‘I didn’t have a job, but I didn’t want to stop’
Canadian Loewen’s career has gone from mound to outfield and back again
PHILADELPHIA— As the cliché goes, baseball is a game of adjustments. But nobody understands that better than Adam Loewen, who is in the midst one of the unlikeliest bigleague journeys the game has ever seen.
The 31-year-old native of Surrey, B.C., is back in the majors as a reliever for the Philadelphia Phillies, four years after he suited up for the Blue Jays as a reinvented outfielder, and nine years after making his debut as a starting pitcher. Most who aspire to the majors never make it; Loewen’s accomplished the feat on three separate occasions. It’s a testament to his perseverance and an indefatigable spirit in the face of ridiculously long odds.
“It never really crossed my mind (to quit),” the lumberjack-looking lefthander said Tuesday inside the Phillies’ clubhouse. “In my mind I was always going to play until somebody wouldn’t let me.”
Still the highest-drafted Canadian ever, Loewen was selected fourth overall in 2002 by the Baltimore Orioles as a hard-throwing lefty. He climbed his way up the minor-league ranks and pitched parts of three seasons in Baltimore before multiple stress fractures in his elbow halted his career in 2008.
But rather than leave the game, he picked up a bat, learned to play the outfield and signed a minor-league deal with the Jays. He went back to the low minors and slowly worked his way back to the big leagues, earning a cup-of-coffee call-up with the Jays in September 2011, notching six hits — including one memorable homer — in a 14-game cameo.
He spent the next two seasons in the Mets’ and Jays’ minor-league systems, but by the spring of 2014 he was looking for work and wasn’t getting any offers as a hitter. “I didn’t have a job, but I didn’t want to stop playing,” he says.
By that point it had been nearly six years since he had pitched off a mound, and he had an inkling that the time off had done what surgery never could. “I had the thought in my head that my arm was healed, so I started testing it out, just by myself.”
It was awkward at first, but soon the old feelings were coming back and it wasn’t long before Loewen was lighting up the radar gun like the old days. His agent tried to drum up interest with major-league teams, convincing a few to watch him throw. But nobody called back. Spring training came and went with Loewen still trying to catch on.
It wasn’t until April 2014 when Pat Gillick, the former Jays GM who now serves as Phillies president, set up a tryout with one of the team’s scouts in Arizona. They signed Loewen to a minor-league deal and he retraced his well-worn path back to the bigs. When he took the mound on Aug. 10 for the Phillies it had been more than seven years since he pitched in a big-league game. “My heart was pounding, but my body was under control and I just felt like I be- longed,” he said Tuesday, adding that he didn’t feel that way when he made his debut as a hitter with the Jays. He has pitched five innings with the Phillies, walking six batters and striking out 10, including striking out the side Tuesday night in his seventhinning appearance against the Jays.
“I think pitching is always what I was supposed to do, what I was meant for. That feeling, just knowing that this is what I’m supposed to be doing and this is what I’m made for is a very calming feeling.”
Loewen has lived both the privileged life of a first-round draft pick and endured the lot of hard-scrabble journeyman. With his time as a posi-
“I think pitching is always what I was supposed to do, what I was meant for. That feeling, just knowing that this is what I’m supposed to be doing and this is what I’m made for is a very calming feeling.” ADAM LOEWEN
tion player, he feels as if he has had three separate debuts. This latest one is easily the sweetest. “I feel like I really earned it,” he said.
“I think in the first couple years there were a lot of things handed to me. My first couple years I didn’t pitch that great, but I got moved up a level when other guys wouldn’t. Going back as a hitter, it wasn’t like that. I had to earn everything I had. Same thing, starting over again as a pitcher. I had to start again in double-A, stayed there the whole year and I was 30 years old. I even went back there this year for a month. So now I’m really thankful for what I have.”
Considering how hard he worked to make it back, he also appreciates his career more than he ever did.
“I appreciate every detail and I’m constantly reminding myself of where I am just so I can appreciate it more,” he said.