This week’s story is one that is very dear to my heart and one that I have been a part of for almost the entire journey. Not as a key player or even a main character but as a supporter, a cheerleader, and a friend.
I consider the subject of this story to be one of my best friends and I wasn’t expecting how emotional I personally would be while putting this together. I hope whoever stumbles across this piece of writing reads it to its entirety, as it is a true American story of love and loss.
There is so much meaning behind the title of this and I want to be clear that Nick was not an Army Ranger. I do not want to disrespect anyone in the armed forces and add a fake connotation that he was, even though the title reflects the story almost perfectly.
Ever since I created Babes Who Ball I’ve wanted to tell this story. I’ve wanted to be the one who articulates the feelings and the struggles faced throughout this story. So I really hope I tell it well. Not for myself but for him, his family and for those who understand the feeling of discouragement and wanting to change things you know you cannot change. And thus it begins, The Army Ranger.
As he sat in his car at a local gas station in Sharon Connecticut; a small town nestled in the Berkshires, emotions unhinged, looking for a distraction, anything at all. It was the third day of the 2014 MLB draft and Nick had been talking with the Texas Rangers for a few days now. Although the communication was present, each day went by without a call. Anxious to shake the nerves that possessed his body he took a drive from a friends graduation party to a local gas station where his phone finally rang. With a pick in the 40th round (the last round of the draft) Nick Dignacco’s dreams of playing professional baseball finally came true.
Nick is one of four boys in a very close family. A family dynamic I’ve been lucky to impose myself on. I’ve spent holidays, dinners, and a lot of time with their family and I consider them to be people who will always be in my life. I argue with the Dignacco brothers like they are my own. I care about them like they are family. I consider his fiancé a sister (more like a twin) and I know the friendship Nick and I have is one that will last forever. Once again painting a vivid picture of the emotional connection I personally have to this story.
An exceptional journey preluded to his moment of being drafted. As I mentioned before Nick grew up in a small town of gravel roads, hills of green, local farm grounds and country charm. Sharon was a small town in Connecticut with just about equal distance to the state boarders of New York and Massachusetts. Playing baseball in the northeast wasn’t always easy, especially in Nick’s town. Although they had high school baseball programs your real ticket to a scholarship was playing with an independent team or league. Nick was a member of Team Connecticut Baseball for 2 years a highly regarded travel baseball in the northeast whose graduates include players who are currently in the MLB. The opportunity to play with TCB opened a few doors for Nick, one of them more unorthodox than others, which was something Nick was very aware of.
After speaking with a few college programs in the northeast, Nick chose to continue his baseball career as a member of Army Baseball team. For those of you who don’t know, Army, and otherwise known as the United States Military Academy, which is otherwise known as West Point, is the armies only public service academy. Not only are you attending a college, but pending you survive all 4 years, you’ll graduate with a degree and immediately be commissioned into the United States Army as a 2nd Lieutenant.
Nick’s consideration to attend West Point didn’t come until an official visit.
“When I was in high school, West Point was the last thing I was thinking of. I was dead set on playing D1 college baseball, but didn’t ever consider the academy. That was until the assistant coach at Army called me and invited me for an unofficial visit. That visit opened up a whole new world to me that not only included a chance to realize my dream to play D1 baseball, but also an opportunity to receive a “free” world class education, serve my country, and challenge myself physically and mentally. I visited some other schools in the Northeast and set up official visits at 5 schools, but after my official visit at West Point, I committed there…”
And just like that Nick not only chose a college, he chose a future. A future completely different than one he had ever expected for himself.
I wondered what it was about the visit to West Point that made him so sure he wanted to attend college there.
“what it ultimately came down to was the challenge of it all. When I look back, I definitely was not prepared for what I was getting myself into, but there was an opportunity there for the taking and I would’ve regretted it the rest of my life if I didn’t at least see if I could make it.”
College to most people meant 10 hours of class a week, maybe 10 more hours of studying, and otherwise time was spent getting into trouble and making memories. Bad decisions, fake ID’s, all the ways you and I can describe the best 4 years of our lives. Not for those who attend West Point. Being a student athlete at the academy looked very different for Nick compared to playing a professional sport in a big conference. He described it to me as “business as usual.” He went on to elaborate on some occurrences that took place during practice, nothing that seemed “business” or “usual” to me.
