ATLANTA — Evan Gattis was 19 when he disappeared off the baseball grid in 2006. He had just spent 18 months at an Oklahoma junior college, and he had had enough of the game. His self-diagnosis was that he was “looking for something,” so he put down his baseball bat and glove for three and a half years and went on a personal journey.

He was a ski lift operator and a janitor, and he flipped pizzas. He lived in a hostel and pondered life with spiritual consultants on a sojourn through Colorado, California, New Mexico and his home state, Texas.

Not once during that time, Gattis said, did he stop at a baseball field or a batting cage or have the urge to take some swings and return to a game in which he had been a schoolboy star.

And, now, suddenly, the former janitor is hitting cleanup for the team with the best record in the majors, the Atlanta Braves.