Brotherly booster club
A’s Gardeck’s pitch to trainer helped get sibling to NFL
MESA, Ariz. — Ian Gardeck’s first few days in Oakland’s camp involved some confusion, and no, not because his younger brother, Dennis, plays for the nearby Arizona Cardinals.
Gardeck, a nonroster invitee to the A’s bigleague spring training, had the exact same conversation with third baseman Matt Chapman and reliever Lou Trivino, who both told him how impressed they were with the Giants’ bullpen at Class A San Jose several years ago and concluded with, “Whatever happened to that Ian Gardeck kid, anyway?”
“Uhhh ... that’s me,” Gardeck responded.
“True story,” Trivino said. “Insert foot in mouth. But I’m telling you, oh my gosh, Ian was nasty back then.”
“I’m a terrible, terrible teammate,” Chapman said with a laugh. “I remember Gardeck vividly — I remember not liking facing him at all. I’m glad he’s healthy and I’m glad we have him because he threw gas.”
Gardeck is one big beard and numerous body parts different from his days as a top relief prospect in the Giants’ organization. He had two Tommy John surgeries, backtoback in 201617, and also had his right hip labrum repaired and the femur head reconstructed in 2016.
“My whole right side has been recreated,” he said. “So there’s a whole new
set of miles on it.”
Gardeck’s mom, Terri, describes his Tommy John surgeries as really one very long procedure, because the first one simply didn’t take. “That second one was just soul crushing,” she said by phone from the family’s home in Crystal Lake, Ill. “But Ian was so determined.”
Gardeck’s second round of rehab proved to be successful — and not just for himself. It was while Gardeck was working at the Fischer Institute in Phoenix that he recommended his brother, Dennis, to physical therapist and trainer Brett Fischer.
“I said, ‘Hey, do you do NFL combine training?’ really naively,” Gardeck said, “and Brett said, ‘Yeah, we’re kind of the best,’ so I told him my brother played and I said I could pay for his training.
“Brett was kind of like, ‘Yeah, I’ve heard everyone’s brother is a good football player.’ I said, ‘No, he’s legit,’ and kind of fibbed and exaggerated.”
Fischer recalls rolling his eyes a bit. Dennis Gardeck was playing linebacker at Division II University of Sioux Falls, which to that point had not sent a player to the NFL.
“I said, ‘Ian, it’s really for guys who are actually going to the combine. I don’t want to waste your money,’ ” Fischer said.
Gardeck persisted and finally convinced Fischer to give his brother at least a quick look.
“So Dennis comes down here and he doesn’t know how to train, but he’s this hardworking guy and I can see there might be something there: He’s fast. He can jump,” Fischer said. “We have all these players from big schools, Oklahoma, lots of DI athletes, and he’s winning drills, competitions, against these guys.
“Everyone is like, ‘Who is this guy? He’s killing it.’ It was pretty incredible. He was beating guys who’re going to go high in the draft. He was destroying people.”
Fischer consults with the Cardinals, so he called to alert them about Gardeck and was told, “We scour the country for players and we’ve never heard of him.”
“I told them, ‘You don’t want to miss this guy. He’s right in your backyard.’ They come over and said, ‘Yeah — he’s great,’ ” Fischer said.
The Cardinals signed Dennis Gardeck, now 25, as an undrafted free agent in 2018, and he was named an alternate Pro Bowl selection last year. “It’s an amazing story, in 37 years of doing this, I’ve never had anything like this happen,” Fischer said.
And all because his big brother had faith in him.
“Ian wouldn’t take no for an answer,” Fischer said. “What I love the most is that Ian believed in his brother when no one else in the world did.”
“It’s been kind of a wild ride,” said Dennis Gardeck, who shares a condo with his brother in the Phoenix area. “Ian helped push me to go after my own ambitions, which isn’t surprising, given the grit and determination he has. He was never going to pack in the bags, even after all those surgeries.”
That’s probably not surprising for a baseball player who has a hockey defenseman’s mentality; Ian Gardeck was an enforcer type in high school. “I was a tough guy, hard slap shot, spent a lot of time in the penalty box,” he said. “Goaltenders’ moms loved me. My mom hated it because I spent more time sitting than skating some nights.”
At 29, he’s the oldest of four boys, all of them accomplished. Andrew, 27, is studying to be a neurosurgeon at the University of Minnesota; Alex, 21, will earn his degree in mechanical engineering from Arizona State this year.
“We kind of moved as a pack. I did a lot of laundry,” Terri Gardeck said. “And Ian is just the quintessential older brother.”
Terri Gardeck suspects that Ian’s hockey days gave her son the type of lowerbody strength that allowed him to throw in the 90s in high school. The Giants took him in the 16th round of the 2012 draft out of Alabama, and though he racked up some good minorleague seasons — including striking out 104 in 861⁄3 innings at San Jose in 2015, injuries derailed him the past few years.
“He is interesting. He just hasn’t been out there a lot the last few years, but he has a really good arm,” A’s general manager David Forst said. “We obviously look at a lot of things about spin rate and what we think he might be able to do from a pitchdevelopment standpoint. We feel like if he stays healthy, Ian could have a really good shot.”