“There are just things you come to accept like running 5 miles if you’re late to any team event, having the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dempsey, come onto your field and casually chat with the team, having practice on the field when it’s 30 degrees out in December, having Blackhawks fly over your field during mid-week games, or getting to play the Yankees. The list of things that make it such a unique experience goes on and on.”
What once seemed stressful, Nick’s memories of being a student athlete in the most intense environment of rigorous academic requirements, physically demanding challenges, and other unusual aspects of his daily life has not left him jaded. He recalls his experience as difficult and challenging while ultimately creating the mold of who he was going to be as a person.
When discussing his experience at West Point he was in a complete trance of reflection and apparent self-awareness. He went on to explain an unorthadox aspect of his experience.
“One thing that I think truly captures the experience of being an athlete at West Point was when I got elbow surgery and missed my junior season. Our team made it to the NCAA tournament and because I was injured, I couldn’t travel. And because I couldn’t travel, I had to start my summer military training. It was surreal doing training, not showering for days, sleeping 2 hours a night, eating MREs, and lugging pounds of equipment through the woods, not even knowing how the team was doing because we weren’t allowed to use our cell phones. I remember thinking ‘this is absolutely insane, what am I doing out here.’ Needless to say, I wasn’t the most positive person during that time. But you remember it’s what you signed up for and you just do it.”
Any past or present athlete reading this understands the excruciating feeling of being injured and unable to contribute to their team in a big spot. You could even empathize with the feeling of not knowing where their team stood in a big situation. Having those thoughts in your head during a summer training of learning combat tactics in a simulated experience is a lot of responsibility to take on, but then again, Nick knew that this is what he signed up for, “yes I was frustrated and pissed off but I understood that there was no way out of it.”
Tommy John surgery kept him from the game his entire junior year so when his senior season rolled around, Nick wasn’t sure what to expect from himself and what his place on the team was going to be. Evidently, he was named the squads #1 starter and found himself starting huge games like the nationally televised game 1 of the Army Navy series in Annapolis.
The draft happened a few weeks after the academies graduation so Nick returned home to Sharon waiting to learn the fate of his future.
“I watched the first two days of the draft (rounds 1 through 10), and knew pretty quickly it was going to come down to the third day to see if I would get selected. I was watching the third day of the draft at a buddy’s graduation party and they had it on the radio. I left when they were at the 30th round because I was too nervous to be around anyone. I started to drive home and stopped at a gas station so I could follow the final few rounds on my phone. Each time the Rangers were on the clock my heart started racing and each time it wasn’t my name. Finally the 40th and final round started and the Rangers were towards the beginning. I remember seeing them as the next team to pick as my phone began to ring. It was the scout for the Rangers telling me they drafted me. I thanked him and hung up the phone. It was a pretty emotional moment, I had to get it together so I could drive home and celebrate with my family. I had a couple drinks with the family that night and was on a plane out to Spokane, Washington to play for the Rangers short season affiliate the Spokane Indians.”
I remember this day so clearly. My family and I constantly checked to see if Nick’s name was called. We sat outside together during a beautiful Californian summer night checking twitter one last time, hoping to see him picked. And he was. Miles and miles away I was proud.
I wondered how Nick would respond to everything. Was it going to be “business as usuall” or was a traditionally unemotional person going to let everything happening to him sink in. I called Nick with no answer but quickly received a text saying he couldn’t talk and would reach out soon. I realized that his emotions were finally released knowing his childhood dreams were becoming reality.
Arriving in Washington, Nick was about to be in a situation he hadn’t been in for a while, and not in the way you’d expect someone heading into minor league baseball would be. Nick was about to have the opportunity to play baseball with absolutely no other obligations. He wasn’t a West Point cadet first and a baseball player second. For the firs time in 4 years, there was nothing else in the way of him and the game. Nick was about to play ball the way he remembered playing as a young kid in Connecticut.
Concluding an incredible summer filled with racking up mini accomplishments all while getting a taste of what playing in the Rangers organization would entail, he was to return to his life in the Army. He explained to me the technicalities of the transition more in depth, “the deal with the Army was that I could play the summer after graduation, then owed roughly 2 years back to the Army before I could request my early release. After the 2014 season in Spokane, I went to Fort Lee, VA for 4 months for my ordnance officer training, and then to Fort Campbell, KY, my duty station for the next year and a half.” Just about 2 years later, the long process of eventually being released by the Army to return to professional baseball was granted, something that was not a sure thing to happen.
