WASHINGTON, D.C. — He was crying. Her heart lurched.
The last time Kendyl Barrett’s husband, Aaron, called her crying it had been that fateful day in the summer of 2016. She stops, eyes welling with tears, before her mind darts back to that dark place again.
No, she corrects herself, steadying the snippets etched in her brain. It hadn’t been Aaron on the phone that day, it had been longtime pitching coordinator (and current Nats pitching coach) Paul Menhart on the receiving end.
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Where are you?, said a frantic Menhart, who had reached Kendyl at the gym, We need you to get to the field immediately.
Those wails, those very audible wails, were from her husband in the distance. Barrett — who would be loaded shortly into an ambulance — had reared back for a fastball and essentially snapped his arm in half. The onlookers at West Palm Beach, Fla., for that simulated game still talk about the gruesome injury, the one that sent Barrett leaping off the mound and crying in pain. It was a broken humerus that would threaten his career, his sanity and everyday life over a grueling three-year rehab.
It’s what reduced Barrett to screams and sobs.
It’s where Kendyl immediately goes back to when her phone buzzes and she knows her husband is at the field, like he was on September 3.
“What’s wrong?” Kendyl asked, terrified as she accepted the FaceTime call.
“Babe,” Aaron said between sobs, “We did it.”
Kendyl started crying, too. And then the sobs turned into excited screams and she ducked outside of the couple’s home to allow their 23-month old daughter Kollyns to stay asleep. When they finally had calmed down some, Aaron told her to grab the toddler and get on a plane.
“Pack your bags,” he said, “we’re going back to the big leagues.”
Sept. 1, Sept. 1, Sept. 1.
It became a mantra all year for the Barretts, a rallying cry every time Aaron pitched well down at Double-A Harrisburg. If they could just get to roster expansion, surely he would be rewarded for all that work. For the years of tedious rehab. For never giving up despite the insurmountable odds.
There were rumors that Barrett would be part of the Nationals’ expanded rosters, but Sept. 1 came and went. The Nats made additions, but none involved the right-hander. It was devastating for Barrett, who pitched to a 2.75 ERA with 31 saves at Double A.
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By now you’ve probably seen the video of Senators manager Matt LeCroy delivering the news two days later. The team was off, and Barrett was told to go to the field for a workout. He thought he was getting some kind of award, standing up front next to LeCroy.
“It’s an honor that I got to manage you,” said LeCroy, who got choked up delivering his last line, “but it’s more of an honor to tell you you’re going back to the big leagues.”
There have been a lot of tears during an improbable journey, quiet moments of crying and wondering if this would ever work out. Faith and family got him here, but the raw emotion of what this means to Barrett and everyone in the Nationals organization has always been clear.
When Barrett got back to the mound this spring and veteran Ryan Zimmerman made the whole team stay in the dugout to watch him, Barrett cried.
When LeCroy’s voice began to crack, Barrett ducked his head and started to cry there, too. He was already red-faced and tear-streaked by the time he called Kendyl, fresh off a jubilant mobbing from teammates.
The moment Aaron Barrett found out he was going back to the bigs. Congratulations, Aaron!
cc: @Nationals @masnNationals @MLB @MiLB @aaronbarrett30 pic.twitter.com/RSxQ1b9dMT— Harrisburg Senators (@HbgSenators) September 3, 2019
It was not Sept. 1, it was Sept. 3. And that made it even better. Earlier in the day, Kendyl had texted him a reminder of an anniversary the pair would rather forget. It was exactly four years ago that Barrett had undergone Tommy John ligament constructive surgery on his right elbow.
“How perfect is this?,” Kendyl said. “Sept. 3 is now a happy moment.”
It couldn’t have worked out better, not the promotion’s timing or Barrett’s actual big-league return.
First, there was chaos. Kendyl landed at 10 p.m. Tuesday night. His parents made the trek from Indiana to D.C. in advance of Wednesday, Sept. 4’s day game. Barrett didn’t pitch, so his parents flew home, got their car and drove to Atlanta. Kendyl and their daughter flew Wednesday night to Atlanta, with Barrett’s other brothers packing up and driving from Florida and Indiana. There they met up with Kendyl’s family, who are all in the Atlanta area, to form a family section of a dozen strong at SunTrust Park. They sat and waited and hoped. When Barrett got up in the bullpen on Sept. 7, they tried to not get too excited. He had warmed up before and not gone in.
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It wasn’t until Barrett started jogging to the mound that it seemed, finally, real. Clutching Kollyns in her arms, Kendyl sobbed. Barrett did too, burying his face in a white towel after throwing a scoreless inning against the Braves. He had taken a deep breath on the mound, said a little prayer and then worked his way around a leadoff walk. Catcher Yan Gomes was the first to greet him, then a dugout full of teammates and high-fives. By the time manager Davey Martinez draped a towel over his head, Barrett —head in his hands — had already begun to sob.
Aaron Barrett hasn’t pitched in MLB since 2015.
After multiple arm injuries, the righty tossed a scoreless inning is his first outing back in The Show.
We are crying too. 😭 pic.twitter.com/73bJfBkdvm
— MLB (@MLB) September 8, 2019
Before he even saw the dugout clip that went viral, its hero was texting Kendyl.
Where are you? he said. Meet me outside.
There the three of them — Aaron, Kendyl and Kollyns — had a long embrace. It was a moment of quiet joy. As the video of Barrett began circling the baseball world, flooding his phone with hundreds of texts and leaving the Barrett clan entirely overwhelmed, the trio took a moment.
