It was the second week of the minor-league season and Roy Silver was up to his old tricks, though he didn’t know it yet.
Silver — whose name you might remember from the stories of Josh Hamilton and Matt Bush — was in Hickory and got a call from former Rangers prospect Jake Skole. Skole had worked at Silver’s “The Winning Inning” baseball and mentorship facility about a decade ago, then left baseball to play football for Georgia after the 2016 season. He was attempting a comeback, playing for the Gastonia Honey Hunters of the Atlantic League, and wanted to catch up with his old mentor.
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“So I said ‘Sure, no problem,'” Silver recalls. “I drive there and I watch (Skole) hit. He comes over to give me a hug, and I watch this lefty hitter in the cage and I go, ‘That damn swing is pretty good; that looks like a big-league swing. Who is that?’ And he goes, ‘Some guy named Sally?’ And right away, I go, ‘That’s Josh Sale.’
Sale (pronounced Sah-lay) and Skole, it turns out, had a connection before Gastonia. They were taken two picks apart in the first round of the 2010 draft — Skole to the Rangers with the 15th pick and Sale to the Tampa Bay Rays with the 17th pick.
Skole’s path was unusual but not shocking. Baseball hadn’t worked out, and he pursued football for a while. But what about Sale? How did he get here? The last anyone had heard from him, it was 2015 and the Rays had released him after three suspensions — two drug-related and one for an incident in which he was ejected from a Florida strip club for throwing change at a dancer and then posting about it on Facebook.
Where had he gone for six years?
“I continued to battle with addiction,” Sale says now. “There were a lot of hard nights. There were times when I was homeless. There were times when, due to my addiction, I couldn’t think about anything other than getting what I needed to be ‘OK’.”
Sale doesn’t go into detail about exactly which substances he was addicted to, but his first suspension was reportedly the result of a positive test for methamphetamine and an amphetamine. His final suspension was for a second positive test for a drug of abuse.
Addiction can waylay even the most promising of futures. While the worst of it came after the draft, Sale says in retrospect, there were warning signs even as far back as high school that this was going to become a problem. He mentioned binge drinking most weekends as one red flag that addiction might be an issue for him.
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And then, the Rays drafted him and paid him a $1.62 million signing bonus. His family had worked extremely hard to get him into a private school, but “Money like that was something that we were not familiar with,” Sale says now.
Suddenly, he was a millionaire with a much bigger budget to feed his addiction. One night at a bar, he discovered a drug that he describes as an “escape from reality.” Where once alcohol had been the sole outlet for Sale’s attempt to check out, now it had a new, strong partner.
Meanwhile, Sale was experiencing failure on the baseball field for the first time. He hit .210/.289/.346 (.635 OPS) in 60 games rookie ball in 2011. The following season was slightly better, as he upped his output to .264/.391/.464 (.855), but off the field, the foundation began to crumble.
“I thought, ‘You know, what, if I just double down on how hard my workouts are, or I double down on the swings that I take in BP, if I were to double down on reps on the field …’ (But) you can’t outwork a poor diet or a poor off-the-field regimen,” he says. “At some point, it’s going to catch up. I was (racing) against my addiction. And I always thought I’d be able to outrun it. (But) what I came to figure out, it’s not possible … The consequences continued to compound, and things were inevitably getting worse by the day.”
The binge drinking in high school wasn’t the only bit of foreshadowing. Sale was in his second spring training with the Rays when Bush permanently injured a 72-year-old motorcyclist in a hit-and-run accident while under the influence. That landed the pitcher in prison before he began his own recovery. Sale, then 20 years old and in the throes of addiction, convinced himself that such repercussions would never come for him.
“I remember getting the news, but I also thought that I was above certain consequences,” Sale recalls. “I’m here to tell you today that nobody’s above anything, me especially … I remember feeling for Matt in that in that scenario. But I also thought, ‘You know what, there’s no way I would get caught doing what I’m doing.’ And that was obviously not the case.”
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By the time Sale realized his addiction had been lying to him, it was too late. He missed the entire 2013 season due to suspensions, and after struggling to a .238/.313/.344 (.657 OPS) line in High A in 2014, was suspended for the third and final time. In early 2015, his stint with the Rays — and for the moment, baseball — came to an end.
“When they released me, it was more ‘baseball is not an issue right now,'” Sale says. “I remember (Rays’ director of minor-league operations) Mitch Lukevics giving me a call and saying, ‘You need to have a serious sit-down with God or whoever your higher power is, and try and get things straightened out and take care of yourself,’ because they were not worried about me in baseball at that moment. They were worried about me and whatever was going on off the field.”
Sale says he did attempt to kick his addiction, and not just because he wanted to get back to baseball. In mid-2015, he and his girlfriend Carmen Robertson (“we met in a bar,” she says now with a chuckle) welcomed a son, Liam. But before long, the couple was no longer living under the same roof, as Sale spiraled toward rock bottom.