“I submitted paperwork for an early release to pursue my baseball career in June of 2016 and was granted that release in November. I was sitting at my desk and I received an email that said I was going to get out. I honestly was so emotional. It felt like being drafted all again. You don’t ever know what is going to happen and I was told that it was a long shot. If the right people didn’t sign off, I would have to say in the army for another 2 years, so for Army leadership to say ‘hey, let’s give this guy a chance to go live out his dream’ is pretty cool. I’ll forever be grateful to the Army for that and obviously the Rangers for allowing me to come back and fight for a roster spot.“
That spring, he would head to Arizona for his first official spring training and attempt to pick up where he left off.
Integration into anything is always a process, but reintegration into minor league baseball is a whole other beast. Nick reflected on the friends he made during his time in Spokane and how they would impact his resurgence into baseball.
“The thing I remember most vividly was seeing my old teammates from Spokane. It was so strange having been living a completely different life and then going back and seeing everybody. A lot of the guys I played with had gotten pretty far up in the minors and unfortunately that meant I wouldn’t get to play in the same spring training games and spend as much time on the field with them.”
One of the most overwhelming differences from army life to baseball life was the sense of selfishness and entitlement versus the sense of brotherhood and sacrifice. Everyone can speak on behalf of their experience differently, but coming from a work environment where it could be a matter of life and death, Nick naturally brought a different attitude to the clubhouse. “There’s a level of selfishness that I guess you have to have in the minor leagues where everyone is kind of looking out for themselves because it’s so cutthroat. Guys get released and they’re just gone the next second. I certainly had to adjust pretty quickly. Luckily, there were a lot of great guys in the Rangers organization that I attempted to surround myself with to avoid some of the negativity or selfish attitudes.”
The general characteristics that make up a few players in minor league baseball is quite different to the ideologies that go into being in the military. Despite being part of a business made up of individuals working hard towards their shot in the major leagues, it’s inevitable that you would run into cases of special treatment, “there were guys you knew were getting favorable treatment or that signed for a lot of money that were just not team players and I think that’s what I struggled with the most, given my upbringing and experience at West Point and in the Army. Certain guys that just weren’t able to see the bigger picture that if everyone played together well, everyone would benefit. Looking back I think I approached minor league baseball as a whole with too much naivety. I wish I could have just ignored it and focused on myself more.” But his struggle to understand the privileged player mindset didn’t mean his experience wasn’t filled with memorable moments, “there are two memories I distinctly recall that I’ll always look back fondly on. The first was when I toed the rubber against a live hitter for the first time after having not played for 2.5 years. I had a walk, strikeout, and a double play. Pretty clean inning. It was like riding a bike, it just came right back to me. And it felt good to know I had made it back and to have coaches and teammates congratulate me. The second memory was when Adrian Beltre was doing a rehab assignment at the complex in AZ. I got a chance to face him twice. The first time he got a cheap double off me, but the second I struck him out on three pitches. I always knew I could get a big league hitter out so it was satisfying to have a chance to do that before I hung up the cleats, and to do it against a future Hall of Famer was really special, even if it was a spring game in AZ.”
Those memories meant more to Nick than you could imagine as a continuous elbow injury which originated in July of 2017 was going to torment his career to the bitter end, “It was pretty much the beginning of the end and it was almost like I could see it coming a million miles away and there was nothing I could do about it. I knew deep down that my last shot was coming the following spring and if I didn’t get healthy, I’d be kicked to the curb. I got arthroscopic surgery to clean up my elbow in the fall of 2017 in hopes of being healthy by spring. Unfortunately, I never got to where I needed to be. I started to hate going to the field because I couldn’t do anything. My throwing was limited, it hurt, I was prescribed medicine to try to help ease the pain in my elbow when I would throw, but it just refused to feel better.” What was about to happen forced Nick to really think about who he was and who he was going to be. “ On April 13th, 2018, after rehabbing through Spring Training, I was released. To be honest, I cleaned out my locker and smiled, not because I was happy, but just because I knew it was over. My dream had come to a screeching halt and it was time to look to the next step. There were a lot of emotions. I really remember feeling defeated, but relieved. Disappointed, but accomplished. Hurt, but optimistic about my future.”
So how do you carry on from something that you have given up so much for? How do you really look to the future when you’ve worked through pain and for so little for so long in the past? For Nick, he remembered his journey to where he is today.
