HOMEWARD BOUND
By any name, Globe Life Park has a special place in Gattis’ heart
ARLINGTON — The realization of Evan Gattis’ revival passed with little pomp or circumstance. He did not watch the third day of the 2010 MLB draft. Yells from a back room in his father’s home alerted him of his selection in the 23rd round by the Atlanta Braves — Gattis’ first reward since returning to the game that once spiraled his life into despair.
The family celebrated that night. The Seattle Mariners were playing the Texas Rangers. They piled into a car and drove 45 minutes to Rangers Ballpark at Arlington. Upon his entrance, Gattis spotted a Dallas Tigers shirt, the boy wearing it a part of that select baseball program’s elite, exclusive fraternity.
“This guy right here,” Jo Gattis told the boy, pointing at his son. “He used to play for the Tigers, too. He just got drafted.”
This was a father’s pride. Far too great to keep bottled up. Jo stared back at who his son once was, a youngster roaming this ballpark, and now was able to show what Evan Gattis could, and would, be.
Father and son spent so many afternoons here, a 24year-old Arlington stadium that’s seen three name chang-
es and soon will be vacated by its home team.
For Evan, the ballpark was a solace, perhaps the one constant in the baseball life of the Astros’ 31-year-old designated hitter.
The best month of Gattis’ sixyear major league career began here. Five hits in 17 at-bats during the Astros’ four-game sweep of the Rangers on June 7-10 spurred Gattis to an unconscious month — he collected 30 RBIs — and his club to the franchise’s first undefeated road trip of 10 or more games.
Last visit of 2018
Tuesday and Wednesday bring the final two games the Astros will play in Arlington this season, inside a ballpark Gattis has known since before it was even built.
During the early 1990s, there was a tour of the construction site in downtown Arlington. Peek at the Park they called it.
Jo snapped photographs of his 6-year-old son — in a T-ball uniform — at stakes marking where the pitcher’s mound and home plate now reside.
He purchased a ticket package for the first exhibition, opening day and opening night inside The Ballpark at Arlington.
Often, Evan would join the throngs of other children who ran onto Greene’s Hill in center field chasing home runs. He and his brother scoured the ballpark for giveaway cups or commemorative trinkets other patrons discarded. During the 1995 AllStar Game, they ended up on the news, lugging around as many bottle tops as they could find for free Cokes.
There was the night Mickey Tettleton hit a home run at the same moment Evan, a rambunctious grade-schooler, stopped his sprint around the ballpark.
“And I thought, man, it’d be so cool to hit a home run here,” he said.
As a visiting player, Evan has more career hits in Arlington than at any other ballpark. He enjoys the batter’s eye, that vast grassy knoll in dead center field he used to roam without a care in the world, when times were simpler and baseball games just a routine outing.
Lesson about autographs
Three-hour games became nine-hour excursions. Jo made sure that Evan and whoever else would join them arrived in time for Rangers batting practice and could stay seeking autographs until the last player departed the clubhouse. Some days ended futilely. Once, a star player stopped signing just before he reached Evan, angering him.
‘Remember that feeling. Because when you get up there and you have a little kid wanting an autograph, you sit there and sign it,” Jo told him.
“Probably went in one ear and out the other,” Jo said with a laugh, “because he probably thought it would never actually come to that or he would ever see that day.”
If Evan didn’t, those around him did. He was the “talk of the town,” as his stepbrother Drew Kendrick tells it. A premier high school catcher playing for a host of the area’s premier high schools.
He and Kendrick were teammates before they were stepbrothers. They and their pals tried to attend at least one Rangers home game a week. Wednesdays, preferably, when $1 hot dogs were the special, $5 tickets were feasible, and a $20 bill from their parents would last all night.
“I had this little parking spot. Behind these bushes, next to a train track. It was hilarious,” Evan said. “We were just waiting for the day my car got towed, but it never did. We’d park for free, go get the cheapest seats, and then just kind of sneak up and watch wherever we could.”
Sometimes it was for the baseball. They’d watch “Francisco Cordero throw 100 and walk out to the ‘Rocky’ music from the bullpen when he’d come in,” Kendrick said.
“(Other times) we just wanted to get out of the house,” said Kendrick, listing the demands and expectations on baseball players who attended the prestigious Forney High School.
“Ever since I was little, playing select ball and all that, I was always curious,” Evan said. “How good was Mark McGwire whenever he was my age? How good was someone else? I’d always try to compare myself to big leaguers and stuff like that.”
Evan coped with the pressure he placed on himself by abusing alcohol and marijuana, beginning his well-chronicled road from uber prospect to burned out on baseball. He was briefly in a mental health clinic while he contemplated suicide.
Out of the darkness
He returned to the game in 2010, playing alongside Kendrick at Texas Permian Basin. The Braves drafted Gattis that year, eliciting the familiar gathering at the Arlington ballpark where some of his childhood was shaped and where his 2018 season was reignited.
“Having a good game is having a good game anywhere,” Evan said. “But it was awesome that it was there. Hitting a home run in Arlington is always special. It’s cool. It’s home.”