Willie Calhoun’s tough 2020 with Rangers started when Dodgers’ Game-4 starter hit him
Of course, it was an accident. That goes without saying.
An early-spring training start. A promising pitcher and a promising hitter who became friends while playing together in the minor leagues.
Maybe it would have been better if they hadn’t known each other, though any pitcher feels like crud whenever he hits any hitter in the jaw with a fastball.
The hitter was Willie Calhoun, the Texas Rangers outfielder acquired in 2017 from the Los Angeles for Yu Darvish.
The pitcher was left-hander Julio Urias, a former Dodgers prospect who has been one of the pitching heroes this postseason and is scheduled to start Saturday in Game 4 of the 2020 World Series at Calhoun’s ballpark.
Seven months later, Urias still feels rotten that his 95-mph heater to Calhoun ended up in Calhoun’s face rather than the catcher’s glove.
“It affected me a lot,” Urias said Friday before Game 3 against the Tampa Bay Rays. “It was really sad. I was really scared when it happened. He was a teammate of mine in Triple A.
“He’s a really good batter, and you can’t miss inside. Unfortunately, that pitch missed and it hit him.”
Calhoun’s and Urias’ seasons are quite a contrast.
The baseball world is watching Urias become a star for MLB’s best team.
Calhoun’s season was a disaster, for multiple reasons, on a Rangers team that finished with the second-worst record in baseball.
Urias is right where every baseball player wants to be.
Calhoun tried to get as far away from baseball as possible after the season.
He was hit by Urias on March 8 in the first inning of a Cactus League game at Surprise Stadium. The count was 1-1.
Calhoun went to the dirt and stayed there, hit in the jaw. It was fractured and required surgery and for the jaw to be wired shut. The Rangers projected the earliest Calhoun would be ready to play again was late May.
The coronavirus pandemic made his return moot, but Calhoun was never the hitter he was in 2019 once the 60-game 2020 season started. At the end, after he hit .190 with only one home run, he said he needed a mental break.
At his parents’ home in the Bay Area since the season ended, Calhoun said he is in a better place mentally. He has started working out again and in a few weeks is headed to Los Angeles to train with Jamal Liggin, who trains NFL stars Odell Beckham Jr., Saquon Barkley and Jarvis Landry.
“I’ve been enjoying my time with my family,” Calhoun said. “I’ve detached enough. What happened this year, there was so much stuff going on with my injuries and the social injustice stuff and off-the field stuff. I felt like everything crashed down on me at once this year.
“I know everything happens for a reason. I just needed to detach and focus on myself. Being around my family helps out a lot. I’ve been doing that and enjoying the off-season.”
Rangers manager Chris Woodward expressed concern late in the season for where Calhoun was mentally. Woodward had tried to protect Calhoun, a lefty hitter, during the 60-game season by sitting him against many lefty pitchers after the two of them discussed it after the first series of the season against Colorado.
Calhoun also had a preseason hip injury that kept him out of the Opening Day lineup and an August hamstring injury that cost him four weeks. Throw in the pandemic and the way social injustice impacted Calhoun, and he had quite a year in just six months.
But his struggles started, understandably, with getting plunked. Of his 100 at-bats, Calhoun said he wasn’t comfortable for 70 of them.
“It affected me a lot,” he said. “ I’m not going to lie to you.”
Woodward encouraged Calhoun to talk to his family and teammates, to get his feelings out there and to solve any issues. The Rangers still believe in Calhoun as a hitter, based on his 2019 season and the way he made a commitment to transform his body through better diet and conditioning.
“Some of this stuff was forced on him, some of it he couldn’t control,” Woodward said. “Some of it was performance-based. How he handled issues he had to face this year from all different angles.”
Urias has started and worked out of the bullpen for the Dodgers, who, heading into Friday night’s game, were knotted 1-1 in the World Series with the Rays at Globe Life Field. He made a critical start for them as they faced elimination in the National League Championship Series, and then closed out Game 7 to clinch the NL pennant.
He said he was glad to speak to Calhoun a few days after hitting him and again in August when the Dodgers played in Arlington. Calhoun told anyone who would ask that he and Urias had no bad blood and, in fact, were friends.
“We had a really good relationship when we were playing in the minor leagues,” Calhoun said. “I told everyone we had no problems. He’s a really good dude.”
That good dude could be on the verge of a World Series ring seven months after hitting Calhoun.
“I’m happy that he’s all right,” Urias said.
This story was originally published October 23, 2020 at 6:43 PM.