Nick decided to look back to where he came from and not wallow in the exact moment, “unlike a lot of professional ballplayers that get released, retire, or quit, I was lucky enough to have a solid education and job experience to fall back on. I connected with the West Point Alumni Association and found a service academy career conference in Washington, D.C. that I signed up to attend. It eventually led to a job offer at Booz Allen Hamilton, a large consulting firm, that primarily does defense contracting in the DC area.” A new and quite frankly better life filled with opportunity, growth and a life of stability and no pain was on the horizon for him. He credits family and friends who reached out to him on advice on what professional life in the real world is like, “Up until then, it was always baseball. There was no backup plan. So figuring out what I wanted to do was a difficult process. I still don’t know exactly what I want to do, but I at least found somewhere to develop my career and learn new things.”
Saying goodbye to anything in your life is a heart wrenching experience. But saying goodbye to baseball goes deeper than just that. Imagine starting something at the age of 3 or 4 and having the opportunity to continue doing it well into your 20’s. That is over 20 years of pursuing a dream that is now ultimately put to a complete stop, and not by your choice. To most people it is all they know. But he lends some very valuable advice to anyone who has had to say goodbye to pursuing a career in something they love, especially professional baseball.
“It’s easy to undervalue your experience playing professional baseball but there are a lot of transferrable skills that employers look for, it’s just about how you convey that on resumes or during interviews. Things like sticking to a routine, performing under pressure, marketing yourself and the team’s brand to fans, getting out in the community for kids camps, and analyzing performance metrics are all skills developed playing a professional sport, especially baseball, and should not be undersold when looking for a job after baseball.“
These words moved me. And they apply to so many people going through transitions in their life. Just because the next chapter of your life will look different, it does not mean your previous chapter cannot have a lasting impact on the rest of your life.
As humans we are consistently learning who we are and changing accordingly. There is always time for growth and the possibility to accept new experiences. How we become successful isn’t by relying on the idea, for instance, that we played a sport really well in high school and got a lot of attention for of it. How we truly become successful is by pulling the things of value from each experience in our lives and carrying them over into the next. Not relying on the highest moments, or dwelling on the lows., but learning from the instances that tested us, and continuing on knowing we would handle them in a better way if they ever happened again. Self reflection.
It’s important to talk about what happens after baseball, or any athlete’s career ends, because I think that is the aspect of the lifestyle that is so scary. What are you left with when you strip away the on the field accomplishments? What do you do when you don’t know what to do? These questions overwhelm those who are in a position of having to say goodbye, but pulling straight from Nick’s experience, it does not have to break them.
In my opinion, the advice Nick offered is exactly what those unsure how to move on need to hear. There is so much value in being a member of a professional sports team. There are always going to be experiences and people along the way who are going to pick you up when you are down. When you’ve spent just about your entire life playing a team sport, picking others up in big spots is instilled inside you. It’s important to understand that it doesn’t have to end in the real world.
The truth is professional athletes will often thrive in any situation. It’s a competitive resilience that is undeniably remarkable. There is a dedication that is to be admired and a work ethic that will transpire no matter what they’re doing. Look forward to the excitement in knowing that your future can be stable, that you are profitable and have something to offer on a greater scale, even though your baseball organization couldn’t see it.
You could argue that both of the professional setting’s Nick has been apart of aren’t exactly the norm. After joining the real world from the Army and professional baseball, Nick has taken great strides as an individual without his prior professions while always keeping in mind that he will love and miss the game he grew up playing.
“When I look at my personal life, I see a fun and fulfilling future. I just got engaged to the love of my life, we moved to the nation’s capital to build meaningful careers, and for the first time in awhile, we are within driving distance of a lot of the people who mean the most to us – several close friends, a lot of our family, and our new friends at work. There’s a lot to look forward to and a lot left to do after dedicating the first quarter of my life to a game. We have hopes of travelling before we get married and eventually want to start a family. I always wondered how I’d handle life after baseball and I can honestly say it’s freeing to think of all the other things that life has in store for us and that life doesn’t end when baseball ends. A piece of me will always miss it, but I have no regrets and will continue looking forward.”
No regrets, and if you ask me– rightfully so. There is so much to be said about Nick’s journey, there is so much to be said about what he has been through and there is so much to be said about how he has turned unwanted endings into life fulfilled new beginnings.
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