The last competitive pitch that Sam Fuller threw was five years ago. The toss itself was low stakes — an exhibition at extended spring training in Arizona. As meaningless as meaningless baseball gets. There’s no real winners. No losers. No box score to etch the game in eternity.
But the throw is forever in Fuller’s mind. So, too, is the entire six-pitch at-bat.
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Earlier in the day, he’d felt a little pocket of fluid in his elbow. Something was off as he warmed up. He figured it was just soreness.
The first five pitches were OK. He reached a full count. Then he threw the fateful pitch. A “gunshot” went off in his elbow as he threw it. A 91 mph two-seam fastball on the payoff pitch. He got the strikeout.
“If you go back and get the TrackMan data on it, that thing had to have close to 20 inches of horizontal break on it,” Fuller said. “It almost looks like I threw a changeup just with how much arm-side run it had.”
He’s prideful of the pitch. But it came with a bad prognosis.
Fuller spoke with The Athletic on Monday, just days after his official retirement, which came 1,701 days after that moment. He didn’t get to pitch much in his pro career. He threw two innings in 2017, plus that work in extended spring training.
He never got to find out if he was good enough. He never got the chance to succeed or fail. All he got were injuries and setbacks. Renewed hope and optimism, followed by the crush of reality every time.
Even the humble Fuller got a little cocky when reliving his final pitch. And you can forgive him for basking in the glory of the moment — not the elbow-popping pain that followed immediately thereafter. It’s a pitch that represented hope, and also that hope being taken away.
He suspects the movement of the pitch came as a result of him hyperextending his elbow. There’s not much silver lining, unless you look closely. Three significant surgeries later, Fuller was forced to retire.
But there’s always that pitch. A moment he remembered, held onto and showed what his career could have been. It shows why he was, is and always will be a ballplayer. Even in his retirement.
“I take a little bit of solace in knowing the last batter I ever faced, I struck out,” Fuller said. “Even though I blew my elbow out against him.”
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Fuller’s story is a disappointing one, surely. He bypassed a chance to pitch at West Virginia University in 2017 to start his pro career after getting selected in the 14th round by the Angels. He was so excited about pursuing a dream of professional baseball.
That’s the disappointing part. The fact it didn’t play out as he hoped.
But there’s also an inspirational element to what he endured. It wasn’t until Feb. 1 when the soon-to-be 25-year-old officially called off the comeback. Fuller’s goal was to come back and pitch, and he put everything into it.
For those around him, there’s pride in his journey to get back. In persevering through everything, even if it never happened.
“His commitment to the whole rehab process — and I mean in every aspect — his attention to his nutrition, his training, his sleep, his continuing to study the game,” said Sam’s father, Joe, “has been making every effort to prepare himself to return to play.
“I’m proud of the effort and the persistence because it hasn’t been easy. … You never want to be in a position to look backward. And I think Sam has done that successfully.”
Earlier this week during Camp Whitefield's Go For The Gold Week, 2017 alumnus and pro baseball player Sam Fuller spoke to campers about growing your faith while pursuing your dreams.
Thank you, Sam, for sharing your inspiring story and coming back to spend time with our campers! pic.twitter.com/bDc6y2R4Ic
— Whitefield Academy (@WhitefieldAcad) July 1, 2021
The final hope ran out when his doctor told him that attempting to pitch could result in permanent loss of feeling in his right hand. He’d already dealt with numbness the year prior. After Fuller’s first Tommy John surgery in 2018, he was back healthy for the 2020 season before COVID-19 canceled it. Then in 2021, he needed another Tommy John surgery.
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After dealing with numbness in his hand last year, his doctor determined he likely had thoracic outlet syndrome, even though that wasn’t what was causing most of his symptoms. They did a submuscular ulnar nerve transposition.
Fuller was told it would be unlikely he’d be able to play again. But still, he tried. His yearlong recovery from the third surgery was derailed after he progressed back to the mound and continued to feel pain and discomfort.
Elbow issues weren’t new for Fuller. He’d dealt with some forms of pain dating back years, even prior to high school. His truly healthy season was in 2017 — his senior year and subsequent early days in the Angels organization.
But that year was something of a mirage. He suspects the surgeries — the first performed by the renowned Dr. James Andrews — were not done incorrectly. He believes his problems are more anatomical and thus unavoidable.
That opinion was backed up by his physical therapist, Troy Jones, who used to work for the Braves and is employed at Peachtree Orthopedics in Atlanta. Jones was there for Fuller — not just as a trainer, but also through the mental hurdles of his recovery.
“It’s really rare that, No. 1, a player sticks with it that long,” Jones said. “And No. 2, the organization actually sticks with them. That tells you a lot about what they must have felt like his talent level was when he was healthy.”
Fuller has a positive perspective on the Angels, whom he said supported him throughout this yearslong process. He knows they could have released him. A regime change in the front office and the COVID pandemic frankly would have been understandable factors in that decision.
But the team stuck with him, and Fuller spoke highly of numerous people in the organization over the years. When he retired, he called Angels farm director Joey Prebynski. Knowing that Fuller wanted to stay in baseball, Prebynski offered to be a reference for him.
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And in baseball, Fuller will remain. When you talk to Fuller, it sounds like he graduated from medical school. He hasn’t — his education has been online courses at Liberty University. He speaks so intelligently on his biomechanics because it’s what he’s studied for countless hours and through many late nights online.
His faith is a huge part of accepting everything that happened to him. It gave him perspective on what’s most important and how to view each day. The science behind everything also gave him more peace of mind. He’s wanted to understand his body and why he’s been in this position.
Fuller’s translated the frustrations of his body failing him into a professional future. He is considering getting a doctorate in physical therapy. In the meantime, he’s an assistant coach at his old high school. It started its season this week, and he feels like “a kid on Christmas Eve.”
“He wanted to be the best. He had an internal drive that other people don’t have,” Whitefield Academy head coach Mike Shaheen said. “And that’s what Sam has. It’s a shame that his body broke down. He has the drive of a Tom Brady-type guy. Everything about the sport, he loves and is important to him.”
Fuller’s goal in pro baseball was the same as for any 18-year-old kid signing a contract. It was to someday make the major leagues. Maybe even star there. Fuller likes to differentiate between those who play baseball and ballplayers. He believes he was and remains the latter.
For ballplayers, the game is part of their DNA. It is who they are and what they’re about. That’s why his life is still revolving around the game — coaching at his high school, giving one-on-one lessons and getting trained in physical therapy.
As his injury time lengthened, that baseball dream evolved. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to make the majors or didn’t think he could. It just wasn’t all that drove him.
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For Fuller, it was about pitching once more. After years of time and effort, he just wanted that payoff.
That didn’t happen. In the last week, he has accepted it likely never will. But he did everything he could. In a video Fuller posted to Instagram announcing his retirement, he harkened back to his Little League days with messy eye black and torn baseball pants.
That little kid had big baseball dreams. And even though that dream didn’t have its happily ever after, the last five-plus years have been about not letting that kid or his dream down. And in that effort, he found value, purpose and a future.
“I would have loved to come back and pitch in just one more game,” Fuller said. “And then who knows? Maybe one more game would have turned into 10 more years of games. My focus was never on, ‘Get to a 10-year career.’ It was always on, ‘Just find my way back to a mound for one more game.’
“It’s not the way the cards shook out. But I’m still extremely grateful.”
(Photo of Sam Fuller pitching July 9, 2017, at Diablo Stadium in Tempe, Ariz.: Zachary Lucy / Four Seam Images via Associated Press)
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