Mitch Harris

The recruiter wasn't looking for a pitcher — he was scouting linemen. It didn't matter. Days later, Harris was standing on a visit to the United States Naval Academy with no real sense of what he was walking into.

“I didn't know what it was. I didn't understand what it meant. But, man, I fully got wrapped in, and it made me who I am.”

Service was already in his blood, even if he hadn't connected the dots yet. Both of his grandfathers fought in World War II — one in the Navy at the Battle of Midway, the other in the Army at the Battle of the Bulge.

The baseball only got better at Annapolis. The Atlanta Braves drafted him his junior year; the St. Louis Cardinals took him in the 13th round of the 2008 draft his senior year. But the country was at war, and a Naval Academy commission came with a bill that had to be paid first. Harris petitioned twice for an early release to the reserves — the same path NBA legend David Robinson once took out of the Academy. Both times, the Navy said no. Officers were needed for Afghanistan. So instead of a mound, Harris went to war.

Four Years, Eight Months, and Eight Days

Harris's first ship was the USS Ponce, out of Norfolk, Virginia, where he served as weapons officer and later combat information center officer. He then moved to the USS Carr, also out of Norfolk, as training officer. Over four years he deployed three times — twice to the Persian Gulf, once on a mission to Russia and the Baltic states, and once to South America for counter-narcotics operations. Along the way, he visited more than 30 countries.

He never let go of the mound. Between flight operations, he'd grab his glove and throw on the flight deck. His dad mailed him bags of baseballs that regularly skipped overboard into the ocean. His throwing partner was a ship's cook from the Dominican Republic who knew the game as well as he did.

“I told myself if I could just keep my body in shape, at some point whenever I got the opportunity... there's nothing you can do to stay in shape on a boat from a baseball perspective. But if I just kept my body in shape, I didn't have to worry about it breaking down.”

Four years, eight months, and eight days after it started, Harris got out of the Navy, moved to Florida, and made a phone call that would have sounded absurd to almost anyone else. He called the Cardinals.

“I don't know if you remember me, but you drafted me five years ago. Can I show up at spring training?”

They said yes. He showed up throwing 83 miles per hour — “pretty embarrassing,” by his own account. He was 27 years old in his first minor league season. His manager was 26.

The next year, the Cardinals moved him from High-A to Double-A — a move Harris later learned was meant to set up his release. Instead, during a bullpen session with the pitching coach, something clicked. They put him in a game that night. The velocity came back. The muscle memory took hold. In 2014 he started the year in High-A and ended it in Triple-A.

Two weeks into big-league spring training in 2015, after being told to “be ready” — the kind of thing everybody gets told — Harris got the call. On April 25, 2015, he made his major league debut for the St. Louis Cardinals. He learned afterward that he was the first Naval Academy graduate to pitch in the majors in 94 years, and the first ever to do it after actually completing his service. The only other Academy grad to play, Nemo Gaines, had done so in 1921, the year he graduated.

Harris pitched most of that season in St. Louis, shuttling up and down as the roster needed a bat or an arm. At year's end, Major League Baseball and the Boston Baseball Writers Association awarded him the Tony Conigliaro Award, given annually to the player who best overcomes adversity through spirit, determination, and courage.

In 2016, the pain that had been building in his elbow finally had an answer: his UCL was no longer attached. He had surgery and tried to come back in 2017 at 31 — technically still a rookie. This time, the writing was on the wall.

“I kinda saw the writing on the wall, but I wanted to continue to play. We did it right, we did it the right way, and I'm proud of how we made it. But I think it's time to move on to something else.”