The problem with “happily ever after” is that it’s too simple. It’s a three-word eject button, invented to help storytellers declare “the end” when they really just mean “Now that the good part has happened, this is where we stop paying attention. There’s more after this, but it’s tedious.”
But we can’t sentimentally declare “the end” on real-life stories at the point where they feel best. Rarely is that more true than in stories of addiction recovery, where success looks less like a parade or a party, and more like one more day, benign or unpredictable. “Happily ever after” just means you successfully avoided “the end” yet again. Little starting lines and little finish lines, one stacking on top of the next with only a periodic pause to acknowledge these meaningful numbers with gratitude.
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When the Texas Rangers line up on the Kauffman Stadium third-base line on Thursday for MLB’s latest starting line, Matt Bush will be roughly 3,298 little starting lines deep into recovery — more than nine years since the drunk-driving incident that permanently injured motorcyclist Tony Tufano, who was 72 at the time. The story is well-documented, and was not the lone incident. There was the nightclub assault shortly after the draft. Another bar fight in Arizona. The assault of two lacrosse players in a high school parking lot in California. The party in Florida where he threw a baseball at a woman. From the time the San Diego Padres made Bush the first pick of the 2004 draft until his arrest in 2012, it seemed that Bush had a compulsion to pick the worst available option at any given moment.
And then he was in a Florida correctional facility, pleading no contest to driving under the influence with serious bodily injury. A plea bargain resulted in six other charges being dropped but carried a sentence of 51 months — a number he now wears on his jersey as a reminder every time he takes the mound.
“I remember those times when I was sitting in jail, and prison, and just saying, ‘There’s no way I can live like this,'” Bush says now. “When I get out of here, there’s no way. This is not living a life.'”
Bush served 39 of those 51 months, then moved to a halfway house. It was there that he reconnected withRoy Silver, someone he had known during his time with the Blue Jays organizations. Silver was best known for his role in helping Josh Hamilton emerge from the depths of addiction to return to baseball, but he had worked with many others. While he mentored Bush, he brought a catcher’s glove to a Golden Corral parking lot. They talked, Bush threw, and Silver recognized there might be hope for Bush, off and on the field. On Silver’s recommendation, the Rangers gave Bush a shot, and somehow, improbably, he made it to the big leagues on May 13, 2016, roughly 12 years after being drafted and more than four years after the last time he had pitched against professional hitters.
Not only did he make the big-league club by June, but he thrived, winning the first of seven games in relief on the day Rougned Odor fought Jose Bautista, and posting an ERA of 2.48 with 61 strikeouts and 14 walks in just under 62 innings.
Happily ever after, right?
Of course not — not from a baseball standpoint, at least. After two successful seasons in the big leagues, he started the 2018 season with shoulder soreness then was demoted to Triple A early in the year after a slow start. Bush’s first win happened in a game with a brawl, and on June 13, 2018 — after Robinson Chirinos and Matt Kemp’s benches-clearing dustup — Bush made a ninth-inning error that allowed the winning run to score. Two days later, he was placed on the IL with an elbow strain.Later that year, he underwent surgery on his UCL that was meant to help him avoid Tommy John surgery.
Then on July 2, 2019, after back-to-back rehab appearances in Frisco, and on the cusp of his returning to the big leagues, the news landed:
“Unfortunately, Matt had a setback with his elbow,” then-GM Jon Daniels announced. On the recording, a reporter can be heard muttering a reaction: “sh*t.”
“Yeah, that was all of our reactions,” Daniels continued, wryly. “Except, somehow, Matt — he’s been some kind of positive.”
Bush says he never considered any outcome but a comeback. The same mentality that allowed him to overcome a bad outing when he was in the big leagues was now going to be the mindset that got him through his second Tommy John surgery (and third UCL surgery) and the subsequent rehab in his mid-30s. After all, he had cleared higher odds than this.
“Last time (in 2016), I was definitely in an environment where it was seriously a dream, if I could come back and play Major League Baseball,” Bush says now. “I didn’t know if I had to go to independent ball and play; (or) where my opportunity could come. … Now, I’ve been just living at home, still with the Rangers, just on rehab. So my whole mindset was always just, ‘Take care of myself, get back; continue to rehab, do what it takes.'”
But while the on-field story was in a tumultuous place, for once there was a certain sense of “happily ever after” in Bush’s personal life. He married Claire in November 2017, and the couple welcomed their first child during the winter storms in Texas in February, just a couple of days before Matt flew to Arizona for spring training.
