I can’t say chasing my dream has been easy, while I got up there pretty quickly the early days were tough!

With the way it works in the United States, you start out at amateur level – basically college. College or high school, the equivalent to “Year 10” in Australia, before heading off to tafe or university.

I played at a small university called, Campbell University and I got drafted by the Atlanta Braves in the 15th round in 2013.

In the American baseball system, as soon as you get drafted by a team, you’re considered a pro athlete at that time, but you’re in the minor league.

And it’s kind of weird how the minor leagues works as there’s five levels to it.

You could either go through every level and it could take you five years, or you can skip levels depending on how good you’re doing.

It can take guys seven, eight years to get to the Major League; but it only took me 18 months.

But that’s not my story, while I got there quickly I had some setbacks that caused me to lose my job, and I’m grinding right now in this independent baseball league.

It’s not affiliated with the MLB by any means, but it’s higher than club baseball because it’s considered pro baseball still.

This league is awesome because 40% of the guys that are playing in the league have Big League experience, so you’re playing against guys that played in the Big League day in-day out.

So it’s a really fun league and a lot of guys get signed again back to MLB teams, so that’s what I’m trying to do right now.

For me my journey begins in 2015, the year I got called up.

We were coming back from a road trip and our bus flipped. We were coming back from a trip playing in Salem, Virginia, which is the Boston Red Sox affiliate, heading to go play in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

It’s 3AM, so people are trying to sleep.

At about 3:30am, I hear one of my buddies go “Oh, shit!.”

I wake up and next thing I know the bus driver is screaming for dear life.

The bus driver was a woman, and she had the most death, blood-curdling scream I’ve ever heard in my life.

It was just like this shock.

Next thing I knew, I get lifted off my seat because we go airborne. The bus flips on its side and we skid about 120 ft on the ground.

I’m on the window side that hit, my window busted out and I’m hanging on to the seat – the little handles on the back of the bus seats.

I’m hanging on for dear life on this seat, while my face’s just getting dragged on the gravel and dirt because the window popped out.

And my teammate next to me had his body’s pinned on my arm.

So I’m holding on to both of us cause if my arm wasn’t there, my buddy would have been flung out the window and just ripped apart.

I can remember the smell of grass and gravel and you’re kind of out it, ‘cause you just woke up and you have no idea what’s going on, but I can hear all my teammates moaning and groaning.

It’s not even screams. It’s not panicked stuff. That’s what made it more scary for me, I think, it’s because you didn’t hear any screams or anything.

You just heard guys moaning. It sounded like people were just getting ground up.

“It was just this low, “Uhhhhhh.” And you’re like, “What is going on?”

Finally the bus stops and man, I’m shook. I’m looking my body up and down. My arm’s bleeding and my face is cut up a little bit.

I’m just like, “What the hell?” In shock. I didn’t know what was going on.

Thankfully, no one was seriously harmed.

But we had just a couple of guys that were never the same again.

One guy, it ended up ruining his career because he ended up getting a herniated disc. But we were just lucky that no one died on that bus.

When the police came and they did the crash scene investigation, they said that the only reason no one died on that bus is because everybody was asleep and our bodies were limp.

Three months pass, and I’m in the Big Leagues.

When I got the call, I didn’t expect it – I was in AAA. It was right around trade deadlines.

So when I got a call from a number saying, “Hey man, you need to go catch a flight to Philly”, I’m sitting there thinking, “what minor league teams in Philly? I must’ve got traded.”

And then I realized it was the manager of my AAA team, and I was like, “Oh, what team did I get traded to?” Cause that’s what I thought.

I couldn’t believe it when he responded, “nah, man, you’re going to the Big Leagues!”

I caught a flight that night and went and made my debut in Philly. It was the most unreal experience, just playing in front of the stadium and playing against people that you watched on TV.

You never think – you always have the dream, and you always believe that you’ll make it, but once you finally make it, sometimes it’s like, “Damn. I’m really here. I can’t believe I’m really here right now.

