Kennedy remembers catching Cole in Kingston, as righty considers retirement

Photo supplied

Taylor Cole relaxes with wife Madilyn and daughter Cozie in the dugout of the Triple-A Worcester Red Sox last season.

December 4, 2022

By Patrick Kennedy

Canadian Baseball Network

Normally, I could care less about the imminent retirement of a big-league ballplayer.

Nothing personal, mind you – and that’s precisely my point. Why should I give a rat’s rump if someone I do not know, and have never met outside of my job as a newspaper scribe, contemplates shelving the spikes to get on with “real life?”

The lone exception was when former Montreal Expo pitcher Bill Atkinson retired. Our ‘personal’ relationship was separated by sixty-feet-six-inches and lasted less than a minute. Yet it endured like no other fan/player bond I’ve known. The Chatham-born Atkinson, still midget-age, once struck me out, well, me and 15 other Kingston Lions teammates in a 1973 provincial junior-age semifinal. Five years later, when the diminutive righthander (5-foot-7, 170 pounds) made his major-league debut with the Expos, that faint-but-firm link compelled me to follow Bill’s career as closely as if he were the game’s brightest star.

Now along comes another exception to that “couldn’t care less” attitude: Taylor Cole, the erstwhile big-league pitcher who will likely soon retire as a player and commence Phase II of his workaday life - the insurance business. Unlike with Atkinson, I never took bat in hands to face righthander Cole. Which is a good thing, given I was 57 years old when we met. I did, however, catch him with my trusty decker during a photo-op at Megaffin Stadium, yours truly wearing only shorts, sneakers, T-shirt and bifocals carefully pushed high up on my beak to protect against potentially fatal blurriness. Cole was clad in grey pressed pants, crisp white shirt, navy tie, and polished dress shoes. In that unofficial uniform of a Mormon missionary, he began firing fastballs. The kid had some serious “gas,” and we’re not talking indigestion.

Our unique bond had been formed days earlier, in June 2010, when the mild-mannered young man, assigned to Kingston as part of his two-year church mission, stopped by the Kennedy house along with fellow missionary Jordan Fletcher. The two were pleasantly surprised to have found the door of a keen listener. In truth, following some initial small talk, the house owner, then an ink-stained wretch in the Whig-Standard sports department, was more intrigued by the pair’s athletic backgrounds than by the pious message they presented on behalf of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Of particular interest was “Elder” Cole’s backstory. The lean 20-year-old with the toothy smile beneath a crew cut had been a pitching prospect, good enough to have been selected by different teams in the 2007 and 2008 MLB drafts. When he turned pro after the Toronto Blue Jays drafted him in the 2011 MLB draft, I began monitoring his progress, which included a sparkling 2014 campaign when his 181 strikeouts topped all the minor leagues.

Fast forward to 2017 and on the TV in a rented Bay of Fundy cottage was Blue Jays’ recent call-up Taylor Cole fanning New York Yankee slugger Aaron Judge. My son Joe and I watched in giddy disbelief.

“I still have that baseball in my office,” Cole noted recently from the Las Vegas home he shares with his attorney wife, Madilyn, and the couple’s nine-month-old daughter, Cozie. “I hope you didn’t see the rest of that inning,” he added on that dubious debut at Rogers Centre. The Yanks torched the greenhorn for four runs and six hits. Afterwards, the Jays placed Cole on the 15-day disabled list with a dislocated toe, then released him days later before resigning him to a minor-league deal.

Current Seattle Mariners closer Paul Sewald and Cole have been close pals ever since the two were eight-year-old teammates in Las Vegas minor soccer, basketball and baseball leagues. Sewald feels badly for Cole and the looming decision his friend faces. “I’m trying to be there for Taylor just like I know he’ll be there for me when my time comes,” reasoned the six-year veteran. “He’s played this game for 25 years and he realized his dream of making it to the major leagues, but it’s never easy to walk away.”

In 11 professional seasons, Cole has pitched at every level and for 15 different teams in four countries, including his last employer, the 2022 Tecolotes de Los Laredos of the independent Mexican League. He’s twice endured serious operations to repair a torn labrum and capsule in his money shoulder, one of which required stem cell injections. Cole has not been on a big-league mound since 2019. Last season the Boston Red Sox added him to the team’s spring training roster as a non-roster invitee before dispatching him to the team’s triple-A affiliate in Worcester. He finished the year in Mexico where, sadly, the soreness in his shoulder returned.

“I feel like I’m chasing my tail,” Cole, 33, said candidly of his peripatetic career which has featured brief stints with two major league teams. His major-league totals include a 7-6 won/loss record, eight saves, 4.97 ERA, and 90 strikeouts in 88 2/3 innings.

Of his pending decision, he said flatly, “It’s almost like a divorce: You know it has to happen, but it’s hard to pull the trigger.”

Another close friend, ex-MLB pitcher Jeremy Guthrie, knows what his buddy’s experiencing, although Guthrie’s 2017 retirement after a dozen campaigns was made easier by his one and only start that season. He coughed up 10 runs in two-thirds of an inning.

“I know what Taylor’s going through,” noted Guthrie, who started Game 7 for the Kansas City Royals in the 2014 World Series against eventual champion San Francisco Giants. “He’s a competitor who still wants to compete… if he’s healthy. No one wants to stop playing, but we all have to at some point.”

If/when Cole does step away, he’ll have fond moments to reflect upon, chief among them being an emotional night at Anaheim Stadium in 2019, the Angels’ first home game since the death of their pitcher Tyler Skaggs 11 days earlier. Reliever Cole opened a “bullpen game” for Los Angeles. He tossed two perfect innings then watched teammate Felix Pena complete the combined no-hitter with seven hitless frames in a lopsided victory over Seattle.

“Talking to you again, in a sense it feels like my career is coming full circle,” Taylor told the caller from Kingston.

If so, it’s been an unforgettable ride. For both of us.

Patrick Kennedy is a retired Whig-Standard reporter. He can be reached at pjckennedy35@gmail.com