“At that time, I was a single parent, raising our young son,” Robertson recounts. “I think (Josh) and I both knew that he still had to go through those really dark places to be able to come out the other side and actually want, and be willing to be, sober and fully invested in that life. But while he was there, I had no contact with him. And that was intentional on both sides. It doesn’t make it any easier, but at that point, it was solely about protecting our son from both perspectives, not just me. (Josh) stepped away because he knew that he could not show up in a way that he would want to as a father.”
For a year and a half, Sale was homeless back in his hometown of Seattle.
“It took me to places that — although (they) were familiar from my general upbringing, in terms of location — were very dark; places that a lot of people, unfortunately, don’t come back from,” Sale says now. “That was one thing that I saw, but it kind of just came with the territory. And it’s unfortunate because it’s a huge issue. Addiction is a real thing. And a lot of people don’t make it out of it.”
Meanwhile, Carmen had gotten sober and was working in addiction recovery. She says she never gave up hope that Josh would come around, even though the two were not in contact. Multiple attempts to get sober were unsuccessful, even after Sale moved back in with Robertson.
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“This may sound foolish when I say this, but every time that he decided to get sober, I had to buy in and believe that he was going to commit to it, for the well being of our relationship, for my well being as well, and my ability to show up and have hope and faith in who he was,” she says. “I still had to wholeheartedly believe, no matter what. Because, for me, it was only a matter of time. I’m sober as well, so I went through my own experience. It was not nearly the same as his, but I did understand from a different perspective than simply being the significant other of someone going through this.”
Rock bottom finally came. Sale was in jail on theft-related charges, and got a phone call.
“My son got on the phone, and I had been away for about two weeks,” Sale says. “He was three and a half or younger at the time, and he called me and he was upset. He wanted to know when I was coming home and why I wasn’t home. And that was the major point where I had this feeling and realization, both mentally and emotionally, that it was either I continue to go through this revolving door and put this small human being — who didn’t ask for any of this — through this … or I have to make a major change.”
When he got out of jail, Sale says he had some hard decisions to make. Step one was to remove himself from a bad situation. He made a decision to walk away from “…some classes that I ended up having to attend due to my poor behavior in society while intoxicated.” They were meant to help him quit drugs and alcohol, but Sale says they were “a hotbed for both.”
“I essentially went in and said, ‘If you guys want me to stay clean, I can’t be here,'” he says. “‘So whatever repercussions come down from not being here, I will take, but I need to leave this area. So I can focus on remaining clean.’ And that’s what I did.”
Next, he turned to volunteering. He gave rides to friends who were unable to drive. He volunteered at EL 1 baseball in Tacoma, coaching youth players. One day, roughly three years after the last time he had done any baseball-related activities, he took a few swings in the cage. Some of the employees noticed that his swing still looked like that of someone who could play pro ball, and asked him: Did he ever think about attempting a comeback?
“In my current condition, no,” he told them. “If I’m gonna play, I’m gonna have to give it 120 percent. I’m gonna have to do it the way I know it’s supposed to be done.”
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That was late 2018.
If life were a movie, this is the part of the story that could do with a classic 1980s music montage, with Sale lifting weights, running, getting his body back in baseball shape. It might require an extended scene, though — Sale didn’t try out in 2019. He just worked out. In 2020, the same story. His body wasn’t ready yet. Finally, in 2021, it was time. He flew to Viera, Fla., for the Atlantic League tryouts.
For the second time in his life, Josh Sale was a first-round pick — the first pick in the draft, actually. He would be a member of the brand-new Gastonia Honey Hunters.
“I’d say the most gravity was (before) game one,” Sale says of his first game action in over six years. “But if I’m honest … every single time I stepped on a field and the anthem was played, and the lineups were called, I would say a prayer … I was grateful for that exact moment. Because I don’t know when that’s gonna happen again. In the grand scheme of things, and everything that had happened, I was just grateful to be there, in the present, at that exact moment.”
And then there he was, talking to Silver, whose name he knew from reading Josh Hamilton’s book.
“You were supposed to be there,” Silver told him, much to the surprise of Sale, who had been identified by Rays director of mental wellness Vince Lodato as someone who would benefit from Silver’s program nearly a decade before. He had just never shown up.
“You just couldn’t get out of your own way,” Silver told him.
The two had a good conversation and exchanged numbers, promising to stay in touch.
“If you want to call it a God shot, that’s what I’d call it,” Sale says. “There are things that happen where you almost feel like they were supposed to happen. And me being able to just talk to Roy — not even baseball-related — is something that feels like it was supposed to happen.”
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Silver left the ballpark wondering, considering, and praying on the question: did he have another personal project left in him? Meanwhile, he kept track of Sale’s progress, both on and off the field, getting reports from Skole, who was Sale’s roommate. Eventually, he met Carmen and Liam.
“I don’t think I would have tried this at my age again, without a built-in sponsor, a built-in support system,” Silver says. “(Carmen) also went through alcohol rehab. So they’re both working together on their ultimate goal to stay sober. And they have Liam and Liam is a game-changer.”
