Delabar’s winding path takes him to Indians’ mound
A steel plate and nine screws hold together Steve Delabar's right elbow.
The hardware serves as a reminder of how far the pitcher's career veered from a straightforward path, with stops at a slow-pitch softball league and at John Hardin High School in his native Elizabethtown, Kentucky.
He is in camp with the Cleveland Indians, seven years later, vying for perhaps the only vacancy in the club's bullpen. He is 33 and a few years removed from his last proficient big-league season.
But counting him out would be an ill-advised practice of ignoring his past.
In 2010, Delabar was content with a potential life as a slow-pitch softball player, a part-time baseball instructor and a gym and health teacher. But by 2013, he found himself back on a mound, in a major league ballpark, facing Buster Posey, the reigning National League MVP, on national TV.
"You get an opportunity, things fall into place and you just go with it," Delabar said.
Delabar was drawn to the Indians in part because they don't discourage the use of weighted baseballs, a training tactic some pitchers follow to strengthen their shoulders and boost their velocity. The regimen helped Delabar increase his strikeout rate once his elbow fully healed.
He was pitching in the Canadian-American Association in 2009 when his elbow begged for mercy. After surgery, Delabar spent the next year working toward his teaching degree and cherishing the softball diamond. When he didn't have class, he would sign up to serve as a substitute.
He wasn't there for long at all. He joined the Seattle Mariners for the 2011 season, and for the first time, he advanced past A-ball. Seattle summoned him that September for his first bigleague cameo. Two years later, he earned his way onto the American League AllStar roster. He struck out Posey, the only batter he faced.
Delabar entered the break with a 1.71 ERA for Toronto, and Blue Jays fans stuffed the ballot boxes for the league's Final Vote initiative. He won out over four other candidates.
"That was great," he said. "You had a whole country voting for you, so that helps a lot. The experience that season — I wasn't really thinking at all. When the phone rang, I got up and got going and went in and got the job done."
In three seasons since, he owns a 5.29 ERA, with a high walk rate (and a high strikeout rate). He briefly pitched in Japan last summer after the Cincinnati Reds severed ties with him.
He signed a minorleague deal with the Indians in January. A quick glance around the clubhouse in Goodyear, Arizona, suggests there is plenty of competition and only one or two openings.
Delabar has faced hard competition before, though. For a guy who has moved from baseball to softball to the classroom and back to baseball, who knows where his journey will take him next?
"For the young kids who maybe get lost in what they want to do, sometimes it takes a little bit to figure out," Delabar said. "You see people who get into college and get their degree and they get out and they don't even use that degree, because they find something else that they're attracted to. Sometimes you don't know what you want and it takes a little bit of time to mature and find out what you really want."