Austin Davis waddles when he walks, but the 18-month-old already loves baseball.
“Austin gets cranky when he doesn’t get to go to a game,” says his dad, Allen. “He just loves baseball.”
When it's time for bed, other kids his age are watching cartoons, Barney, or Sesame Street. Austin isn’t sleepy until he gets to watch the critically acclaimed 2002 baseball movie “The Rookie.”
“I think he believes that’s his daddy in the movie,” says Austin’s mom, Nikki.
He might be right.
OK, “The Rookie” is the inspiring story of Jim Morris, a flamed-out minor league pitcher whose injured left arm seemingly ended his playing days in 1977. He became a high school science teacher and coach in the wind-swept West Texas town of Big Lake. Twelve years later, making a half-hearted motivational bargain, he agreed to attend a pro tryout camp if his high school team made an improbable playoff appearance. They did, he did, and his rejuvenated arm fired 98 mph fastballs that earned him a shot in the minor leagues. By summer’s end, the 35-year-old rookie made an incredible major league debut for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays by striking out Texas Rangers’ shortstop Royce Clayton on four pitches.
Allen Davis’ story ranks right up there. All it needs is a big league finish, and that remarkably seems within reach for the 29-year-old Reading Phillies’ left-hander, named the Phillies’ minor league system Pitcher of the Week last week.
Davis was one of four pitchers drafted from Northwestern State’s 1998 Southland Conference championship team. He seemed on the fastest track to the majors, reaching the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Class AA affiliate in San Antonio before his first pro season ended.
His next two years with San Antonio were respectable but not spectacular. When he became eligible for the minor league version of the big leagues’ Rule 5 draft, the Montreal Expos picked up his contract, and quickly, Davis made it look like a brilliant stroke.
He was 2-2 with a 2.89 ERA after eight starts for the Harrisburg (Pa.) Senators in the 2001 season, when disaster struck. With two outs in the ninth inning of his eighth start, Davis felt a pop in his elbow. He got a game-ending ground ball on the next pitch, but “it was the worst pain I ever felt,” said Davis.
“Everything was going great, he’d pitched a great game, here I am thinking we’re heading to Triple A,” remembered Nikki, “and Allen told me he couldn’t even move his arm.”
Facing a major injury is a fear of every athlete, especially a 25-year-old minor league pitcher who can hear the clock ticking. As it turned out, overcoming the injury was only half the battle for the Davis family.
The cash-strapped Montreal organization agreed to pay for an MRI evaluation of his elbow, but team doctors told him it was a relatively minor injury and recommended arthroscopic surgery. Three months after the procedure, Davis knew he had bigger problems, but the Expos medical staff felt otherwise, telling him he’d be fine by spring training. He wasn’t, and although he continued to question the initial diagnosis, the Expos stood their ground.
Davis couldn’t pitch effectively in 2002. But because he was able to pitch at all, the Expos believed they had no liability, and released him. Suddenly, he was an unemployed 26-year-old with a wife.
Allen and Nikki came home to Texas and he took a job at a Home Depot store. His arm still throbbed, there were bills to pay and seemingly no future in baseball.
Nikki knew what her husband felt. A lifelong athlete herself, she went through five sports-related surgeries but still earned a spot on the University of Texas soccer team. Her sixth surgery ended her playing days, denying her a senior season and leaving a searing scar on her heart.
Meeting Allen in the winter of 1998 helped her move on. He was working in the garden department at a Lowe’s department store near her hometown of Duncanville and his home, White Oak. She was working inside the store.
“It was love at first sight,” she said. “Four months later, we moved off to San Antonio together, and not long after that, we were engaged.”
Her athletic background was one of the things that attracted Allen to Nikki. He couldn’t have imagined how important it would be to keeping his baseball career alive.
Back home, embittered by the unresponsive Expos medical staff, Nikki refused to accept what they’d been told.
“That last year, we felt they were leading us in the wrong direction,” she said. “Allen would wake up in the middle of the night from the pain in his elbow. When we came home, and he took the job at Home Depot, we were sick and mad and just felt disgusted. I thought, 'this is ridiculous,' and started poking around.”
The Expos weren’t sharing his medical records, leading to a fierce struggle for the right to have a third-party doctor evaluate the original MRI film. There was no place to turn and the case was all but closed. Then, a couple of wonderful things happened.
Major League Baseball took over the operations of the floundering Expos organization. After a barrage of phone calls, faxes and e-mails from Nikki, the commissioner’s office finally ordered all of Allen’s medical records released.
“Once we had all the records, I went to my orthopaedic, who has been my doctor since the eighth grade,” said Nikki. “He looked at the MRI from 2001 and right away he saw the injury was severe.”
A second opinion, from a physician working with another major league team, confirmed the Davis’ suspicions. The ligament was torn completely off the bone. After more wrangling, the Expos relented and Allen had “Tommy John” reconstructive elbow surgery in April 2003.
Winning that “David vs. Goliath” battle and getting authorization for the surgery was Wonderful News Item No. 1. That, however, wasn’t the best news.
“Once we came to terms with the situation, and we felt like our days in baseball were finished, we had decided to start a family,” said Nikki. “At the same time we found out the Expos had lied to us, we found out we were pregnant.”
Working a 40-hour week at Home Depot was no picnic for Allen. Then came the hours of rehabilitation on his elbow, with no guarantee that the surgery would work out. And oh, by the way, Nikki had a rough month-long stretch during her pregnancy that kept Allen up many nights.