As for what that looks like, Carmen’s answer was enlightening:
“We have really difficult conversations with each other pretty often,” she says. “Not just about sobriety, but about the other things that generally lead to someone wanting to no longer be sober. Like our thought patterns, the way that we see things, how we interpret conversations with others, it’s really interesting, because addiction plays such a huge role in your relationships. They say it’s like a disease of isolation. And so when you’re trying to combat that, you really have to understand what makes you withdraw and isolate, to begin with. And so for both of us, we call each other out and call each other’s bluffs when we’re saying ‘Oh, yeah, we’re fine.’ No, you’re not fine. This is what I see, this is what I hear, so tell me the truth.”
With his off-field life in a more stable place, the on-field performance took off as well. Sale hit .284/.394/.593 (.987 OPS) and led the Atlantic League in home runs with 34. He hadn’t ever played third base, but his defense at the position improved over the course of the year. In November, Silver convinced the Rangers to take a chance on the player.
“I think both Roy’s … own vetting process is one part,” says assistant GM Josh Boyd. “We just have a ton of faith in Roy, when he does come with that kind of recommendation, knowing that means he’s invested. He has given us a lot of reasons for that to be pretty meaningful.”
Sale traveled to Arizona in November to work out for Rangers scouts, but it was more than just a tryout.
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“He also agreed to speak to the players and he did a really nice job,” Silver says of that November visit. “And that’s very early. I didn’t have Matt or Josh (Hamilton) do any of that stuff early on. I didn’t think they were ready for it — they weren’t ready for it.”
On Jan. 26, in a press release announcing the minor-league signing of pitcher Nick Tropeano, the Rangers quietly announced that they had signed five other players to minor-league deals, including Sale.
Sale’s story differs from Hamilton’s in at least one very significant way: Hamilton was, at one point, the No. 1 prospect in all of baseball before addiction cost him three years away from the sport. Further, Hamilton was 25 when he returned to affiliated ball. Sale is 30. There’s not really any path that would allow him the usual number of years to work his way through the minor leagues. Does the signing indicate that the Rangers think he’s close to big-league ready?
“I hesitate to answer your question — and (I) also say ‘yes,'” says Boyd. ‘The hesitation is because it’s not a scouting process that we normally go through. The evaluation process is completely different than normal. But the conversations I have had with him, it makes it easy to not only root for him, but to believe that this is a talented young man who has been through a lot and he’s dealing with it — his perspective on life and what he values, and how committed he is to it, what this opportunity means to him. When you believe in a person and what they can accomplish, he’s given a lot of reasons to want to believe him and want to be whatever kind of support I can, and the Rangers staff can (be) to help make that happen. That’s where the ‘yes’ part of that comes from.”
This is not the end of the story. Sale’s life isn’t a movie, and he acknowledges that getting this far doesn’t mean we get to cue the dramatic string section and watch him blast a game-winning home run in slow motion. Often, a “happy ending” to an addiction story looks less like an end and more like thousands of small, seemingly-boring victories stacked atop one another, day after day.
“Every day, for me to stay clean, I need to put in work to be able to stay clean,” Sale says. “I don’t want to say that I’m uncomfortable because it’s a constant work in progress. But at no point (playing in 2021) did I think ‘You know what: I would like to escape reality.’ Because for me, escaping reality isn’t a small one-time thing. It is a very exponential and slippery slope. I have no intention of purposely going down that slope again. Because some of the places it took me to were dark enough that I don’t ever care to purposely put myself in that position again.”
Realistically speaking, it still seems like a long shot that Sale will ever suit up as a member of the Rangers’ 26-man big-league roster. Destroying Atlantic League pitching is one thing; rising through the upper ranks of the minor leagues and facing big-league pitchers and their big-league pitch repertoires is quite another, especially after missing six years that your competitors spent honing their skills.
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“For me — and I want you to make sure this is written — (the) big picture is 25 years from now, he’s sober,” Silver says. “He’s married. He’s at least the father of one child, potentially two or three, whatever they decided to do as a family, but that’s the big picture. The little picture is that he gets a chance to play Major League Baseball and helps the Texas Rangers win a few games at the big-league level. Also part of the big picture is he wants to be a counselor. He wants to be a person that inspires young people to live life the way it’s supposed to be lived, not the way you want to live it. And that’s huge for me as well.”
It’s one thing to hear that from a man whose job has, for decades, been to see to it that players find and maintain their sobriety and care for their mental health when their playing days are through. But when asked about his own goals of making it to the big leagues, Sale’s answer echoed Silver’s:
“That’s my goal regardless: to help mentor, and be of service to, the younger players I come in contact with. But the ultimate ‘little picture’ is to play in the big leagues. The ‘big picture’ goal is to remain in baseball at a high level and try to help as many people as I possibly can.”
(Photo of Josh Sale: Steve Shutt)
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