Corbin Burnes remembered the important part. As a television host and analysts peppered the newly minted Cy Young Award winner last week with questions about a nasty cutter and remarkable two-year transformation, Burnes steered the conversation to his upbringing. He introduced the baseball world to Rick Burnes, and by doing so, the Brewers pitcher with the superior stuff suddenly appeared relatable.
Advertisement
That’s the thing with Burnes. He’s so tightly tethered to his routine that he can come across as almost robotic. He’s the kind of person who can eat the same meals, perform the same workouts day after day while maintaining interest without the risk of boredom. It’s what works for him professionally. Ask him about how he rebuilt himself with the help of the Brewers’ coaching and analytics staff, and he will recite the backstory like a man who has told it a million times.
Get him to discuss dad’s support and the delivery isn’t as rehearsed, because it can’t be.
Father-son relationships aren’t supposed to work that way.
Moments after the winners of the league Cy Young Awards were announced, MLB Network host Greg Amsinger asked Burnes, “Who is responsible for putting you on a mound?”
Burnes replied, “Going back to a young age, getting me on a mound, it was my dad. He was the one … he coached us, both me and my brother, from probably age 9 or 10 up until high school. The credit goes to him for getting us into baseball.”
While Burnes was speaking, his father was tearing up. Burnes, his family and friends were gathered at a beach house in Santa Monica. During the interview with MLB Network, Burnes’ mother, Kandi, and wife, Brooke, flanked the pitcher while sitting on a sofa. Rick Burnes was sitting behind them, with his eyes fixated on his son. Burnes’ agent, Mark O’Brien of CAA, then walked over to Rick Burnes and quickly massaged his shoulders by the time Burnes was mentioning his father. Brooke turned her head to see her father-in-law and nodded with a smile.
Reached by the phone recently, Rick shared his version of the emotional experience.
“To hear that on the night … you never expect it … I know he loves me. I love him. And those are the things you just don’t have to talk about,” he told The Athletic. “So to hear that on the night, it was like, OK, well, that’s pretty cool. Talking with Brooke, his wife now, she’s like, ‘Rick, you know, he looks up to you so much and this and that. And that’s awesome. That’s great. That’s what you always hoped for. But you don’t need that kind of validation.’ So for him to share that, to say that, it was definitely a gut-wrenching shot.”
Advertisement
To that point, Rick Burnes reiterated that it’s Corbin who deserves the credit. To the father, there are reasons his son — the same guy whose battle-cry shouting is the go-to choice for seemingly every photo about the pitcher — mentioned him. Before the call ended, Rick Burnes said, “People should know more about him.”
And then the father kick-started that cause, sharing stories from Corbin’s childhood that help explain how a kid who once did his homework assignment on Nolan Ryan grew up to be one of the most electrifying pitchers in baseball.
With his hard cutter, an array of plus-pitches and dominant metrics, Burnes is an outlier. Except for one thing. Once, he was just a kid who refused to lose.
Before Burnes was born, in early 1994, when Kandi Burnes was pregnant, Rick Burnes asked his own mother, “OK, I’m getting ready to be a dad, what do I do?”
She told him something that still resonates: “You just gotta love them and support them, and help them along the way.”
Rick Burnes never pushed Corbin Burnes into becoming a baseball player.
“People ask me that all the time,” Rick Burnes said. “Growing up, we played a lot of baseball. But we also played a lot of ice hockey, a lot of football and a lot of basketball. And at any given sport he was playing from age 5 to high school, he thought he was going to be a pro in every one of those, right?
“So as a dad, you just say, go for it. It’s, ‘I’ll get you to practice … What do you need?'”
Rick Burnes coached his sons (Corbin Burnes has a younger brother, Tyler) in baseball out of necessity. When Burnes, who was born in Bakersfield, Calif., was playing youth sports in the early 2000s, travel and club baseball wasn’t as prevalent as it is now. Rick Burnes’ sons wanted to play more, and he coached them as a way of showing support.
Advertisement
But Rick Burnes also had to work every day. He has worked in the farming business for more than 25 years, producing almonds, pistachios, grapes, citrus, pomegranates and blueberries. Sometimes, another parent was called from the bullpen.
It wasn’t unusual for the two boys to arrive home from school around 3 p.m., with their father still at work. So Kandi would throw batting practice to the kids outside their house for an hour or two.
There’s little intel on her cutter.
Inside the Santa Monica beach house, phones buzzed once it was known Burnes was the National League’s Cy Young Award winner. The congratulatory messages continued well into the night and over the next few days. One of the texts was from a grade-school teacher.
It read something like, “When I had Corbin, when he was in third grade, everything he did, he was the leader and he had to win whether it was the class musical, whether it was the class play, whether it was academics. He was leading the pack and he had to win.”
Another message was sent to Kandi from Burnes’ principal from grade school and middle school. The contents were similar. It said, “We always knew Corbin was gonna be a star in something. We didn’t know it was gonna be athletics. But we knew that he was going to be something special because of that attitude and drive. And it was in everything he did.”
Before asking about the genesis of Burnes’ pitching, Amsinger asked the hard-throwing right-hander on the air about his favorite pitchers growing up. Burnes, an Angels fan as a kid, mentioned two: Hall of Fame fireballer Nolan Ryan and former Angels pitcher Jered Weaver.
Ryan, baseball’s all-time strikeout leader (5,714), retired the year before Burnes was born. Burnes ended up nonetheless idolizing Ryan after needing to do a book report in school and choosing one on Ryan.
Advertisement
“Then he really got into it,” Rick Burnes said.
Between the two right-handed pitchers, there are some similarities. For one, Ryan was known for never backing down. Similarly, on the rare occasions when Burnes fell behind in counts, particularly during his streak of 58 strikeouts before issuing a walk to start the season, Burnes never gave in. He often still threw his best pitch, his cutter, how he wanted to, where he wanted to. And it usually worked.
“For Corbin, he wants to be a Nolan Ryan kind of workhorse,” Rick Burnes said. “You know, the criticism about, hey, he didn’t throw enough innings and stuff this year, for him, it’s not because he didn’t want to, right? I mean, he was fighting for every inning he could get but he understood what the Brewers were trying to accomplish.
“But that’s one of the reasons he likes Nolan Ryan. He’s just, get up there, throw it hard, get after you, not afraid of anything. And that’s very similar to why he mentioned he liked Jered Weaver. That’s not necessarily your Hall of Fame guy, but he just liked his mentality. As a kid, he just loved to see him out there and just attack people. He didn’t care; even as he got older, when his stuff wasn’t as hard, wasn’t as nasty, he’d still attack.”
Of the three pitchers, Burnes is the only Cy Young Award winner.
Burnes and Brooke married in November 2020. They are expecting their first child in March. Recently, Burnes has asked his father for parental advice. The response has sounded familiar.
Rick Burnes has told him, “You just gotta love them and support them, and help them along the way.”
(Photo of Corbin Burnes: John Fisher/ Getty Images)