“I think the thing that stands out for me is just the maturity level, just to watch this guy mature as a man,” says manager Chris Woodward. “I love having conversations with him about life, because he’s got a really good perspective on it. I wish that a lot of guys would take that to heart and learn from that, because so many guys think that this is it — (baseball) is how they’re defined; how they perform and what people think of them on the field. And that’s so far from the truth. It’s just what we happen to do. And we love it, but at the same time, it can’t define us as human beings. And Matt’s a good representative of that.”
Who could have foreseen Matt Bush becoming an example of maturity, one of the veteran leaders expected to show the big-league ropes to a very young team of baseball players?
“When I showed up here, Adrián Beltré and Prince Fielder, and Josh Hamilton were still around. I mean, this team, to me, was unbelievable,” Bush says, reminiscing on his first year with the Rangers. “I wish Beltré was still here. I really miss that guy. It’s so cool being around a Hall of Famer every day and trying to follow his example, and such a great person and teammate he always was. But just remembering the people that came before me. And how older guys that have experience can really set an example around how they do things and how they talk and how they treat others. So I just want to try and pass the baton and do what I can, so that guys one day can say, ‘It was great to be around Matt, and he helped me out.'”
That maturity has informed the way he thinks about pitching as well. Whereas he once leaned heavily on his triple-digit fastball, now he says he has spent time learning how to use his off-speed and breaking pitches more effectively, allowing them to set up the fastball to succeed. When he finished his first outing, he told his manager he felt like he was really pitching for the first time.
“It’s great to be able to do that so that I don’t have to rely on blowing it by a guy at 99,” Bush said earlier this month. “It’s more fun, seeing the bad swings on the breaking balls, and then throwing a fastball where they’re fooled by it.”
The questions are going to come. Matt Bush knows this. He has never shied away from them before, and he does not now.
“I understand,” he says when the questions come about his past, and they do still come.Nine years is a long time, but the damage done doesn’t just disappear when the little beginnings and endings get to some specific number.
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“I’ll never forget, and I always have that perspective,” he says. “So no matter what happens in my life today or tomorrow, I can always use that to go back and say, ‘It’s gonna be OK.’ I’ve learned to move forward, no matter what happens — tragedy, heartache, loneliness, whatever it is — it’s the only thing that I can do in my life, is to pick things up and move forward and continue to grow and get stronger.
“Move forward,” “grow,” “get stronger” — all propulsive turns of phrase. Does it ever feel like the destruction that marked his old life is a distant memory?
“To me, it’s not. It really isn’t,” Bush says. “Being incarcerated for four years, it’s a pretty traumatic experience, so it’s something that will definitely never feel too far-removed. But with where I am in my life and my family with my wife, it’s … yeah. She doesn’t really let me go there.
“(I’m) constantly in the mindset of ‘one day at a time.’ Trusting in God, leaning on my family, my loved ones, and my support group,” he continues. “I try never to lose my perspective on where I was and the harm that I caused, and just the overall hurt, depression — (that’s) not the way I ever envisioned living my life. So one day at a time, things got better, and I don’t ever want it to change. So definitely, definitely one day at a time and continue to stay sober and grateful, honest, and a loving husband and father. That’s all I can do.”
It’s that day-by-day perspective that informs how he sees the game as well — a fact that is not lost on his manager.
“He’s like, ‘You know what: every time I have that ball in my right hand, and I get a chance to go play in a major-league game, I’m grateful,'” says Woodward of their conversations. “(Shin-soo) Choo talked about that as an older player; I felt that way, as an older player. At some point, it’s no longer about just the grind, and ‘I got to get there, I got to get there.’ It’s just ‘No, you know what? I’m gonna stay in the moment and live out today. And that’s all I can do.’ He talks about that openly and he’s worked really hard on the mental side; calming his emotions. … I can’t wait to hand him the ball the first time, and watch him go out and compete in a big-league game again.”
And so, Bush hopes, 3,298 will become 3,299, 3,300 and so on … and this is where the happily ever after would go, if such a thing applied to real-life stories. It doesn’t — recovery doesn’t come with any “ever after” guarantees — we just have to conclude this story somewhere.
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But acknowledging that life must go on after we are finished telling this part of the story is not meant to imply that there is no joy in recovery. On the contrary, with no big finish line to cross, you are free — or forced, or maybe both — to find the immediate and present happiness in each of those little starting lines and finish lines as they come and go. There won’t ever be a “we made it, once and for all” moment but there can be an “I made it through today” waiting for you at every little finish line. When you are present in those little beginnings and endings, it can help you take off the weight of the past and the future that would pull you in either direction.
Matt Bush started this morning. He plans to finish this night. And tomorrow, he plans to start again, and finish again.
(Photo of Bush: Richard Rodriguez / Getty Images)
