No longer afraid, Rockies' Riley Pint opens up about his comeback journey: 'I want to be an inspiration'
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. − Colorado Rockies pitcher Riley Pint hated the drive to the ballpark.
It made him nauseous entering the baseball clubhouse.
He cringed just putting on the uniform.
Here he was, the fourth pick in the 2016 amateur draft, a high-school kid out of Kansas who could throw 102-mph, receiving a $4.8 million signing bonus, and he suddenly no longer wanted to be a baseball player.
So, he quit.
“I was done,’’ Pint, 26, told USA TODAY Sports. “I didn't really want to think about it. I didn’t want to talk about it. I was tired of being a failure.
“I knew there was life after baseball.’’
Pint, still stuck at Class A five years later, told the Rockies after 10 appearances in June, 2021, he was done. He called his parents in Kansas City, told them he was coming home. He took an on-line accounting class. Purchased some homes to flip on the real-estate market. Went on a fishing trip with his dad to Walker, Minnesota. He went to Vail. Spent a week hanging out in Wyoming. Traveled to New York City.
He played on a beer league softball team, too, but baseball was no longer on his mind.
At last, he felt free.
“You know, ever since I was probably a sophomore in high school, I got all of that attention and stuff,’’ Pint says. “I get drafted, go to the minor leagues, and then there’s all that failure. Me, being so young, I just didn’t realize how to handle it.
“It was kind of a combination of not having the results for so many years, injuries didn’t help, and it just came to a point where I was done with it.
“I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to worry about it. Nothing.’’
Pint’s confidence was shot. And so was his control. When he asked his dad to play catch on the street in front of their house, just like they did almost every day growing up, he had absolutely no idea where the ball was going.
“He threw 30 balls,’’ said Neil Pint, Riley’s father. “I think I caught one of them. I wore a path across the street to pick up the balls.
“It was just awful.’’
The throwing sessions stopped in the front yard. It was too embarrassing. They shifted to the back yard where no one could see him.
Now, here he is, three years after officially retiring on June 6, 2021, Pint is back in the Rockies’ major-league clubhouse, trying to make their opening-day roster in what could be one of baseball’s greatest feel-good stories of 2024.
Pint has made six appearances this spring, and has pitched six scoreless innings, giving up just two hits with four walks and five strikeouts, dazzling hitters with his slider.
“You would see the smile before,’’ said Rockies farm director Chris Forbes, “but you never felt like it was authentic. It was forced. But you look at him now, he doesn’t have to fake a smile. He doesn’t have to fake being happy. He’s just being real because he’s such a genuine guy.
“Riley Pint is back to being Riley Pint.’’
Forbes, who has a dramatic comeback story of his own, overcoming non-Hodgkin lymphoma 25 years ago and given just nine months to live after being diagnosed with two inoperable brain tumors, drove to Kansas City this past winter to visit Pint. They sat and talked for three hours at a barbeque joint near his Overland Park, Kansas, home. Forbes never pressed for a decision. He didn’t try to persuade him to return. He just sat back and listened.
“I just kind of let him unpack,’’ Forbes said. “We had conversations before, but they were completely organic. I didn’t ever ask him to come back. I had an idea that he was going to come back, he kept saying “we or us’ a lot.
“Two, maybe three days later after our lunch, he gave me a call.
“He was ready to come back.’’
Pint, 6-foot-5, 225 pounds, still doesn’t know exactly where everything went wrong. There were bouts of wildness when he pitched for St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Overland Park, Kansas, but nothing like this. But once he got drafted, he felt the need to be perfect. The more he tried to be perfect, the more pressure he put on himself.
He still had the 100-mph fastball, but too often had no clue where it was going. There were times he’d bounce the balls in front of home plate, or throw balls off the backstop. It was painful to watch.
He saw four, maybe five sports psychologists. He talked to coaches. Confided in teammates. Nothing seemed to work.
“Things just going sideways,’’ Rockies manager Bud Black says. “The harder we tried, the worst it got. The minor-league people, the player-development people, the psychologists, he was just probably smothered with advice.
“That was so overwhelming, it just became too much.’’
Pint felt like such a failure. He let down the Rockies, who projected him to be an All-Star pitcher. He let down his dad and family, who couldn’t wait to brag about their son. He let down his friends, who wanted to be around a major-league star.
One minute, you’re the fourth-best amateur player in the country, ranking 51st among all prospects in baseball in 2017, and the next, you’re still stuck in Class A with control problems, desperately searching for answers.
“To be honest, it was just awful, seeing what he was going through,’’ said Neil Pint. “He’d call me after every outing, and I was running out of stuff to say. I was trying to be positive, but I couldn’t come up with anything. Sometimes, I feel like I let him down because I felt so helpless.