I was at the top level of baseball in the world right. You just think to yourself, “Damn”. It’s a humbling thing. Not that many people get the experience that.

But then, you also get introduced to the cruel side of the industry; how fast they can trade you on or release you from the contract.

Before you know it, you are fighting for your job, and in my circumstances that was made all the more difficult after I damaged the front of my rotator cuff, suffering ligament damage to my shoulder.

The doctors told me that it’s a very rare injury and that they really don’t like doing operations on it because it could do more damage than what’s already there.

So they told me to get this shot called a PRP injection, which is like a plasma-replacement.

It’s where they take your own blood and they super fugue really, really fast and it creates a tremendous amount of white blood cells, and they shoot it back into that area.

It’s then hoped that there is enough scar tissue to hold down my shoulder.

I ended up doing that, and then I got sent down the league – while I was submitted into the rehab program.

I was doing my rehab and I was making some progress, and then I started having these stomach issues, randomly, where I couldn’t go to the bathroom for like a week.

It was weird to me. I’d have extreme pain in my stomach.

I didn’t know what to do and I was kind of getting nervous. One thing I recommend to people who read this, is not to type in your symptoms on Google because I started thinking I had cancer and stuff.

I went to our team doctors and they did ultrasounds on my stomach and then they said they couldn’t see anything, it wasn’t until they wanted to do a colonoscopy, and I was like, “Oh man. I’m 25. I don’t feel like I need a colonoscopy at 25.” Because usually they do that at 50-something.

But I had to do it. I went and I drank that fluid and I went to the bathroom.

It wasn’t until later, I just started feeling light-headed and weird. My body just felt – weak, and it was random, what scared me the most was my eyes started close. My vision kept tunnelling.

I tried to get on my phone and dial 911, but I couldn’t cause I didn’t have the cognitive ability because my brain function was all off.

I started slurring my words. My motor skills were awful.

It was almost like I was super drunk. It felt like I was almost blackout drunk and honestly, I didn’t drink anything.

It was just the fluid, that stuff the doctor gave me.

In my head, I thought I was dying – I’m literally dying right now. I need to go do something right now or I’m going to die.

We were in a hotel in Orlando, Florida and I just got in a taxi-cab, that’s the only thing at the time that I saw.

My primal instincts took over, and I managed to tell him to get me to the hospital as I was fading out. The next thing I know, I wake up about a week and a half later.

I wake up and I was so confused. I had no idea what was going on. I just see my parents in there and some of my teammates.

Apparently, my sodium levels were so low. The Doc came in and told me my sodium levels were so low that my organs started to shut down, my brain started to shut down and I started having seizures.

So the whole time I was trying to dial my phone, I was having a seizure, but I didn’t know it because I felt like I was normal.

I was just shaking and moving. And when they said that – I felt like I passed out in the taxi cab and they got me out.

But apparently, I walked in to the hospital on my own and apparently I was just speaking gibberish to the reception lady.

It made no sense. I wasn’t even speaking English words. I was just saying random stuff to her. They thought I was on meth or ecstasy or drugs, like hard-core drugs.

Then I fell on the ground and started having really bad seizures.

So they took me to the emergency and put me into a medically-induced coma because I wouldn’t stop having seizures.

I guess they pumped me with enough sodium and potassium or whatever the electrolyte fluids they wanted to give me at the time, and I survived somehow.

They told me that if I would have stayed in that room, I would have been dead.

I’ll say this. It was the most humbling experience. You’ll never know true humility until you have another grown man wipe your ass when you go to the bathroom because you can’t move your body.

I was just apologising the whole time. I was just, “Bro, I’m sorry, man.” He’s like, “Bro, don’t even worry about it. What you’ve been through man, this is nothing.”

Needless to say, some of the experiences I’ve been through on my pursuit to the MLB, I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

While I am currently without a MLB contract right now, I’m doing all I can to get back there!