From the outside looking in, it was hard to make sense of Braves pitcher Brandon Beachy.
How did a virtual unknown, with so little pitching experience, make his major league debut in the thick of a pennant race against the Phillies last September -- with four hours notice -- and never flinch?
“I didn’t really view it as anything different than I did in Double-A or Triple-A,” Beachy said.
The 24-year-old undrafted free agent from Indiana Wesleyan, who’d played mostly third base there, seemed in total control of his emotions. He pitched 4 1/3 strong innings for the injured Jair Jurrjens, allowing three runs, just one earned.
He’d made only 21 starts in the minors and a handful in college. So why wasn’t he fazed?
For Beachy, the adrenaline rush of stepping onto the field at Citizens Bank Park couldn’t possibly compare to walking across a burning carpet in bare feet and not feeling a thing.
Any pressure he felt on the mound that night couldn’t touch the burden of feeling he’d let down his entire family. A quality pitch could beat Ryan Howard, but on July 4, 2007, no matter how long he sprayed a garden hose, he couldn’t stop his family’s home from burning out of control.
And it was his fault.
***
Beachy grew up the oldest of seven children on a farm. He was a good student, a good athlete, and his inclination for good-natured ribbing aside, a good brother.
He double-majored in pre-law and criminal justice, filled a summer internship in a prosecutor’s office and followed in the footsteps of his parents, working at a center for delinquent children.
Baseball was more a dream than career plan. He wanted to make a good living and help his family. His father Lester, who’d quit farming when Brandon was 11, worked with his brother’s construction business. Brandon’s mother Lori ran a babysitting service out of their basement for teachers at a nearby elementary school.
For 21 years, Beachy had prided himself on being a brother Kyle, Kirk, Bryan, Hannah, Sophia and Ben could look up to; he was only kidding around with them the day all that threatened to change.
He wanted to prank them with a “smoke ball” he and his brother had bought. He lit one and threw it outside the doorway of his bedroom, a converted porch on their 100-year-old farmhouse.
A gust of wind apparently blew some sparks back into the room and onto the pile of fireworks.
“I heard a boom,” Beachy said.
He stumbled back to his bed, as the fireworks exploded.
“It wasn’t until the room had filled completely up with black smoke to where I couldn’t see in front of my face that I realized, ‘I’ve got to get out of here,’” Beachy said.
Wrapped in a blanket, he started for the door. Not realizing his girlfriend had rushed back inside the house, he shuffled along the carpet, thinking he might find her on the floor.
She met up with his mother in the living room, and they both got out. They waited anxious minutes until he did, too.
“Once he came out, nothing else mattered,” Lori Beachy said.
***
Using a hose from their backyard shed, Beachy tried to fight the flames himself.
“The siding right in front of me starts melting,” Beachy said. “That’s when it hit me: I’m not stopping this.”
Neighbors and passersby helped the family recover items like photos, a computer, Lori’s purse and a dining room table that seats 14.
On one of those runs, Beachy’s mother noticed her son's left shoulder was burned. Only when he sat down did his feet start to howl. He spent the night in the hospital with second-degree burns.
Two police officers and a firefighter came to his room, but there was no grand interrogation, he said. Everybody knew it was an accident.
Similar to the latent pain in his feet, the fallout from that day was slow developing and even harder to sooth.
"I was so mad at myself," Beachy said. "I burned down our house.”
They moved into his grandparents’ home down the road. They hung sheets to divide the basement into makeshift bedrooms. His father and uncle started work on a new house. Beachy went back to school.
***
Beachy told Indiana Wesleyan coach Mark DeMichael after the fire he was fine, but by fall practice it was clear he wasn’t.
The junior leader, normally encouraging and outgoing, got snippy and impatient.
“No one was angry at me,” Beachy said. “So that just built the anger at myself.”
DeMichael called Beachy into his office and asked what was going on.
The feelings started pouring out, first in words, then tears.
“He just sort of let it out, the guilt he was carrying for what he viewed as ruining his family’s life,” DeMichael said.
DeMichael put his arms around Beachy and hugged him until the wave of emotion quieted. They prayed.
"You’ve got to forgive yourself before anyone can move forward,” DeMichael told him.
Beachy agreed to meet with a counselor from the school’s support services. His attitude changed.
“It helped me grow up,” Beachy said. "I learned holding things in doesn’t help anything.”
Just as important as taking responsibility was knowing when to let it go. Punishing himself for something he couldn’t change was eating him up. He started to realize the same could be true for baseball, and pitching might help.
***
DeMichael first clocked Beachy throwing 90 mph in January of his sophomore year.
He planned to start Beachy that fall of his junior year, but shoulder tendinitis forced him to play first and third base and pitch in relief instead.
By the end of the season, his shoulder was strong and his bat had cooled. He decided to focus on pitching at the Virginia Valley Summer League -- getting an invite on a good word from a college teammate.
All it took was a warm-up pitch or two from Beachy for Braves scout Gene Kerns to sit up in his seat in Woodstock, Va., on July 20, 2008. Beachy hit 90, 91, 92 on his radar gun, and a couple of 93s.
“Nothing happened for eight innings and in comes Brandon,” Kerns said. “I tell everybody he woke me up.”
Two days later the Braves signed him for $20,000 with another $30,000 to finish college.
Last summer, Beachy’s 1.73 ERA led all qualified pitchers in the minor leagues. He developed a reputation within the Braves front office as their best control pitcher in the minors.
Beachy’s cool resolve and a 3.00 ERA in three major league starts last September got him a shot at the fifth starter job this spring. He reported with pitchers and catchers on Monday ready to compete with Mike Minor, the No. 7 overall pick in the 2009 draft.
Heading into camp, though, Beachy didn’t seem overly worried.
“All I can control is when I’ve got that ball in my hands,” he said. “So I’m going to do the best I can when I have it.”