They hugged and cried and celebrated a four-year journey unlike any the baseball world has ever seen.
“I did it,” Aaron said, over and over, as if he had to convince himself or it still wasn’t real.
“I did it. I did it.”
He would repeat that phrase long into the night. The 31-year-old had debuted on March 31, 2014. That day didn’t come close to matching the emotion of the early September outing in Atlanta, his first time on a big-league mound since 2015.
“Watching what that man did for four years, I’m so incredibly blessed to be his wife, to have my kids look up to him,” said Kendyl, who was tearing up again, this time from the bowels of Nationals Park. “He’s an inspiration. There’s a lot to be learned from him.”
Tommy John surgery had been a breeze. Repairing Aaron’s humerus wasn’t initially supposed to be that complicated, either.
The Barretts were initially told it would be a three-hour surgery. Noted orthopedic surgeon Dr. James Andrews told Kendyl she could even watch if she wanted to. By the three-hour mark, more surgeons were going in. Kendyl watched doctor after doctor crank on her husband’s arm. More surgeons, more screws. Six hours, two plates and 16 screws later, Dr. Andrews emerged.
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“He was like, ‘I don’t know what the outcome will be, this will be a miracle,’” Kendyl recalled. “But he got through the surgery.”
So started the long road back. No one quite knew what to expect. There was a chance Barrett wouldn’t be able to lift his arm over his head without pain, let alone throw a baseball. But the physical nature of an injury is one thing. The psychological aspect can be much tougher.
It took two years just to get his body back in sync for normal-life activities. The day he was able to do a single push-up felt monumental. There were days of despair, too, such as when Barrett came home from a workout because he was unable physically to complete it.
“People are like, ‘Oh, he just rehabbed for four years,’” Kendyl said. “But there were so many ups and downs. There was ungodly amounts of, ‘Is this going to happen?’”
Aaron never wavered, never wanted to quit.
It’s in God’s hands, he kept telling his wife, who marveled at his positivity. That push-up was a huge confidence boost. Smaller victories made the daily 30-mile drive from their Atlanta-area home worth every second. He’d rehab for 3-5 hours, come home and ice his arm and slip on the Normatec recovery sleeves. There was more rehab after that, then massage and baths. It was so relentless and all-consuming that Barrett brought his dog with him at one point because the therapists felt so bad for Kendyl, home with a new puppy and pending baby. Looking back on it now, it should have been more draining. But it was the new normal for the Barretts, who welcomed their first daughter in the fall of 2017.
Barrett’s physical therapist sat with his family for his first outing in Atlanta. Dr. Andrews is trying to rearrange his schedule to make a visit to D.C. before the end of this season. When Barrett called the doctor after his return, it took just one ring for the sought-out surgeon to answer.
Bear, he yelled excitedly into the phone, you’re a miracle!
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Even for Andrews, stories such as Barrett’s don’t come around every day.
Kendyl, a former high-level soccer player, used to avoid watching her husband on the mound. Instead, she’d be a nervous wreck, pacing in the concourse. That’s changed since Barrett’s injury.
“I don’t want to miss a pitch,” she said, holding Kollyns on her hip Friday night, surveying the Nationals-Braves game playing in the distance. “You never know what can happen, and I want to be there for it, for every second.”
There are moments in life that take your breath away, ones you’ll never be able to forget. When Barrett was one of the last cuts in spring training, he came to D.C. for the final exhibition game in late March. He arrived at the ballpark 5 1/2 hours before game time, trembling with excitement.
Barrett moseyed over to the home bullpen in right field, swung the gate open and stood inside. Then, as if he was summoned, the right-hander swung it back open with authority and came striding out. He stood on the mound for a while, imagining. Hours before the team would take the field for batting practice, Barrett toed the rubber and continued to dream.
“I wanted to picture myself doing it all,” he told me at the time. “I wanted to visualize that I’m here and that’s going to happen again.”
There is one more first for Barrett, to pitch in front of the home crowd in D.C. again. Who knows what his emotions will be like or how many hundreds of texts he’ll be flooded with? Barrett spent Monday’s off-day responding to every message he’s received. It took the entire day and he couldn’t think of a better way to spend it. He smiles from inside the visiting clubhouse in Minnesota, grateful that his cheering section didn’t have to pack up in Atlanta and make one more drive to wait for his debut. After the past four years, they were prepared to follow Barrett anywhere.
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“I couldn’t have planned it any better,” Barrett said of the straight-to-movie script that his life has been the past two weeks. He hears the continual cheers from fans and got an enormous on-field hug from owner Mark Lerner before Friday’s game. Sometimes he still has to remind himself, as he walks around Nats Park with an ear-to-ear grin, that he did it. He did it. He really, truly did it.
Kendyl will travel to St. Louis after Sunday’s homestand finale with the Braves, and Miami after that. She’ll sit in the stands and try to contain herself every time she sees him stirring in the bullpen. Perhaps she’ll chide herself, like she did Friday, for not wearing waterproof mascara. You never know when the next surreal moment will come. The Barretts are simply trying to enjoy the ride.
“The last four years have been humbling, gratifying at the same time and just enlightened,” she said. “Everything we’ve learned and gone through. Our faith has strengthened, our marriage has strengthened, we have a new little girl. It’s been a great four years, but it’s been challenging. I honestly wouldn’t change it for the world. It’s been a good four years. I know some people would look at it as ‘how negative’, but this process has taught us so much. We’ve learned so much, and we’ve gotten to spend four years together.”
(Photo courtesy of the Barretts)