06/10/2020: A date etched in Erceg's glove, heart

NEW YORK -- Lucas Erceg has switched gloves since joining the Royals at the Trade Deadline this year, opting for a darker blue glove with the KC logo of his new team, the one which has him pitching in the biggest moments of October as its best reliever.

The date remains the same, though, stitched onto the outside in white lettering: 06/10/2020.

A constant reminder of the day Erceg’s life changed.

“It’s why I’m here, I think,” Erceg said, looking down at the glove and patting the date. “I can’t thank my choices enough for allowing myself to be here. If I hadn’t chosen to put down the bottle, I don’t know where I would be.”

Four years ago, Erceg was in “dark spaces,” as he detailed to MLB.com’s Adam McCalvy back in 2022 as a former Brewers prospect. When baseball shut down in spring 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Erceg developed a new routine at home in Phoenix: Waking up, playing video games and drinking for hours, and occasionally taking a trip to the convenience store nearby for restocks.

When his now-wife Emma returned home after a long day at work, Lucas would be where she left him.

“I had been up since 10 o’clock drinking and playing video games,” Erceg said. “It just got to a point where she was sick of it.”

Emma told Lucas she was taking a trip home to California, and that if he didn’t have “this all figured out,” as Lucas recalled, “then she wasn’t coming back.”

In hindsight, that was the awakening for Lucas. In the moment, he didn’t care.

“I got so drunk that over the next couple of days, I was like, ‘What am I even doing?’” Lucas said. “And I wasn’t even doing it to spite her. I was doing it to spite myself. At the end of the day, it was to get in my own way.”

On June 9, 2020, Erceg made the decision to stop drinking. June 10 was the first day of his sobriety.

Emma, the “love of my life,” Lucas says with a smile, was the initial push. But he is clear that he stopped for himself more than anything or anyone else.

“In the past, I tried to become sober, and I never really made that choice for myself,” Erceg said. “At first, I thought if I was able to make others feel happy for me, then I would feel happy for myself. And that just wasn’t the case. When I finally decided that I needed to do this for myself, so I could be happy for myself, and know at the end of the day that I am good enough to make a choice like this, that’s when it all came to fruition.”

It wasn’t easy. Withdrawals caused him to lose weight. He couldn’t sleep. But he was convicted in his decision and stayed true to it. Even when he drove 16 hours to Sugar Land, Texas, to play independent ball, which presented a whole new set of challenges -- and not only because he hit .180. One night as he played Fortnite with his teammates, a friend poured him a shot of bourbon and placed the glass on Erceg’s PlayStation.

Erceg was faced with another choice. He declined the drink. He told his friends his story.

“To this day, I haven’t ran into anybody who has had an issue with me telling them I’m sober, a recovering alcoholic,” Erceg said. “Nobody’s made fun of me, everyone has respected my decision, they’ve all supported me.

“That was the biggest scare. That thought of, ‘How are they going to react to me telling them something like that? Are they going to think I’m weak? Are they going to make fun of me because I don’t drink and I had an issue with it?’ But nobody has ever wronged me, or put me down. It’s been nothing but awesome support.”

Erceg has come a long way, although it doesn’t mean the hard days are over. He’s a pitcher now. He’s with his third organization and is establishing himself as one of the best relievers in the game. His 99 mph fastball, nasty slider and wicked changeup are why the Royals made him their prized Trade Deadline acquisition in July.

His competitiveness and confidence are why they had no qualms about slotting him immediately into high leverage roles.

“We just threw him right in there to high leverage as soon as we got him,” manager Matt Quatraro said. “… He has not backed down one time from any of those challenges.”

The date on Erceg’s glove, right there in front of him as he takes a deep breath and gets set on the mound, is a reminder he can take on those challenges -- and then use them, and his story, as support and inspiration for others.

“There’s always a way to turn yourself around,” Erceg said. “There’s no giving up, right? You don’t think there’s a way to get out of this? There is. I found my way out, so for me to be able to use this as a platform and extend my hand out to others, that’s what I want to do. To tell them this isn’t just a baseball thing, this is a life thing, and you learn plenty of lessons through hardship, through adversity.”