A former Navy Lieutenant with three tours of duty has been called up by the St. Louis Cardinals to pitch for them. Mitch Harris, 29, was called up by the team Tuesday when they played the Washington Nationals, the Military Times reported.
During his stint in the Persian Gulf on a Navy carrier, Mitch Harris kept his pitching arm—and his hopes of eventually making it to the majors—in shape by tossing a baseball on the flight deck.
"We actually had a cook ... who grew up playing baseball his whole life," Harris recalled. "He was about the only person I truly trusted to throw with, because I was scared I'd hurt anybody else."
Harris, a 2008 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, told this story Tuesday during a news conference at Nationals Park, where the 29-year-old relief pitcher joined the St. Louis Cardinals after being called up from the minors.
Harris may be the second Naval Academy graduate to ever play in the major leagues and the first since the 1920s. He said that while there were points he thought he'd never make it, he never gave up on his dream.
Through all the time away from the game, he never lost sight of his goal.
"If you tell yourself you're not going to be able to do it, you're setting yourself up for failure. So I told myself the whole time that there was going to be a time where I was going to get a chance to do this," Harris said. "And that was the best way to go about it. I'm human. There's definitely days where I thought there's no shot, no chance I was going to do this. But here we are."