What Happens When You Retire From MLB

Hey what's going on everyone so today we're answering the question of what happens when you retire from baseball. Now the camera shot might be a little bit different here I'm not sure if it looks good hopefully it does. My tripod again broke it fell over and broke and so it's been it's being held together by tape okay so I can't put it exactly how I want it but hopefully this looks okay. So let's talk today about what happens when you actually retire from playing baseball major league baseball minor league baseball. Now every circumstance is different I'm coming from the perspective of well I think most of you know my story first round pick played eight years professionally played a little over a year in the major leagues played about seven years in the minor leagues and retired at the age of when did I retire 29-ish right around there and so everything that I'm talking about is is for me personally I'm sure if you retire and you played 12 years in the big leagues you made 172 million dollars you're probably just going to go on your yacht and maybe travel the world okay but I really didn't have that luxury. So let me give you my perspective of what happened when I retired. So the first thing the biggest thing I think when you retire is that I get this question a lot you know you get full you get a big pension and you get a you get health insurance for life and in all these things right and so you don't have to pay for anything you get dental insurance and everything okay listen when I retired I do receive a pension at some point but it's going to be almost nothing because I only play like a year in the big leagues okay the minor league pension you know what the minor league pension bought me my minor league pension basically bought me like it bought me this book right here okay it bought me this shift by the way that just reminded me you see this shift book right here by Russell A Carlton right there it's a great book okay you want to hear something funny I read that book down in Florida a couple weeks ago and I told my wife it was a great book I told my wife he said I said you know what I'm going to reach out to Russell I'm going to get a hold of him and I just want to tell him that he did a great job it's fantastic read I enjoyed it sat by the pool I just couldn't stop reading the thing my wife's like what are you reading over there still reading that book yes I loved it anyways I wanted to reach out to Russell what do you know I woke up this morning I had an email from him and he said thank you so much he said one of his friends showed him this video with the book not this video another video with the book back there so I highly recommend if you're a baseball fan even if you're not go buy that book that's a really good book okay anyways totally lost my train of thought my pension minor league pension ain't even gonna be able to buy me that book right there okay so it's nothing forget about minor league pension as far as having insurance you know health insurance and dental insurance and stuff for the rest of your life no the second I stopped playing see you later it was gone it was like I never played I never played okay so don't think that you've got all this stuff all right now with all that being said your career ends right you get released I got released and uh independent ball teams called me okay if you don't know what independent ball teams are if they call it professional baseball but they're not affiliated with any team okay it's very difficult to go from independent ball to them back to the big leagues have people done it yeah certain people have done it but I was injured and I knew basically I had no shot and so I didn't do that so I had to go to the real world the biggest thing when it comes to retiring retiring getting fired okay just something you have to be good to say you're retired okay I don't tell anyone oh I retired from baseball I said no I stopped playing because I got fired all right so when I got fired the craziest part is you have to figure out what to do with your life and I'm sure people can relate to this in some way but for me my whole life basically beginning in college even a little bit my junior and senior let's start my junior year of high school okay baseball became the most important thing to me the most important um I mean like my family and my health and you know that type of thing obviously was very important but baseball was the most important thing in my life okay that's all I really practiced that's all I really thought about a lot when I went to college I went to college for one reason only it was to be a professional baseball player people asked me what I went to college for as far as the major I told them baseball they'd laugh and go how very funny I'm not laughing that's the truth I majored in baseball it's the only thing I really cared about the only thing I really thought about and that continued after college and it continued for eight more years of professional baseball so you got to think about that eight years of pro ball three years of college even the last two years of of high school ball now what's that 13 years I don't know I majored in baseball not in math okay I don't know how many years that is let's say it's 13 years it's a lot of years in a row to focus strictly on baseball and you always think I mean at least I always thought like I was going to have a really long baseball career I figured I was going to play in the big leagues till I was like 35 years old all of a sudden 28 years old 29 it was somewhere right in there I'm not playing anymore and boom it's like done right like you know you're playing you're playing you're playing you're playing bam you're not playing good luck find something else to do like that's how quickly it felt like it happened and so it's a real shocker I've told this before I'm