide grin.

Tyler Ivey smiles in the dugout after leaving a game against the Rangers in the fifth inning on May 21, 2021. (Kevin Jairaj / Imagn Images)

For many, it is their final image of a man who disappeared. Houston demoted Ivey to Triple A following the game, but he didn’t report within the requisite three days. He doubted whether he wanted to continue playing. Doctors diagnosed Ivey with thoracic outlet syndrome, finally solving his physical problems. The mental obstacles remained.

“One thing you can’t fake is passion,” Ivey said last month. “And I just don’t think I had the drive and the passion at that point to give my all or give my best to be at the top of the game and compete at that level. Even if I wanted to have it, it just wasn’t there at the time.”

So, 12 months after making his major-league debut, Ivey left the sport. He became a salesman, first of life insurance and, for a short time, solar panels. He married a longtime friend named Audrey, welcomed a son named James and made his family’s home in a tiny Texas town called Pottsboro.

“I just wanted to go have a simple life, spend time with my friends and family and see how God’s plan worked out for me,” Ivey said.

Ivey presumed it would not include baseball. After he retired, he swore off watching the sport, save the Astros’ annual playoff run. Once regarded as one of Houston’s premier starting pitching prospects, Ivey seemed content never to step on a mound again.

Now, it is his ultimate goal. Two years after he walked away, Ivey is attempting a baseball comeback. A slew of serendipitous encounters have allowed him to see the sport from a different perspective. An impromptu start for a collegiate summer league team helped Ivey, 28, to reignite his passion.

“There were some synchronicities that happened,” Ivey said. “And everything I did, everywhere we went, all roads led back to baseball.”

Ivey decided to quit during the first week of May 2022. His parents, Jon and Michelle, visited him throughout the week in Sugar Land after Ivey informed them it “may be the last time” they could watch him pitch.

That Sunday, on Mother’s Day, Ivey threw 59 pitches across 2 1/3 innings in his final professional appearance. After the game, he entered Triple-A manager Mickey Storey’s office and had what Ivey described as a “great conversation.” According to Ivey, he and the organization “left on really good terms.”

“They understood. There was no animosity on either side,” said Ivey, Houston’s third-round draft pick in 2017. “I still got tons of love and respect for them. They gave me a shot.”

No single reason exists for Ivey’s decision. He pitched through elbow pain for most of the 2020 and 2021 seasons, but hid it from the team for fear of losing his place within its hierarchy. Days after making his major-league debut, Ivey was further staggered by a family tragedy. The stresses of playing during a pandemic took a toll, as did strain from his decision not to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

Trouble sleeping and eating left Ivey a shell of the person who entered professional ball. He weighs 205 pounds now — 25 pounds heavier than when he debuted in Arlington.

Ivey made eight appearances spanning 18 2/3 innings after that start against the Rangers, including five in Triple A at the beginning of the 2022 season. To hear him describe it, no single inflection point precipitated his decision, nor did one particular aspect of his predicament outweigh the other. An accumulation of it all became too much for Ivey to bear — and most around him knew it.

Three days after Ivey retired, an unexpected phone call interrupted a day at the gym. Ivey dropped everything to answer when he saw Baker’s name on the caller ID.

“We know you need a break. We get it,” Ivey recalled Baker telling him. “But the body, sometimes it needs some rest and sometimes it miraculously heals itself. And if that were to happen, you never know, a few years from now, you might get a call. At least consider it.”

“Absolutely,” Ivey answered. “Anything for you.”

Last summer, Ivey volunteered to help one of his neighbors coach a high school summer ball team, even though his original inclination was to decline.

“It allowed me to see baseball from, I guess, a different light, a different point of view,” he said, “which started to make me fall in love with it again.”

That love proved strong enough for Ivey to double down on coaching. The Sherman Shadowcats are a Texas-based collegiate summer league team within the Mid America League. When they found themselves in need of a pitching coach, they offered the job to Ivey. The life insurance salesman accepted the chance to coach in his spare time.

But when attrition hit in late July, it left the team without enough pitchers to get through an upcoming game. The head coach asked Ivey if he would start it.

“I basically rolled out of bed. I’d played catch a few times, just screwing around. I hadn’t been training. Hadn’t been intently throwing, nothing,” Ivey said. “I just said, ‘Screw it, I’ll hop on the mound and we’ll see how it goes.’”

Ivey struck out all three hitters he saw. He threw without pain and, for once, could feel his fingers, fulfilling Baker’s prophecy. Radar guns had Ivey’s fastball in the low 90s, up from the 88-90 mph he averaged at the end of his professional career.

“It felt good to go back out there and compete and know that, ‘Hey, I can still throw strikes. My stuff is still good.’”

Ivey soon wondered how good. The reintroduction to competition, however brief it was, helped to crystallize a path that began to feel more realistic.

“I started throwing and thinking about it. And I just thought, ‘All right, I’m going to do this,’” Ivey said.

“We prayed on it a lot. My wife would pray for me and she would ask God to kind of help me find my direction. What’s my purpose? Everything just went back to baseball.”

Ivey knows he can pitch. That feel for the game hasn’t left him. Trying to do it without velocity or feel for any of his secondary pitches sunk his first professional stint, even as he ascended the Astros’ organizational hierarchy.

“If I come back and my stuff is better and I’m the same pitcher — which I do believe I can still pitch,” Ivey said. “And now stuff is better and I’m healthy, who knows what could happen?”

Ivey has not been on a radar gun since his substitute summer league start. He is studying both biomechanics and the art of pitching instead of relying on nothing but natural arm talent. Ivey’s initial findings leave him amazed at what he accomplished — and angry he didn’t discover it sooner.

“My throwing mechanics, in general, were just so bad. It’s a miracle that my arm didn’t blow off,” Ivey said.

Tyler Ivey has the most unorthodox delivery in camp. More on how he got it, why it works and why the Astros don’t want to tinker with it – https://t.co/L59T7l1ReL pic.twitter.com/jbG0ESpj5D
— Chandler Rome (@Chandler_Rome) March 11, 2021

“I just had no idea. I was just kind of relying on my arm, relying on my natural talent to get it done. That can only last for so long until it all blows up in your face.”

During his first professional stint, Ivey had an unconventional delivery, complete with a high leg kick and violent rotation. He’s modified it to be “much more efficient and smooth” after making “significant changes” to his body and posture.

“After throwing bullpens and throwing with 100 percent intensity, my elbow doesn’t even get sore, let alone hurt, which is pretty remarkable,” Ivey said.

Ivey hasn’t changed his five-pitch arsenal, but does believe all of his offerings have benefitted from his body’s overhaul. His curveball is sharper with more downward action. His changeup added some depth. His fastball remains hoppy with some backspin — traits Houston’s pitching infrastructure covets.

The Astros, the organization that once thought enough of Ivey to make him a major leaguer at 25, still retain his contractual rights. Whether they invite Ivey to minor-league spring training in March or release him remains an open question. But even if they offered him another chance, it’s possible that too much time has passed. Ivey isn’t sure of the outcome, but said he will nevertheless remain an Astros fan.

Ivey harbors some regret for how he handled the demotion after his major-league debut, but otherwise is content with the first chapter of his career.

How the next unfolds is Ivey’s foremost focus.

“We’re really happy living the nice, simple little life we’ve created,” Ivey said. “But we both feel that God’s put it on our hearts that I’m on a mission and I’m going to go do it, whatever that looks like. And if it doesn’t work out well, I’m completely fine with that. I’ll just go back home and be happy again with my family.

“But I do believe that there’s unfinished business out there. I’d like to go see what that looks like.”

(Photo: Tony Gutierrez / Associated Press)