Tigers pitcher Daniel Norris was making the cross-country trek from California to New York on Tuesday when he heard the news. His connection from Denver to Chicago had just landed and he switched his cellphone off airplane mode.

He had 14 text messages. Messages from close friends and family members.

Did you hear what happened to Roy Halladay?

Immediately Norris scoured Twitter, with an ominous feeling inside. He knew this couldn’t be good and his heart felt heavy when that suspicion was confirmed: Halladay had been killed when his plane crashed off the Gulf of Mexico.

“As soon as I saw that, I started thinking about what he meant to me,” Norris said.

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It all started when Norris was starting out with the Toronto Blue Jays organization. The promising young left-hander, selected in the second round of the 2011 draft, was attending his first real spring training with the club back in 2012.

At first, Norris was simply struck by the way the trainers would talk about Halladay in the weight room, or the way they’d use him as an example for the various strength and conditioning exercises the prospects were put through. There was even one named after the iconic pitcher, “The Roy Halladay Run.”

It was a brutal run — “nobody could complete it,” Norris recalled — and it prompted an unwavering respect among all those who even attempted the feat. That’s when Norris really started to understand what Halladay’s lasting impact was on the organization.

“Roy Halladay was the benchmark for hard work for the Toronto Blue Jays,” Norris told The Athletic when reached by phone Wednesday morning. “It was like everything we did was almost compared to Roy Halladay.”

Even though Halladay was three years removed from Toronto – he was traded to the Phillies in 2009 – his reputation took root.

“Roy Halladay, he was a legend already,” Norris said of the eight-time All-Star and two-time Cy Young winner. “And he was still pitching.”

Norris eventually got to meet the legend himself, when a handful of the Blue Jays’ best pitching prospects were given directions to gather for a secret morning meeting during minor league spring training one year. The details were scarce. All the players were told: Show up at the cafeteria at 7 a.m. for something special.

When the players convened that morning, Halladay strolled in, sat down with those select few and spent the next hour talking with them about the mental preparation side of baseball. Norris still recalls the reactions of everyone sitting there that day.

It was a young group of guys and, as Norris said, it was not unusual for a group setting like that to elicit a mixed bag of interest. Not that day.

“I remember looking around and everybody was jaw-on-the-table like, super-dialed in to what he was saying,” Norris said. “And that just speaks volumes about what he meant to the game of baseball and how much respect he had.”

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Fast forward to 2017, and this is where the bond between the two men grow and Norris’ affinity and respect for Halladay deepens.

It was a rough year. Norris felt he started strong but was later hampered by injury and flummoxed by his lack of results.

“Obviously, I was struggling to stay healthy,” Norris said. “but mentally it was really stressful, because I wanted so badly to perform well. Every time I went out there, I was putting immense pressure on myself.”

There were many lengthy conversations with then-Tigers pitching coach Rich Dubee, personal conversations that went beyond baseball as the two tried to unearth some solutions. One day, right before the All-Star break, Dubee approached Norris. He asked him not to repeat this to anyone (Norris now believes this is an anecdote that is worth sharing publicly, considering the circumstances) but that he was going to have Roy Halladay give him a call.

Norris was flabbergasted. When Dubee, who was Halladay’s pitching coach in Philadelphia, texted him to say he would be calling, Norris, responded:

“It’s not December 25th though.”

Norris literally likened this event to Christmas Day, he was so excited.

The day Halladay was set to reach out, the Tigers were in Cleveland. Norris didn’t want to miss the call so he got up early and went to breakfast. When the two connected, they ended up talking for two hours. Two hours.

They talked baseball, of course. Halladay told Norris he could tell he was pitching through an injury, but that he had seen previous starts in 2016. He told him his stuff was incredible, that there was no reason he wouldn’t have success. He took him through his own story, a path that included, at one point, a stop in Single A. He gave him tips on mental preparation.

If anything, Norris’ confounding results can be traced to caring too much — an earnest, willful and intense desire to succeed — and Halladay empathized with this. He too had struggles with that sort of aggressive tenacity. But then he learned to channel it in a positive way. He encouraged Norris to do the same.

It’s OK to be who you are. You just need to use it more effectively.

There’s one other kernel of advice that stands out, though. One that Norris has never, and will never forget. One that was abundantly relevant to his professional crossroads at the time.

Every game you go out there, every fifth day, make sure every box is checked. That’s the main thing. And if it’s not, and you don’t get the results, you have no one else to blame.

“That’s what’s gonna stick with me because for me it was so hard. I always had every box checked. But if I had a bad game, I would review my checklist. What went wrong? What did I not do right? And it was like, I did everything right, maybe I’m just not good enough,” Norris said.

“And that’s why I was losing sleep last year. It was hard. I was doing everything right. I was doing every little thing right, but the big thing I was doing wrong. And I think he basically told me, ‘It’s OK if you do the big things wrong as long as you do the little things right. At some point, the work’s gonna pay off.’”

Amid struggles on the mound, Tigers pitcher Daniel Norris got a helpful phone call from Roy Halladay that lasted two hours. (Photo by Rick Osentoski/USA TODAY Sports)

After the two finished talking baseball, they talked about life. Both were men with a diverse array of interests. Halladay told Norris how stoked he was to get his pilot’s license to fly his new plane, a topic of conversation that feels eerie now for Norris. But he also talked about his family, how they were his world, and about how much he loved coaching his sons’ baseball teams.

This was not just your garden-variety, generic call of goodwill.

“That was the thing that really stuck with me. I just imagine he gets a text from his old pitching coach, ‘Hey, I’ve got a kid here who’s got a lot of potential but he’s not there yet.’ I think it would be really easy for him to just text me like, ‘Hey, whatever, if you need me, call me,’ but he called me and we talked for two hours. He took two hours out of his day.

“I think he really enjoyed doing that. I guarantee I’m not the only one he did that to,” Norris said. “I think he really saw that as yeah, I’m retired, but I’m still involved in baseball and I can still have an impact on the game. I think he really took pride in helping the young up-and-coming pitchers and players of baseball.”

Before they got off the phone, Halladay gave him some homework to do over email, and he encouraged him to remain in touch. Norris went on the disabled list shortly after, but was looking forward to the 2018 season, because he knew he had a legendary pitcher in his corner, one who would be willing to help when he hit a rough patch.

“I knew that he was going to be there,” Norris said. “That’s what he portrayed to me ‘I’m going to be there for you. You can get through this.’ ”

Halladay won’t be there for Norris to call this season. Or ever again. But his impact will live on, surely.

“He had a stamp on a lot of guys, and I think that was really important to him,” Norris said. “He was such an old-school type pitcher that I think he wanted to keep it that way. And that’s what I respected about him.”

(Top photo: Drew Hallowell/Getty Images)