not going to lie the first couple of weeks you know I was driving home and I was kind of like not relieved but I was a little bit like man like I've been struggling and been hurt and haven't playing well my my mentally I'm just not in a good spot from playing because it just it's always beating you down and and I was driving back and I'm like I'll be all right though I feel fine I feel fine I was telling my wife like yeah I feel good like we're good and then the first two weeks I felt horrible mentally like horrible it was like I woke up in the morning I was like what do I do oh I play a video game like I personally need something like really competitive that's why I like baseball a lot or really anything that's competitive is because every day I woke up I could think like okay what do I got to do to get better at baseball like what do I got to do like I like getting up and like having something to do I cannot get up and just mosey around the house you know just I don't know I mean I guess I'll do this I guess I'll do that like I can't do that I got to have something like when I get up when I want to like jump out of bed and do something like exciting and yeah I didn't know what to do so the first two weeks I was kind of like mentally just kind of like out of it I just sit there and I just you probably see me in the morning I'm just kind of like eating my cereals staring off into oblivion there's probably lucky charms and yeah it wasn't great but luckily after about two weeks I got focused in I focused in and I said you know what I've always wanted to be a coach and let's do it so I went right into my next occupation which was coaching I actually went back to Wake Forest to get my degree because I hadn't gotten that so I went got my degree I started coaching at Wake Forest I started antenna baseball and that all of a sudden like gave me something again to do one misconception that I get from a ton of people is like people always say like oh you're so lucky you got to retire at the age of 28 or 29 and never work again like hello I mean I don't know if real people are saying that or if they're like 12 year olds but like that's a long time to go in the rest of your life and and even if you make money playing baseball even if you make a million dollars or two million dollars when you're younger that's not gonna last you for the rest of your life so you're gonna have to go to work not only to make money but just to stay sane okay so no I did not retire and most people don't just retire and just not do anything again unless they've made tons and tons of millions of dollars and even then probably they don't either because they don't want to be bored all day long okay so I got right into coaching and that like all of a sudden that feeling of like I don't know what to do with my life I finally like I got the competitive juices going again and then I was back in the coaching I did antenna baseball I coached college I coached college the next year trying to figure out what I want to do and I realized antenna baseball that's what I want to do I want to train players and I want to help players in high school get to college and then I started coaching high school and then it was awesome all right so now I've gone and transitioned from there and started kind of like a whole second career for myself baseball it's not really a second career I'm still doing baseball but playing baseball for a long time and then coaching baseball for a long time so that was the big thing with retirement retirement getting fired and stopping my playing career and then the other things you kind of do is just kind of get going with life so one thing about baseball and I talked with Laura about this all the time my wife you know when you're playing baseball you're away from your family a lot I was away from her a lot and she'd come and visit me and stuff but like it's it's tough with relationships and and all that and so we ended up having our son Matty about a year after basically a year after I was done playing and so you can finally start a family I always felt like if I kept playing and playing and playing I don't know when I would have started an actual family I mean I was married but who knows how long until I would have had a kid because I was so like I was so into like just playing and playing and getting better and playing and all that stuff and so ended up having a son and then and I had a daughter and now I have two kids and you know it's really nice to finally be back at home and not be living on the road and in suitcases and all that stuff so that's kind of what happened when I stopped playing and again everyone's a little bit different but I actually want to I want to make another video this just brought this up because I've been asked about this like what's it like playing and and having a relationship a girlfriend a wife kids and all that stuff because I think that might make for an interesting video but anyways this is kind of how I keep saying retirement it's not retirement this is how it all happens when you get released and you're told you stink you're fired and go home and do something else with your life this is what I did let me know what you did if you happen to be in the same situation as me and let me know if there's anything else that you'd like me to get into I can make more videos on this obviously I've got spare time so that's all we have we'll talk to you later thanks for watching subscribe to the channel hit the notification bell the bell and all that stuff and I don't know we'll talk to you later if you've enjoyed this video and want to learn more about building the elite swing check out our new course we have over two hours of content almost 30 hitting drills we break down the exact mechanics that you're going to want to implement into your swing I've put the link in the description if you want to go check it out