“I was shocked at how bad it had become, but I couldn’t let him know it. He used to have so much confidence, nothing would ever get to him. And then to find out he had this anxiety, where he knew just walking to the ballpark it wasn’t going to be a good day, it was miserable on all of us.
“We all were hurting.’’
It was the COVID-19 season in 2020, when there was no minor-league season, that turned out to be a blessing for Pint. It was when he was able to meet Rockies reliever Daniel Bard, who was making is own comeback after not pitching in the big leagues for seven years. He had been retired for two years working as a player mentor and skills coach for the Arizona Diamondbacks, when he decided to make his comeback.
Bard told him all about his story, going through the similar anxiety issues, suddenly unable to throw strikes, only to return and wind up becoming the Comeback Player of the Year in 2020.
“It was the first time I met Daniel, and I asked him if I could go to dinner with him and talk,’’ Pint said. “I’d been struggling, and I know he had gone through the same thing. I remember the first thing he said to me was, 'You know, it’s Ok to step away if you need to. You don’t need to be Superman. If you can’t continue to do this, and you’re not enjoying what you’re doing, really, it’s Ok to step away.’
“I’m like, 'No, I would never do that. I’ll be fine.’ I mean, it’s the first time I ever heard that because I never really thought it was an option. I always thought I had to keep grinding until, honestly, they released me. That’s when I felt it going to be over.’’’
Less than a year later, after making 10 relief appearances with Class A Spokane, going 1-0, with a 3.38 ERA, walking 10 batters and striking out 17 in 10 ⅔ innings, he succumbed to the struggle.
And retired.
“What Daniel told me always stuck with me,’’ Pint said. “I’m not saying that’s the reason I left, but he let me know it was ok. I knew it was time.’’
Said Bard: “It’s just life, man. The culture says you’ve got to keep grinding. You got to put your head down and fight through it all, but sometimes that’s not how you fix things. You let things settle down. I’m a big believer that when something’s not right in your mind, it will heal given the right environment, and the right time, just like any other body part.
“Sometimes, being in a competitive environment and continuing to push every day is not the right environment for it to heal. It’s like ripping the band-aid off the cut, and keep ripping the scab, it’s never going to heal.
“If you never take your foot off the gas pedal, you’re never going to give yourself a chance to see things from a different perspective.’’
It took time to heal, but Pint realized that just because he struggled on the field didn’t mean he was a failure in life. He was a loving, engaging, sensitive person. He spent more time with his girlfriend, Jamie Thalen, they got engaged, bought a house together in Scottsdale, and got married in December.
“I finally understood there was more to life than baseball,’’ Pint said. “Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t mean I’m sitting here and saying, 'Baseball isn’t important.’ For a lot of guys, it’s everything. It means a lot to me too.
“But it doesn’t mean that if you fail at baseball, you were going to go home and fail at being a husband, or fail at being a dad. So for me, I just learned how to separate the two and be able to leave the park and not take it home with me. That was the biggest thing for me. I would go home and think about baseball all day long, and that just put me in a bad spot.’’
Pint now refuses to even think about his performance, or even the game of baseball, the moment he walks out of the Rockies’ complex and drives home. When he gets up in the morning, he now looks forward to driving to the ballpark, seeing his teammates, and getting back in the daily grind.
Baseball has become a sheer joy again just like when he was a kid.
He even got a slight taste of the big leagues last year when he was called up to pitch on Mother’s Day, with his family flying to Denver. He faced five batters against the Cincinnati Reds, walked three of them, gave up a double, and was taken out after one-third inning.
It was an ugly outing, but, oh, so gratifying.
He finally made it to The Show.
“It was special just kind of seeing where I was at one point in my career, and see how it transpired,’’ Pint said, “it was a really cool and neat feeling for me. I obviously haven’t accomplished anything yet for me personally, but that was a good start.’’
This time around, he plans to stick around a lot longer, and prove to everyone, particularly himself, he can be a major league pitcher.
He’s no longer afraid.
He has conquered his demons.
And, most important, he has the confidence he belongs.
“I want to be an inspiration, I want to have one of those stories,’’ Pint said, “that you look at kids and can say, “Anything’s possible. You can basically do anything you want.’ I want to be that guy. I want to spread my word. I want to help guys that are struggling. I want to be a resource for guys.
“I feel like I’ve kind of been through it all at this point in my career, so I have a pretty good perspective on how to handle things. Seeing the other side, I know there is more to life than just baseball. But at the same time, it’s always been a game that I enjoyed playing since I was a kid, one that I always dreamt about being on that big stage.
“Now that I’m finally here, I feel I like I can do it.
“I can really do it.’’
Pint smiled, turned around, grabbed his glove, and put on his spikes.
It was time to play baseball, and it never felt so good.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Rockies' Riley Pint finds perspective in baseball after time away
