Ricky Steele's last memories of fake baseball were not pleasant ones. A haze of anger and discontent prompted the then-outfielder to give up the sport entirely. He disliked where the game was going, and decided enough was enough.

"I felt slighted," Steele says. "By the commissioner, by the sport, by everything."

He went immediately on a path of cleansing. He would give up the game forever, vowing to never follow or deal with it again. He shut himself entirely from even thinking about his former career path, making sure to skip MLR Network each time he watched the TV.

"I actually remember arguing with my television provider to get it off my sports package," he says. "I really wanted to wipe the game from my mind."

But Steele was a fake baseball player. He knew it in his heart, as much as he didn't want to admit it. And it took a few calls from friends and fellow players to make him consider it. At first he denied any interest in returning, but one night, while watching television, he succumbed and checked the MLR channel for the first time in months.

"Everything looked so different," Steele recalls with a chuckle. "The Nationals and Phillies were bad now!"

It was what he needed to get back in gear. After an hour of watching game highlights, seeing new players in action, Steele decided he wanted to return to the grind. And so, the next morning, he went on training.

This time, as a pitcher.

"I saw the needs in the game," explains Steele. "Pitchers seemed more coveted than ever. That's when I first thought about joining Minnesota. They had just traded one of their star pitchers away, and I said: 'I could be that star.'"