EPILOGUE

From backup catcher to A-list celebrity? It still cracks me up. But within sixty days of that last game in my career, Ryan, my agent, informed me that I had crossed some strange threshold and my story had put me in the “A-list” category. Me? Not possible!

There was a time when I wondered what I’d do after I retired as a player in the major leagues. But, of course, the 2016 season with the Chicago Cubs changed my life beyond belief. I have to give the credit to my teammates, the Cubs organization, and Cubs fans everywhere. Where does a role player get this much attention? How do I go from the baseball dugout to Dancing with the Stars? It’s a script that would have been tossed out for being just too unrealistic.

My success—and the reason I could even write a book like this—came because others invested in me. Guys like Brian McCann and Dave Roberts; college coaches Hal Baird and Andy Lopez; general managers Kevin Towers and Wayne Krivsky; all the managers and players, all the people beyond even the ones I’ve mentioned in this book. Each of them has affected my life in positive ways they don’t even know. They changed me as a person and what I believe in, what I value as important, what winning is, and what being a good person is. Everything that we’ve talked about in this book is because the people I’ve met have changed my mindset and made me better. I feel like I’ve stolen a piece from thousands of folks and made it my own. I owned my behavior and, at the end of my career, I’ve gotten all this love. That’s crazy. But I also feel there’s so much more to go and so much more growth in who I will become. I’m closing a chapter in my life, but I am not closing the book.

I want to be a great husband and a great dad, so how do I do that? What does that look like? I want to be excited about my kids’ events and still show them that Dad works hard. This is what Dad believes in. This is the example that Dad is going to set. And these are the qualities that Dad expects out of me. I want to see that play out, whatever else happens in my life.

For my entire life I have enjoyed being out of my comfort zone. I want to continually test myself. That’s how you learn, right? On January 13, 2017, the Cubs named me as a special assistant to baseball operations. I joked I was the organization’s newest intern. Honestly, as I write this in February 2017, I still don’t even know what I’m going to be doing exactly. I expect it to be a learning process and the Cubs offered me the opportunity to grow in my baseball knowledge and try to learn different aspects of what goes on in the organization. I will have my fingers in a number of different elements, from scouting to working within the front office. I was also hired by ESPN as an MLB analyst. The network announced I would provide analysis on SportsCenter, in the studio, and even join some game broadcasts. I worked with ESPN as an analyst during the postseason in 2014 and 2015 and really enjoyed it.

Working for the Cubs and for ESPN were easy decisions. Agreeing to join the twenty-fourth season of Dancing with the Stars on ABC took some thought. Initially I wasn’t really keen on the idea, but the more I thought about it, the more I figured, Why not? If stepping outside my comfort zone was a theme, why not dance outside it? I was told by the show’s producers that I was the first professional baseball player ever to compete, but more important, they convinced me it would be fun. They said my personality was perfect for the show because I don’t take myself seriously, and the show, despite the competition, doesn’t take itself too seriously.

I knew that former professional football player and Hall of Famer Emmitt Smith was winner of season three with Cheryl Burke, and it changed his life forever. Hall of Fame receiver Jerry Rice finished second on season two and the experience introduced him to people all over the country and the world who never realized he played professional football. I mean, this is a guy who’s widely considered to be the greatest wide receiver in NFL history. And here I am, a backup catcher! Who would believe it? I told ABC yes, and I started Pilates classes to help with my flexibility and posture, just in case! I didn’t have any expectations for myself, but I was looking forward to the experience.

I look back on my baseball career and I still pinch myself. Players like me might get lost in the shuffle because the game has changed and analytics are so important. Character matters, too, not just numbers. Cubs president Theo Epstein said his appreciation has grown for how much the human element matters and how much winning-focused players can impact the rest of the team and create something that’s maybe immeasurable but also valuable.

For the same reason that a pitcher’s velocity might be overvalued—he throws hard but his fastball doesn’t have any movement and he’s hit all over the park—maybe to some degree a player’s track record is incorrectly taken into consideration. It’s hard to incorporate as a core element of your team-building philosophy, but it’s incredibly important. There are a lot of talented teams year after year that don’t win because they might have too many selfish players and don’t have the players who are conscious of building the right environment. I would never go as far as to say it’s more important than talent. Obviously, you need the talent to begin with, but talent alone isn’t enough.

That’s what we accomplished as World Series champions in 2016 with the Chicago Cubs and in 2013 with the Boston Red Sox. I am so thankful I was able to play fifteen years in the major leagues. I evolved as a player, as a teammate, and as a man.

But I am no different than anyone else.

I just always thought of myself as a regular guy who had a pretty cool job.