“For someone to go through Tommy John surgery, knowing it may very well be a situation where you bust your butt for a year or more for nothing, it took a lot of courage on his part. The odds weren’t in our favor,” she said.
Seven months later, way ahead of schedule, Allen was throwing off a mound. In another three months, he pitched in front of a handful of scouts. With the season approaching, no big league organization was willing to give him another chance, but the Fort Worth Cats, an independent minor league franchise, offered one last shot.
Last summer, weathering an understandably slow beginning, Davis posted a 10-7 record with a 3.38 ERA in 20 starts. More important, he caught the eye of some major league teams. With three weeks left in the Class A Florida State League, the Phillies had an opening in Clearwater, and Davis didn’t waste the opportunity. He threw a shutout in his only start.
The Phillies brought him back to spring training this year, and Davis earned a place on the Class AA roster of their Reading affliate. After allowing just two runs and four hits Thursday in seven innings of Reading’s 4-2 win at Altoona, he’s off to a 3-2 start with a 2.53 ERA.
Having seen the business side of pro baseball from an unusually cold perspective, Davis realizes the odds are still stacked against him. There are other talented pitchers in the Phillies system, some who have drawn big bonuses after going high in the draft. He could keep pitching well and there may be many outside factors, not his performance, that could have the biggest influence on his chances of climbing up the ladder to Triple A and even the major leagues.
“Is it really worth it? I’d defenitely say there are more cons than pros. But here I am, sitting in the backyard of my house in Reading, Pa., on a beautiful spring day, watching my wife play with my son. I’m a pro baseball player again and I have a shot to make it to the big leagues,” he said last week. “My son gets to watch me play. I’d say it’s all paid off, because if the end comes this time, I think it’s going to come on my terms. I’m getting a fair shot and it’s only because Nikki battled and got us to this point.”
“This has been 90 percent mental and 10 percent physical,” she said, “and that’s true even considering the work he had to go through with his body and arm. The emotional wear and tear, and maintaining faith and focus in what we were trying to accomplish, was incredible. Every day, I would think about how to inspire him. I knew when he got healthy, he’d be ready, and he is.”
During his rehab, Nikki gave Allen a St. Rita’s medallion, honoring the Patron Saint of Impossible Dreams. She had a baseball player engraved on the back of the medallion.
And the Davis family purchased their own copy of “The Rookie.” Pardon them if they have the dialog nailed by now. The storyline was just too perfect a tonic.
“When you watch ?The Rookie,’ oh, my God, can you imagine that? Walking out into the stadium, reaching the major leagues, knowing you belong there? I fantasize about making it every day,” said Allen.
“Sure, you fantasize about making the big leagues. That’s the ultimate goal. Nobody dreams about playing minor league baseball, but it’s part of the deal. There’s no way to predict the future, but ultimately, I feel I can pitch in the big leagues.”
That belief is reinforced each night when they watch familiar faces providing big league highlights on ESPN’s “SportsCenter” and “Baseball Tonight.”
“You see guys who you played with and played against,” said Allen. “We know somebody in every game. They got their shot first. Those guys made the most of it, and they may have had some luck along the way. The way I see it, I’m getting my shot now, and we’ll see where this leads.”
He enjoys keeping tabs on two of his former Demon teammates, four-year big league veteran pitcher Brian Lawrence of the Padres and Brandon Emanuel, a second-round draft pick in 1998 who has overcome Tommy John surgery himself to reach the Padres’ Triple-A affiliate, the Portland Beavers. The family computer is also bookmarked to www.nsudemons.com so Allen can monitor the fortunes of this year’s Demon baseball team.
“They’re nationally ranked, which is awesome. It sounds like they have a great team,” he said. “Nikki and I argue over where Austin’s going to college. She wants him to be a Longhorn and I want him to be a Demon.”
He even finds a rose that has sprouted through the rubble his baseball career seemed just a couple of years ago.
“You hear people say all the time, ?I wish I had known then what I know now.’ Well, with what I’ve been through, I know now what I need to know,” Davis said. “It’s been a crazy process but it’s toughened me up. I’ve learned so much about myself and about competing and about this game of baseball.”
Whether or not his playing days carry him to the big leagues, Davis will get a taste of the majors Monday night, May 9. Reading heads east to Philadelphia to play rival Trenton at the Phillies’ brand new Citizens Bank Park. Guess who is scheduled to get the start for Reading?
But he’s not overly excited. Rotations can shift in the minors as often as the wind changes. In any case, Davis will get a look at the big league digs he one day hopes to occupy, but the odyssey he and Nikki have experienced has shown him more important things.
“No offense, but after I hang up my glove, I’m not going to work at Lowe’s or Home Depot again,” he said. “That’s not my thing. All I’ve seen, my expertise is in baseball, and at some level, I can be a positive influence.”
While he plans to spend his life around baseball, the game is no longer his top priority.
“In spring training this year, Nikki was at the park every day with Austin. So many other guys thought that was awesome. Their wives or girlfriends were off shopping or sitting at the hotel, but Nikki was there supporting me, and because she’s been an athlete, she understands what I’m going through,” he said.
“She’s good enough that when I want to throw and do some long toss, she grabs a glove and comes outside with me. I’ve got a workout partner and a partner in life and I couldn’t be happier.”
About 2,400 miles away, on a sunny spring day in Reading, Pa., you could hear Allen Davis smiling through the phone.
